NO CLEAN SINGING is proud to announce the release of METALITY’s second compilation of music from the Middle East. If you don’t already know, METALITY is a great metal blog that covers music from around the world, but with a unique emphasis on metal bands from the Middle East and North Africa. That blog has turned us on to lots of great music in the past. Through an effort so gargantuan as to make us exhausted just thinking about it, METALITY has now assembled a compilation of music from more than FIFTY bands — including bands we’ve previously written about here at NCS — and it’s now available for free download.
If you scrutinize that flyer up above, you’ll see our name as a co-sponsor of the release. In fact, we’re the sole North American co-sponsor of this comp. One perq of being a co-sponsor is that we got an advance listen to all the tracks on this compilation. What it doesn’t mean is that we’re sworn to rave about all the music regardless of what we honestly think about it. So, we’re going to give you our honest opinion about this comp: It’s amazing.
The download files (two of them) for this album are big — and not just because they include more than 50 songs. The download also includes a separate file of album art for each band plus a file of links to the web pages or social media sites for each of them. You could be forgiven if you needed something more than the word “free” to invest the hard-drive space on this beast. So, after the jump, we’re going to do three things:
We’re going to provide more detailed observations about the music on this compilation so you’ll have a better idea what you’re getting into; we’re going to feature five of our favorite tracks; and (courtesy of METALITY), we’ll give you an embedded music player that will allow you to stream each song or put the whole album on continuous play. And of course, we’ll give you the link for the download if you like what you hear.
There are some real gems on this comp — we think it’s worth your time to stay with us after the jump and investigate this further.Â
As a broad overview of the compilation, it includes a diverse array of metal from more than a dozen different countries, from Turkey to Morocco. There’s even a track from an Iranian metal band called Arsames. You’ll find power metal, thrash, metalcore, and straight-up hardcore. You’ll also hear songs from several black metal bands, including Bouq (Jordan), who we’ve written about before (here).
However, the majority of the 50+ tracks are death metal — and almost every flavor of death metal is included: old-school crushers faithful to the Florida, New York and Swedish progenitors of the genre; flashy fusions of thrash and death; technical death metal; deathcore; brutal death metal; melodic death metal — you name it.
We were especially excited to see that the comp includes songs from three other excellent bands who we’ve covered in the past —Â Voice of the Soul, whose 2010 EP we covered here, Sawlegen (covered here), and Bilocate (see this post). Their songs are among our favorites on the comp.
Speaking of favorites, I’ve picked five songs to feature. I wanted to pick bands that we haven’t written about before, just to broaden your horizons a bit, and of course I picked songs that particularly appealed to my own tastes in metal, which means most of them are going to run over you like a phalanx of war machines.
KAOTEON
No reason to pussy-foot around. We’re going to start with something that will just tear your fucking head off. This band is from Lebanon. Last year, they released their debut album on Osmose Productions called Veni Vivi Vomui, which translates to “I came, I saw, I vomited.” Nice. The song included on the METALITY comp is from that album. Buckle your seat belts:
[audio:https://www.nocleansinging.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Kaoteon-One-by-One-Dogs-Heed-the-Call.mp3|titles=Kaoteon – One by One (Dogs Heed the Call)]DAMNED SORROW
This band is from the North African country of Tunisia. They released their first EP called A Natural Taste for Blood in 2009. The song included on the comp is called “Die On Your Own”, and it’s a titanic blend of symphonic black metal and walking-dead death metal with quite possibly the most awesomely cavernous vocals on the comp. Fans of Dimmu and Old Man’s Child should get up on this. Hot shit.
[audio:https://www.nocleansinging.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Damned-Sorrow-Die-On-Your-Own.mp3|titles=Damned Sorrow – Die On Your Own]PHOBIA
Phobia is another Tunisian band who released an EP in 2009 called Itinerary. The song on the comp is called “Unavoidable Torment”. It has some riffs and rhythms in common with deathcore, but includes a cool, proggy mid-section and an unexpected, contrasting keyboard outro that works. Very nice song.
[audio:https://www.nocleansinging.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Phobia-Unavoidable-Torment.mp3|titles=Phobia – Unavoidable Torment]INNERGUILT
InnerGuilt is another Lebanese band that was originally called TristMoon. The song on the comp is a fusion of thrash and death-metal, fast and technical and fueled with a smokin’ hot melodic guitar solo. Damned fine metal. (The comp also includes a bonus TristMoon song called “The Dungeon”, which is another of my favorite tracks on this album.)
[audio:https://www.nocleansinging.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/InnerGuilt-Burden-Of-Guilt.mp3|titles=InnerGuilt – Burden Of Guilt]THRASHSTORM
This is yet another Lebanese band, and the name of the game is thrash, with its punk roots fully exposed. This band self-released a demo in late 2009, but the song included on the METALITY comp seems to be a new one. It’s got a stripped-down, garage-studio, underground honesty going for it that I like (and that’s coming from someone who’s generally indifferent or downright bored with the re-thrash movement of the last few years). Here ya go:
[audio:https://www.nocleansinging.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Thrashstorm-Skatanic.mp3|titles=Thrashstorm – Skatanic]Now, those five songs ought to whet your appetite for the rest of what the comp includes. Here’s a player that will let you stream all the songs (except for five bonus tracks that are included with the download), and to download all of this, HERE is the link to the METALITY page that will give you download instructions.
