Andy Synn, Author at NO CLEAN SINGING

Andy Synn

THINGS YOU MAY HAVE MISSED (BUT SHOULDN’T)

Sep 042025

(Andy Synn has four suggestions, taken from a long list, of stuff to check out from August)

August was a busy month for me, for a lot of different reasons, which is why it feels like I missed out on covering a lot of artists/albums I normally would have made/found more time for.

Those artists include – but are not limited to – Arrows (though at least Islander was able to give that a bit of a write-up), Innumerable Forms (hopefully someone will get to that?), Lowheaven (which I wish I had more space for… but Slow Crush took their slot in the end), Pilgrimage, Ethereal Wound (which I’m more and more gutted not to be including), Spire of Lazarus, Hexrot, and Porenut (whose new album I still might review, possibly next week) amongst many, many more, so I encourage you all to go check them out if/when you have time after reading this article.

THE SYNN REPORT (PART 186): MODERN LIFE IS WAR

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Sep 012025

Recommended for fans of: Comeback Kid, Shai Hulud, Rise Against

One of the best things about a band announcing a new album – especially a band as seminal to their scene as this – is that it often acts as a prompt to go back and re-listen to their previous works, which often (in my case, at least) results in you developing a new appreciation for their earlier material.

Case in point, when prodigal Punk/Hardcore legends Modern Life Is War announced their upcoming fifth album (set for release this Friday, some twelve years since their last full-length record) I took it upon myself to revisit their discography just in case I wanted to write something about them to commemorate the occasion.

And not only did I end up rediscovering the band – while also developing a greater appreciation for the impact that legendary acts like Minor Threat, Rancid and Black Flag have had on their music – but I also found myself connecting even more deeply this time around with their intensely personal, yet intimately relatable, lyrics and their distinctly dystopian (yet not hopeless) take on modern life (it’s war, don’t you know?).

Now, a word of warning… I’m off to Islay this weekend to spend a couple of days touring some of the island’s many distilleries (it’s my stag-do, if you were curious), so this article will be a little different to most of its predecessors as I’m going to focus my attention mostly on my favourite songs on each of the band’s albums, rather than trying to cover them all comprehensively.

But the one positive side-effect of this of course is that – if you like what you’re about to read and/or hear – you’ll still have lots to discover and appreciate on your own time!

SHORT BUT SWEET – ANTI RITUAL / BACKSTABBED / HARROWIST

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Aug 262025

(Andy Synn highlights three more short-but-sweet releases for you to sink your teeth into)

Between work, band, and my personal life I’m not going to have much time to write this week, hence this is likely to be one of only two articles you’ll be seeing from me.

Which means I’m going to have to do my best to make them both count… and what better way than by trying to stick to my ongoing (and continually failing) promise to try and cover more EPs?

So, without further ado, here’s three “short but sweet” bursts of Hardcore-inspired venom and vigour from Anti Ritual (Denmark), Backstabbed (Germany), and Harrowist (Austria).

JUSTICE FOR THE DAMNED – STAY RELENTLESS

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Aug 222025

(Andy Synn gets in the ring once more, ready for another beating from Justice For The Damned)

Did you know that Amazon was originally called “Relentless”?

It’s true, and while I’m glad they didn’t stay relentless – as that would have really confused things SEO-wise for this review – that little factoid does provide a bit of extra insight into the organisation’s unapologetically brutal business practices that they’ve used to beat down their competitors and crush all opposition.

And speaking of beat downs…

DEFACEMENT – DOOMED

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Aug 202025

(Andy Synn contemplates chaos, and genre tags, with the new album from Defacement)

The genre tag “Post-” – as in “Post-Rock”, “Post-Hardcore”, “Post-Black Metal”, etc – is one of the most maligned (and often misunderstood) terms in music (according to some of the comments I’ve seen, anyway).

The thing is, while the initial idea behind “Post-Rock” was to take the fundamental elements of the genre – the distorted, crunchy guitars, the heavy, hooky rhythms, the bombastic, larger-than-life melodies – and separate them from their traditional structures and conventional constraints, allowing for more expansion, more experimentation, and more dynamic depth (especially in terms of pushing the classic “quiet/loud” dynamic even further) that’s often not how the “Post-” prefix has come to be used in recent years.

