DGR Archives - Page 35 of 62 - NO CLEAN SINGING

HIDEOUS DIVINITY: “LV-426”

Apr 232021

(DGR tends to move in fits and starts with his NCS writing, and this week he’s had a fit, with this being the third of his posts for us in almost as many days. Today’s subject is the new EP by NCS favorites Hideous Divinity, which is being ejected today (like a blooming facehugger) by Everlasting Spew Records and Century Media Records.)

Hideous Divinity‘s chosen subject matter of different films to frame their overwhelmingly hostile take on brutal death metal has proven fruitful for them over the years. The recent Cronenberg deep-dives have given them much to work from as they take their chosen genre and morph and contort it to fit their musical equivalent of a bulldozer being launched downhill in a mudslide into a suburb. Often stretched into full-albums, the film nods have been blatant, but LV-426 represents the biggest and most upfront statement of subject matter to date.

It’s already struck a chord around here, given the NCS crew’s fondness for the Alien moves to begin with, and so the group’s decision to tackle a more focused subject over the course of an EP was one we were guaranteed to be looking into. LV-426 consists of two original songs and one out-of-left-field yet surprisingly pragmatic cover song for a total of sixteen minutes of blindingly fast music. Continue reading »

STRANGE TRIPS (PART 2): GHOSTS OF ATLANTIS (“3.6.2.4”) AND TIDES OF KHARON (“TITANOMACHY”)

Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule 2 Responses »

Apr 222021

(DGR has been spending his listening time with some strange musical creatures and has offered his thoughts about them in a two-part collection of reviews, of which this is the second. Go here to check out Part 1.)

GHOSTS OF ATLANTIS: 3.6.2.4

At this point in my metal fandom I think its safe to admit that there will always be room in my heart for something a little more theatrical when it comes to music. I’m a sucker for things appearing larger than life, buried in bombast, and suffocated by symphonics. If you’re incredibly ambitious and it seems like you may be swinging for the fences on even your first release and coming off just a little bit campier than expected, then you’ll probably have someone who enjoys what you’ve got right here.

Of course all those things don’t necessarily have to apply, so they can be larger than life without having the veneer of a B-grade horror movie, but sometimes the stars align just so that I can’t help but be attracted to it. Like I said, a larger-than-life spectacle can often be just as interesting for me in the world of the extreme, which is how I landed at the debut album from Ghosts of Atlantis. Continue reading »

STRANGE TRIPS (PART 1): EMPTINESS (“VIDE”) AND DIALETHEIST (“ECSTASY AND FUTILITY”)

Album Reviews 1 Response »

Apr 202021

(DGR has been spending his listening time with some strange musical creatures and has offered his thoughts about them in a two-part collection of reviews, of which this is the first.)

I could probably pay off a month’s worth of bills if I had a nickel for every time I’ve started a dive into a particular release with some variation of ‘this is gonna be a weird one’. But there’s a certain joy I take in continuing to do that in between the varying issuances of brutality and violence that we typically cover.

Sometimes it’s a good breather and other times it feels like a peek into where metal might be expanding in the future, a gaze into realms otherworldly and difficult to describe, where the artiste roams free and unshackled. Mostly, it’s because, despite the fact that strangeness may abound and take us off the beaten path, that can still appeal to many a listener in the world of No Clean Singing.

It’s still metal, because I guarantee you that the constant breaking of conventions and the fusing of different moods into strange creatures is certainly enough to challenge a listener on what they may consider musical. Sometimes it’s in the atmospherics. Sometimes it’s how a band might embrace minimalism. And other times it can be due to just how strange the collection of influences and instrumentation is. Often it might feel like this is the room where we get to adjust our turtle-neck sweaters, sip on our classiest alcohol, and pretend to be as high-minded and pretentious as we can possibly get.

Long story short, the two that I’ve paired up today are albums I’ve been listening to quite a bit since their release, and while one name is likely more recognizable, I assure you that for both you’ll probably want to buckle up, because this is gonna be a weird one. (I have another pairing of reviews still to come tomorrow.) Continue reading »

OMINOUS RUIN- AMIDST VOICES THAT ECHO IN STONE

Album Reviews 3 Responses »

Mar 112021

(Find out what our man DGR thought of the new album from San Francisco’s Ominous Ruin, out now on Willowtip Records.)

Ominous Ruin‘s first full length album – after a string of demo’s and EPs throughout the late aughts – Amidst Voices That Echo In Stone starts in a very different spot from where it ends up.

The band’s sound is one of multiple extreme genres in all-out combat with each other, fully unloading from the hyperactive Tech Death scene even as it drains the arsenal from a very Brutal Death inspired segment as well.

It’s an ambitious album for sure, but not one that feels intentionally crafted to become a journey – more that it just wound up that way as songs morphed over time, from that previously mentioned superspeed blast festival into something weirdly proggy, incredibly dense, and all too willing to dive headlong into some profoundly (and joyously) dumb caveman chug all over the course of nine songs.

If it seems like the Bay Area crew are one of those amorphous bands able to reach tentacles into a variety of places and drag down so much of it back into their maw by that descriptor, you wouldn’t be too far off, but the fact that they make it work here…now that’s worth talking about.

SHORT BUT SWEET: DISTASTE AND INORGANIC

Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET No Responses »

Mar 102021

(DGR jumps back into action once again with a pair of short but sweet EP reviews)

Three months in and although the review slate so far has been oddly stop-start – understandable given the shitshow we’re slowly crawling out of, especially when we can start complaining about being buried by our day jobs again – we’ve had some very choice releases so far.

So I figured after a bunch of long ass reviews I’d try to pick a couple of EPs to keep things shorter for you all, even as I keep on digging through everything else as it’s the only thing keeping me sane.

