SEEN AND HEARD (PART 2): SHINING (NOR), PRAETORIA, NAMI, MASTIC SCUM

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Sep 282015
 

Shining-International Blackjazz Society

 

(DGR steps up for round-up duty, and he prepared a really big round-up, so big that your humble editor decided to divide it into two parts. Part One is here.)

In case you missed it, Friday was a kind of slow date for the site. We’ve had times like this before, where various outside influences conspire to make sure that we post with the speed at which animals are able to escape the La Brea Tar Pits. That doesn’t mean we weren’t up here in space, lookin’ down on you and keeping track of various rumblings going throughout the web.

I’ve gathered together eight fairly recent developments in the heavy metal world for you all to enjoy. As usual, I’ve tried to catch stuff that has flown under the radar and mix it in with a few things that have likely made a big splash across the web already. This collection of stories covers a pretty good swath of the globe in terms of distance but has a foot heavily planted in the death metal and doom metal realms, making a few labored grasps to the outside genre world.

SHINING

We turn next to Norway’s blackjazz entourage Shining. The group have been building up to the release of their new disc International Blackjazz Society, and recently the song “Last Day” found its way to the web. Continue reading »

NAMI: “THE ETERNAL LIGHT OF THE UNCONSCIOUS MIND”

 Album Reviews  7 Responses »
Jan 082014
 

(In this post DGR gets around to reviewing a 2013 album that appeared on his year-end list of best metal.)

For those of you who suffered through my gigantic list of music that I enjoyed in 2013 (which btw, was trimmed down!), you may have spotted, out of nowhere, a disc by a band hailing from Andorra called Nami. I made reference to the fact that by the time the list was read, I would have already been well on my way to reviewing the group’s latest release, The Eternal Light Of The Unconscious Mind, which came out on November 4, 2013. So, welcome to what will likely become something of a recurring bit here on NoCleanSinging called, “DGR attempts frantically to review and talk about a whole bunch of discs that came out last year”.

My discovery of Nami actually dates back to the last few days of the previous site I wrote for. My editor GroverXIII reviewed the group’s debut disc Fragile Alignments and really sang the praises of it – which in my mind was an almost immediate tip to check this band out. He was right. Fragile Alignments had its issues, but the disc was really ambitious for a band just starting out and it held some heavy promise of what this group might do in the future.

Fast forward to 2013 and I see the name again, this time attached to a new album entitled The Eternal Light Of The Unconscious Mind. Having not yet heard it, all I could think was that while Fragile Alignments was an ambitious album in terms of its ethos, lyrics, and what the band were trying to do with the progressive death metal sound, it sure had a mouthful of a name. However, I immediately dove into the disc. Were it not for the fact that I spent much of the back half of the year swearing up and down that I wasn’t going to forget about all the fantastic music that hit in the early part of 2013, Eternal Light Of The Unconscious Mind would’ve ranked super-high on the list — because it is an album that has enveloped me as a listener every time I have given it the chance to do so. Continue reading »

FREE SHIT: A KLONOSPHERE SAMPLER

 Free Shit  1 Response »
May 132012
 

Klonosphere is a French business devoted to organizing and promoting musical performances and releasing music, with distribution provided by Season of Mist. Their name has been associated with a number of bands we’ve featured at NCS over the years. This morning I discovered that they’ve released an 18-track sampler of music from Klonosphere bands for free download. The sampler includes music from five bands we’ve featured at NCS (each of these names are links that will take you to our features about them):

Hypno5e
Jenx
Nojia
Klone
Nami

These bands are all so good — and their music is so diverse — that it bodes well for everything else on this sampler. I haven’t listened to the whole thing yet, but I did pick out a few songs at random from bands whose names were new to me. I’ll stream those after the jump and provide a link for the download. Continue reading »

LET’S GET TECHNICAL

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  12 Responses »
Feb 052012
 

groverXIII, bringing the tech metal, with Nami (Andorra), Innerty (France), and Xenocide (Canada)

Nami – Fragile Alignments

Andorra isn’t exactly a hotbed of metal; chances are, the only Andorran band that you’ve ever heard of is Persefone. Well, it’s time to add Nami to that list. This quintet have done something pretty special with their 2011 album Fragile Alignments, seamlessly combining elements of bands like Opeth, Gojira, Cynic, and Porcupine Tree into something that doesn’t necessarily sound like any of those bands.

The amount of talent on display here is impressive, the songs are incredibly memorable and well-written, and the production on the album is clear without sounding overly polished or processed. It’s really a pity that I didn’t find out about these guys last year, because I’m fairly certain they would have made my year-end list. You can stream the first three tracks from Fragile Alignments on Bandcamp, [and here, after the jump] and you can hear the whole thing at the band’s Facebook bandpage HERE. It’s amazing. Continue reading »