OUR LIST OF 2021’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 10): THE CROWN, VEILBURNER, ALUSTRIUM

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2021  2 Responses »
Jan 182022
 


The Crown

As you can see, we’ve made it to 10 installments of this list, and this one brings the total number of songs identified so far to 30. If I’m able to continue at the current pace, revealing another 3 songs every weekday from now to the end of the month (when I’m going to try to force myself to stop), we’ll reach a grand total of 19 Parts and 57 songs, so we’ve now crossed the halfway mark. On the other hand, I might decide to throw in one more segment at some point so we have an even 20 Parts and 60 songs.

By the way, you’ll find the preceding Parts (and an explanation of what this list is all about) through THIS LINK. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: ALUSTRIUM, FLUISTERAARS, JOURNEY INTO DARKNESS, SERMON OF FLAMES, SEEDS OF PERDITION, SHED

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Aug 102021
 

 

If a blogger like me could pull together roundups of recommended new music on a daily basis, it would be a lot easier to keep my head above the constantly rising musical tides. But sadly I don’t have enough time for that, and so I wind up doing things like this and this as the week ends and the weekend begins. Which is to say that what you’re about to embark on has become a rarity — a roundup early in the week. And this one, again arrangd alphabetically, turns out to be a real roller-coaster ride. Enjoy!

ALUSTRIUM (US)

The lead-off item is a new video (with a message) for a song that’s a head-spinner, one that melds barking growls and caustic screams, darting symphonics and scintillating drumwork, feelings of jolting hostility and jittery tension, a jazz-like interlude, and abundant flurries of flickering and fret-leaping guitar. Deep drilling tones give the music a cold, grim, and desolate mood as the song draws to a tragic and haunting end. Continue reading »

A TRIPTYCH OF TECHNICAL TALENT – ALUSTRIUM / COGNITIVE / OPHIDIAN I

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Jul 132021
 

(Andy Synn goes fishing in the Tech Death scene and comes back with a hell of a catch)

If there’s one common theme which unites these three albums – you know, apart from the fact that they’re all brand new additions to the ever-expanding Tech Death canon – it’s that each of them finds the band in question working hard, struggling some might say (though certainly not in vain), to carve out a space, a niche, an identity, for themselves in an already saturated scene.

Let’s face it, there’s no shortage of super-speed shredmasters out there all vying to be the fastest, the most complex, the most ridiculous, and this year alone has already delivered a bumper crop of both killer and filler releases running the gamut from the heaviest to the most histrionic (and everything in between).

One thing that I think we can all agree on though – and which, to a greater or lesser extent, all of today’s selections clearly demonstrate – is that technical talent is nothing without the songwriting skill to match it, because once the initial dopamine rush of being bombarded with a thousand notes a second wears off it’s the structural hooks, the infectious melodies, the subtle repetitions, that trigger the brain’s innate pattern recognition algorithms and ensure that what you’ve just heard gets filed away in your long-term memory, rather than just flying in one ear and out the other.

So let’s see if this particular trio have what it takes to make a lasting impression, shall we?

Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: ALUSTRIUM / DÖ / FUMING MOUTH

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
Nov 182020
 


Alustrium

 

(Andy Synn prepared the following reviews of three recent and very impressive EPs.)

It’s pretty common knowledge that, for the most part at least, I’m more of an “album guy” than an “EP guy”. There’s just something about the extra effort, the extra level of commitment, involved in creating an album that makes it feel more real and more substantial in my mind (although I’m sure that’s not always true).

That being said, I can’t deny that there are certain times when an EP is exactly what I’m looking for from a band, something explicitly designed to deliver a short, sharp shock of (ideally) all their best ideas and elements in one concise, captivating package.

Which is exactly what I have here for you today, three EPs – from three tonally and stylistically very different artists – all of which are pretty much brand new (one of them, in fact, is so new that it isn’t actually released until Friday) that find each band putting out some of their best material yet while also dropping a few hints as to where they might take things next. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ALUSTRIUM — “SLACKJAW”

 Premieres  3 Responses »
Jul 022015
 

x

 

We’re about to premiere a song by a Philadelphia band named Alustrium from their new album A Tunnel To Eden. I have a sneaking suspicion they knew what they’d accomplished when they picked “Slackjaw” as the name for the song. I think they also knew what they were doing when they released an instrumental play-through video for the song about one week ago — you know, as proof that they didn’t record the song at the speed of normal humans and then run it through CERN’s large hadron particle accelerator outside of Geneva.

If you haven’t picked up on the clues yet, this thing is faster than an SR-71 and it did indeed leave me slack-jawed. I think I popped a few blood vessels in my right eye while listening to it, and there was a lot of drool left on my shirt, too.

Now, I realize that there are people out there who are unimpressed by pyrotechnical displays of physical dexterity in metal. They demand something more from a song. I confess that I’m one of those people who get off on the pyrotechnics, even when the song is just a chaotic mass of notes and beats. Maybe it’s because, as a child, I was in a car that was picked up by a tornado (true story). On the other hand, when that’s all there is, even I don’t tend to listen to a song more than once. But “Slackjaw” isn’t in that category. Continue reading »

UTMU’S VISIT TO MOJO 13

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Apr 292012
 

(Welcome NCS reader/commenter/suggester-of-great music, Utmu, with his first guest post at this site.)

Hello everyone, this is my first full-article contribution to NO CLEAN SINGING—that’s right, after submitting a good number of bands and news articles to Islander and posting comments for quite some time, I’ve decided to get off my ass and really contribute something substantial to the site. So, to get on with what this post is about . . .

I recently went to the Wilmington, Delaware date of the excellent Occupation Domination 2012 Tour at Mojo 13 headlined by the mighty Origin and supported by a killer lineup, including the likes of Cattle Decapitation, Decrepit Birth, Aborted, Rings of Saturn, Battlecross, and Face of Ruin. As much as I may like or love some of those bands, I don’t plan on talking about them in this article. Instead, I’m going to give you information on some relatively local and generally unknown bands who played before Face of Ruin and the other aforementioned groups. You can find all of the bands’ Facebook pages at the bottom of the article.

MARCH TO VICTORY

What we have here is a magnificent melodic death act from Lancaster, Pennsylvania. These guys have been tearing up the local and East Coast music scenes since 1998, releasing a handful of material, including one demo, two EP’s, and a full-length called Frostburg 666, the first metallic assault of theirs to be released by a label, Born of Chaos Records. I also plan on reviewing Frostburg for you all at some point.

March to Victory started out as a straight-up black metal band and progressed into what I would say has become a melodic death metal group based on the change of style from Frostburg 666 and previous songs to the new single “Your End”.  In fact, since they have a “new” vocalist, Ron Evens (who, by the way is a really cool dude), they’re now harnessing a growl instead of a rasp, so in my opinion they’ve taken a big step into Amon Amarth territory with this new song. You can stream “Your End” exclusively on Vampirefreaks.com, where you can also stream two other tracks that are on the EP’s as well as a fifth track called “Pure Fucking Hatred”, which is from a 1998 demo, and what seems to be an early version of a song off the full-length called “Funeral Blizzard Beast”. Continue reading »