Sep 282013
 

Happy Saturday motherfuckers (and of course I mean that in the nicest possible way). You haven’t asked what I’ve been listening to this morning, but I’m going to share that with you anyway, because sometimes people want things that they don’t know they want, and I feel sure this is such a time.

PHANTOM

In listening to the kind of albums I, Voidhanger releases, I’m used to getting my brain pureed in a blender or torn apart by black hurricanes of harrowing noise. But this morning I listened to the first song on a forthcoming I, Voidhanger album that takes a different turn. The album is Incendiary Serum by a Danish band named Phantom, and it’s scheduled for release before the end of this year. The opening track is “Ghostly”, and it is ghostly (and ghastly).

The aura of the music is still very black and bleak, still filled by vocal vomit, but it’s slow, crushing, and melodic. Powerful degraded riffs stomp and moan, twisted tremolo trills flit through the murk, minor-key piano melodies sing the songs of dead, homeless souls. You can headbang, and you can sink into a state of melancholy bereavement. This is an excellent melding of doom, death, and black metal. I, Voidhanger does not disappoint. Here’s “Ghostly”: Continue reading »

Dec 162010
 

Oh, the things I do as a result of my borderline OCD affliction. Earlier this morning, I posted the next-to-last feature in our Finland Metal Week tribute, and for the sake of being complete, we focused that post on Apocalyptica, Nightwish, and Lordi. Why did we do that? Because they’re globally popular (massively so), they’re sort of metal, and they’re from Finland.

But really, what were we thinking? This site is called NO CLEAN SINGING. Early on, we defined our main focus as extreme metal of the kind that’s fast, brutal, cathartic. Sure, we don’t limit ourselves to the core NCS musical style — as witnessed by lots of the bands we’ve featured in our Finland Tribute Week posts. But at the same time, we don’t want to give people the wrong impression. As far as music goes, most of the time, this is not a nice place to visit, and we’ve never let “popularity” define the music we feature.

We got a reminder of just how far around the bend we’ve gone from this comment yesterday by one of our long-time, bloody-minded readers, Aaron: “Jesus christ this week has been a fucking long one. I haven’t liked a single band you’ve talked about. Nope, not even Children of Bodom.” Man, that was a wake-up call — one we’re answering.

So while we’re featuring Apocalyptica, Nightwish, and Lordi today — for the sake of obsessive completeness — we need to give ourselves, and maybe some of you, a couple of shots of acid, with a paint-remover chaser. Y’know, just to cleanse the palatte.

Just a couple of quick shots to scour out the inside of our craniums (and yours) and make the blood run in crimson rivulets from our ears and allow us to rage at the skies. Just a couple of songs from the likes of NOX and Disparaged(after the  jump . . .) Continue reading »