SHADES OF BLACK: 夢遊病者 (SLEEPWALKER), CAGED BASTARD, VYR MUK

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Nov 032024
 

(written by Islander)

I included a fair share of black metal in Part I of yesterday’s large cross-genre roundup despite having this column looming in the near distance. I did that on purpose because the bulk of the verbiage below (and it is bulky) is devoted to an album that doesn’t really fit the usual bill on Sundays, or any other bill, though I have my reasons for including it here.

Yet fear not, ye black metal zealots, because I’m following the opening act with some music that will be more in line with this column’s typical focus, though some of it gets out of line too. Continue reading »

OVERFLOWING STREAMS ON A SATURDAY: ARCHSPIRE, DREAMWELL, HUMANITY’S LAST BREATH, KUNSTZONE, SLEEPWALKER, CHOSHECH, SWARRRM, SYLOSIS, TRIVAX, WORMHOLE

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Jul 222023
 


Archspire

Someone wrote they get by with a little help from their friends… don’t tell me… it will come to me….

I got by with some help from my friends this morning. It was one of those especially distracting weeks when I had almost no chance to claw my way through the hundreds of e-mails we get every day, so I didn’t have much new music bookmarked to check out over the last 24 hours and really wasn’t eager to do the catch-up chore. However, DGR and Andy Synn pitched five new songs and videos at me, and I also noticed a few recommendations from some other valued influencers.

Collectively, those became my main targets… and like the blind squirrel who found an acorn, I did stumble across a few nuggets of musical nourishment myself. The result is the very big collection I’ve assembled below, organized alphabetically by band name and with fewer words than usual for Saturday round-ups. Surely you will find something to enjoy….

The Beatles! Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: WOE, 夢遊病者 (SLEEPWALKER)

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Jul 142023
 

Here we are at another Friday, with yet another big pile of new metal staring us in the face and not nearly enough time to make much of a start in selecting recommendations before the sun gets high in the sky (or is replaced by the moon where you might live).

I’m reminded of the statement attributed to Laozi about how the journey of a thousand miles begins, a proverb that usually doesn’t motivate me at times like this, when a thousand-yard stare is all I can usually muster. But today I tried harder to take the proverb to heart, and actually made two steps. Unless like puts a bog in my path, more steps will follow tomorrow and Sunday.

WOE (U.S.)

My first selection is a new song from Legacies of Frailty, a new album by Woe and the first one since 2017’s Hope Attrition. Since then, it’s hard to deny that the human world around us has slid backward, more rapidly and in more disgusting ways than even the pessimists among us had contemplated, and the natural world has suffered for it as well.

These developments certainly weighed on the mind of Chris Grigg, who for the first time since 2007 made this Woe album by himself (albeit with additional drumming on three tracks by Lev Weinstein). The result is a concept album, described by Grigg in these words: Continue reading »

OVERFLOWING STREAMS: PHRENELITH, MÆRE, 夢遊病者 (SLEEPWALKER), DRUNE, ANTI RITUAL, LHAÄD, PSILOCYBE LARVAE, SINIESTRO, LÄHDÖN AIKA, IMPENDING DOOM, VELCH, BURNING TONGUE, TEETHGRYNDER

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  5 Responses »
Oct 162021
 

 

I experienced NCS anxiety again this morning. That’s what comes from having 84 open tabs on my computer for new songs and videos, all of which I opened just since last Saturday. Not lying — 84 of them! To increase the anxiety level, I hadn’t listened to any of them until this morning.

Of course, I didn’t listen to 84 music streams, some of which are complete albums and EPs that were released over the last week, nor to all the other songs on the long list of candidates that I’d made over previous weeks. I did add all 84 to that pre-existing list, so I could stare at the band names and try to figure out what to spend time on. I stared… made choices… and from those choices here’s what I decided to share:

PHRENELITH (Denmark)

Nice to have these Danish death metal heavyweights back, with a jaw-dropping song named “Awakening Titans“. That’s what the music sounds like too, mystical and ringing at first, and then furiously slaughtering, packed with electrifying drumwork, unhinged, venomous riffing, jolting grooves, gargantuan growls, and maddened howls. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: SLEEPWALKER, HANTERNOZ, KASSAD, ULVEHYRDE, THANATOMASS, BLACK CEREMONIAL KULT, STWORZ

 SHADES OF BLACK  2 Responses »
Mar 212021
 

 

I guess it’s usually true that I try to put a lot of variety into these Sunday columns, but today’s selections seem to be even more divergent than usual. As a result, I had a devil of a time figuring out how to arrange the tracks, and I don’t think I succeeded in creating any kind of rational flow, probably because all the songs resist that. However, I do think I succeeded in creating a whiplash effect at the end, so there’s that.

There’s only one full release to be found here. The rest are either singles or advance tracks from forthcoming records. Enjoy!

夢遊病者 (SLEEPWALKER) (Russia, Japan, U.S.)

I decided to begin with the most head-spinning track of everything you’ll find here. Although my head has been spun around before by the escapades of this multi-national avant-garde collective, they’ve really outdone themselves this time. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: 夢遊病者 (SLEEPWALKER) — “NO PREMATURE CELEBRATIONS”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
May 082018
 

 

If you managed to catch the 5772 record released last fall by 夢遊病者 (Sleepwalker), then you already know how difficult it is to describe the music of this band. I haven’t heard anything else like 5772… and I haven’t heard anything else like this band’s new LP either. They have boggled my mind again. “Visionary” seems like too pretentious a word, and “genius” might come off too strong, but it’s definitely ingenious — so bewilderingly creative that I’ve become transfixed by it.

The name of this new release is 一期一会 (Ichi-go ichi-e). That title is a Japanese idiom that can be translated as “for this time only, never again”. I’ve learned from The Font of All Human Knowledge that it is often associated with Japanese tea ceremonies, the characters often “brushed onto scrolls which are hung in the tea room”. “The term reminds people to cherish any gathering that they may take part in, citing the fact that many meetings in life are not repeated. Even when the same group of people can get together again, a particular gathering will never be replicated, and thus, each moment is always once-in-a-lifetime”. Continue reading »

VIDEO MINDFUCKERY, DELUXE

 Metal News  4 Responses »
Jun 122010
 

Here at NO CLEAN SINGING, we don’t spend much time looking at metal music videos. Mainly, that’s because we’re in too much of a damned hurry to get our shit done for the day — which includes imagining something to write about, writing about it, feeding the cat (that would be me), reading other metal blogs, working our fucking day jobs, dealing with the rest of the shit in our daily lives, etc., etc.

And there’s also the feeling, grown through experience, that most extreme metal music videos are going to be imminently forgettable — even when we really dig the songs — so really, why bother?

But every now and then, we see something that defies our presumptions. Case in point: the new video of a song called “Sleepwalker” by Australian metalcore band Parkway Drive. One of our NCS collaborators, IntoTheDarkness, brought this thing to our attention a few days ago, insisting that we had to watch it without delay.

Coincidentally, about 5 minutes before getting that urgent message, we’d seen a write-up on the video by Axl Rosenberg over at Metal Sucks. He thought certain aspects of the video were “kinda cool” but thought the song was “FUCKING AWFUL” and invited readers to suggest a better song that would fit the video.

So we watched the video — and it’s completely mind-blowing. Really, it is. (see for yourselves, after the jump . . .) Continue reading »