(It’s been a while since we had a post from The Artist Formerly Known As Dan, but he responded to my appeal for submissions for my vacation with this review of the latest album by Seattle’s own I Declare War.)
Isn’t that album art sick? This will be a bit of a short review (light on the words, heavy on the samples) but, first things first: Before the self-titled album came out last month, I was not an I Declare War fan. I’m somewhat particular about my deathcore (which maybe is strange in and of itself), but this band never really did it for me. Check this video out:
It might be the mixing, but I guess it just sounds underproduced and lacking some punch. Anyway, I tried to like them, but I found myself just enjoying other music more, and why force yourself to listen to stuff you don’t like? Fast-forward to October 2011 and I heard about this release.Continue reading »
September is behind us. Here in Seattle, it was such a beautiful month that it seemed like nature’s compensation for how late the summer started. Unfortunately, with September’s end, we’re on a short track to the onset of winter, which means about six months of short, cold, grey, ceaselessly wet days. Ain’t that just fuckin’ great?
Well, bitchin’ about the winter ahead won’t change one fucking thing. I prefer to think instead about the deluge of new metal that’s headed our way and try (momentarily) to forget about the deluge of rain on the horizon. Which brings us to the latest monthly edition of METAL IN THE FORGE.
You know the drill: In these posts, we collect news blurbs and press releases we’ve seen over the last month about forthcoming new albums from bands we know and like (including occasional updates about releases we’ve included in previous installments of this series), or from bands that look interesting, even though we don’t know their music yet. In this series, we cut and paste those announcements and compile them in alphabetical order.
Remember — this isn’t a cumulative list. If we found out about a new album before August, we wrote about it in previous installments of this series. So, be sure to check the Category link called “Forthcoming Albums” on the right side of this page to see forecasted releases we reported earlier. This month’s list begins right after the jump. Look for your favorite bands, or get intrigued about some new ones. As usual, also feel free to tell us about how we fucked up by omitting releases that you’re stoked about.Continue reading »
While I was away on vacation I didn’t completely neglect what was happening in the world of metal, but I confess I didn’t spend the kind of time I usually spend keeping up on current developments. So over the weekend I did my best to catch up. It was kind of like swimming against a flood tide. It’s amazing how much happens on a daily basis. Of course, I find that a lot of the bulletins, press releases, and blurbs that fill up the likes of Blabbermouth and band pages on Facebook and MySpace are pretty uninteresting.
But even ignoring the boring and utterly useless streams of bullshit that pass for metal news much of the time, I still found all sorts of happenings over the last 12 days that were quite interesting, and even exciting — the kind of occurrences we would have written about on this site if we’d been able to stay on top of our game. The downside of writing about them now is that for many of you, it will be old news. But what the fuck. We’re going to write about some of those items anyway, stale though they may be. Some things still taste pretty good even when they’re beyond their sell-by date. And besides, maybe some of you missed them, just like I did while I was off staring at clouds.
It may take a couple or three posts to catch up, but there’s no time like the present to get started. So today we’ve got a collection of items about Animals As Leaders, From Exile, After the Burial, and I Declare War. That’s what you’ll find after the jump, along with some music videos . . .Continue reading »
You learn something new every day. You may not think you do, but you do.
Like on Friday, I learned that the German word for emptiness is “leere”. On Saturday, I learned that if you live in the Pacific Northwest and forgetfully leave your car window down overnight, spiders will move in and later drop on your arm while you’re driving, causing unexpected vehicular fun ‘n games. And yesterday, I learned the secrets of how extreme metal vocalists can shriek and growl really low without requiring hospitalization.
I’ve always wondered, and finally, after years of listening to non-clean singing, it now all becomes clear to me. It’s like some trade secret that finally leaked. And it turns out to be something that is easily duplicated. It just takes the right preparation and the right record producer (like Chris “Zeuss” Harris).
I’m not making this up. I learned it from a dude who ought to know — Adam Warren, who happens to be the frontman for deathcore heavyweights Oceano. It’s all in that video at the top of this post. It just takes sleeping ’til noon, some microwaved elixir, a little Lion King chord-stretching, and someone who can tell you which buttons to push.
Go ahead, see for yourself. The secrets are out. We won’t even charge you to watch. In the video, you can also see some spirited debate over whether “Contagion” is the kind of album title people will have to look up, as compared to a common street-word like, uh, “harbinger”.
Truly, Adam Warren is an engaging dude, and we can pretty much guarantee this thing will make you smile, even if you’re not an Oceano fan. And while we’re on the subject of deathcore, word of a Whitechapel–Impending Doom–Miss May I–Oceano–I Declare War tour has leaked out. Details about that breaking news, plus an Oceano video, follow after the jump. Wonder what I’ll learn today?Continue reading »
Shit, we might as well just surrender the day to deathcore (not counting my goofy MYSPAZZ post). As punishing breakdowns go, that clip we put up earlier today from Thy Art Is Murder is pretty satisfying, if you can get past the foam-at-the-mouth-and-belch-blood vid accompaniment — or maybe you’ll greet that as a plus factor.
But now we’ve just stumbled across a newly minted, almost freshly unwrapped official goodie from our Seattle homeboys I Declare War performing “Federal Death Alliance” from their new album Malevolence — which my man IntoTheDarkness gushed about in our review here.
