KATATONIA: “DEAD END KINGS”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Sep 202012
 

(In this post DGR gives us the second of our two reviews of the new album by Sweden’s Katatonia. The first one is here.)

Katatonia are fast becoming a cornerstone around these here parts. Despite the fact that the band are pretty much completely clean singing, we’ve still covered them quite a bit. Aside from the fact that we here at No Clean Singing have excellent music taste, I am also a massive fan of the group, coming into the fold during a time just prior to the release of The Great Cold Distance and riding that wave of darkness ever since.

Katatonia are even reaching the point when they aren’t just a really great underground band, a trsnaformation that has been excellent to watch as more and more people discover just how good their music is. When you’re receiving shout-outs in main quest lines on million-selling video games, your profile tends to increase pretty dramatically.

It was a little hard to speculate about where the band would go with the impending release of their latest disc, Dead End Kings, as they began slowly to release songs to the public. Were they going to try to return to the fuller, more band-oriented sound of their earlier works or were they going to continue with the sparse, cold, and vocally driven music that they revealed on Night Is The New Day?

The song “Dead Letters” hinted at some really strong potential, but coming into the full album without having followed every step the band have taken, I have found Dead End Kings to be a pleasant surprise. It’s an excellent combination of everything I’ve heard from the band before, with the quality cranked up as high as the band could make it, and nary a stinker on the whole disc. Continue reading »

LIVE IN SEATTLE: KATATONIA, THE DEVIN TOWNSEND PROJECT, PARADISE LOST, AND STOLEN BABIES

 Concert Reviews  17 Responses »
Sep 092012
 

On the night of September 4, 2012, a group of friends and I were on hand at Studio Seven in Seattle to take in the first show of a North American tour featuring Katatonia, The Devin Townsend Project, Paradise Lost, and Stolen Babies, and I brought my fancy camera, which I still haven’t learned how to work very well. And yes, that means there will be a bunch of amateurish photos scattered around this write-up.

Two of us had bought VIP tickets, which gave us the chance to attend a “meet and greet” with DTP in advance of the show. As instructed, we arrived at the venue at 5:45 pm, and eventually a group of about a dozen of us were brought inside, given swag bags, and escorted to Studio Seven’s balcony bar, which was empty except for staff people getting ready for the night — plus Devin Townsend and two members of his live band, drummer Ryan van Poederooyen and guitarist Dave Young.

We spent the first 10 or 15 minutes talking with Ryan, who couldn’t have been more friendly and humble (and who clearly was in love with the songs DT had written for Epicloud). Eventually, we wandered over to where DT was holding court with the rest of our group of admirers, and he seemed very much the same person as he does on stage — full of energy and humor, making jokes and funny faces, and enjoying talking with all of us mostly tongue-tied well-wishers. If there’s a big rock star ego anywhere in his personality, it’s well-hidden. (We had talked earlier with one of the venue’s security guys who we know, and he confirmed the impression — that DT has always been outgoing and nice to all the staff people every time our friend has worked one of his Seattle shows).

We had our photos taken with DT and then were escorted back out of the venue to wait for the doors to open along with everyone else (though our swag bags contained VIP laminates that allowed us to get back in first). The goodies inside the bag also included a signed copy of the Epicloud CD, which hadn’t yet been released as of the time of this show. Continue reading »

SUMMER BREEZE 2012 – THE REVIEW (Part 2)

 Concert Reviews  2 Responses »
Sep 072012
 

(Our UK-based writer Andy Synn made the trek to Germany for this year’s edition of the SUMMER BREEZE festival, and provided us with a review of the bands whose performances he witnessed.  We’ve divided the review into two parts. Part 1 was yesterday, covering performances on the first two days of the festival. In this post, Andy covers the festival’s third and final day, and at the end we’ve again collected videos of some of the performances discussed in the review.)

DAY 3

Day 3 saw a late start (which may have had something to do with the amount of alcohol consumed the night before) with Naglfar over on the main stage, kicking out some lethal melodic black metal despite the blazing sunshine and clear blue skies. It’s really only in the live setting you can fully appreciate both the anthemic quality of the group’s material, as well as the technical skill behind it.

Over on the second stage Unleashed wasted little time getting into the swing of things, their brutish, occasionally melodic, Viking-obsessed death metal garnering a surprisingly loud reaction (at least for this early in the day). The only niggling problem is that where Amon Amarth are more obviously self-aware, using these tales of Viking lore to inspire and uplift their fans, Unleashed seem to treat their subject matter as a manifesto, and their uncomfortable “we should all be Vikings!” schtick is both extremely geeky and embarrassingly ill-informed.

