Oct 302023
 

(In this review DGR revisits an old favorite, the German band Distaste and their new album, released a few weeks ago by FDA Records.)

We’ve had a long history with Austria’s Distaste, as we’ve watched them evolve their form of blast-happy grindcore, relentlessly focused on short songs and straightforward hammering, to a blackened death-inspired group with a light sludge flavoring, to the current incarnation of the band obsessed with fury, hellfire, and portmanteaus of their chosen language.

Previously, Distaste had done pretty well for themselves with albums like Of Abyss-Hearts And Falsity and Black Age Of Nihil but they really started to come into their own along about the time of the Rotten Cold/Distaste split and the Todt EP. Adopting a strong guitar-lead segment did the group well, adding another element to the otherwise whirlwind chaos and well-spoken language of grindcore circle-pit throwdowns, and Deibel was a strong culmination of that. Continue reading »

Mar 102021
 

(DGR jumps back into action once again with a pair of short but sweet EP reviews)

Three months in and although the review slate so far has been oddly stop-start – understandable given the shitshow we’re slowly crawling out of, especially when we can start complaining about being buried by our day jobs again – we’ve had some very choice releases so far.

So I figured after a bunch of long ass reviews I’d try to pick a couple of EPs to keep things shorter for you all, even as I keep on digging through everything else as it’s the only thing keeping me sane.

Right now I present to you some very much up-my-alley style of music though, one Grind release that I’m convinced I have spelled wrong every time it appears (despite the fact that I copy and paste it off of the bandcamp every time) and one so firmly implanted in the Brutal Death concrete that using a jackhammer to get them out would just be added instrumentation for atmosphere.

Continue reading »

Sep 242019
 


Murder Made God

 

(NCS scribe DGR is catching up after a long hiatus, with a multi-part collection of reviews of 2019 releases, beginning with this one.)

At one point I half-joked with myself that I’d call this column ‘with apologies’. This is due in part to the happening-more-often-than-not real life occurrences taking over my internet-writing time and resulting in missed self-imposed deadline after self-imposed deadline. In fact what you’re seeing right now is only ‘part one’ of this review roundup rather than everything at once, to protect the sanity of both your beloved writer and our beloved editor.

I keep a long running list of albums I’ve been meaning to review, stuff to look at, stuff I think our readers will find interesting, and so-forth, but as mentioned, there was a whole lot of falling behind as life just seemed to cascade one unfortunate event after another in an attempt to crush me. Long story short, by the end of the crushing I wound up with one fewer pet and became a new homeowner, with a whole bunch of bullshit in between. And so in that sense, I feel like there are apologies due not only for the lateness but also for the multiple re-writes that happened behind the scenes as I attempted to shake the rust off of what was essentially two months of exile.

That doesn’t mean music discovery and listening stopped. In fact that was an ongoing activity, and so this archive in all of its Parts covers a wide swath of the year, from January right up to stuff that came out just a few days ago. The same goes for genres and locations, because if there’s anything I do enjoy it’s traveling the world of heavy metal. The world doesn’t stop and wait for us to play catch-up, though, and right now is just as good a time as any to begin again, so if you’ll indulge me doing much shorter reviews than usual, here we go…. Continue reading »

Jun 272017
 

 

(DGR once again takes over round-up duties at our metallic fortress, presenting news and new music from six bands.)

This weekend was glorious if you were in a death grind sort of mood, as it felt like Friday was the first crack in a dam about to burst from a small handful of bands. Austria’s Distaste put out a new EP entitled Todt (which is curently name-your-own-price), and Belgium-based grinders Leng Tch’e and their fellow countrymen in the restless Aborted both began streaming new songs from their upcoming releases.

In fact, in compling this roundup I felt I had to temper the blade a little bit by tacking on something that wasn’t just raw fury from front to back, so Samael find themselves paired up alongside an EP announcement for Australian tech-death wonders The Ritual Aura and an ambient teaser that, were we not aware of just how heavy those guys can get, would be fairly calming. So, if you were looking to start your day without a massive pile of non-stop guitar batterings, relentless drumming, and vocals fired at the speed of a machine-gun, my friend…you’ve come to the wrong place. Continue reading »

Feb 292016
 

Rotten Cold-Distaste split

 

(DGR brings us two reviews of two new cataclysmic musical assaults.)

The foraging for new sounds with which to ruin your hearing never stops here at NoCleanSinging, it just happens to move a little slower than usual as work hits its busy season for a few weeks. As such, I’ve been in the mood for the sort of music that can wipe away any sense of reality by fire, and I figured I’d share my two most recent listens that have allowed me to do that.

Both of these hit in January and have been sort of waiting in my back pocket, armed and ready to be deployed at a moment’s notice and, almost inevitably, something happens that causes one’s day to go sideways. Both of these releases are short, quick hits of adrenalin to the system and they both appear angry as hell. So if you need a good way to light a match on your day, here goes…

ROTTEN COLD / DISTASTE: A SPLIT

A few years ago I went on something of a grind kick here at NCS. Never really delved too deep into the underground, but had found a list of bands that I thoroughly enjoyed. A lot of them, to no surprise, took a lot of inspiration from bands like Nasum/Rotten Sound (who themselves have a disc hitting really soon) and more, from that specific breed of grind band. They were all lightspeed-heavy, blaster-style bands, and the whole thing that triggered my exploration was curiosity as to what musician had been in what project and what side projects they had been in. Continue reading »

Nov 082013
 

(In this post DGR reviews the new album released last month by Austria’s Distaste.)

Distaste are one of those bands I can only claim to have gone into recently. Probably the fault of Man Must Die, Mumakil, Afgrund, and a few others, but I’ve found myself really digging into the short-song/blastbeat-filled/punk-riff segment of grind recently. Basically, it has started to boil down to where if a band puts a circle pit riff over some blasts and some dude starts screaming about how much of a wreck the world is, then chances are my adrenaline has shot through the roof.

I came upon Distaste rather randomly, just surfing through Bandcamp and coming across the three-piece Austrian group’s album Black Age Of Nihil just a little over three weeks after it saw release in early October. Coming off of about a million spins at that point of Afgrund’s Corporatocracy and its predecessor The Age Of Dumb, Black Age Of Nihil immediately grabbed me. At first, I couldn’t quite figure out why, until it came to light that Afgrund’s front man as of 2010, Armin Schweiger, is one-third of this band, playing guitar and doing vocals in this troupe as a founding member of the band rather than simply being the voice behind all the yelling. Continue reading »