AN NSC EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW) MYLINGAR: “DÖDA VÄGAR”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
Dec 022016
 

mylingar-doda-vagar

 

Last month we premiered a song from the debut EP Döda Vägar by the mysterious Swedish band Mylingar. At that time I decided to defer my thoughts about the EP as a whole, with the idea of completing a review closer to the release date. That’s one plan I managed to complete, and just in the nick of time, because the EP is being released today by Amor Fati Productions and can now be heard in full.

The music on the EP is a nightmarish hybrid of black and death metal that seems designed with the objective of inflicting torment and terror on a thermonuclear scale. It ignites one violent hurricane of hate after another, each song ravaging the listener’s head with horrendous and even stupefying power. The effect is to produce the kind of adrenaline surge in the listener that I imagine is akin to a near-death experience in a midnight war zone, where you’re surrounded by combatants that aren’t fully human. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: THE REPLICATE — “EUGENICIDE”

 Premieres  4 Responses »
Dec 022016
 

the-replicate-a-selfish-dream

 

As a genre term, “technical death metal” covers a lot of ground. It’s applied to bands ranging from Suffocation to Spawn of Possession, from Cryptopsy to Atheist, from Decapitated to Behold the Arctopus. It has been applied to the band whose new song we’re premiering in this post, but despite the broad landscape of sounds the term has come to encompass, the music of The Replicate still seems out on the fringe of the territory — if it hasn’t crossed over into a new and strange frontier altogether, at least compared to the modern drawing of the boundary lines.

The Replicate is the solo project of an Indian musician named Sandesh Nagaraj. Before moving to Los Angeles where he now lives, Nagaraj was a member of other extreme metal bands in his native land over a decades-long life in music, including Myndsnare, Extinct Reflections, and Stranglehold. On The Replicate’s debut EP A Selfish Dream, he is accompanied by drummer Ray Rojo as well as a trio of vocalists and other “cunning pals”. But Nagaraj is a damned cunning ringleader himself. Continue reading »

DARKNESS DESCENDS: AKSAYA, FROWNING, DDENT, MONTE PENUMBRA, FAMISHGOD, UBUREN, DERHEAD

 Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
Dec 012016
 

aksaya-kepler

 

Lots of people are starting to make year-end lists, and we’re continuing to gear up for our own LISTMANIA extravaganza (we invited our readers to begin sharing their lists here earlier today), but time hasn’t stood still for all that:  New songs and new albums continue to roll out, and I continue to make lists of what I come across.

Here are new songs from seven bands among the many that grabbed me over the last week. I decided to use a different title for this collection than the usual “Seen and Heard” heading, for reasons that will become evident as you listen.

AKSAYA

Aksaya are a French band whose new album Kepler will be co-released by Satanath Records (Russia), More Hate Productions (Russia), and The Ritual Productions (The Netherlands) on December 15. Two songs are now available for listening, the first of which is a free download at Bandcamp: “Anomalie, Prélude À La Découverte” and “Non Morietur”. Continue reading »

BRUCKNER: SYMPHONY 9 (1896)

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Dec 012016
 

300px-anton_bruckner_donaupark

 

(We welcome back our guest writer Lonegoat, the Texas-based necroclassical pianist behind Goatcraft, whose latest album Yersinia Pestis was released earlier this year by I, Voidhanger.)

I’ve decided to feature one of my favorite symphonies for my second entry for No Clean Singing. It is metal as far as spirit is concerned, which I will attempt to delineate here. My next entry will be about an actual metal release, so you won’t have to worry about me spamming classical music at everybody here all of the time. I will first talk about Bruckner-the-man before Bruckner-the-composer.

Of Bruckner’s numerous quirks, what struck most people as odd was his obsession with death. He kept a photo of his mother’s corpse, and when Beethoven and Schubert’s graves were exhumed for their remains to be relocated, Bruckner was there to fondle their skulls. Nobody’s quite sure why he was infatuated with death so much, but his music might shed an insight on it, as it often goes from heavenly beauty to demonic predation. Other than this macabre quirk, he would also propose to teenage girls/young women, even while he was elderly. Most men are attracted to younger women so this isn’t that bizarre. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE: CHARLENE BERETAH — “DEPRAVED / A VERY LONG WEEK”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Dec 012016
 

charlene-beretah-depraved-a-very-long-week

 

Let’s have a show of hands:  How many of you are fans of Stanley Kubrick’s film Full Metal Jacket? Well, quite a lot of you, though I can’t say I’m surprised. Now, raise your hand if you remember the name that Private Gomer Pyle gave his M14 rifle, the one he ultimately used as the instrument of his own destruction. Not quite as many… but those of you who remembered “Charlene” got it right.