Over in the third-stage tent Incantation were unleashing their own brand of filthy, blood-spitting aural horror, dropping some gut-clenching death metal grooves and breakdowns into the whirlwind death metal stew, even throwing in a few Possessed covers for good measure. Slightly breaking the atmosphere though was John McEntee’s use of an uber-gravelly Batman voice for his between-song banter, unintentionally hilarious in its own special way. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: KATATONIA, KRODA, ASMODÉE, AND TAKEN BY THE TIDE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Aug 292012
 

As mentioned in today’s last post, the last 24 hours have brought a torrential flood of news and new music that I care about, and because I care about all this shit, I’ve been grinding my talons down to nubs on the keyboard, on the assumption that you will care about it, too. And if you don’t, please keep that to yourselves, because I bruise easily. Without further ado, here are four more items to add to the long list that has already filled up our site today.

KATATONIA

We published a very, very early guest review of Katatonia’s new album, Dead End Kings, in this post. We also were fast in posting about the wonderful music video for the first song to debut from the album, “Dead Letters”. For reasons I haven’t figured out, we’ve been getting a ton of hits on both of those posts over the last 3 or 4 days despite the fact that both of them are two months old. We might as well add something a bit more current.

This afternoon, DGR alerted me to the fact that the entire album is now streaming at the Canadian Exclaim.ca web site. HERE is the link for that. Dead End Kings was released yesterday (August 28) via Peaceville.

KRODA

We’ve written so many times about this Ukrainian black metal band that I’ve lost count (actually, I could count them if I had more fingers, because all the previous posts are collected here). Schwarzpfad was probably my favorite 2011 black metal album of all the ones I heard last year. It also showed up on Andy Synn’s list of the year’s Critical Top 10 albums, as well as his list of 2011′s Great Albums, and I included a song from Schwarzpfad on our list of the year’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs. Continue reading »

KATATONIA: “DEAD END KINGS”

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule  3 Responses »
Jun 282012
 

(We welcome London-based guest contributor Alex Franquelli, who reviews the forthcoming album by Katatonia.)

Similar but different. The thin line separating criticism and appreciation when discussing the artistic value of the Swedish godfathers of “depressing metal” is such that the resulting balance between the two currents aptly describes the status of the band itself. Both camps are in fact not completely devoid of cynicism, and a subtle but relevant amount of expectation is shared by those who see Katatonia as either an epitaph or an epigraph at the beginning of a new chapter for heavy metal. 2012 marks the return of the band at whose helm Jonas Renkse and Anders Nyström (vocals and guitar respectively) seem to sit pretty comfortably, sharing the role of producers with David Castillo at the mixing desk.

Is Dead End Kings the natural continuation of Night Is the New Day (2009)? The recent additions of Per Eriksson on guitars and Niklas Sandin on bass might be enough to make you draw your own conclusions, but what is revealed by listening to the new album is a thoroughly new concept of music which goes beyond an easily predictable evolution. Dead End Kings appears to be less direct; ambitions are set reasonably high, and the progressive hints, which punctuated the previous full-length album, now play an effective role in making the sound more dynamic and prone to dramatic changes of keys and atmosphere. Continue reading »

NEW KATATONIA: “DEAD LETTERS” FROM DEAD END KINGS

 Exceptions to the Rule, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Jun 202012
 

Following up on 2009’s Night Is the New Day, Sweden’s Katatonia have completed their next studio album, Dead End Kings, which will be released on August 27 (a day later in the U.S.) by the Peaceville label (it’s available for pre-order here). Today, Peaceville and the band released a lyric video for one of the tracks on the new album — “Dead Letters”.

It is an Exception to the Rule here, because . . . clean singing. But ever since my one and only witnessing of Katatonia in a live setting, I’ve had a soft spot for the band’s music (it was quite a show), and so I had to pay attention to this. Glad I did.

The video showcases some of the wonderful artwork by Travis Smith that will appear in the album booklet, and the imagery well-suits both the lyrics and the music. The song is a blending of the heavy and the ethereal, both moody and jolting, dark and meditative. I don’t think fans of Katatonia will be disappointed in what they hear. Check it out following the jump.

In addition, Peaceville has made the song available for free download, in exchange for your email address. To get that, GO HERE. Continue reading »

THINGS I SAW AND HEARD TODAY

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  15 Responses »
Jun 012012
 

I’ve been doing actual paying work all morning. I took a break not long ago and cast my baleful eye around the interhole and my NCS e-mail box to see what there was to see and hear. And these are things I thought worth passing on.

First, that cover you see above is for a tribute album to Emperor called In Honour of Icon E, which will be released on June 25 by Metal Swamp. It’s a very nice piece of art, created by Wolkogniv of Folkingrimm Art.

It also looks like it will be a very nice album, with Emperor covers by the likes of Demonical, Helheim, Horna, Taake, and Setherial. I’ll give you the full tracklist rundown after the jump, but the news for today is that the album has gone up on Amqzon for pre-order, which means you can hear snippets of each song here. Continue reading »

NEWS ABOUT A BUNCH OF BANDS ON COMPLETELY OPPOSITE ENDS OF THE METAL SPECTRUM

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  9 Responses »
May 282012
 

(Here’s a round-up of recent news and music from DemiGodRaven about Katatonia, Æther Realm, Fear Factory, Shadows Fall, and The Browning.)

