NO CLEAN SINGING

SEEN AND HEARD: GODLESS ANGEL, LIGHT OF THE MORNING STAR, DECOMPOSED, ADVERMIX

Apr 042016

If you look at what I posted at the site this past weekend, you’ll see that I was caught up in the throes of a blogging frenzy and threw a large amount of new music at your head. Having done that, I took some deep breaths — and then almost immediately discovered a bunch of other new songs that had appeared while I was scribbling thoughts about all the others. From that batch of new discoveries I’ve sifted these four — in part because I really enjoyed all of them and in part because they make for a diverse playlist of new metal with which to start the week.

GODLESS ANGEL

A very good friend of our site, Derek Neibarger from Lawrence, Kansas, has just released The Conjuring of Four, the third album of his solo project Godless Angel. It follows last year’s Harvester of Shadows (released by Inverse Records). For a pretty complete narrative of the interesting musical journey that led to the creation of Godless Angel, peruse my interview of Derek from last October (here). And for a taste of this new album, check out our stream of the album’s first single — “The Worms Are Eating Him Now”. Continue reading »

BENEATH THE NCS RADAR (PART 10)

Album Reviews 19 Responses »

Apr 042016

(Our contributor from Norway, Gorger, is back with the tenth edition of his series recommending releases that we’ve managed to overlook. To find more of his discoveries, visit Gorger’s Metal.)

Greetings good folks.

My last installment contained 6 releases. This time I only present two. They are longer, and hopefully a bit more in depth.

Both consist of what I like to refer to as regional flavours.

The first one takes you through the fjords and up the mountainside to meet a debuting Norwegian act.

The second bulletin takes you to French Canada, and a band I’m sure many of you have encountered before. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 2): LATHSPELL, OREWOET, SEVENTH XUL, WILDERNESSKING

Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET 7 Responses »

Apr 032016

In my musical explorations over the last week I came across a lot of new black metal that I wanted to recommend. To make the rollout of the music a little more easily digestible, I divided the collection into two parts, with the music listed in alphabetical order by band name, continuing from Part 1 (here) into this second part. As usual for these posts, there are some significant stylistic differences in the sounds, despite the connections (either spiritual or otherwise) that all the music has to the ever-expanding genre of black metal.

LATHSPELL

Part 1 of this collection included new music by Havukruunu, and we return to Finland for this next song, which will appear on the forthcoming fifth album by Lathspell. Entitled Thorn Cold Void, it’s due for release later this month by Wolfspell Records and Patologian Laboratorio Productions. Though Lathspell have been in existence for almost two decades, this song is the first piece of their music that I’ve heard, so I can’t give you a comparison to their previous works. But just considering it as a stand-alone song, it’s powerful stuff. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 1): GJENDØD, HAVUKRUUNU, HEIR, INCLEMENCY

Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET 2 Responses »

Apr 032016

This is Part 1 of a collection of very good new music in the orbit of black metal that I encountered over the last week. Once again, I found a lot to like — so much that I decided to divide the collection into two parts — but I hope you’ll find time to at least sample the music from each band; only two of them have previously been covered at this site. I’ve arranged the music in alphabetical order by band name, continuing into Part 2 later today.

GJENDØD

Apart from the music in the two songs embedded below, the only thing I know about Gjendød is that the band is from Norway and that sometime “soon” the Polish label Hellthrasher Productions intends to release what appears to be the band’s first demo on CD.

The songs you can now stream are two of the four listed on the Bandcamp player for the demo — “Evig svart røyk” and “Menneskeavl”. If we could plug the energy of these songs into electrical grids, we could decommission vast numbers of power plants — though we wouldn’t do much to reduce global warming, because these tracks are hot as hell. Continue reading »

THE REARVIEW MIRROR (SUMMONING)

THE REARVIEW MIRROR 4 Responses »

Apr 032016

Tons of metal bands have mined the works of J.R.R. Tolkien for everything from band names to album and song titles and lyrics. Few have excavated his writing as extensively as Austria’s Summoning, in part because the band have been plying their trade for such a long time. Since their formation in 1993, Summoning have produced seven albums (the last of which was 2013’s Old Mornings Dawn), three EPs, and an assortment of early demos and splits.

Summoning are probably best known for creating an epic, atmospheric, synth-heavy sound that captures the mythic, heroic sagas that have often inspired them and that have been reflected in their lyrics. But the album I’ve chosen for this Sunday’s look back at metal’s past — 1999’s Stronghold — is the first one in which the lyrics were not all derived from Tolkien (according to this source), and it’s often referred to as one that marked a change in the band’s sound, one that even Summoning have described (here) as “much more guitar orientated with more compact keyboard-melodies”. And this further statement about Stronghold appears on the band’s official site: Continue reading »

FREE SHIT FROM DUPLICATE RECORDS: “AN ALIGNMENT OF SHRINES”

Free Shit, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 1 Response »

Apr 022016

On this Saturday morning I’ve been struck by a combination of early slothfulness and (annoyingly) a subsequent need to deal with some internet service problems. I had plans to review two EPs for today, but since it’s already noon out here on the Left Coast and I haven’t written a word, I wondered what the hell I would do to foist music upon you. And then I received a Bandcamp alert in my e-mail and… Voilà!!!

