NO CLEAN SINGING

AN NCS PREMIERE: HELION — PROMO 2016

Dec 182016

Have you been feeling sluggish lately? Beaten down and worn out from the travails of daily life? Sleeping poorly and waking up exhausted? So disheartened by the drabness of your existence that all the color has been leached from the passing hours, leaving your world a monochrome gray? If so, we have a sure-fire cure for you: Listen to Helion.

Helion was spawned in 2009 in the Lombardy region of northern Italy, the brainchild of guitarist/vocalist Massimiliano Cirelli. Helion’s full line-up now includes musicians from other bands, including Maze of Sothoth, With Out, Redneck, and Mortui Corpus. Together, this quartet have recorded a two-track promo that we’re premiering today, and it’s guaranteed to get your blood rushing and pop open your eyes like an electric shock. Continue reading »

VIDEOGRAPHY: ZEAL AND ARDOR, GODCHILLA, MORS PRINCIPIUM EST, WOLVENNEST, INFERITVM

RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 1 Response »

Dec 172016

We devoted ourselves largely to year-end LISTMANIA over the past week, but that didn’t stop the torrent of new metal from continuing to flow. I have a large list of interesting things I spotted during the week, and I’ve divided the best of them among several posts for this weekend.

In this first one I’ve collected five videos. Three of them are new and two are older. I picked these in part because they make for quite a varied montage of sights and sounds. I’ll mention that a new Kreator song and video also appeared yesterday, which you can find here, even though I decided not to include it.

ZEAL AND ARDOR

There have been some interesting discussions in our LISTMANIA comment threads about Devil Is Fine, the 2016 album by Zeal and Ardor. Some people think it’s too uneven and disjointed to deserve the acclaim it’s received this year (and in lots of year-end lists). While agreeing that it’s uneven, I’m in the camp of people who think the high points on the album are so creative and interesting that it deserves the attention — which is pretty much what I wrote within days of its release last June. Continue reading »

SUNLIGHT’S BANE: “TBVLATEWB”

Album Reviews 4 Responses »

Dec 162016

(TheMadIsraeli reviews the forthcoming debut album by Sunlight’s Bane from southeastern Michigan.)

Sunlight’s Bane is the sort of pure vitriol I need in my life. TBVLATEWB (also known as “The Blackest Volume: Like All The Earth Was Buried”) is both an unrelenting powerhouse of feral ferocity and carnage and also an interesting exercise in sub-genre hybridization which, as you may know, is my fucking shit.

An interesting combination of death metal, black metal, hardcore, and grindcore, this album accomplishes a grim and unrelentingly belligerent attack that sticks out from the pack. If you like bands like Anaal Nathrakh, Nails, Dark Fortress, Portal, and/or Incantation I think this album will speak to you inevitably on some visceral level. I’m quite a fan of what this band are doing, and very glad I gave it a shot when I got the promo. Continue reading »

2016 — A YEAR IN REVIEW(S): THE PERSONAL TOP TEN

LISTMANIA 2016 36 Responses »

Dec 162016

(Andy Synn’s week-long series of year-end lists concludes with his list of The Personal Top Ten for 2016. Click these links to see his lists of The Critical Top Ten and the year’s Great Albums, the Good Albums, and the Disappointments.)

And now for my final list, the one which, following on from how in-depth and over-thought the rest of them are, is pretty much a breeze by comparison.

Because, for my “Personal” top ten of the year I like to just go with my gut, and simply pick those albums which I’ve been listening to the most, which have been my biggest surprises or my favourite new discoveries, without over-analysing the who, what, where, when, and why.

As a result I’m explicitly NOT saying these albums represent the “best” of 2016 (that was yesterday’s column). They just happen to be my favourites, and should provide a window into my tastes and my listening habits from this year. Continue reading »

BENEATH THE NCS RADAR — PART 19 (OVER THE TOP YEAR-END EDITION)

Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 19 Responses »

Dec 162016

( The end of the year approaches, and to commemorate the death of 2016 our Norwegian friend Gorger has prepared a gargantuan installment of his series highlighting releases that we have overlooked. To find more of his discoveries, type “Gorger” in our search bar or visit Gorger’s Metal.)

LISTMANIA is well under way. I still have some 2016 releases that deserve a mentioning at least. And that’s what I intend to do. Inspired by Islander’s overflowing-streams I’ll settle for a short conclusion of my own initial write ups. It’s not going to be easy, as I just don’t know when to shut my mouth. You probably got better things to do with your life than listen to me jabber, chatter, and preach all day anyway.

During December, I’ll probably gather enough material for a 20th round of this here series. When such a post will be published, is still up in the smoggy air. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: COWARDICE — “NO SOVEREIGNTY”

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Dec 152016

Some album titles seem to have little or nothing to do with the sound and atmosphere of the music. Some titles tell you a lot about what you’re going to hear. Without Condolence, the debut album by New Jersey’s Cowardice, is in the latter camp.

