BlackBraid Archives - NO CLEAN SINGING

BLACKBRAID – BLACKBRAID II

Jul 032023

(Andy Synn takes a second look at Blackbraid and their new album)

The thing about overhyping a band, or an album, is that it doesn’t really leave you much room to manoeuvre in the future.

After all, if [Record A] was so perfect how is it possible that [Record B] – which we all agree is an altogether superior and more mature piece of work – is somehow better?

Case in point, while Blackbraid II undoubtedly improves upon its predecessor in a myriad of subtle ways it’s also not without its flaws, which I’d imagine presents certain writers/reviewers with a difficult decision to make.

Because either they acknowledge that II is the better album despite its imperfections – in which case they have to admit that they went a little overboard with praising I – or they have to continue to pretend that the band can do no wrong… in which case, how is it possible to improve on perfection?

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: KHANATE, KATAKLYSM, TEMPLE OF DREAD, BLACKBRAID, HALFLIGHTED, ANIMA HERETICAE

Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC No Responses »

May 202023

Khanate

I began this morning like I’ve begun every morning since the start of the pandemic: sitting on the deck of my home in the forest drinking a triple-espresso, smoking cigarettes, and reading the local, national, and international news on my phone.

It’s not something I can recommend in good conscience. Smoking is bad for you and the news is almost invariably depressing. But today the birds around me were in full song and the news included a story about a woman who had a “loud and full body orgasm” during the second movement of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony as performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

The article where I learned about this included a link to a list of “The 10 Best Orgasm Symphonies”, compiled by British music journalist Norman Lebrecht in celebration of the woman’s scream. The article also quoted opera soprano Renée Fleming: “Let’s not forget that the word ‘climax’ is a common musical term. It has to do with musical tension and its release.”

With this in mind, I started making my way through my gigantic list of new songs and videos from the past week or two, listening for climaxes. If you get one while listening to what follows, just keep that to yourself. (Joking of course — I want to hear all about it!) Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A BANDCAMP FRIDAY: BLACKBRAID, AN AXIS OF PERDITION, THE INFERNAL SEA, CLAUSTRUM, RANNOCH

Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 2 Responses »

May 052023

Lots of people keep wish-lists in anticipation of making purchases on Bandcamp Fridays, when more of the money will go to the labels and bands. I have friends whose lists include releases from three or more years ago, or from even older albums that have only recently become available on Bandcamp. So it’s not as if people are just now looking for things to buy, much less cloely examining releases that have launched on Bandcamp just barely in time for today.

Still, on days like this I feel a compulsion to make new recommendations, even if they might drive a lot of you (or at least your bank accounts) crazy. I should add that I noticed most of what’s below before today. I just couldn’t bring myself to do more than quickly skim the 300+ Bandcamp alerts and other e-mails that landed in our in-box since midnight last night. I picked a couple of things out of that ridiculous flood, but I have no idea what else might be frothing in there.

Obviously, I could have done much more today if I’d had enough time. So I’ll have to continue tomorrow, when maybe you’ll be tempted to add to your lists for the next Bandcamp Friday.

BLACKBRAID (U.S.)

It’s fair to say that the rise of this indigenous black metal project into the consciousness of metalheads (or at least those with a taste for blackened arts) has been meteoric. The subject-matter themes of the music probably account for some of the attention, but the strength of the music would carry it far even if the themes were less important. It was thus a nice surprise to discover the debut of a lyric video for a new Blackbraid song a couple days ago. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: SWAMP LANTERN, USNEA, BLACKBRAID, ERNTE, UPCDOWNC

Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 1 Response »

Feb 182023

Today I woke up late and moved lazily. For most of my life, and probably yours, that’s the way Saturday mornings always were. Except in my case I had the lunatic idea when I started this blog in the fall of 2009 that I’d post something about music I liked even on Saturday and Sunday, and every holiday.

I thought of that as a way of underscoring that NCS would never be a business, and would consider none of us here as “workers”, because people working “jobs” almost always get weekends off. I think I also believed we might get more visitors due to the lack of competition on the weekends from the somewhat more-established metal sites that were beginning to dot the internet landscape.

And I probably thought the lifespan of NCS would be about a year, so how tough would it be to listen and write on the weekends for a year? Who knew it would go on like it has? I sure as shit didn’t.

In the last 13+ years I’ve failed to make some weekend posts, after a long stretch of never failing, though the number of failure days is still small. So now when I wake up late and move lazily it doesn’t take long before I start to feel like I’d better get my shit in gear, even if the lateness of the morning hour means I’m not able to make the Saturday roundup as extensive as I’d like (which is true today). But… no failure today at least…. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2022’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 16): BLACKBRAID, PUTRID, GUDSFORLADT

MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2022 1 Response »

Jan 232023

We have seven weekdays left before the end of January, which marks my self-imposed ending of this list. Seven days before I ought to stop, and like every other year, the impending end adds to my anxiety levels because I know I have so many more songs I’d like to include and not enough room to include them all. To begin this final seven-day stretch I decided to concentrate on shades of black metal.

BLACKBRAID (U.S.)

Seemingly out of nowhere this indigenous black metal project from the Adirondacks made a big splash in 2022 with a debut album denominated I. The size of the splash was measured by how often it appeared on year-end lists, both here and in many other locations across the web. For those of you who somehow missed the album despite all the attention and acclaim it received, I’ll borrow some words from Andy Synn’s NCS review: Continue reading »

BLACKBRAID – BLACKBRAID I

Album Reviews 8 Responses »

Aug 222022

(The highly-anticipated debut album from Native American Black Metal artist Blackbraid is set for release this Friday, and our very own Andy Synn has some deep thoughts to share about it)

Hype… whether it’s the organic, grass-roots, free-range variety, or the artificial, astro-turfed, paid-for by your parents, kind… is a major part of today’s media landscape, whether we like it or not.

It’s not always a bad thing, by any means, but it sometimes becomes a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy where, once a narrative about a band is established by an author or an outlet (or, increasingly, someone with sufficient twitter influence), that becomes the only story that gets any traction.

Case in point, Blackbraid I is not – as some have claimed, and even more have amplified – the “best Black Metal album of the year”, but it is a very good, occasionally unabashedly great, example of how Black Metal can serve as the perfect medium for anyone with a strong enough vision to express themselves.

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 1): BLUT AUS NORD, BLACK BRAID, OF TWO LANDS, SYNTELEIA, CABINET

SHADES OF BLACK 1 Response »

Mar 202022

As you can see, I have ambitions for a two-part SOB this Sunday. Part 1 is obviously done, so I can confidently state that it includes singles and advance tracks from forthcoming albums. My plan for Part 2 is to recommend a collection of complete albums that have recently been released, albeit without proper reviews. Let’s get to it:

BLUT AUS NORD (France)

Blut Aus Nord‘s mastermind Vindsval has characterized his creations under that name as a “process of perpetual regeneration”. In introducing BAN‘s last album Hallucinogen, he observed: “Music is a fascinating quest without end… and it would be a mess to express the same range of emotions, a mess to remain frozen in the same aesthetic, the same energy, a mess to compose and release the same thing again and again… and again.” Continue reading »