Nabaath Archives - NO CLEAN SINGING

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): NABAATH — “FIRESTORM BRINGER”

Aug 172017

The name chosen by the Ukraine-based black metal band Nabaath for their new EP could easily be an alternate name for the band: Firestorm Bringer. It’s as close to a sonic hurricane of hellfire as one could hope for — utterly ferocious, completely electrifying, and immediately addictive.

Firestorm Bringer is also an archetype of how the EP format can be used to supreme effectiveness. There are only two songs here, both of which are themselves compact, plus an outro track that both contrasts with and complements the flamethrowing ferocity of those two songs. The three tracks don’t feel like a scattering of stand-alone pieces thrown together for want of a better place to put them; instead, they make for a cohesive representation of a particular kind of power, and if the EP had been longer it might well have lost some of its impact. It’s over almost before you know it, but it may still leave you wide-eyed and slack-jawed (as it did me). Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: AEPHANEMER, CRUCIFIED MORTALS, LUNATIC AFFLICTION, NABAATH, NAG, PIT OF CARNAGE, RUSSIAN CIRCLES, ZQKMGDZ , AUBE GRISE

Jul 252016

I had a few ideas for a Monday round-up that percolated over the weekend. And then this morning, when I crawled through what had arrived in the NCS in-box since I went to sleep last night, all those ideas were shoved aside and put on the shelf for later retrieval. I do have poor impulse control, and therefore decided I would devote this post to nothing but what I discovered this morning.

Mind you, not everything I found in our in-box was worth spreading around (e.g., news about a new device for preventing snoring), but an unusually high percentage was. And what I especially liked about what I found was the serendipitous fact that the songs were quite varied in their styles of heaviness.

Now there’s quite a lot of music here, and so I’m going to do my best to keep my verbiage to a minimum. I’ve arranged the tracks in alphabetical order by band name, except for the last one… because I think it’s best experienced as a conclusion to this playlist.

AEPHANEMER

Until seeing the wonderful cover art that I put at the top of this post I had forgotten that Dark Tranquillity’s Niklas Sundin was a visual artist as well as a musical one. This creation adorns a new album named Memento Mori by the band Aephanemer from Toulouse, France. It will be released on September 16, but the band have already made one song from the album available for streaming and free download at Bandcamp. Its name is “Unstoppable”. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 3): NABAATH, DEAFEST, AUTOKRATOR, VUKARI, NIHILISTINEN BARBAARISUUS, NEBULUS

Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHADES OF BLACK 2 Responses »

Mar 202016

This is the delayed completion of a three-part post I began early last week, collecting and reviewing mostly new songs, EPs, and albums in the orbit of black metal. Part 1 is here, and Part 2 is here.

One benefit of the delay is that I happened across a very recent song that’s the fourth item in this final installment, which includes music from six bands that I’ve been enjoying. Most of what I’ve collected here falls on the “atmospheric” side of the black metal spectrum.

NABAATH

In a previous edition of Shades of Black that appeared the day after Christmas 2015, I wrote about a striking video for a live performance by a band named Nabaath (who are Russian but now based in Ukraine), accompanied by dancer Mariya KarMa. The name of the song was “Iron In Your Throat”, and it’s one of nine on Nabaath’s third album, Common Graves, which was released last fall and is now available in full on Bandcamp. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: ALTARAGE, SELBST, ANCESTORS BLOOD, OCERCO, NABAATH

Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET 11 Responses »

Dec 262015

I had no Christmas rant this year. Truthfully, I said about all I have to say on the subject five years ago. And if I were even more honest with myself, I’d admit that I’m not quite as big a humbug about the day as that post might suggest. It has its good points, to the extent that it provides an occasion for people who actually do like or love one another to get together and enjoy themselves (and I hope that happened for you).

Now that the day has been interred for another year, it’s time to return to the unearthing of new underground metal. In this collection, and in another one I have planned for tomorrow, I’ve got music to recommend in a blackened vein — not all of it black metal, but all of it pleasingly dark nonetheless.

ALTARAGE

In July I reviewed a two-song demo by a Spanish death metal band named Altarage, concluding as follows: “This is primitive, poisonous, electrifying music from a band that’s now squarely on my radar screen for the future.” They’ve now made a new appearance on the screen. Continue reading »