JUTE GYTE: “RESSENTIMENT”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Sep 032014
 

 

(Austin Weber reviews the brand new album by the one-man wrecking machine from Missouri known as Jute Gyte.)

As it stands, this is the third time I have written about Jute Gyte here, the consistently crushing solo project of Missouri native, Adam Kalmbach. After writing up his previous album from this year, Vast Chains, my sense of curiosity led me to email the man behind the band and inquire as to his lack of social media presence. I was greeted with the answer that he, in so many words, has a disagreeable personality and does not play well with others, thus the lack of an official band Facebook page or other account.

I found this very interesting, as it speaks volumes about himself as an artist. If we are being honest, what musician doesn’t want to hear his work praised? Either as a form of validation or as an appeal to narcissism, or both?

It would seem to me that Adam Kalmbach’s desire to stay hidden in the shadows may show how much darker and cathartic of a release creating music must be for him. Further evidence for this suspicion may be found in his lack of press releases. The man drops several releases a year, but because there is no band page or other online presence, the music simply appears without a whisper. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SINGULARITY — “THRONE OF THORNS”

 Premieres  4 Responses »
Sep 012014
 

(Austin Weber wrote the following introduction to our premiere of a new song.)

Singularity are an unsigned, mega-talented act from Tempe, Arizona, I have covered here before at No Clean Singing. Recently they were able make their upcoming self-titled debut album a reality through a successful Indigegogo campaign. The album will be out September 23rd, and trust me, you’re going to want a copy. Today we give you the first glimpse of their upcoming rise with “Throne Of Thorns”.

Singularity have been perfecting a musical merger they dub “technical black metal”, and it’s hard to argue with that description. In a way reminiscent of Fleshgod Apocalypse, the band use a type of classical and orchestral approach in their often technical death metal sounding music, and the end result is catchy without being cheesy. The symphonic rush and pomp is strong on “Throne Of Thorns”, interacting expertly with the twin inferno of tremolo-picked vortexes and onslaughts of precise, galloping drums, which display a fine battering-ram quality. As its militaristic peaks and pauses meet warp-zone level shredding amidst squalid, throaty screams, the cohesion of styles move from headbanging heights to scarring stampedes. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE: SOLACE OF REQUIEM — “CASTING RUIN”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  2 Responses »
Aug 272014
 

 

(In this post we premiere a full-album stream of the new release by Virginia’s Solace of Requiem.  Austin Weber provides the following review by way of introduction.)

As a hardcore death metal junkie, I pride myself on my extensive knowledge of the genre. Especially the many underground, unorthodox, obscure, and defunct acts of the genre. As such, I feel like an idiot for being unaware of the Virginia-based group Solace Of Requiem until now. But even in my shame, I can rejoice in having spun their new record, Casting Ruin, numerous times already. To mix my metaphors, it’s a voracious technical death metal beast and a feast for the ears, one whose smorgasbord of sounds has been intricately intertwined into a singular weapon of immense hatred.

Solace Of Requiem write with a diverse array of metal influences, and the in which way they string those influences together in various combinations is the crux of what makes Casting Ruin stand out. Overall, their style weaves around massive bone-crushing columns of racing riffs and brimstone-exploding blast beats, topped off with highly venomous vocals. But to further dissect it, the death metal side of their sound often brings to mind the jackhammering propulsive beatings that Hate Eternal brought to life. In addition, they accent each song with a plethora of aggressive melodic leads and round them out with scathing infusions of blood-curdling black metal blasphemy.

A symphonic undercurrent with classical and orchestral motifs then further enhances most of the songs, including the monstrous savagery present in “Heaving Bile And Ash”. They also display a penchant for beginning and ending several tracks with samples — of such things as chains, clinking machinery, and echoing water droplets. If I had to guess, maybe the cold clang of chains and mechanical whirrings was intended to represent our mental self-imprisonment, societal restraints, and existence as a helpless cog in a larger grinding machine, with the graceful sounds of water drizzling down showing the flip side — freedom and the serenity found freely in nature. Continue reading »

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