Into Orbit Archives - NO CLEAN SINGING

SEEN AND HEARD: WINDSWEPT, DOWNFALL OF GAIA, OAK, GOD DISEASE, INTO ORBIT, KRALLICE

Jan 102019

Here are a few of the songs and videos that brightened and darkened my night. I encountered all of them in a rush of listening at full dark yesterday evening. Most of them appeared within the last 36 hours. If you’re like me, the flow of these songs will take you from a blazing high down into more cold and wretched depths, and then soaring again — and I’ll close with a stream of a new EP that was released by surprise last night.

WINDSWEPT

All three members of the Ukrainian band Windswept, including vocalist/guitarist Roman Sayenko, are also members of Drudkh, Precambrian, and Rattenfänger. Under the Windswept banner they released an excellent debut album in 2017 entitled The Great Cold Steppe (from which we hosted the premiere of a fiery song, “Shrouded In Pale Shining, So Sleeps Infinite Ancient Steppe”). Having been a fan of that album, it took about a nano-second for me to jump on the band’s new EP Visionaire when I discovered its existence last February, and (as explained here) found it to be powerfully moving as well.

Windswept now have a new album for us, which will be released by Season of Mist on February 8th. Its name is The Onlooker, and the first track in today’s collection is one released yesterday with the interesting title “Gustav Meyrink’s Prague“. (If you’d like to learn about Gustav Meyrink and of how his life changed in Prague, check this article.) Continue reading »

INTO ORBIT: “UNEARTHING”

Album Reviews 1 Response »

Feb 022017

(New Zealand-based writer Craig Hayes (Six Noises) returns to NCS with this review of the new album by New Zealand’s Into Orbit, which will be released on February 3 — and we have a just-released full stream of the album as well.)

Countless bands try to grab our attention with an enticing vocal hook. Hell, even in the world of extreme metal, where vocals are frequently an indecipherable blur, words and lyrics still play a crucial role in imparting meaning. At the other end of the spectrum though, instrumental bands seek to convey meaning without any lyrical or vocal cues, and that’s obviously a tougher task. When it all goes well, audiences can decipher meaning from moving songs, and that forges a connection between fans and bands. But when it all goes wrong, because a band is technically proficient but emotionally sterile, instrumental music is simply tedious background noise. Elevator music, at best.

It’s rare to find an instrumental band that manages to transmit its message evocatively. But the music of New Zealand instrumental duo Into Orbit has received rousing applause at home for doing just that. In some ways, Into Orbit are building on a legacy established by New Zealand bands such as Jakob or Kerretta –– both guitar-led instrumental groups with fan bases in Europe and the US. Jakob and Kerretta have gained international recognition because they make truly gripping music, and there’s no question that Into Orbit’s superb new album, Unearthing, is filled with captivating music too. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: ADE, GOJIRA, INTO ORBIT, KILL, PAIN, VALBORG, BLOODWAY, WITHDRAWAL

Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 3 Responses »

Jul 092016

If you’re reading this, it means you survived another week. Congratulations. That seems like good cause for celebration, since about 155,000 people die every day on average.

To help you celebrate, here’s a collection of new music I sifted from the never-ending torrent of new metal over the last 48 hours, presented in alphabetical order by band name.

ADE

The Italian death metal band ADE, whom we last mentioned in these pages almost four years ago, have a new album headed our way on July 15 via Spain’s Xtreem Music. Like its predecessors, Carthago Delenda Est again draws upon themes from ancient Roman history, and the title suggests that its focus is on Rome’s efforts to destroy the North African city-state of Carthage in the Punic Wars. The Font of All Human Knowledge tells us: Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD (PART 1): CRIMINAL, GRAVES AT SEA, UADA, INTO ORBIT

Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 4 Responses »

Jan 282016

The flood of new metal, which has been especially torrential over the last 10 days, continues unabated. We’re really not even keeping our heads above water, despite posting a slew of round-ups since the weekend, but I think we’ve at least got our nostrils in the air.

With welcome help from Grant Skelton on today’s second item, I’m again collecting lots of very good and very diverse metal discovered over the last 48 hours. A second part of the collection will appear later today.

CRIMINAL

There’s a really long, twisting and turning story behind the name Criminal. I’m sure it’s a name well-known to many of you, so I’m going to severely truncate the history lesson before moving to what really counts — a new song from a new album. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: INTO ORBIT — “CAVERNS”

Premieres 2 Responses »

Nov 022014

(New Zealand-based metal writer and broadcaster Craig Hayes brings us something very special — the premiere of an album-length video, preceded by the following introduction.)

New Zealand instrumental duo Into Orbit released their debut album, Caverns, to rave reviews at home earlier this year. The band’s guitarist Paul Stewart, and drummer Ian Moir, craft vast and dynamic soundscapes that combine post-metal and post-rock with elements of progressive, drone, and ambient-rock. Caverns featured both tranquil and thundering passages, and plenty of soaring six-string detonations and crashing percussion too, but what the album brought most of all was a sense of epic journeying.

Caverns conjured up imposing landscapes, took deep dives into microscopic worlds, and befitting Into Orbit’s moniker, launched into the wonders and mystery of galaxies overhead. Of course, it’s one thing to summon all of those visions via the mental imagery of the mind’s eye, but Into Orbit have gone one better and released a full-length video, covering the entirely of Caverns’ tracks. That’s 40-plus minutes of mesmerising optical and audio journeying, and No Clean Singing is proud to be streaming the debut of Caverns right here. Continue reading »