Ultio Archives - NO CLEAN SINGING

AN NCS PREMIERE: ULTIO — “A THOUSAND TIMES MORE”

Apr 302024

On May 23rd Brucia Records will release Cor, a new album by the Italian black metal entity Ultio, the solo work of Giorgio Barroccu, who is also behind the music of Derhead. Brucia describes Cor as “the twistedly demented brother of The Grey Zone Phobia, Derhead‘s latest album released back in March 2023″. (We had some things to say about that album here.)

What does this mean? Brucia describes it this way:

Another side of the same, dark coin – Ultio shares Derhead‘s very same dramatic tension and despair, however showcasing here a magnificently unrestrained and raw soul: behind a gloomy wall of freezingly cold riffs and shrieking screams Ultio ascends maniacally, building a sense of impending peril and oppression – dissonance after dissonance. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: ADVERSARIAL, ARROGANZ, BLACK TOTEM, CULT LEADER, DEAD FLESH, HENRY KANE, LILJEVARS BRANN, OU, SIG:AR:TYR, TÝR, ULTIO, VULGARIS

Mar 302024

It’s the 30th day of March, and 30 is about the number of new songs and videos I checked out in anticipation of this roundup, all of them having surfaced during the past week. I settled on an even dozen to share with you, and you probably won’t like all of them, even if you’re tenacious enough to go through all 12.

Why? Because your range of heavy metallic interests is probably narrower than mine (most people’s are), and the big herd below ranges pretty far and wide. On the other hand, the breadth of the range means you’ll probably find something to like.

Because there’s so much to get through, I dispensed with uploading and re-sizing all the cover art and tried to limit myself (with varying degrees of success) to more pithy expressions than usual. I also alphabetized the selections by band name.

P.S. There will be more recommendations tomorrow, Easter Sunday notwithstanding. In fact, the Easter observance just makes me more eager to char the day black. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: ELLENDE, MESZAROTH, OMINATION, ULTIO, SULDUSK, MALHKEBRE

Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET 5 Responses »

Feb 032019

Ellende

There’s quite a lot of new music I’m recommending in this Sunday’s column — three full EP streams (one of which is an EP-length single composition), plus advance tracks from three forthcoming albums. Coincidentally, four of the featured bands are essentially solo projects.

As usual, I picked these selections in part to provide some listening variety, though there’s certainly more than a fair share of melancholy and grandeur to be found herein, along with a fair share of ripping and tearing. I also positioned one selection to provide a bit of a diversionary interlude through its interweaving of Neo-Folk elements (and clean singing) among heavier sounds.

ELLENDE

I discovered this Austrian atmospheric/post-black metal band through a 2016 video of the title track from their 2014 EP, Weltennacht. I couldn’t get the song out of my head, and the video was hard to forget, too, since it included film of the 1987 public suicide of a Pennsylvania politician (Budd Dwyer) at a press conference he conducted the day before he was to be sentenced to prison following a conviction for bribery. Continue reading »