Immortal Archives - NO CLEAN SINGING

OVERFLOWING STREAMS: AETHERIAN, APHONIC THRENODY, ARKONA, ASCENDED DEAD, ASHBRINGER, DÅÅTH, DEATH OF GIANTS, HOLY DEATH, IMMORTAL, NOCTURNAL TYRANT

Apr 222023

Saturdays are usually days when I pick a handful of new songs and videos to recommend, accompanied by some of my own peerless prose (HA!). But as I waded through possibilities this morning it quickly dawned on me that there was just way too fucking much stuff for me to pare down to a handful without experiencing some mental agony in making the choices.

So, I’ve thrown up my hands and resorted to this “Overflowing Streams” format, where you will find a lot more music than in the usual “Seen and Heard” columns, a lot fewer of my own words (dry your eyes), and very little cover art — other than Yoann Lossel’s stunning artwork “Les Fleurs du Mal”, which is on the cover of the new album by the first band in this roundup.

Today the musical arrangement is alphabetical by band name (heavily weighted by the A’s). I’m deferring most of the black metal discoveries until tomorrow.

AETHERIAN (Greece)

Wonderful news to see that this Greek melodic death metal band are returning with a new album, six years after their fantastic full-length debut, The Untamed Wilderness. They say this marks “the start of a new era for Aetherian“, and it appears that they’ve added a couple of new guitarists to an already formidable lineup. The first sign of what the new album brings is a lyric video for the song “Army of Gaia“. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: IMMORTAL, NIGHT DEMON, VULTURE INDUSTRIES, ALL HELL, PHANTOM LUNG

Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET No Responses »

Mar 252023

Demonaz – Photo by Leander Djønne

How long did I sleep last night? Hey, thanks for asking, it was 10 1/2 hours. You’d think I’d dug a mile-long ditch by myself before collapsing in exhaustion, but I did little more than sit on my ass and peck at a keyboard all day. It’s probably just a sign of how long I’d sleep every night if I didn’t have some binding commitment to keep early every morning (looking at you, NCS). I like sleeping.

Anyway, late start today, and therefore not as many picks in this roundup as I thought I’d have. I decided to pull in some bigger names, whose songs surfaced fairly early in the week, and then round things out with some hard-scrabble fighters from deeper underground.

IMMORTAL (Norway)

Dark northern armies go to battle across the ice under blood-red skies in Immortal‘s blazing and bombastic new song “War Against All“. It’s a hot-blooded scorcher, packed with both brazen and febrile fretwork, berserker screaming, and rumbling thunder in the low end. If you’ve just hibernated for 10 1/2 hours it’s as welcome and as effective as a jolt of pitch-black caffeine. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2018’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 10): IMMORTAL, UADA, SKELETONWITCH

MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2018 10 Responses »

Jan 212019

After a weekend break, I’m resuming the rollout of this series, which will continue every day this week (and beyond). Today I decided to group together tracks from some of the bigger names in the corpse-strewn battlefields of our beloved ear-gouging genres. There are some other well-known names scattered among the rest of this week’s episodes of the list, along with lesser-known names that deserve a lot more attention.

To check out the previous installments of this expanding list, you’ll find them behind this link, and to learn what this series is all about, go here.

IMMORTAL

I suppose Northern Chaos Gods surprised more than a few people, and at least provided a resounding answer to the questions about what Immortal might be able to accomplish if and when they re-surfaced following the acrimonious departure of Abbath. If there was a surprise (and for me there was), it was that the band’s ninth album, arriving nine years after All Shall Fall, would turn out to be one of their best in such an unusually long career. Continue reading »

2018 – A YEAR IN REVIEW(S): THE PERSONAL TOP TEN

LISTMANIA 2018 20 Responses »

Dec 142018

(Andy Synn concludes his week-long round-up of metal in 2018 with this list of his ten personal favorites among the year’s great and good albums.)

So, after all the stress and struggle involved in putting together all my various lists which preceded this one, now it’s time to relax and turn my attention to those albums, whether “Great” or “Good”, that make up my personal favourites of 2018.

Once again I decided that I wouldn’t include any “Honourable Mentions” this year, as to do so would essentially mean reproducing a good 60-70% of my previous lists (although, that being said… do try and give Agrypnie, Disassembled, Hundred Year Old Man, The Agony Scene and Void Ritual a listen if you get chance) and instead decided to focus solely on the ten albums which I’ve listened to the most and/or which have made the biggest impact on me this year.

Funnily enough, while the actual process of working out which ten records best represented my listening habits over the last twelve months was as complicated as ever, the write-up was much easier than I expected it to be, as it just so happens that I was responsible for reviewing almost all of them! Continue reading »

IMMORTAL: “NORTHERN CHAOS GODS”

Album Reviews 4 Responses »

Jul 062018

(Andy Synn reviews the new album by Immortal on the day of its release by Nuclear Blast.)