Katatonia’s new album: Dead End Kings (August 27th)

Over the past two weeks Katatonia have done a pretty interesting publicity bit on their Facebook page by putting up a picture of what looked like a dead tree branch in some snow and then slowly adding letters and more to the branch, eventually revealing that it was something more of a dead shrub and that the letters would spell an album title and release date for the group’s new upcoming disc.

Now they’ve completed the whole picture, and yes, it’s got branches on it alright, but it is something more than that. It’s looks like a dead bird wearing a crown, and the album title for their new disc will be Dead End Kings. It has an August release date, appearing a day later in the US than in Europe, but the difference of a day really isn’t that huge when you have the internet essentially spreading everything around at light speed. The moment anything from this album is out I’m sure it’ll be all over youtube, so if you have to wait a day you can find solace in at least streaming the songs that way. The image for you folks to check out is above, all Facebook banner-styled. Continue reading »

2012 METAL IN THE FORGE (PART 3)

 Forthcoming Albums  10 Responses »
Mar 022012
 

For a change, I actually remembered on the second day of the new month that that the preceding month had ended; usually takes longer than that. My creditors would be happy, except I think their bills need to age a while longer. But yes, February is history — and that means its time to post our usual monthly round-up of news about forthcoming albums. Today’s list is a little more comprehensive than the half-assed job I did at the end of January, which means it’s about three-quarters assed. One of these days it will be fully assed.

Here’s how this round-up usually works: In these METAL IN THE FORGE posts, I collect news blurbs and press releases I’ve seen over the last month about forthcoming new albums from bands we know and like at NCS (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, I cut and paste those announcements and compile them in alphabetical order.

Remember — THIS ISN’T A CUMULATIVE LIST. If I found out about a new forthcoming album earlier than the last 30 days, I probably 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.

Having said all that, please feel free to leave Comments and tell all of us (me and your fellow readers) what I missed when I put this list together, because I’m abso-fucking-lutely certain that I missed all sorts of shit. So let us know about albums on the way that  you’re stoked about, even if you don’t see them here! Continue reading »

MORE 2010 SICKNESS (Part 2)

 Forthcoming Albums, Listmania, Metal News  No Responses »
Feb 232010
 

We’re now almost two months into 2010, and it’s already time for our second update to the list of forthcoming new albums we posted on January 1.  (See the original list here and the first update here.) Below is a list of still more projected new releases that we didn’t know about on January 1 or at the time of our last update about a month ago — and there’s a lot of them.

Once again, we’ve cobbled together news blurbs about bands whose past work we’ve liked, or who look interesting for other reasons. Needless to say (but we’ll say it anyway), these are bands that mostly fit the profile of music we cover on this site.

So, in alphabetical order, here’s our list of cut-and-pasted blurbs from various sources over the last month about forthcoming new releases:

1349: “Prosthetic Records will release the brand new album from Norwegian black metal legends 1349 in North America via an agreement with Indie Recordings. The new CD, which promises ‘a return to the band’s more traditional, raw-yet-technical black metal sound,’ is due on April 13. In support of the yet-to-be-titled record, 1349 will embark on a North American tour in April and May as the support act for CANNIBAL CORPSE (alongside SKELETONWITCH and LECHEROUS NOCTURNE).”

ABACABB: “ABACABB are currently out on the road headlining the Hot Dice On Black Ice Tour featuring Upon A Burning Body!. The tour just hit Texas and will be in California this weekend. Following the tour ABACABB will enter the studio with producer Will Putney at Machine Shop in New Jersey and will have a new album to be released sometime this summer.”

AEON: “Swedish death metallers AEON have set Path Of Fire as the title of their third album, due later in the year via Metal Blade Records. The CD was recorded in September 2009 at Empire Studio in Östersund, Sweden and was mixed the following month at Mana Recording Studios in St, Petersburg, Florida by Erik Rutan (HATE ETERNAL, MORBID ANGEL, CANNIBAL CORPSE). The mastering was handled by Alan Douches at West West Side Music (CONVERGE, HATEBREED, THE DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN) in New Windsor, New York.”

AMORPHIS: “AMORPHIS will release its first-ever live DVD, Forging The Land Of Thousand Lakes, in early June via Nuclear Blast, in time for the band’s 20th anniversary. The filming took place on November 20, 2009 at Club Teatria in Oulu, Finland, where AMORPHIS was supported by STRATOVARIUS and BEFORE THE DAWN. In addition to the full-length live show, the anniversary DVD will include plenty of bonus material documenting the band’s impressive career.”   (much more after the jump . . . ) Continue reading »

 Older Entries  Newer Entries