NO CLEAN SINGING

AN NCS PREMIERE: COMA CLUSTER VOID — “IRON EMPRESS”

Aug 012016

(Austin Weber arranged, and now introduces, our premiere of a song from the debut album by the multinational band Coma Cluster Void.)

While 2016 has been an exceptionally good year for quality metal releases so far, there’s one album I’ve been anxiously awaiting above almost all else, Coma Cluster Void’s debut full-length, Mind Cemeteries. Some of you may be familiar with the group from when we premiered the album’s title track here at NCS last year. Others still may have noticed that our esteemed editor placed the album on a list of his most anticipated 2016 releases back in January at NCS. It seems things have come full circle, as we get to debut another song by the band! The one we are premiering today is a ferocious ode to chaos and bleakness entitled “Iron Empress”.

From what the band told me, the song title is a reference to the foreboding being that adorns the cover art of the album, the Iron Empress on the cover standing in as a metaphor for the album’s concept and themes. Coma Cluster Void members John Strieder and Mike DiSalvo explained a bit about this in the following statement: Continue reading »

BLACK METAL (PART 3): A COLLECTION CURATED BY NEILL JAMESON (KRIEG)

RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 6 Responses »

Aug 012016

(Neill Jameson (Krieg) returns with the third installment of a three-part post devoted to under-the-radar black metal releases worthy of greater attention. You can find Part 1 here and Part 2 here.)

One thing I’ve come to realize while doing this series is my mix tapes in the late ’90s were fucking great and anyone who was forced to drive with me during those times should start a kickstarter to throw me a parade. The other thing I’ve realized is how fortunate I was to come up at a time when all this was actually happening and not a footnote in some elderly man’s rantings twenty years later. The emphasis on performing music you were passionate about versus the current metal scene’s (sometimes) inane need for innovation meant that while you might be getting three dozen variations on the same Darkthrone or Emperor songs, at least they still possessed something special.

The conversation around black metal at the time was easier to digest, too, since it was basically all based on a form of honesty that isn’t really around any more, and there wasn’t someone standing up on a soap box because they were offended you owned a Burzum record. While I value the deeper intellectualism that the contemporary era can bring, it also has its shortcomings, especially in people’s perceptions.

Anyway, this is the final piece of my three-part black metal series. My list is obviously far from complete and I may revisit it someday, but for now here’s six more: Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD (BY DGR): VOLTURYON, NECROMANCING THE STONE, DAWN OF DEMISE, EVERGREY, MASTIC SCUM, SPURN, S-TOOL, NOCTEM

Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 3 Responses »

Aug 012016

(DGR volunteered for round-up duty to start our week, and brings us new music from seven bands plus new-album news from an eighth.)

We have been trying our damndest to keep up with the flow of music that has been spilling forth from the gaping maw of heavy metal recently, but it has become clear that this is a war that must be fought on multiple fronts. Thus, I find myself once again deploying to the Seen and Heard front lines with a veritable smorgasbord of new music, videos, and album announcements for you to all enjoy.

I had a lot of fun figuring out where to position each band this time, as I have a very symmetrical idea of how things in this Seen and Heard should be approached — resulting in tremendously heavy music spilling into some infectiously light stuff and then returning right back to the abyss from which it came. You may need to settle in for this one; there’s a lot of fantastic stuff packed within this round-up, and it just goes to show that 2016 is proving to be a hell of a year for metal. Continue reading »

THE REARVIEW MIRROR (WOLFHEART)

THE REARVIEW MIRROR 5 Responses »

Jul 312016

(DGR takes over The Rearview Mirror again, with a look back at the Finnish band Wolfheart — and it’s not the one you’re probably thinking of.)

When prolific Finnish musician Tuomas Saukkonen launched a new solo project entitled Wolfheart in 2013, there was a small part of my brain that fired and said there had been a Wolfheart before — which was true; there have actually been a couple of them. But I quickly wrote off the hunch as a misfiring neuron, which has pretty much been shown to be the basis of this site.

Why it mattered to me that there had been a Wolfheart prior to the formation of the current excellent Wolfheart is a question that would go unanswered for some time, until I remembered that the other Wolfheart had been a project launched by a couple of the members in Charon — and then it all made sense, as I am a fan of Charon, albeit in an ass-backwards sense because I didn’t really check them out until an eternity after Poisonblack had launched in the mid 2000s, it being the project of one of the main guys behind Sentenced, who hung it up in 2005. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE: VOIDS OF VOMIT — “RITVAL EXPIATION”

Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET No Responses »

Jul 302016

There are only two songs on this new EP by the two-man Italian band Voids of Vomit. Only two songs… but they are so good that my only criticism of what V.o.V. have done is that they didn’t do enough. Why couldn’t they have made three songs? Or four? Or six?