Right now I present to you some very much up-my-alley style of music though, one Grind release that I’m convinced I have spelled wrong every time it appears (despite the fact that I copy and paste it off of the bandcamp every time) and one so firmly implanted in the Brutal Death concrete that using a jackhammer to get them out would just be added instrumentation for atmosphere.

FRACTAL GENERATOR: “MACROCOSMOS”

Album Reviews No Responses »

Mar 082021

(DGR catches up with the new record by Canada’s Fractal Generator, which was released in January by Everlasting Spew Records.)

You’ll likely be reading this one way out of chronological order given the tendency I’ve developed with this album to want to dive back in, write a little, crawl back out, and then dive back in again.

As a result, there’s been multiple discs from the moment this review started that have coasted into and out of my purview.

But, needless to say, as of recent I have been absolutely buried in a wall of incredibly dense Death Metal.

And while I’m talking about multiple albums one could also ascribe that feeling to Fractal Generator‘s newest album Macrocosmos all on its own.

DGR REVIEW ARCHIVES (PART 4): THE AMENTA — “REVELATOR”

Album Reviews No Responses »

Feb 192021

(We present the fourth and final installment from an avalanche of reviews that DGR delivered unto us earlier this week, and today’s edition focuses on the newest album by Australia’s The Amenta, which is being released today by Debemur Morti Productions.)

It’s been a good bit of time since we last heard from the Australian amorphous extreme metal genre-hoppers The Amenta. Their sound has expanded widely over the years, with releases that range from a blackened death metal vein, to industrialized monstrosities, and even some straightforward noise and black metal collisions for fun. I’ve even seen them granted the genre-descriptor of ‘terminator metal’ a few times, given their favoring of distorted electronic backings that can often sound like failing machinery.

By the time of 2013’s Flesh Is Heir the group’s sound was firmly planted in a vast maelstrom of industrial noise and blackened death metal, and it is a release that we have yelled about for a long time – largely my fault – at this here site. The eight years since then, though, have been relatively quiet and have seen The Amenta‘s various musicians spread far and wide. It seemed for a little while that the group would be slowly shadowed out – that is, until the announcement of the group’s newest album Revelator. Continue reading »

DGR REVIEW ARCHIVES (PART 3): MECHINA — “SIEGE”

Album Reviews No Responses »

Feb 182021

(We present the third installment from an avalanche of four reviews that DGR delivered unto us earlier this week, and today’s edition focuses on the newest album by Illinois-based Mechina, which was released on January 1st.)

I did not review Mechina’s 2019 album Telesterion for this here website. This is something that bothered me for a lot longer than I expected. All the way into mid-2020 I was swearing up and down I would do a 2019 archive of stuff I had come to super-late, but truth be told that was always only part of the reason why it never got a deep-dive here, despite my continued insistence of enjoying nearly everything the band have done.

The main driver behind that decision actually came down to the simple fact that Telesterion is a completely different style of album from previous Mechina works, and in some ways that disc served as a foray into newer sounds for them. It’s the first time when the project fully leaned into its conceptual side and you had vocalists playing characters within songs, and thus the characters sang about certain of the events being described. Continue reading »

DGR REVIEW ARCHIVES (PART 2): JARI LINDHOLM — “TRAJECTORIES”

Album Reviews 1 Response »

Feb 162021

(We present the second installment from an avalanche of four reviews that DGR delivered unto us yesterday, and this one focuses on a solo album by the Swedish musician Jari Lindholm that was released on February 12.)

Early 2021 did not seem like it would be the sort of release slate that would involve covering a few instrumental releases right out of the gate but here we are, inching our way further into February, and as we slowly hack away at our early-year backlogs and anticipate upcoming downpours we find ourselves at the doorstep of musician Jari Lindholm.

You may recall him from projects like Enshine, Exgenesis, and Atoma – which have received a fair bit of coverage here for their gorgeous takes on a melancholically minded doom genre. So while the initial reveal of a seven-song instrumental journey was unexpected, the combination of international musicians coming along for the ride and the fact that, well, we generally enjoyed most of Jari’s work up to this point, made it a little easier to justify the hard swings from albums chock-full of clean singing despite our site title to something that contains absolutely no singing.

Sometimes, I feel like a parent threatening to pull this car over and make you all walk home when we get to do that. Continue reading »

DGR REVIEW ARCHIVES (PART 1): HUMAN SERPENT — “HEIRLOOMS ETERNAL”

Album Reviews 1 Response »

Feb 152021

(We present the first NCS review of 2021 by DGR. Even though we’re already six weeks into the new year without hearing from him, he has been busy listening and writing — witness the fact that we suddenly have an archive of four reviews, divided into four parts, of which this is the first. The others will follow over the next three days.)

We’ve been hammering the drum for Greek black metal group Human Serpent for a little while now – at least your dear writer has – so the announcement last year of a full-length followup to the group’s scorcher of a 2018 album For I, The Misanthropist (after a series of intervening EPs and singles) was exciting. While the singles and EPs proved to be a lot of fun, if only as a small slice of just how surgically dangerous the band have become, a new full-length blasting from the group’s furnace was obviously going to be a lot more exciting.

And thus with the closing of January do we find ourselves at the feet of the group’s latest release Heirlooms Eternal, an album self-described by the band like this: “It is the most aggressive, soul-suffocating and mind-destructive Human Serpent album/It is a physical manifestation of a life-walking private hell.”

For one: The album is certainly the most visually colorful, given the group’s excellent choice of red and black for the cover art (we may be biased toward that combo) vs their usual muted blacks, greys, and sepia tones. But also, when you have a song with a title like “Memories Are Rooms Of Pain”, you can’t help but think that maybe the band might be on to something when they describe their own music as “soul-suffocating”. Continue reading »

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