Gonzo Archives - NO CLEAN SINGING

PREVIEWING FIRE IN THE MOUNTAINS 2025: AN EXCLUSIVE NCS INTERVIEW

Mar 202025

(This coming July the Fire in the Mountains festival will take place at the Red Eagle Campground in the Blackfeet Nation in northwest Montana, with a spectacular lineup of performers and many other attractions. In the following exclusive interview, our man Gonzo talked with festival organizers Jeremy Walker and Shane McCarthy about how FITM got connected with its new location, what inspires the event, and a lot more.)

It was a clear, calm day in Denver. A cloudless sky left plenty of room for the Colorado sun to focus its fiery wrath directly onto my bare head. Sometimes putting on a hat is all but necessary when living up here. Today, I was woefully unprepared.

While walking down Broadway, one couldn’t be blamed for questioning whether spring had come a week or two early. At this elevation, Mother Nature tends to be especially fickle, and any Denverite knows you should probably dress like you’re going skiing at the beach before going outside during this time of year. It’s a decidedly weird aesthetic, but I don’t make the rules.

I was on my way to the dark depths of Trve Brewing, my usual haunt for getting a midday beer and hiding from the sun’s persistent wrath, especially in summer. I am no stranger to this place, and it’s one of my favorite dark corridors in which to lurk and drink.

Today’s visit would be different, though. I’d be meeting up with Jeremy Walker and Shane McCarthy, two of the gentlemen behind the curtain of the Fire in the Mountains festival, to talk about the event’s long-anticipated comeback, where that journey has taken them since its last appearance in 2022, and how in the hell they managed to get Old Man’s Child to play their first-ever US show as a headliner.

I was fortunate enough to have experienced this festival in ’22, when Enslaved and Wolves in the Throne Room were featured, and I can say without exaggeration that it was a life-changing weekend. It became very clear to me back then that this was more than just a music festival. This was something special.

With all that in mind, I’d been looking forward to today’s conversation with Jeremy and Shane for weeks. Continue reading »

SPIRITWORLD: “HELLDORADO”

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Mar 112025

(SpiritWorld‘s new album Helldorado will be arriving on March 21st on Century Media Records, and we have Gonzo‘s take on it today.)

I’ve often described metal as the perfect additive to any other type of music. When done right, it can be an incredible marriage of styles. Results may vary, of course, but the ongoing explosion of subgenres within the metal realm will prove the point either way.

This fact will undoubtedly be obvious to anyone reading this. But the fun part of such experimental alchemy that so many bands have tried over the years? It creates new sonic territory yet to be explored by anyone else.

Enter Stu Folsom and his bedazzled cowboy cohorts in SpiritWorld. I was (and still am) hopelessly hooked on their 2022 album DEATHWESTERN, with its furious Slayer-inspired riffs and paint-peeling vocals. The fusing of country, folk, and dust-crusted Sergio Leone-style storytelling made the album worth its weight in gold. Three years later, the big question about new album Helldorado is whether or not it holds up to its predecessor.

Let’s find out.

GONZO’S HEAVY ROUNDUP, FEBRUARY 2025

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Mar 052025

(In this column our Denver-based friend Gonzo brings forward five albums of varied kinds of heaviness for your consideration, all of them released in February.)

Well, February came and went, and I’m still catching up on the absolute onslaught of heavy music that emerged from it – hence the noticeable delay in putting this column together.

Alas, shit happens. I’m still recovering from last night’s Cavalera show here in Denver, in which the eponymous brothers Max and Igor led their band through a crushingly heavy Schizophrenia set that was played at breakneck speed. Even the Chaos A.D. encore cranked up the BPM. And just before they were ready to call it a night, they hauled none other than Jello Biafra on stage for a downright cathartic cover of “Nazi Punks Fuck Off,” except “Punks” was replaced with “Trumps.”

In place of a politically charged tirade of my own, I’ll just lazily approve the above with a “fuck yes” stamp of approval and carry on.

Anyway, here’s some music you should listen to that came out last month. Continue reading »

16: “GUIDES FOR THE MISGUIDED”

Album Reviews 1 Response »

Feb 132025

(Let week Relapse Records released a new album by 16 [aka -(16)-], and this week we’ve got Gonzo‘s review of the record below.)

Outside of the unholy trinity of The Melvins, Eyehategod, and Crowbar, you might be hard-pressed to name another longstanding sludge band that’s left their swampy mark on the scene quite like those three have.

If that’s the case, Southern California’s 16 would like a word. Continue reading »

GONZO’S HEAVY ROUNDUP, JANUARY 2025

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Jan 272025

(Denver-based NCS writer Gonzo helps us kick off the New Year with reviews and recommendations of four albums released this month.)

Beyond being miserably cold and generally lacking in the “stuff to do” department, January is customarily the month of pure crap. Big-screen movie releases are usually garbage. Music releases tend to be few and far between, and bands tend to (wisely) avoid touring due to the weather. Nobody wants a broken-down trailer in rural Nebraska at 4 a.m. in subzero temperatures with all your gear stuck in it.

