WHEEL: “CHARISMATIC LEADERS”

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May 062024
 

(We start a new week at our site with DGR‘s enthusiastic review of the new album by the Anglo-Finnish prog metal band Wheel, released late last week by InsideOut Music.)

Normally we try to keep the veil up when we cover a group, to keep the author’s personality out of the writing but in this case I feel that I have to place my neck on the chopping block in order to justify this one. If you’ll indulge more of my wanderings out of the metal world for a bit, let’s take a journey with the band Wheel.

Our history with this progressive rock/metal group is a long one. The Finnish/English combination have been hanging around the rafters of the NoCleanSinging halls for a bit now, largely due to my own fandom for their album Moving Backwards. Since then, I’ve tried to get a post or two up about them whenever they have something new to offer and in that time we’ve covered their album Resident Human – one of two albums to reference Heinlein’s writings that year – and their recent-ish EP Rumination, which was released upon them signing to major progressive rock label InsideOut.

The group’s combination of heavier metallic sounds, progressive rock, and yes, even some heftier guitar bending of the djent variety at times, is one that has allowed the band to create both short songs verging on radio rock with plenty of hooks and longer progressive numbers that have many times pulled back the curtain on shared similarities with the band Tool. Even with this in place there has always been room for Wheel to surprise, and that is still the case when it comes to the group’s newest album Charismatic Leaders. Continue reading »

MY DYING BRIDE: “A MORTAL BINDING”

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May 012024
 

(About 10 days ago Nuclear Blast released the 15th studio album from My Dying Bride, and DGR has sat with it long enough to now provide his thoughts below.)

My Dying Bride‘s newest release A Mortal Binding is a surprisingly turbulent album by My Dying Bride standards. Though My Dying Bride have been an adaptive beast over the course of a long-running career, the group have cycled back around into an interesting amalgamation of modern day doom and their early miserable forms.

Yet My Dying Bride have been the civilized and staid older-sibling of the doom scene, awash with despair yet seeming more ‘refined’ than their cohort bands. No stranger to longform song writing either, it hadn’t been until 2020’s The Ghost Of Orion that they forged themselves into a stately yet concise version of what they’d been before. Granted, they almost immediately followed that up with Macabre Cabaret, an EP with a ten-minute song as its opener, but it seemed like My Dying Bride had found a strong comfort zone with the fragile and mournful atmospheres of The Ghost Of Orion.

Which is what makes A Mortal Binding quite the followup. Continue reading »

THE VISION BLEAK: “WEIRD TALES”

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Apr 262024
 

(Two weeks ago Prophecy Productions released a new album-length song from the German horror metal poets The Vision Bleak, their first new music in 8 years, and below you’ll find DGR‘s attempt to make a review of it.)

The halls of NoCleanSinging are no stranger to groups with a large amount of time passing between releases. Upon awakening from a deep slumber, the halls of this site are many times the first thing that the slowly-awakening-back-to-consciousness groups see. We’ve premiered bands that’ve had decade-plus times of inactivity to their names while members ventured elsewhere, explored with other bands, or even enjoyed the more mundane side of things by maintaining a stable day job.

The resurrected’s first few hesitant steps can be flat-footed and precariously balanced but it has happened enough that it’s a familiar sound by the NoCleanSinging doorstep. That’s why we’re familiar with how a project like The Vision Bleak could’ve entered a near-eight-year hibernation following the release of a pretty goddamned good album in the form of 2016’s The Unknown and how after all this time the project could return to us with something equally as crazy sounding, a forty-one minute single song known as Weird Tales. Continue reading »

THY SHINING CURSE: “THEURGIA”

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Apr 232024
 

(Here we have DGR‘s review of the debut album by the Greek symphonic death metal band Thy Shining Curse, released by ViciSolum Records in mid-February.)

Thy Shining Curse is a project that snuck up on us – the result of many a Bandcamp tumble and record label page scour, mostly to see what projects are doing what these days. Even though their debut album Theurgia has been out for a few months by this point – have to keep the perpetually tardy streak alive – the aura of intentional mystery surrounding the album was enough to grab interest. Mostly curiosity for both what it is as well as who was involved in assembling the machine in the first place.

The group are intentionally keeping things a bit vague, as Thy Shining Curse is a solo project belonging to musician Leonidas Diamantopoulos, while the album credits – courtesy of the label – add vocalist Cezar Moreira and guitarist Gabe Pietrzak as co-conspirators in making the creature that is Theurgia breathe. But to walk that back a little, as just about everyone these days is enjoying their time with the masks-and-robes aesthetic, just what the hell are Thy Shining Curse and Theurgia and why does it seem they are walking among us now? Continue reading »

BENIGHTED: “EKBOM”

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Apr 092024
 

(Benighted‘s new album Ekbom comes out this Friday, April 12th, via Season of Mist, so the time is right to present DGR‘s review… which proceeds in phases.)

Benighted are old friends around here – No Clean Singing has taken the banner up for the band for a long time and have been covering them in one form or another since 2009(!).

We’ve covered their EPs, singles, and albums and there’s a pretty hot chance that your author here has been involved in a large part of that.

The high-speed core of Benighted‘s evolution into deathgrind form was found pretty early on, and well, they’ve danced into and out of -core, black metal, and brutal-death-inspired circles but they’ve always cycled back around to the sort of relentless blastbeating backbone that is their foundation.

