We’ve collected here a quintet of new videos for your viewing and listening pleasure. In a rare display of brevity, I’m not going to attempt to describe the sounds or what you’ll see in the videos. I’ll identify the music and provide a band link, and then let you dive into the streams… beginning with an exception to our Rule.
ANATHEMA
Song: “Anathema”
Album: Distant Satellites
https://www.facebook.com/anathemamusic Continue reading »
(Andy Synn wrote this review of the new album by Liverpool’s Anathema.)
Let’s start things off by getting a few things out of the way first, shall we? If your initial reaction to this post is:
“That’s a stupid name. I won’t listen to what any site named No Clean Singing has to say!”
Or:
“What is this? This is not metal! This site is stupid!”
Then there’s the door. Feel free to let it hit you on the way out.
For those of you who’re still reading (hopefully that’s most of you, because our readership here at NCS is, in the majority, pretty open-minded and interested in the albums/bands we elect to cover), thank you for sticking around, and I hope to make it worth your while. Continue reading »
Here are a few notices sent my way by my NCS colleagues that we agreed were worth mentioning. They concern forthcoming albums.
ANATHEMA
Following up on their well-received 2012 album Weather Systems, the UK’s Anathema revealed this morning that their new album will be named Distant Satellites and will be released by the Kscope label on June 9. The album art was created by Korean new media artist Sang Jun Too and was based on his “Distant Light” installation. Some of the songs were mixed by Steven Wilson. The band’s announcement also included these words:
“Distant Satellites is the culmination of everything ANATHEMA been working up to so far in our musical path. It contains almost every conceivable element of the heartbeat of Anathema music that it is possible to have. Continue reading »
(BadWolf reviews the live performances by Anathema, Alcest, and Mamiffer in Flint, Michigan, on September 19. Photos from the show, which follow the review, were taken by Kyle Lee Tate.)
Metal is rarely beautiful music. Many people, myself included, come to it looking for something harder, ugly—a mirror to hold up to those feelings not accepted by the mainstream society day-to-day. But some bands do take metal and make something beautiful out of it. Gorgeousness is likewise shunned by the worker bees of the modern day (have you ever seen a modern apartment complex? Or a piece of IKEA furniture?).
Doom-turned-progressive pop heavyweights Anathema, who traffic in bittersweet lyrics and soaring melody, trekked through the United States for the first time in twenty years, with French shoegaze-meets-black-metal wunderkinds Alcest in tow. The tour also sported brief opening slots by Seattle-based avant-garde metal-as-soundscape artists Mammifer.
I rolled into Flint Michigan’s legendary metal venue The Machine Shop with photographer Kyle Lee Tate, to find Mamiffer already playing, bathed in stage-smoke and dim, red light. Mamiffer is a collaborate effort between Aaron Turner, the one-time creative force behind legendary post-metal act Isis, and wife Faith Coloccia. Together they make ambient metal with Turner on guitar-and-pedal-board, and Faith on vocals and keyboard. Their music is akin to the sound propagated by the Handmade Birds record label, and popularized by Horseback and Locrian (with whom Mamiffer have collaborated). Continue reading »
(In this post, DGR reviews the new albums from Anathema and Storm Corrosion. Sample songs are at the end.)
Also: Hey guys! You all like Steven Wilson, too, right?
It isn’t too much of a stretch to assume that a lot of us have our pleasures outside of the metal realm. Sometimes, you just need to take a break from all the yelling and ass-kicking’s you receive from your dispenser of choice. A lot of music lies in wait out there beyond the bounds of metal, and if you know where to look you’ll find that a lot of it is surprisingly good. You already read NCS, so you full well know this though, you sexy reader you. I tend to find my solace from stuff outside of metal in the type of electronica rock that the label Fixt usually peddles (as well as more heinous techno like BT and Pendulum) and Prog.
I’ve never drifted too deeply into the prog genre per-se, especially since it is such a huge umbrella term, but what I do find, I usually enjoy. One of my favorites has been Porcupine Tree, and to a broader extent anything in which its members have involved themselves outside of that band. A large part of the attraction is Steven Wilson, and he is prolific as hell in music at the moment. I mention this because it seems like I talk about him a ton anyway, so the fact that he is present in Storm Corrosion means it shouldn’t come as much of a shock to find them included in this post. Not only that, but I’m going to talk about his fellow compatriots in Anathema, who may have just released one of the best non-metal discs to come out this year. Continue reading »