BARING TEETH: “GHOST CHORUS AMONG OLD RUINS”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Nov 252014
 

 

(Austin Weber reviews the new album by Baring Teeth.)

The time has finally come for renowned quirky Texas death metallers Baring Teeth to show the world another plane of terrifying sounds and squalor. As if their first album, 2011’s Atrophy, in all its demented brilliance, was not enough of a jaw-dropping testament to their skill and uniqueness, they set their aims at a higher and different place on Ghost Chorus Among Old Ruins, giving us is a wide range of dynamics within each song — like a massive fight for control between frenetic, entrancing splinters and the colossal depths of quicksand, whose power ultimately derives from its slow, suffering burn.

Not only have they moved further from the realms of their Obscura-influenced debut, they’ve managed to expand their sound. It would have been easy and standard for a metal band like this one to keep the same blazing tempo and stylistic formula the second time around. Yet this time Baring Teeth offer more cesspools and sinkholes to drop into, sucking up more of the music like a slow-draining black hole, while also offering full-scale onslaught the likes of which will make your face melt just a bit too much to recover from in one sitting. Continue reading »

BUCKSHOT FACELIFT: “LIVING GHOSTS OF THE NORTH SHORE”

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Nov 122014
 

 

(Austin Weber reviews the new album by NY’s Buckshot Facelift.)

When I was fortunate enough to see (and cover here at NCS) the Artificial Brain, Pyrrhon, and Gigan tour in Covington, Ky, a few weeks back, I also had the honor of speaking with Artificial Brain swamp monster/wookie/vocalist Will Smith. He even gave me a copy of his old band Biolich’s material, a group I adored long before Artificial Brain or Buckshot Facelift came into existence. I’ll embed a song by them at the end of this review for those interested. (The band started out as a Demilich worship act, but evolved into something much more eclectic later on. Biolich even had the superbly talented guitarist Andrew Hock (Castavet) in their ranks, but not many know that either.)

But to get back on topic, in the course of our conversation Will let me know that his other band, Buckshot Facelift, had a new EP coming out soon. He graciously gave me a physical copy in order to check it out — under one condition: He told me to be honest with how I felt about it. And honestly, its fucking awesome, hence this review. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DEVOURING STAR — “DECAYED SON OF EARTH”

 Premieres  4 Responses »
Nov 102014
 

 

(In this post we’re helping to premiere a new song by Finland’s Devouring Star from their debut album, due for release by Daemon Worship Productions.  Austin Weber provides the introduction.)

Very recently here at NCS, I wrote about a Finnish black metal group called Devouring Star in my Recalcitrant Roundup series. Now that a small bit of time has passed, the band have found a label to call home — Daemon Worship Productions. In addition, through DWP they are on the cusp of releasing to the world a new five-song album, Through Lung And Heart. We and two other sites are giving you a first glimpse at this latest misanthropic offering through our premiere of one of the new songs — “Decayed Son of Earth”.

While Devouring Star may be said to generate a musical aura similar to that of Deathspell Omega, they do a lot to set themselves apart from mere hero worship. While most black metal hints at evil or masquerades as such, Devouring Star is the real, uglier-than-sin deal, with “Decayed Son Of Earth” serving as a carnal carnival of cataclysmic rage whose disgusting majesty cannot be ignored. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: BARING TEETH — “DRIPPING SUN”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  2 Responses »
Nov 052014
 

 

(Austin Weber wrote the following introduction to our premiere of a song from the forthcoming second album by Baring Teeth.)

While Willowtip continues to churn out releases by forward-thinking bands like it’s no big deal, Baring Teeth still stand out as a singular creative force on their roster. Their exponential growth and talent for exploration displayed on their soon to be released sophomore album, Ghost Chorus Among Old Ruins, prove that their path is a rich and multifaceted one, albeit one that’s highly unsettling in the best way possible.

Their last album, 2011’s Atrophy, cemented the band as pioneers in the art of stretching boundaries and seeking out different methods and manners of interpreting death metal, creating new and inspired forms of the genre, giving it a new canvas on which to rot, and painting with a more sophisticated palette than mere straightforward aggression and simple headbangable riffs. They infuse their output with an alien presence that wanders amidst chaotic rhythms and moody peaks and valleys. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SAMSKARAS — “RED HILL”

 Premieres  5 Responses »
Oct 302014
 

 

(Austin Weber introduces our premiere of a new single by Montreal’s Samskaras.)

While song premieres at No Clean Singing are typically introduced with an article discussing the band and dissecting the song, I decided with today’s exclusive premiere of “Red Hill”, by two-man Montreal-based death metal act Samskaras, to do a short interview with band member Eric Burnet instead. Eric writes the music, plays guitar and bass, and performs vocals as the core member of Samskaras, and he is also a member of the well-known and justly praised technical death metal band Derelict (and if you don’t know about Derelict, listen here). In Samskaras he is joined by Unhuman drummer Alexandre Dupras.

***

What led you to create this project and what do you seek to achieve with it?

My main project for the majority of the last decade has been the tech death band Derelict. Inspiration and energy was running low after several tours and a lot of years of constant activity, so we decided to put it on ice for an indefinite period. This opened me up time-wise to other projects, so I immediately hatched the idea of starting Samskaras with whatever material I was writing. Since Derelict has its own specific sound, I had been writing in that vein for a long time. So with Samskaras my goal is really just to let my ideas flow and see what they become. No need for a pre-determined genre tag. Continue reading »

PRIMORDIUM: “AEONIAN OBSOLESCENCE”

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Oct 292014
 

(Austin Weber reviews the new EP by Indiana’s Primordium.)