24 Responses to “METALITY – THE COMPILATION [VOL. 2]”
Leave a Reply
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
I feel for the metalheads persecuted in some middle-east countries. They still churn out quality bands. Good for them \m/
My feeling, too. I’m sure no expert on life in the countries represented in this comp, but the hurdles faced by metal bands trying to do their thing in those places have got to be bigger than they are in North America and Europe. But you can see from this comp that there’s definitely a scene, small and difficult though it may be in some of these countries. Pretty inspiring. Plus, the music is damned good — lots of these bands would already be signed to well-known labels in this part of the world if they were located here.
Voice of the Soul–did they get their name from a Death song?
That’s a good guess. I don’t know for sure, although VOTS names Death as an influence. Kareem Chehayeb from the band is a reader here — maybe he will see this and clue us in.
Yes I did! Voice of the Soul is one of my favorite songs by Death…I started the band nameless in 07…and we had to have a name for a Battle of the Bands competition..and it just came off the top of my head. We’re definitely influenced by Death, but we (and many people who have reviewed us) can relate us more to European melodic death metal movements, especially in Sweden..we’re releasing a 6 track EP this summer with some of our strongest and top tracks. Hope you liked our material..we’re on facebook.com/votsband
Take care!
What a beautiful compilation! Haven’t stopped listening to it! Thanks for mentioning VotS and glad you mentioned Thrashstorm. Their frontman, Karam, sticks to the old school guns and he does a great job!
Cheers!
I had so much damned fun listening to this album over the last 10 days. It was like eating my way through a big box of assorted chocolates, blindfolded. Except for you guys and a small handful of other bands whose music I already knew, I had no idea what was coming, from song to song — and so much of it was really tasty! I hope lots of people will take the time to do what I did.
Sweet! I’ve only had the internet back for a few minutes and an epic score!
Have you been without internet? How long?
Since this happened on April 27th http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfPFKAYFLCA . An EF4 tonado hit our community, I live two driveways past and to the right of where that vid cuts off. All our electrical and communications wiring comes from the direction shown in the vid. The road is London Lane in Apison, TN. This is Cherokee Valley road, one road south, about a mile away over a ridge in north Georgia http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lU-0Xv7KMwI&NR=1. The ridge to the left in the first vid is the ridge to the right in the second.
Oh fuck. I had no idea. I’m so sorry man — and so glad you’re in one piece (at least I hope you are). How long were you without power?
Still in one piece. My home only lost some shingles from the roof and we lost some trees and got some car damage. We feel lucky, though. It was pieces of someone’s home that beat up our car and we know several people who’ve lost family and friends, so I’m very glad that internet, electricity and some food is all we lost. Hell, I even found enough shingles from other houses in my yard to repair my own roof. Though, since there are seven houses of family in a row here, I will be cutting and dragging trees for a very long time.
We were only without power for four days, which isn’t bad for the amount of lines downed. We had crews working our road from Ohio and Virginia. The local electric utility foreman for those crews said that they had four hundred extra crews in our area. The communications utilities haven’t been so fortunate. We got internet today because it’s from our cable company, haven’t seen anything from the landline phone company yet.
Wow. I can’t even imagine what that must have been like. It does prove one thing — undoubtedly true in many other countries but certainly true in the US — when the shit comes down, people from all over turn out to help. No telling how long you’d have been living like a cave-dweller but for those out-of-state crews. I’m sorry for the losses of your neighbors, and glad that you and your home survived.
Thanks.
It does bring the community together and family, like nothing else I’ve ever witnessed.
Good to see you’re back Byrd!
Bloody cool mate, congrats on getting your name on there. Has a lot of amazing stuff on it.
Thanks for checking it out Niek. I’m still mindblown thinking about how much work it must have taken iRoar (Metality) to do this thing. I struggle just to get a half-assed post or two ready each day.
Likewise man, likewise 😛
Well, damn… I guess I have a lot more stuff to download than I thought. Not sure I have enough time to snag this today, though. Should be worth it when I have a little more time.
It’s a powerful amount of music to download, that’s for sure. But working through it is a very interesting experience. I really do think there’s something in here worth discovering for just about every taste, and people can always skip ahead if they hit songs that aren’t their thing.
That’s how it is with any sampler. The first Metality was like that, that Indean comp you posted about a while back was like that and I’ve no reason to believe that there won’t be some duds with this one, but also some gems.
One thing I think you’ll notice is the variation in the production quality, in addition to the variation in the music. Some of the songs are pretty clearly self-produced, and many times I thought that if those bands had access to the production values of my favorite tracks, they might well have been favorites, too. In other words, even on the songs that didn’t wow me, there’s clearly talent behind them.
I checked kaoteon’s album and it’s one of the most aggressive albums I heard in a while. barely technical, highly audible and so freaking violent \m/
You just reminded me that i intended to track this album down. I just downloaded it from Amazon mp3 and have started listening. Let’s see . . . how can I say this . . .
HOLY SHIT!
Yes indeed, “barely technical, highy audible and so freaking violent.” I’m lovin it.