So given all that, I was fully prepared to scrape from the bottom of the barrel for this month’s column. Evidently, this January is built differently.

Not only do I already have almost 60 songs on my best-of-year Spotify playlist, but I had to narrow this column down to just a few bands I wanted to include. Separate reviews of other unexpectedly awesome shit may follow – granted, if my fellow NCS scribes don’t beat me to it. (Which is likely.)

LISTMANIA 2024: GONZO’S TOP 25 ALBUMS OF THE YEAR

LISTMANIA 2024 8 Responses »

Dec 242024

(This is Denver-based NCS writer Gonzo‘s list of 2024’s Top 25 albums.)

It’s probably a grim sign of the times when, upon assembling this list, my first thought is “which albums helped me endure the horrors?”

That’s really why we listen to music in the first place, though. In that sense, this year was no different than any other. And I’d defy anyone to name a better form of self-guided therapy than blasting a metal record at god’s volume to help them navigate said horrors of existence.

Holy shit, that all sounded a lot bleaker than I’d intended. Whatever, though. We’re going with it. Continue reading »

GONZO’S HEAVY ROUNDUP, NOVEMBER 2024

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Dec 032024

(Denver-based NCS writer Gonzo weighs in below with reviews of three albums released in November 2024 that he heartily recommends.)

We’re rapidly approaching everyone’s favorite time around here (or most stressful, depending on who you ask) and that time, of course, is Listmania, where our dignified group of NCS scribes, contributors, friends, and an assortment of others all sound off on their favorite releases of 2024.

Before all that unfolds, though, I wanted to squeeze in one last monthly roundup of new music. Why? Because everyone should have something to read on the toilet if they need to avoid asshole family members during the holidays.

You’re welcome. Continue reading »

GONZO’S HEAVY ROUNDUP, OCTOBER 2024

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Nov 082024

(Denver-based NCS writer Gonzo brings us reviews of the following three albums released in October, just in time for gray days ahead.)

Call me a downer if you must, but I really hate theme parties.

Come to think of it, I don’t like “themed” anything. I once was dragged to an office party with a “The Office” theme (I shit you not) and it was one of the most excruciating hours of my life. This was the same job that occasionally held “ice cream socials” that consisted of nonverbal weirdos quietly grabbing a small cup, wordlessly putting a scoop of Breyer’s into it, and scampering back to their desks. (“Ice cream antisocial” might be the Anthrax and Weird Al collab we never knew we needed.)

That job, fortunately, was a long time ago, but my stance on themes remains. There’s a caveat now, though: after assembling this column, I realized that all three of the albums I used are all similarly dreary, doomy, and full of despair.

So, with this month’s roundup being perfect music to slit your wrists to, perhaps I’m not as averse to themes as I thought I was.

On that gloriously uplifting note, let’s get right into it.

BLOOD INCANTATION: LIVE AT THE BOULDER THEATER, OCTOBER 4, 2024

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Oct 182024

(Denver-based NCS writer Gonzo had the good fortune of seeing Blood Incantation perform in Denver on the day of their newest album’s release, preceded by the solo set of Steve Roach, and he’s given us the following show review. We’re also grateful to Denver photographer Jacob Juno for allowing us to use his photos from the show throughout this article.)

Hype is a helluva drug.

And perhaps no band in modern metal is aware of that statement the way Denver’s Blood Incantation are. Their 2019 opus Hidden History of the Human Race was released to a cacophony of effusive praise from every dark corner of the internet, catapulting the band into interdimensional stardom.

Fast forward to 2024. The past five years have seen Blood Incantation’s career become anything but predictable. There are probably fewer words that haven’t been used to describe Timewave Zero than those that have, and the Luminescent Bridge single was a nice surprise that left many (myself included) wanting more.

It felt like a culmination of all of this, then, to have the band play a special one-night-only headlining set at the foot of the Rocky Mountains last week. And to properly commemorate the release of Absolute Elsewhere, they even brought along the king of ambient sound himself, Steve Roach, to open the proceedings.

What followed was a night nobody in the Boulder Theater would soon forget.

A DOUBLE DOSE OF DENVER DEATH METAL: GLACIAL TOMB, NIGHTWRAITH

Album Reviews 2 Responses »

Sep 302024

(NCS contributor Gonzo usually helps us close the end of months with a collection of reviews, and he does so again today, but this time focusing on just two albums, both of them created by bands from Denver.)

This won’t be news to most of you, so I’ll get right to it –

The rolling thunder of the Denver metal scene cannot be denied. It’s been on a powerful sort of kick in the 2020s, and few American cities can rival the raw talent and creativity that constantly comes pouring out of it. I know this because I live here. Between the crushing ubiquity of heavy music and craft beer, this place is a veritable haven for people who wear battle jackets to bars.

And as the metal gods would have it, two new albums from two rising stars in the Denver scene have been released within a week of each other – Glacial Tomb’s Lightless Expanse and Nightwraith’s Divergence – and if you haven’t heard of either band, buckle up motherfuckers – these albums are poised to change that. Continue reading »

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