DGR Archives - Page 53 of 58 - NO CLEAN SINGING

ROTTING CHRIST: “RITUALS”

Feb 112016

(In typically detailed fashion, DGR reviews the great new album by the Greek titan, Rotting Christ.)

Rotting Christ have been an interesting entity over their epic-length career. As a band who have existed since the late ’80s, they have changed form multiple times, firmly held in foundation by the two members who began the group, and as other members have entered and exited the band, the sounds have changed as well.

A career this long will often lead to maybe one golden period and then a slow, steady income for a band, but Rotting Christ are one of the few that have had a couple of huge highlights while at the same time continually grinding it out on the road as well as consistently cranking out disc after disc. Most recently — since the release of 2010’s Aealo — Rotting Christ have been on an absolute tear, planting themselves firmly in the metal scene as one of the best guitar-riff-writing bands out there to date.

It’s an interesting situation, as recommending Rotting Christ to people can sometimes lead (still to this day, even, in a culture of viral shock and awe) to the occasional upturned nose and jaw dropped. Yet I would argue that the band, even limited to the group’s previous three albums (not counting today’s subject), have written some insanely catchy music, working in complete tandem with the part of the band that gives itself so completely over to its chosen subject matter, which 96% of the time is Satan. Continue reading »

MECHINA: “PROGENITOR”

Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule 5 Responses »

Feb 022016

(DGR weighs in on the new album by Chicago’s Mechina, as you knew he would.)

The January 1st album release has become a comedic undertone to my writing as of late. It’s never one that I have advanced warning for, nor is it one that I am ever truly adequately prepared for. Instead, it just serves as a reminder of the relentless march of time and the constant – and reassuring – pressures of being a writer for this site. It’s strange, but I have found comfort in this sense, the idea that I am already late and that I have fucked up.

Without that pressure, life seems aimless, and so, as it has been for the past handful of years, I have Mechina to thank for the fact that I am once again dragging ass on a review. The sun has risen in the east and set in the west, the sky is still blue, and all is right with the world – because as I take longer and longer to write out this review out, each moment means that I am later than I was before. Always the hare in Alice In Wonderland, and in that way continuing exactly how I felt last year and the year before.

It’s that consistency that one needs as a reminder that while the year has ticked up one notch, things haven’t really changed and the world is a mess. God forbid any actual events happen. This ladies and gentlemen, is how I start my year. Continue reading »

FLESHGOD APOCALYPSE: “KING”

Album Reviews 7 Responses »

Jan 182016

(DGR reviews the new album by Italy’s Fleshgod Apocalypse.)

It starts with classical music. It always does.

Any time someone tries to trace the roots of heavy metal, we inevitably wind up at the same branching paths. We hit the ’70s and the Black Sabbath era, and that leads us to the blues and from there things get far more nebulous, but through some sort of inherited wisdom over the years we always come back to classical music. Composers like Bach and Wagner are name-dropped left and right, and we always point to the huge, bombastic symphonies and the low, bass-heavy instruments, because these are the deepest roots of our heavy metal lineage.

The tendency to make things ‘heavier’ isn’t a new one, its just the one that musicians have often seen fit to push beyond the most extreme boundaries imaginable. So, the idea of Symphonics being a part of heavy metal was an almost foregone conclusion. It’s slowly worked its way even into death metal – itself a container of the hidden flair for the dramatic – and the two have produced multiple pairings and fantastic bands.

Fleshgod Apocalypse are the natural evolution of that tendency, a group who over the course of four main releases (counting our current subject as well) and an EP have become completely intertwined with symphonic music, writing a pyrotechnic and operatic style of death metal that can’t really be matched. Continue reading »

THE 2015 DGR PYRITE DEITY AWARDS PRESENTED BY MONSTER ENERGY DRINK SPONSORED BY TAMPAX

LISTMANIA 2015 18 Responses »

Jan 112016

Editor’s Note: Grant Skelton began his own NCS year-end list here by writing, “Since I’m likely the most verbose writer on this site….” Haha. Nope. Not even close. That distinction goes to DGR. His year-end list is not the longest we’ve posted in terms of the number of releases he honors. But in terms of words, it’s like The Great Wall of China, going on and on and on until it becomes one with the horizon… but every album gets its own corporate-sponsored award! Who said there was no money in metal?

******

Listmania has once again taken No Clean Singing into her grubby little paws, devouring anything else that the site may put out into its gaping maw and allowing no information outside of album title upon album title – with pretty picture and album streams included – to escape.

This is the time of year where opinions are validated, egos stroked, outrage fomented, and more often than not the usual album-reviewing duty shirked when the author realizes that he’s a fucking idiot who thought it would be funny to write a novel-length album review and then turn around and create a giant year-ender list where he once again pretty much reviews every album on it. Continue reading »

SWALLOW THE SUN: “SONGS FROM THE NORTH I, II & III”

Album Reviews 16 Responses »

Nov 302015

(In the longest review we’ve ever published, DGR assesses the mammoth new three-disc album by Finland’s Swallow the Sun.)

We’ve had this disc for a bit. I know we’re late on this, but I hope to make it up you guys by essentially deep-diving and excavating this album, as there’s a ton going on with Songs From The North I, II & II that deserves to be highlighted.

I have become one with this album. It is inside me, and I am inside it. At this point, I consider myself the Jacques Cousteau of album reviewers — minus the whole being French, deep-sea diving, and talented part, but still. I believe the analogy holds on its own merits. I have stared into the abyss through the eyes of this album and asked if there was anything worth saving, and still my heart said, “No”.