The band whose debut EP we’re premiering today remember it, too — the name they chose for themselves, Charlene Beretah, is a tribute to that movie. And their music turns out to be just as dark, depraved, and depressive. In fact, the EP’s name is Depraved / A Very Long Week, which combines the names of the two songs you’ll find there. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2016: AN INVITATION FOR READERS’ LISTS OF THE YEAR’S BEST METAL

 LISTMANIA 2016  264 Responses »
Dec 012016
 

NCS The Best of 2016 graphic

 

We’re now beginning the final month of 2016, and you know what that means: Now begins the final countdown to the end of the year (and the strengthening onslaught of the annual holiday season). In the world of metal, this month we’ll also start seeing more and more lists of the year’s best releases.

Back in 2009, when this site was just a few days old, I wrote a post about year-end lists and why people bother with them. The best reason still seems to be this: Reading someone else’s list of the albums they thought were best is a good way to discover music you missed and might like.

We don’t do an “official” NCS year-end “best albums” list. However, we publish the picks of each of our regular staff writers as well as a large group of guest writers (which we’ll start doing later this month). Every year we also invite our readers to share their lists and we’re doing that again right here, right now. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: HEREZA — “UNIŠTI, PALI, RUŠI”

 Premieres  5 Responses »
Dec 012016
 

hereza-i-become-death

 

“Uništi, Pali, Ruši” are the Croatian words for “destroy, burn, tear it down”. Those words are also the title to a song and video we’re premiering today from an album called I Become Death by the Croatian band HerezA. This is HerezA’s second album, which follows their 2015 debut full-length, Misanthrope. The new one will be released in mid-February by the Polish extreme metal label Godz ov War Productions.

Although I’m spoiling a jolting surprise, I have to applaud the moment in the first few seconds of the video that syncs the first sound of the song with an image of artillery going off. And the sonic bombardment of the song doesn’t relent from that moment to the end. Continue reading »

TERAMOBIL: “MAGNITUDE OF THOUGHTS”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Dec 012016
 

teramobil-art

 

(Here’s Austin Weber’s review of the new album by Montreal’s Teramobil.)

Some of you may have caught Teramobil’s initial 2013 release, Multispectral Supercontinuum, which we covered here at NCS in 2013. It got a lot of coverage elsewhere too, and for good reason. The line-up and the music were jaw-dropping.

The band is a power trio consisting of Dominic “Forest” Lapointe (Augury, First Fragment, ex-Beyond Creation) on six-string Bass, Mathieu Bérubé (Unhuman) on Guitar, and the always amazing Alexandre Dupras (Samskaras and Unhuman) on drums.

Out of nowhere, without any warning, the band dropped their second album yesterday called Magnitude of Thoughts. Even Luc Lemay gets in on the experience, playing some incredible stuff on second guitar on all of “Thanatonaut”. Continue reading »

SPAZZ: “SWEATIN’ II: DEPORTED LIVE GORILLA”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Dec 012016
 

spazz-sweatin-ii

 

(Todd Manning reviews this re-mastered (or in some cases mastered for the first time) compilation of tracks by the now-defunct Spazz originally recorded from 1995-1996, plus a full live set from 1996.)

I always have drawn a rather false analogy when comparing music genres that goes something like, Metal is to Classical as Punk and Hardcore are to Jazz, trying to express the relative approaches of the musicians and their interactions as ensembles. More or less, Metal and Classical often seem to put a premium on a certain sort of precision, whereas Punk/Hardcore and Jazz, often at their best, rely on a tight sort of looseness, a sense that everything could fall apart at a moment’s notice, but yet the band manages to hold everything together, creating an enthralling dynamic tension.

All that being said, if most Hardcore were analogous to a Hard Bop quintet in full swing, then Powerviolence represented the most gonzo of Free Jazz ensembles, and Spazz was the king of the musical renegades. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: PARIA — “SO FAR FROM THE HIDDEN GOD”

 Premieres  3 Responses »
Nov 302016
 

Paria-Knochenkamp

 

The German black metal band Paria were spawned in the year 1995 and since then have grown ever more toxic and terrifying through a sequence of demos and splits, ultimately collected in a foul 2011 compilation (fittingly named 11 Years Of Blood, Cum & Satan), and then three full-lengths, the last of which was 2013’s Surreal Satanist.

On the 25th of December, W.T.C. Productions will add to Paria’s horrific legacy by releasing a new EP, entitled Knochenkamp, and today we bring you the premiere of its third track, “So Far From the Hidden God“. Continue reading »

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