Imagine the slithery nature of Spawn Of Possession or Gorod meeting the brutality and heft of Beneath The Massacre, with the end result getting a hefty injection of melody, and you would arrive at the sound of Primordium. Primordium are a new upstart technical death metal group from Indianapolis, Indiana and Aeonian Obsolescence is their very first release as a band.

Islander premiered “The Incursion” not too long ago, and it was a dizzying introduction for those new to the band. While the release of this EP was shifted a few weeks back, it will finally be out this Friday and damn if it isn’t a killer release full of bestial cavernous growls, relentless rampaging hatred, classically influenced orchestral moments and some neo-classical leads, and catchy melodies with the occasional jazzy flamenco snippets hidden within. Continue reading »

RECALCITRANT ROUNDUP: THE DEATH OF DEARTH, PART II, INSTALLMENT 5

 Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  8 Responses »
Oct 092014
 

(In this 5th installment of a multi-part piece, Austin Weber continues rolling out recommended releases from his latest exploratory  forays through the underground. The first installment is here, the second here, the third here, and the fourth here.)

KATAPLEXIS

Let’s start today’s edition with a bang, the kind of loud and ear-shattering ruckus you might associate with a mortar shelling or rapid machine-gun fire flying out of an unnecessarily huge extended clip. The time has come for the death-grind fun-free happy hour, cue Kataplexis.

This Canadian wrecking crew are relentlessly crushing, suffocating, and pummeling in approach. They offer a fair bit of contrast not readily present in most deathgrind, vacillating between short, purely grind-blasted death bursts and longer grindcore-fed chaotic death metal numbers. All of which pairs nicely with the occasional black metal poisonous riffs in their veins, coursing a darker shade of rot into the proceedings. Continue reading »

RECALCITRANT ROUNDUP: THE DEATH OF DEARTH, PART II, INSTALLMENT 2

 Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Oct 032014
 

 

(In this latest installment of a multi-part piece, Austin Weber continues rolling out recommended releases from his latest exploratory  forays through the underground. The first installment is here.)

VEILBURNER

Veilburner are a two-man death/black band from Pennsylvania whose strength lies in oddball mania, conjuring an unearthly interstellar feeling. Veilburner burnish an esoteric atmosphere throughout The Three Lightbearers as they dig in dissonant ditches, arising frequently with technical guitar-led passages, some of which bring Gorguts and Obscura to mind. Veilburner often back up their aggressive core with experimental soundscapes of an industrial and occult feel that is oddly psychedelic in nature.

Simply hellish stuff, and damn fun to listen to death metal infused by a cold clinical black metal embrace. This album is killer from start to finish, and to me, frequently sounds like a black metal companion to the immersive insanity Gigan conjure — rife with psychedelic inclinations and robotic/reverb heavy vocal effects amid a massive mix of horrific undulating riffs and spine-shattering drum work. I recommend listening to the whole album at once, but if you need a starting point, go with “Nil Absolute”. The Three Lightbearers rips wormholes open in your mind, leading to self-collapse from within. Get your mind explosion on! Continue reading »

PHOBOCOSM: “DEPRIVED”

 Album Reviews  4 Responses »
Sep 302014
 

 

(Austin Weber reviews the new album by Phobocosm from Montreal.)

A lot of modern death metal is shiny, flashy, and in addition, purely cutthroat. Well, the Montreal-based group Phobocosm are nothing like that. They are relentlessly ugly and unforgiving, often content to stew in misery at a slower pace, entrenched in massive, sickening riffs that churn bowels and cause minds to enter a state of hopeless insanity. If a cutthroat death metal record feels like a physical assault, then consider Phobocosm masters of taking that assault directly into your brain, feeding you clouded questions that don’t lead to any answers, submerging you in a sadness and longing that reeks of perversion. Deprived offers an evil and different take on the death metal sound. Yes, there is plenty of  lively double-bass, and the album has its frenzied moments, but often this is a skulking, wounded beast — preaching a horror beyond gore, beyond death.

An eerie Immolation and Incantation influence is clear — from the riffs to the grooves to the structuring. However, Phobocosm are far from wholly a clone of either group. Besides those two points of reference, the music sometimes calls to mind the approach of Ulcerate, embracing and reflecting in atmospheric reverberations, sometimes by themselves and at other times mixed within the band’s full-throttle moments. The back and forth sway of the songs on Deprived is one of its greatest strengths, frequently manifesting a battle between faster and lurching tempos.

At still other moments on Deprived a black metal undercurrent is injected into the mix and further poisons the music’s already pitch-black feel. In this respect, the album is reminiscent of Deathspell Omega or Mitochondrion, though the blackened coloring occurs largely within a death metal framework overall. Continue reading »

SINGULARITY: “SINGULARITY”

 Album Reviews  4 Responses »
Sep 222014
 

 

(Austin Weber reviews the forthcoming debut album by Singularity.)

By now, you’ve probably heard of Singularity here at No Clean Singing, either through the recent “Throne Of Thorns” song premiere we did recently, or my post regarding them last year. But if you haven’t heard them, now is your chance for redemption, because this band is incredible and worthy of your attention.

They are a self-described technical black metal act from Tempe, Arizona, and that genre tag certainly holds true, though within there blackened madness is a boatload of technical and melodically infused death metal.

Singularity are experts at fusing a malleable, shifting mixture of black metal and technical death metal together, to arrive at a new, previously unexplored horizon of majestic grimness. They are aided in their goal by a grandiose veneer of powerful orchestral key work, a characteristic present on all tracks, in a way somewhat akin to Fleshgod Apocalypse. Yet musically, they are a completely different group whose music is worlds apart; the orchestral sound just happens to be integrated and fuels the fervor of the tracks in a similar way. Continue reading »

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