Let’s face it, the term “Post-Hardcore” is often just as synonymous with “Melodic Hardcore”, while a lot of “Post-Black Metal” artists are just Black Metal bands stealing directly from the tropes of “Post-Rock” (or vice-versa), and too many people in general just seem to use the term “Post-” when they actually mean something like “Progressive”, “Atmospheric”, or “Avant-Garde” (and we can argue about what those terms mean another time).

So perhaps we need to think of another way to talk about a band like Defacement – who have been wilfully and unapologetically deviating from the formula since 2018 – that properly reflects their ongoing attempts to deconstruct extremity in order to let something new, or at least something else, fill the gaps.

RENUNCIATION – MAKE BABYLON GREAT AGAIN

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Aug 182025

(Andy Synn sets out to see just how “great” the new album from Renunciation, out now, actually is)

Look, if you’d asked me before now I would have sworn blind that I reviewed Autelmorte, the second album from Renunciation, back in 2022.

But, as it turns out, I only managed to mention them as part of my regular end of year round-up (where it seems a couple of you also discovered them).

Which makes it doubly fortunate that I randomly stumbled across their third album, Make Babylon Great Again, towards the end of last week, as not only do I get to review it but I also get a chance to properly introduce you all to their shamelessly infectious amalgam of blast-driven, hyper-melodic Black Metal and fret-melting, pulse-pounding Tech Death.

BEST OF BRITISH: KING WITCH / SEA MOSQUITO / TECHNOLOGIST

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Aug 142025

(Andy Synn offers up another tasty platter of meaty British Metal for you all to enjoy)

It feels like it’s been ages since I last did one of these “Best of British” articles… though, in truth, it’s only been a couple of months.

But, whatever the reasons behind this slight delay (mostly due to the fact that I’ve been busier than usual recently, although it hasn’t helped that at least one of the albums/artists I was going to cover ended up coming to us for an album premiere, thus taking them out of contention… looking at you here Ba’al) I’m now once again set to present you with three more recent releases from the always verdant, ever versatile British Metal scene.

ASHEN – LEAVE THE FLESH BEHIND

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Aug 122025

(Andy Synn continues to be the biggest advocate of Australian Death Metallers Ashen here at NCS)

Let me ask you something… do you ever feel out of step with the (music) world?

I mean, I know we all do at some time, that’s a given, but every so often something comes along to really drive home to me how the bands I want to be bigger and more successful in the Metal scene (particularly the Death Metal scene) are rarely the ones who receive the biggest push.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy a bit of Undeath, Gatecreeper, and 200 Stab Wounds now and then, but I’d be much happier to see the likes of Baest (whose new album I reviewed last week), Tribal Gaze (whose upcoming second album, Inveighing Brilliance, was just announced) and Ashen receive the same level of attention.

But, let’s face it, there’s probably a reason I’m not an A&R guy, since I’m demonstrably terrible at assessing which bands are going to be the most marketable and most successful… although I’ve still got a pretty big platform here, and if I can use it to get some more of you to jump onboard the Ashen bandwagon in advance of their upcoming second album (out next week on Redefining Darkness) then I’ll consider it a job well done.

BAEST – COLOSSAL

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Aug 052025

(Andy Synn has always been Baest‘s biggest cheerleader here at NCS, and that’s not about to change)

As the dude who’s been singing the praises of Danish death-dealers Baest (or Bæst, as I still prefer to call them) for a long time now, and who believes that they deserve just as much hype and attention as the Tomb Molds and Blood Incantations of the world, it was only natural for me to be the one to cover their upcoming fourth album (set for release 15 August on Century Media).

But, I must admit – having purposefully avoided all the pre-release singles so that I could experience (and, hopefully, enjoy) the whole record in one go – my first encounter with Colossal wasn’t quite what I expected.

Because it was way more… whisper it… fun than I ever would have imagined.

THINGS YOU MAY HAVE MISSED (BUT SHOULDN’T)

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Aug 042025

(Andy Synn has four more recommendations from last month which you might have overlooked)

For the most part, when putting together these “Things You May Have Missed” articles, I try to cover as varied an array of artists and albums as one possibly can when they’ve limited themselves (to preserve their own sanity) to just four records.

But, as it happens, the four records I’ve chosen to highlight here today – a succulent slab of gnarly, narcotic Sludge, a harrowing howl of soul-scarring Black Metal, a prime cut of prodigiously proggy Death Metal, and an unexpectedly ambitious (if flawed) attempt at combining the metallic and the metaphysical – all have at least two things in common.

One, they’re all from bands with one-word names and, two, they all hail from the good ol’ US of A.

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