For the last couple of years they’ve subsisted on a somewhat steady drip-feed of singles that allowed them to get the horror movie craze out of their system during the pandemic downtime, and Ekbom – upon first listen – doesn’t really mess around with the formula.

But it doesn’t take long – nor many listens – for the band’s latest album to start revealing itself as being something more. Continue reading »

THE ABSENCE: “THE ABSENCE”

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Mar 262024
 


artwork by Dan Goldsworthy

(On March 28th The Absence will release a new self-titled album via Listenable Insanity Records, and we’ve got DGR‘s extensive review of it below.)

You could argue that it’s a common enough situation that it shouldn’t warrant a raised eyebrow, but six albums in is usually not the expected timeframe for one to get the honor of being the self-titled one.

Maybe it’s just us, but there’s a lot to be said for being the ‘self-titled’ album. It usually marks a few things within a group’s history; it’s either the one with the definitive sound for the band, or the complete reinvention. Sometimes the event of the ‘self-titled’ is usually two or three albums in, when it seems a group has finally honed its craft. The self-titled album is stating to the world that this release is such and such band.

You usually don’t get the self-titled album this late unless the band have opted for the second of our two above-mentioned scenarios, wherein the group are completely reinventing themselves and taking a serious gamble. It’s a way to dodge the curse of naming your release after a phoenix or some new-born flame because that almost wills your group into breaking up soon after. Yet with The Absence‘s The Absence we’re not really facing any of those scenarios. Continue reading »

NECROPHOBIC: “IN THE TWILIGHT GREY”

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Mar 192024
 

(Below you’ll find DGR‘s review of the new album by Sweden’s Necrophobic, released on March 15th by Century Media Records.)

Mark this as one of the most profound statements you’ll ever read on this site: As NCS has grown older and followed the careers of many a heavy metal band, we seem to be reviewing more and more albums that have hit double-digits in a band’s discography. Who would’ve thought the passage of time would be such a crazy thing?

It’s taken Sweden’s Necrophobic a while to get there – their first having been released in 1993 – but they’ve actually kept to a surprisingly consistent amount of time between albums over the years. They’ve never fully fallen into the ‘every two-to-three-years’ album schedule that many career bands do, and beginning with 2002’s Bloodhymns, the gaps between albums have remained steady, hovering at around three-and-a-half to four years. Continue reading »

HIDEOUS DIVINITY: “UNEXTINCT”

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Mar 062024
 

(We present DGR‘s review of the new album from Italy’s Hideous Divinity in advance of its March 22nd release by Century Media.)

A new Hideous Divinity album will loom large in the distance. We’re now well into the group’s career as a generator of overwhelming and unrelenting death metal, for those who might think that standing at the bottom of a mountain while a crew does avalanche preparation during snow season is a fun way to experience music.

Hideous Divinity started with the intensity of their music ratcheted way past the standard red line and have effectively stayed there. Somehow, with each album, they’ve found new ways to twist and mutate that intensity into something different and malformed every time, often with enough there to make those releases a different experience from one another.

Yet for just as much as the band play mad scientist with their musical compositions there’s still the theme of whether or not their vocalist or their drummer is going to pass out from exhaustion first as the group continually push themselves harder and harder. Continue reading »

THE SORROW OF BEING IMMACULATE: “CHURCH MUSIC FOR SATANISTS”

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Feb 292024
 

(DGR has left his usual comfort zones far behind, lured away by the Welsh band whose new EP is the subject of his review below.)

Sometimes in the process of wandering the decrepit halls and ancient ruins of metal, detector, pick-axe, and trowel in hand in the hopes of coming across something interesting that you can help spread out to a wider audience, you’ll come across something that you know isn’t directly for you, but boy howdy, do you know a whole lot of people who will absolutely be into it.

Those adventures are fun in part because you have the job now of trying to find someone on the site who may be interested in covering it or, the more likely option, you yourself get to go on an adventure of trying out something and seeing if it lands with you. Something may resonate with you, who knows?

That’s how we have landed at the doorstep of The Sorrow Of Being Immaculate, a name which floated across the proverbial – if not perpetually on fire – writer’s desk here approximately one time but somehow managed to grab attention based off of the album title alone. Because, even after fourteen-plus years of existence, how could we not be tempted to look into something entitled Church Music For Satanists? Continue reading »

HANNES GROSSMANN: “ECHOES OF ETERNITY”

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Feb 272024
 

(Below you’ll find DGR‘s review of the newest solo release by the standout German musician Hannes Grossmann, which was released on February 9th.)

Hannes Grossmann‘s solo career has been one of the more interesting things to pop out of the many tech-death groups and scenes over the decade. You never realize just how foundational a musician is to a particular style until they’ve done five or so releases that feel like continual statements of ‘I can do this in my sleep’ quite the way like Hannes does with some of his solo stuff.

Not only that but it’s long since been proven that as a musician he’s an absolute machine, and while Gene Hoglan has long earned the nickname ‘Atomic Clock’ when it comes to drumming, Hannes is equally precise and reliable. You could hand him anything and it seems within about an hour or so he’d have a grasp on the whole setlist. There’s a certain guaranteed reliability to the guy that pretty much assures quality; any band he joins is in good hands and any recording where he sits behind the kit is probably going to be just as solid.

His solo career has afforded him affable room to explore as well, and while his first two releases felt a little like finding their footing, Apophenia and onward are adventures in their own right. Continue reading »

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