The title implies the existence of grievous loss or tragedy, and it also conveys a kind of cold fatalism as the response. Or I suppose it could be understood as a statement about the uncaring dice roll of daily existence — when you least expect it, life will fuck you without remorse, and without a comforting hand to assist in your recovery. The music offers no condolences either. It hits with the staggering force and wrenching agony of incurable desolation, and its visceral power and emotional intensity are compelling.

We have a sample of what I’m trying to describe, a song called “No Sovereignty“, which is the album’s opening track. Continue reading »

2016 — A YEAR IN REVIEW(S): THE CRITICAL TOP TEN

LISTMANIA 2016 72 Responses »

Dec 152016

(Andy Synn’s week-long series of year-end lists continues with his personal list of The Critical Top Ten for 2016. Click these links to see his lists of the year’s Great Albums, the Good Albums, and the Disappointments.)

For those of you unfamiliar with how this works, I always wind-up my week-long retrospective with two lists, the “Critical Top Ten” and the “Personal Top Ten”.

Now the second one is probably pretty self-explanatory, in that it’s just a list of the ten albums I’ve loved, lived with, and listened to the most this year. It’s really just a snapshot of my personal listening habits/tastes over the last twelve months.

The idea behind this one possible needs some explaining though.

You see the “Critical Top Ten” is where I try (as best I can) to remove my own personal biases and downplay any favouritism and instead attempt to name the ten albums (unranked) which I feel honestly represent the best of the best from the last year in Metal. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): UR — “HAIL DEATH”

Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET 2 Responses »

Dec 152016

I listen to a lot of new black metal every week. As most serious metal lovers are well aware, the genre has become remarkably diverse, so much so that I’d venture to say that it now encompasses more variety than any of the other well-recognized genres of extreme music — which is one reason I listen to a lot of black metal every week. Some branchings of this immense, gnarled, and thorny tree have gone off in experimental directions; others have twisted back down into the roots, intertwining with them to the point that the new growth is indistinguishable from the old.

The debut EP Hail Death by the Polish black metal band UR isn’t experimental, or mind-bendingly intricate. It honors certain aspects of the genre’s roots, yet it’s also not a re-tread of the dominant forms of the second wave. But among all the varied branchings of black metal that I’ve explored this year, it has proven to be one of the most enjoyable. I’ll explain why — but I wouldn’t blame you if you chose to skip past my verbiage immediately and jump straight to the player at the end of this post, where you can launch a full stream of the EP in advance of its December 15 release by Arachophobia Records. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA: STEREOGUM’S LIST OF THE 40 BEST METAL ALBUMS OF 2016

LISTMANIA 2016 37 Responses »

Dec 152016

Earlier this month as part of our annual LISTMANIA series I posted the names of the few metal albums that were included in Stereogum‘s list of “The Best 50 Albums of 2016” across all genres of music that Stereogum covers, while noting that their list of best metal was yet to come. Yesterday it arrived.

Stereogum is of course a “big platform” site that appeals to an audience much larger than merely metal lovers, but the site does have a heavyweight group of metal writers in its stable. They’re responsible for the “The Black Market” column each month, which has been a great source of discovery for extreme music for four years, and Stereogum‘s annual metal list has been dependably solid for just as long. Unlike metal lists at other big cross-genre sites, Stereogum’s hasn’t had the aroma of pandering and calculation hanging about it like a fresh fart.

And so I’ve been anxious to see Stereogum‘s metal-only year-end list, as I have been in past years. As usual, this year it’s accompanied by an introductory essay — which this year is especially noteworthy in its own right. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: LAGO — “CATACOMBS AND OCEANS”

Premieres 1 Response »

Dec 142016

We go back a ways with the Arizona death metal band Lago, back to the discovery of their very impressive Tyranny demo in January 2013. They released an even more impressive debut album of the same name in 2014, from which we had the pleasure of premiering the first advance track. And since then we’ve been waiting to see what Lago would do next.

What they’ve done next is collaborate with the Polish war machine Calm Hatchery on one of the best short releases of the year, a powerhouse vinyl/digital split released on December 2 by Selfmadegod Records (Poland) and Battleground Records (U.S.). For that split, each band contributed one song — but if you buy the vinyl split (as I did) you’ll discover that it comes with a code for a secret bonus track by Lago that turns out to be maybe even better than the two staggering monsters that are visible on the track list.

It’s really far too good to remain hidden, and so today we get to bring you the premiere of a public stream, just as Lago is releasing the track as a digital single. The name of the song is “Catacombs and Oceans“. Continue reading »

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