Songs From The North is an album that a lot of folks have been approaching with equal measures of dread and excitement. A huge cause of this is obviously down to the fact that the up-front description of Songs From The North was essentially this: doom metal band from Finland decides to release a triple-album — as in, not one disc, or two discs, but three separate platters of music. Continue reading »

ARKAIK: “LUCID DAWN”

Album Reviews 6 Responses »

Nov 232015

(DGR reviews the new album by Arkaik.)

The idea of a “tentpole” band is something that has been playing on the darkest reaches of my mind lately. Like an idea that has its claws slowly wrapping around you, so the tendrils have slowly wormed their way into my thoughts over the course of my album listenings for this review.

I’m definitely the most unqualified person in the world to opine about how the record label business is conducted, but I’ve always been under the impression that a lot of many label’s rosters often don’t exactly generate tremendous amounts of money, and under some business models there are usually two or three fairly huge bands that happen to bring in most of the money, and that tends to get kind of spread out amongst the rest of the label.

If it isn’t the profit factor, sometimes these bands I’m thinking of just happen to be the ones that seem to define the ethos of the label. In other words, there will usually be a band or two per label that seem to define what much of the roster sounds like, or they embody huge swaths of the sound — the exemplaries of the label, so to speak. In my mind, this is the case with Arkaik and their label Unique Leader. Continue reading »

SADIST: “HYAENA”

Album Reviews 3 Responses »

Nov 162015

(DGR reviews the new album by Sadist.)

When the word “angular” comes to mind when describing a death metal band, one of the groups that I always have in the back of my head is Italy’s Sadist — a band who since their comeback have been an odd fusion of about a hundred different styles — whose early works were often cited as hidden gems in the death metal community — and a band whose most recent work has been constructed out of some of the mostly oddly shaped riffs, whose music is so alien in its geometry, and whose subject matter is so off the beaten path from what one might consider the usual death metal “fare” that you can’t help but refer to it as “angular”.

It’s been hard to argue about where Sadist lie on the death metal spectrum since their 2007 revival with their self-titled, which featured them returning to form after a hefty, hefty break, since the band have been playing with a keyboard-reliant style, heavy on the theatrics, where the drumming pulls just as much from the jazz and fusion worlds as it does the traditional blast-beat-bombing-run that we’ve all become accustomed to. It’s been difficult to say if Sadist are technical death metal or technically death metal, but if they’re not either then you have to answer the question of what the fuck are they?

Despite being an enigma in genre terms, however, Sadist have — in their most recent three discs — put out some fascinating, odd music. The third of those albums is the group’s mid-October release, Hyaena, an album that has taken its dear, sweet time in following up 2010’s Season In Silence, which itself could best be described as… well… I’m not sure. The cover art featured a pretty prominent evil snowman and had some monstrous tracks in “Broken And Reborn” and “Bloody Cold Winter”, but Hyaena takes us elsewhere. As best as I can figure, it takes us to the wilds of Africa and deals with not only myth but also the behavior of its titular creature. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: THIS BE THE VERSE — “STUBBORN YOUTH”

Premieres 2 Responses »

Nov 162015

(DGR introduces our premiere of a song from the forthcoming debut album by London’s This be the Verse.)

Every once in a while we like to bring you something way the hell out of left field, outside the realm of the usual fire-breathing belches and inhuman barks that populate our chosen genre of music. This time we’re bringing you the premiere of a song by the young London-based Industrial/Rock band This Be The Verse entitled “Stubborn Youth”.

This Be The Verse have been around for a little bit now, having released an EP in 2014 entitled Consequences available on their Bandcamp page as well as having filmed a very “band trapped in white room”-style music video for the song Consequences. “Stubborn Youth” marks the first showing of life in the leadup to a self-titled album projected for release next spring, one that sees the band taking their Consequences EP and making the sound a little more raw and intense. Continue reading »

THE REARVIEW MIRROR (MAËLSTROM)

THE REARVIEW MIRROR 1 Response »

Nov 152015

(DGR brings us this Sunday’s installment of The Rearview Mirror.)

You can likely fault this one as me being in a tech-death mood here folks. As of this writing I’m currently bashing my head against Arkaik’s latest and I think the brain-juices are starting to spill over into other things.

After the last Rearview Mirror I did, in which I took us back in time to the halcyon caveman days of 2013, I made a promise that I was going to try and live up to the rearviewmirror concept and take us further back in time. If not just to come across some underappreciated gems and also maybe cover some stuff that was super-obscure. Such is the case with today’s Rearview Mirror, for which I literally could only find ONE SONG from the band on the YouTube pages to share with people. Continue reading »

THE REARVIEW MIRROR (THE AMENTA)

Album Reviews, THE REARVIEW MIRROR 6 Responses »

Oct 252015

(This Sunday, DGR steps forward with our weekly look back at metal from yesteryear.)

I’ve been waffling a bit with the idea of contributing more often to the series of Rearview Mirror posts that we’ve been doing here at NCS. I genuinely love the idea of being able to deep-dive on a song at random, but I’ve also wanted to let other folks share their hidden gems out there without me vomiting my taste all over the site, especially as my own archive of ideas consists pretty much of bands I’ve already taken a healthy opportunity to write about on this lovely page.

However, there is one group that has been haunting me, that I’ve been thinking about a lot as of late, and that is Australia’s The Amenta. If you’ve been following NCS for a while, you’ll know that I’m a pretty unabashed fan of the band. Tim Pope gave me one of my favorite interviews ever, and the group’s 2013 release Flesh Is Heir ranks among my favorite discs — it is a noisy, harsh, and abrasive listen that seemed just slightly ahead of its time, especially as now it seems like more groups from Australia are breaking out into the limelight. Continue reading »

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