And no, we still don’t have any more light to shed on the rumored departure of IDW’s frontman Jonathan Huber, except it definitely is true that he’s not playing with the band on the current tour and Molotov Solution‘s Nick Arthur is standing in. We’re still hoping for more news. The vid is after the jump. It’s murderous . . .Continue reading »
Our sometimes NCS collaborator IntoTheDarkness just alerted me to this piece of news on Lambgoat:
I Declare War (Artery/Razor & Tie) vocalist Jonathan Huber has reportedly left the group, though nothing official has been announced thus far. The band just kicked off a tour with For The Fallen Dreams and Legend and have been using a fill-in singer (apparently Nick Arthur of Molotov Solution).
To which all we can say is, What The Fuck?
We’ve been following these hometown deathcore favorites for a while, and no one was more stoked to learn earlier this year that they’d been signed by a label (as we reported here). We were even happier to discover that their recently released second album, Malevolent, kicked massive amounts of ass (as IntoTheDarkness reported here). And with that release and the label backing, the dudes started hitting the road and building their fanbase.
Now this? It really don’t make sense. We’ve got no explanation at the moment. Maybe it’s all just a baseless rumor. When we find out more, we’ll put it up here for you IDW fans in the audience.
If you’re a baseball fan, you’re familiar with the term “stuff.” And if you’re not? Well, inarticulate baseball players, managers, and fans (like us) use that term to refer both to what pitchers are capable of throwing and how they actually perform in games. It can refer to the speed of the ball, the location of the pitch as it crosses the plate, the guile of the pitcher in varying the pitches from batter to batter — basically, everything that goes into keeping hitters off balance and generating outs.
When a pitcher is on his game, keeping batters off the bases and cruising through a low pitch count, the manager or some teammate will be quoted as saying, “he had good stuff tonight.” And when a pitcher gets shelled and removed without going at least five innings, you can bet someone will say, “he didn’t have good stuff.” Hey, they don’t pay those dudes for their public speaking skills.
So, you might ask, what the fuck does that have to do with metal? And we would answer: If you’re a metal band and you pick the name “Legend,” you better have the “stuff” to back it up. And in the case of this metalicized hardcore band from Michigan and their recently released debut album Valediction, they abso-fucking-lutely do.
We’ve written before about our disappointment in Bury Your Dead‘s change in musical direction since the departure of vocalist Mat Bruso and his replacement by Myke Terry. We were further chagrined to learn that BYD bassist Aaron “Bubble” Patrick left the band last fall. And we were equally disappointed by the defection of band members from another repeat-play favorite of ours, For the Fallen Dreams. (more after the jump, including a song and tour dates . . . )Continue reading »
I know, I know, I have been absent from No Clean Singing for quite a while now but what do you want from me? I am in college after all. I have many important things that occupy my time like girls, sleep, cookies, movies, shooting the shit with friends, cookies, (mmmm cooooookies) and did I mention girls? Oh and there is that foreign entity called homework…wait; fuck homework. Anyway, all that being said, I have been brought out of hibernation by the multitude of new releases today and I am here to tell you about two of them that will fuck your ears repeatedly until you beg for mercy. (more after the jump, including songs…)Continue reading »
Job For A Cowboy, Whitechapel, Cattle Decapitation, Revocation, and I Declare War hit Seattle hard on JFAC’s current Ruination tour on the night of May 18 at El Corazon. All three of your NCS collaborators turned out for the carnage and we file this somewhat incomplete report, along with a somewhat incomplete batch of our half-assed photos (be sure to scroll to the end of the review to see those).
Somewhat incomplete, because we had to leave before JFAC’s set. Maybe if we were being paid to run this site, we’d have stayed to the bitter end, but the people who actually do pay us were expecting our asses to show up on time early the next morning. Life is full of fucking compromises, isn’t it?.
I DECLARE WAR
Well, what can we say? It’s just so fucking cool to see our local boys making good. As we reported here back in March, IDW has signed with Artery Recordings and has a new album (Malevolence) due out on June 8, with two of the songs currently streaming on their MySpace page. They played some dates earlier this month in California with Whitechapel and Son of Aurelius, and next month they start a nationwide tour with Molotov Solution, Dr. Acula, and Monsters.
But this night was a show for the home folks — something of a coming-out since the news of their label-signing, and man, did the home folks turn out. El Corazon was packed to the gills in time for the first chord of IDW’s first song, and they showed these hard-working, hard-playing dudes a lotta love. (more after the jump . . .)Continue reading »
We’ve had a weakness for our local boys in I Declare War ever since we first saw em play live a couple years ago. They work their butts off and they churn out some brutal death metal. Plus, one of our favorite band shirts is theirs, with the following in big letters on the back: “IF IT AIN’T BROKE, BLAST BEAT THE FUCK OUT OF IT.”
We put up a post last November about IDW entering the studio to begin recording a new album. What we didn’t know then but have just learned today is that they had a deal in the works with The Artery Foundation. Now the news is public. Excerpts from a press release issued by the band and Artery:
“Seattle, Washington-based death metallers I DECLARE WAR have inked a deal with Artery Recordings, the new joint venture between The Artery Foundation and Razor & Tie. The band’s self-produced new album,“Malevolence”, will be released on June 1. . . .
“During I DECLARE WAR‘s first tour in 2007, the band happened to cross paths with well-known death metal band WHITECHAPEL, and played what [guitarist] Evan [Hughes] calls ‘one of the worst shows both of us ever played.’ The unfortunate concert turned into a lasting friendship and one of the best things to happen to the band. When Alex Wade from WHITECHAPEL was approached by Artery in regards to possible bands to sign, he suggested I DECLARE WAR, and so the relationship began.”
