Cobalt Archives - NO CLEAN SINGING

COBALT: “SLOW FOREVER”

Feb 222016

(Andy Synn reviews the eagerly awaited new album by Cobalt.)

Where to start with this one? Obviously the dead horse of the Erik Wunder/Phil McSorley split has been comprehensively beaten to a pulp and rendered down for glue by this point… so let’s not get into that whole ordeal again.

No, I think we have more important issues to consider, not least of which is the question of whether or not Slow Forever, the first new Cobalt album in seven long years, successfully lives up to the band’s hard-won and well-earned legacy.

And our survey says… Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: WORMED, COBALT, MISTUR, DESTRÖYER 666,

RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 10 Responses »

Feb 112016

I didn’t pounce on some of the songs in this round-up as fast as I would have liked, but it seems that there are people who still manage to discover new music through these collections even when the songs aren’t piping hot right out of the oven. But I’ll start with a couple of tracks that actually did just premiere today, before getting to the ones that appeared earlier in the week.

I’m sad to say that this is a day when I’m pressed for time, and so I’m unable to whip together the mini-reviews that usually accompany songs I’m enthusiastic about. I’ll say only that I’m REALLY enthusiastic about all of these.

WORMED

Today Revolver Magazine hosted the debut of not one but two new songs off Krighsu, the new album by Spain’s Wormed. The tracks are named “The Singularitarianism” and “Eukaryotic Hex Swarm”, and are accompanied by this description from the band: Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: MIASMAL, COBALT, BLUT AUS NORD / P.H.O.B.O.S., HIGH SPIRITS, AND SINMARA

Exceptions to the Rule, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 5 Responses »

Apr 222014

Here are five items I found yesterday that I thought were worth sharing. The first and last items will tear you a new one. In between those you’ll find some tantalizing news and a song that’s an exception to our “rule” but will rock you all night long.

MIASMAL

Miasmal are a Gothenburg death metal band who share members with Agrimonia and Martyrdöd and whose self-titled debut album came out in 2011. Their second album, Cursed Redeemer, is scheduled for a May 13 U.S. release by Century Media (April 28 in the EU). Last month we featured a song from the album named “Until the Last”. Yesterday Noisey/Vice premiered a second track, “Call of the Revenant”. In a word, it’s stupendous (and, as noted, it will tear you a new one).

Seriously, there’s something about this song. On the one hand, it sounds utterly familiar — voracious vocal howling, heavy-drilling down-tuned riff grisliness, death/crust grinding and crawling, punk-inflected Swedeath rhythms. On the other hand, it not only captures this old-school radiance terrifically well, it sounds… vibrant and new. The rapacious, marauding energy is explosive and it begs to be played over and over again. Continue reading »

SHAKE-UPS: COBALT AND ARCH ENEMY

Metal News 37 Responses »

Mar 182014

Phil McSorley — Cobalt

I had to deal with a load of personal shit yesterday, and I do mean a load of shit. For the second time in about six months, my car was broken into on Sunday night while parked in a lot on Seattle’s Capitol Hill. Passenger side window smashed in — again. Laptop and other personal valuables stolen — again. When will I learn? I’d like to come across the motherfucker who did this. Killing would be excessive, but I could live with myself if I permanently crippled him.

And then, after spending a crapload of time trying to figure out how to get my car window replaced (again), changing internet passwords to be safe, and working on replacing everything that was stolen, I somehow managed to load malware into my PC at work — the one I almost never use because I prefer to use my MacBook (the one that was stolen) because shit like that never happens to it. And so I had to surrender that PC to our IT department to figure out how to clean it up, leaving me to sit around with my thumb up my butt.

To sum up, my feeble plans to live some kind of blog life yesterday were basically fucked like a tethered goat. Continue reading »

NEW VIDEOS: CHTHONIC, COBALT, AND KATECHON

RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 7 Responses »

May 242013

Here are three new videos I spied this morning. All three are worth your time.