That Bandcamp alert concerned a just-released compilation of sounds from Oslo, Norway’s Duplicate Records entitled An Alignment of Shrines. It includes tracks by 14 bands — four of them from forthcoming releases and the rest from Duplicate releases over the last year or so. I recognized the names of 10 of the bands, and it happens that I’ve enjoyed and we’ve previously written about the music of all 10 of those. Here’s the list of the bands and the names of the releases from which the songs were drawn: Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: BEASTWARS — “DEVILS OF LAST NIGHT”

Premieres 7 Responses »

Apr 012016

NCS Introduction: We have a two-fold treat for you in this post. First, we have the privilege of premiering for you a song from the new album by New Zealand’s amazing Beastwars. And second, we have an introduction to the song by New Zealand metal writer and broadcaster Craig Hayes — and I want to take this opportunity to mention that Craig is in the final days of a crowdfunding campaign to turn his Six Noises blog into a first-stop (and first-class) portal for anyone investigating “radical sonic arts” from New Zealand, and thus a more visible and successful platform for supporting and promoting New Zealand underground music. This is a very worthy cause, and one to which I hope you will contribute (I did — twice). HERE is where you do that. Now, onward to Craig’s introduction and the new music of Beastwars….

******

The devilish goat Black Philip asks the ultimate question near the climax of the recent horror film The Witch: “Wouldst thou like to live deliciously?”

Really, there’s only one answer to that: of course you would. One brief life is all we get, and the sweet Dark Lord knows it often feels like our lives are jam-packed with enough misery to last three lifetimes.

So why not indulge our senses?

Why not purge all that pain? Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: DARK FUNERAL, PTAHIL, RITUAL CHAMBER, LOTUS OF DARKNESS

Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHADES OF BLACK 9 Responses »

Apr 012016

I’ve gotten in the habit of preparing these Shades of Black posts for Sundays, but the first two items in this collection are so new that I thought I’d get them out there without delay. The last two are less new, but have been on my mind recently. I have some other music appropriate for this series that I will still try to collect for Sunday. As usual, this is music in a black vein, though not all of it is black metal, strictly speaking.

DARK FUNERAL

Sweden’s Dark Funeral are back with their first album in six years. The new one is named Where Shadows Forever Reign and it’s scheduled for release on June 3 by Century Media, with cover art by Necrolord. Continue reading »

SYRINX: “BLACK SPRING”

Album Reviews 4 Responses »

Apr 012016

(Andy Synn reviews the new album by Syrinx from Limoges, France.)

The start of every new year brings another opportunity for new musical discoveries. At least, that’s how I’ve always felt about things. In fact I think it was probably almost exactly twelve months ago (give or take) that I last said something to that effect. You know what they say, plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose…

Fittingly enough, today’s discovery comes courtesy of France’s own Syrinx, whose all-killer, no-filler new album, Black Spring, delivers a ten-thousand megaton blast of post-Gojira, post-Decapitated Death Metal, balancing punishing, piston-powered riffage and bunker-busting drum work with a subtle progressive flow and liquid-metal fluidity that helps make it stand out head and shoulders above the rest. Continue reading »

SOME CHANGES FOR THE SITE

IQ Subtraction, Metal News 45 Responses »

Apr 012016

(DGR, who has recently assumed the brand new title of Press-Entertainer Relations Viceroy (PERV) at the site formerly known as No Clean Singing, has prepared the following important announcement concerning our exciting future, and yours!)

As some of you may have been aware recently, we at No Clean Singing have been experiencing a modicum of success, traffic-wise, and as a result we have caught the eye of a couple of potential investors over the years. Today, you might have seen some news articles going around, but we can officially confirm that we have been purchased by Downfall Trust Co. Inc. for an undisclosed sum, to be added to their roster of “up-and-coming” websites.

We’re excited to be part of this new company, especially given that we have quite a few writers in tech-heavy cities who will likely be huge assets in the days to come. However, as with all purchases, there will likely be some changes going forward and we here at No Clean Singing will be doing our best to make the transition as smooth as possible whilst we continue forging into the future, providing new and exciting content for all of you to read!

We look forward to your continued support during this time of change and are eager to share with you what will likely be multiple fruits of our labor over the coming months! Continue reading »

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