I am speaking selfishly, of course. Suppressing my own selfishness, I should simply be grateful for these two tracks… and indeed I am. I hope you enjoy them as much as I have, because after another few paragraphs you will find our premiere of the two songs on Ritval Expiation. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: MESHUGGAH, AUROCH, ARSIS, ANICON, ANCIIENTS, BRAIN TENTACLES, BATTLE DAGORATH, FERAL LIGHT, HELEN MONEY, VANHELGA

Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 15 Responses »

Jul 292016

I mentioned in a post earlier this week that I’ve been distracted during nights this week by a televised political convention (because I am a political junkie with low willpower), and I also had to make a quick out-of-town trip. Metal didn’t wait for me while I was diverted, and so I have an immense list of new things from the last few days that I want to recommend. I’ve cut the list down to a mere 10 items, which I’ve collected here. Seriously, I’m aware that 10 is a lot, so I’ve choked back my usual desire to spill a lot of words.

I’m starting with two news items and then following those with 8 new songs or videos, presented in alphabetical order by the name of the artist.

MESHUGGAH

I no longer subscribe to Revolver magazine. If I still had the subscription, I might have seen the full-page ad at the top of this post, which so far seems to be the only disclosure that Meshuggah’s new album The Violent Sleep of Reason will be released by Nuclear Blast on October 7. Here’s another fan pic of the ad: Continue reading »

RELAPSE RECORDS PODCAST NO. 44 — FEATURING INTER ARMA

Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC No Responses »

Jul 292016

Relapse Records launched their first podcast way back in February 2010, showcasing both brand new and classic tracks from Relapse artists, as well as exclusive interviews, and it’s still going strong more than six years later. All of the podcasts since that first one are collected at the Relapse Records Podcast site (here), but beginning last month the podcast will now be hosted by a changing array of other platforms. Our friends at Invisible Oranges hosted Edition No. 43 in June, and this month NCS has the pleasure of providing a platform for No. 44 — and it’s especially pleasurable for us because this podcast features an interview with one of our favorite heavy bands, Virginia’s Inter Arma.

This edition of the podcast — which you can stream below and also download for listening at a later time — includes a big group of diverse new songs, including tracks by Red Fang, True Widow, Ringworm, Myrkur, The Album Leaf, Horseback, and Nothing, as well as songs by recent Relapse signees Survive, Integrity, Brain Tentacles, and Sumerlands. It also includes some older songs from the likes of Disembowelment and Human Remains, as well as classic tracks by Don Caballero and Revocation. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DAEDALVS — “APOTHEOSIS”

Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET 7 Responses »

Jul 282016

Daedalvs are a four-man death metal band from Charlotte, North Carolina, whose debut EP Apotheosis is being released today via Bandcamp, and we’re helping spread the word by providing a full stream of the EP, and a few thoughts about the music.

What Daedalvs dish out is a mammoth, monstrous, skull-fracturing beatdown, a rumbling, crushing avalanche of booming jackhammering bass, clobbering atonal riffs, and thundering drums, overlaid with an effusion of harsh roars and wild, acid-spraying shrieks. But while the music’s brute-force physical impact is certainly one of its main calling cards, it’s not the only one. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: MÜTTERLEIN — “ORPHANS OF THE BLACK SUN (CHAPTER 1) — LESBIANS, WHORES AND WITCHES””

Exceptions to the Rule, Premieres 4 Responses »

Jul 282016

Those of us who hunger for darkness in music find sustenance in particular forms of extreme metal, made by people who sustain themselves by making it. But sometimes the essence of pain, frustration, anger, isolation, and the defiant desire to throw off the yokes that both engender such feelings and restrain their expression can be captured in other ways. And sometimes the summoning of that essence comes from unexpected sources.

Which brings us to Mütterlein — a band named for a song on a 1970 album by the German musician and actress Nico; a band whose principal creative force Marion Leclercq (of the cult French act Overmars) has named Nico, The Cure, and Breach as the three main pillars of her widely varying influences; a band for whom krautrock and Shannon Wright seem to be as beloved as Sabbath and Tragedy; a band who caught the ear of Phil at Debemur Morti Productions and Blut Aus Nord’s Vindsval, who together made Mütterlein’s debut album Orphans of the Black Sun the first release of their new collaborative label Sundust Records. Continue reading »

BLACK METAL (PT. 2): A COLLECTION CURATED BY NEILL JAMESON (KRIEG)

RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 9 Responses »

Jul 272016

(We welcome back Neill Jameson (Krieg) with the second installment of a multi-part post devoted to under-the-radar black metal releases worthy of greater attention. You can find Part 1 here.)

As we slog through the bullshit heat and humidity of the summer one could say the best activity to beat the heat is to stay indoors, shun your asshole friends who think hiking on the surface of the sun is enjoyable, grab a drink and bide your time listening to music. It’s a good distraction and perfect excuse not to go outside and get skin cancer in the name of “fun in the sun”.

This is the second part of my blathering about black metal releases you should listen to because I’m under the misguided impression that I have decent taste. This might turn into a three-part series because I keep thinking of random records at inopportune times like when my boss is trying to explain new vital procedures at work. Continue reading »

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