CHTHONIC

This morning, Taiwan’s Chthonic premiered yet another official video (here) for a song from their forthcoming album Bú-Tik. That album will be released by Spinefarm on May 29 in Taiwan and Japan, May 31 in Europe, June 3 in the UK, and June 18 in North America. The new song is “Sail Into the Sunset’s Fire”. According to the band, it tells a tale of pirates in East Asia during the Age Of Exploration (some of whom eventually settled along Taiwan’s western coast) who sought to overthrow both the Ming Empire of China and the Tokugawa Shogunate of Japan.

You don’t get much of a sense about the song’s historical roots in the video. It was filmed in an outdoor swimming pool during an unexpected thunderstorm, and those shots are interspersed with comic-strip graphics. The music in the song itself doesn’t have as much of the ethnic flavor that I most enjoy in what Chthonic have done previously — it’s more of a straight-ahead, Scandinavian-styled melodeath romp. But hey, I’m entertained anyway.

Watch the video next. Continue reading »

FLAMING TUSK

Album Reviews No Responses »

Mar 152010

Last week we received the following e-mail:

Hey, No-Cleaners.
We definitely have a whole lot of no clean singing on Flaming Tusk’s new album Old, Blackened Century. For that and many other reasons I think you’re going to love it. The album is available as a pay-what-you-will download (yes, even $0) at http://music.flamingtusk.com.
Enjoy. In a horrifying kind of enjoyment.

Keith [aka Zosimus]
Flaming Tusk

Well, we thought that was one of the most intriguing e-mails from a band we’d received in a while. So, we hopped right over to the linked page, downloaded Old, Blackened Century, made a monetary contribution, and started listening. And then listened again. And again. And it turns out that Flaming Tusk’s stylistic flair doesn’t stop at e-mail messaging and cool album titles.

The music is indeed immensely enjoyable, in a horrifying kind of unclassifiable metal enjoyment. If you like blackened post-hardcore proggy doom sludge noise metal, well you’ve come to the right place. (read on after the jump, and we’ll give you a track to stream, too, plus some musings about band names that Flaming Tusk may have narrowly averted . . .) Continue reading »

THE TEN MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS OF 2009 (Part 10)

Listmania, MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2009 No Responses »

Dec 262009

Here at NCS, we’ve been putting a different spin on year-end listmania. Ours isn’t a list of the best metal full-lengths of the year. It’s not even necessarily our list of the best individual extreme metal songs of the year. What we decided to do was create a list of the most infectious extreme metal songs we’ve heard this year. We’re talking about songs that produce involuntary physical movement and worm their way into your brain to such an extent you can’t get ’em out (and wouldn’t want to).

We haven’t ranked our list from #10 to #1 because that would be too much fucking work (and your co-Authors would still be arguing about it this time next year). In addition, when we started naming our entries on this site, we hadn’t yet figured out the whole list. So, we’ve been dribbling them out one at a time, in no particular order.

Of course, only after naming the first 9 entries did it dawn on us that we only had one spot left. If only our tiny brains hadn’t been hard-wired with the decimal system we could have made this “The Fourteen Most Infection Extreme Metal Songs of 2009.” But you reap what you sow. With only one spot left, and still lots of songs on our collection of candidates, picking #10 proved to be especially vexing for your Authors. But now it’s done.

Our list heretofore:

1. Asphyx: Sorbutics

2. Mastodon: Crack the Skye

3. Amorphis: Silver Bride

4. Goatwhore: Apocalyptic Havoc

5. August Burns Red: Meridian

6. Pelican: Ephemeral

7. Scale the Summit: Age of the Tide

8. Daath: Wilting On the Vine

9. Molotov Solution: The Harbinger

And to see our tenth and final entry on the list, continue reading after the jump. Continue reading »

DECIBEL’S TOP 40

Listmania No Responses »

Nov 232009

Top 40 Hits

A couple days ago, we reported on Decibel magazine’s (premature) publication of its “Top 40 Extreme Albums of 2009” and gave you the list of 40. Many more “Best of 2009” metal lists will soon be appearing on the netz and the newsstands. Why do people create these kinds of lists and why do we read them? Music is a matter of personal taste. These lists represent the personal tastes of particular critics and fans, no more or less valid than my favorites or yours. So what’s the fucking point? I’m not sure there is a fucking point, but I’ll make a stab at it. Continue reading »