Unless you’ve been living under a rock you’ll no doubt be aware that the release of a new Immortal album – the band’s first since 2009’s All Shall Fall, as well as their first since the now well-documented and more than a tad acrimonious split with their former frontman Abbath – is what we in the business like to call A Very Big Deal.

You’ll also likely have seen a plethora of different reviews, comments, and op-eds being published either decrying it for not being “Immortal enough” due to its lack of Abbath, or else praising it to the heavens for being “a return to the band’s roots”, with lines being drawn and camps being formed on either side of this divide.

And while, if everything’s gone right, at the time of reading this you’ll hopefully have found a way of listening to the album for yourselves, I still thought it might be worth publishing my own thoughts on the matter, and asking, “can’t we all just get along?” Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 1): IMMORTAL, THE ANTICHRIST IMPERIUM, VERMILIA, IGNIS

SHADES OF BLACK 8 Responses »

Jul 012018

My cup runneth over — not really in the sense of the Psalm but more like Fantasia’s rendition of “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”, in which drowning in a deluge spawned by runaway magic is a serious threat. In other words, I have far more new metal in a black vein to recommend than I know what to do with.

In an attempt to do more rather than less, I’ve compiled a two-part post on this Sunday… and I’ve also wimped out by providing a series of little more than encouragements rather than reviews, especially in the case of the three full albums included in this first Part.

IMMORTAL

My comrade Andy Synn tells me he will soon provide a review of Immortal’s new album, Northern Chaos Gods, which is due for release on July 6th. (Spoiler: he seems quite high on it.) In the meantime, Immortal has revealed a second single from the album, the title of which might lead some to guess (incorrectly) that the new Abbath-less Imnmortal had decided to re-record an earlier song. Continue reading »

SET FIRE TO YOUR SATURDAY WITH IMMORTAL, NERVOSA, LELAHELL, ALIEN WEAPONRY, SAHON, AND KARNAR

Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 15 Responses »

May 122018

One of my friend Andy’s objectives in launching our Saturday Waxing Lyrical series (the new edition of which is here) was to make it possible for me not to worry about coming up with something to post on Saturdays. I get to party on Friday nights, sleep in on Saturday mornings, and loll around like a walrus in penguin shit for hours after waking.

So I’m sort of defeating the purpose of Andy’s generous gesture by doing this post… but only sort of. I couldn’t resist throwing these brand-new hell-blazing tracks and videos at you because I had so much fun listening to and watching them yesterday and this morning, but I’m not going to take the time to explain what happens in the songs or why I like them so much. I’ll just give some basic info and let you have at it.

There’s some good geographic dispersion in this collection, as well as a lot of enviable talent on display. Also, if you happen to have some asbestos underoos, you might want to pull those on to protect your nether regions. Continue reading »

THE REARVIEW MIRROR

THE REARVIEW MIRROR 4 Responses »

Sep 062015

It seems that Immortal are no more. Last year Abbath declared the band at an end, and having lost a legal battle to secure rights to the name, he is forging ahead under his own. Meanwhile, Demonaz and Horgh announced last month that Immortal will continue without Abbath, and that the two are at work on a new album to be released by Nuclear Blast.

Who knows whether these now separate formations will create music worthy of the band’s past glories. Rather than engage in fruitless speculation, let’s listen to some of those instead. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: A NEW GORGOROTH ALBUM AND IMMORTAL SOCK PUPPETS

Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 11 Responses »

Mar 062015

I have a lot of new music and videos that I spotted earlier in the week that I still need to throw your way, and with luck I’ll be able to do that later today, but for now, here are the first two things I saw this morning after firing up my computer and visiting Facebook.

GORGOROTH

My NCS comrade Andy Synn posted the album cover that’s at the top of this post. It appeared on the Facebook wall of Gorgoroth, with this announcement:

Gorgoroth has signed to Soulseller Records, who will release the band’s new album Instinctus Bestialis on 8. June 2015 on CD/vinyl and digital (available through Amazon, Spotify, iTunes etc.) Continue reading »

AT THE HEART OF WINTER

RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 34 Responses »

Dec 022013

(Guest writer Ben raises an interesting question about the effect of seasonal change on listening habits. Read . . . and comment!)

Hello NCS readers, my name is Ben, and as Winter comes into it’s fullness (at least where I’m living in Wisconsin) I’ve noticed something interesting this year.

As the temperature decreases down to the teens or lower, the volume increases and the aggression in the music increases considerably. It’s probably obvious I listen to “heavy” music, seeing as I’m a regular visitor of NCS, but my taste is quite varied. I can, on a daily basis, be listening to bands like Death, At The Gates, and Godflesh, as well as classical compositions, jazz, drum and bass, etc. But the right choice for the winter days and nights, just seems to be unrelenting Metal.

As you may have noticed, the title of this post is a nod to the frostbite-loving Norwegians we all know as Immortal. Now I’m not the biggest Immortal fan, or Black Metal for that matter. I appreciate it, but I get sick of hearing about how “evil” a band supposedly is. For the reasons I described earlier, though, over the past few weeks Immortal has more often than usual been a nice choice of music for the working hours. Continue reading »

Older Entries