DEVIN TOWNSEND / TESSERACT / LEPROUS – LIVE AT ROCK CITY, NOTTINGHAM 18/03/17

 Concert Reviews  3 Responses »
Mar 212017
 

 

(Andy Synn attended the performance of Devin Townsend, Tesseract, and Leprous in Nottingham, England, on March 18th and files this report.)

Despite the fact that this site is called “No Clean Singing” we’re actually big fans of clean sung vocals here… well, in the right circumstances anyway.

No, the site’s moniker originally stemmed not from a blanket hatred of clean singing, but from Islander and co’s growing dissatisfaction with all the bands shoehorning clean vocals into their songs in a desperate attempt to appear more “accessible”, and therefore more marketable, at the cost of both their overall intensity and their underlying integrity.

I personally have a lot of love, and a lot of respect, for bands on the heavier end of the spectrum who are able to integrate and incorporate clean vocals into their sound in a way that feels totally natural. After all, it’s generally a lot more difficult to hold onto a melody and to hit all the right notes than it is to simply scream your lungs out atop a parade of blastbeats/breakdowns/bombastic riffs (not that I’m attempting to downplay the skill and strain involved in being a good screamer/growler).

So when a show like this rolls around, featuring three bands whose singers are all capable of knocking it completely out of the park (and practically into orbit) with their clean singing abilities, you’d best believe that we’re going to write about it. Continue reading »

TOURISM: GWAR, WHITECHAPEL, IRON REAGAN, A BAND OF ORCS, KATATONIA, CULT OF LUNA, INTRONAUT, TESSERACT, ORGAN DONOR, COFFIN DUST

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Aug 012013
 

Collected here is news about three new tours that surfaced yesterday.

MADNESS AT THE CORE OF TIME TOUR

GWAR is the headliner of this tour, and the rest of the line-up consists of Whitechapel, Iron Reagan, and A Band of Orcs. It’s tough to find a unifying theme for the selection of these bands, other than the fact that the line-up is book-ended by inhuman creatures. But I’ve found that some of the best shows are those in which the combination of bands makes you scratch your head. One band might pull you in, and you might then discover another band you like.

In this case, Whitechapel have kicked my ass every time I’ve seen them and I’m also interested in seeing Iron Reagan and A Band of Orcs (HAIL GZOROTH!). I’ve never gotten into GWAR, though I can’t say I’ve ever given them much of a chance. Maybe that will be my new discovery on this tour. Here’s the schedule: Continue reading »

SENSELESS RAMBLES – DJENT

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  12 Responses »
Nov 062011
 

(Ramblings from TheMadIsraeli . . .)

Until yesterday, I’d been a bit scarce around NCS recently, mainly due to illness, school being fucking lame, and the well being rather dry in terms of good shit for me to review.  I’ve only got five major reviews on the horizon that I give a damn about at the moment — Vallenfyre, Demisery, Vildhjarta, Vektor and Ever Forthright.  So as you probably guessed, this ain’t none of that reviewin’ shit.  Instead I’m gonna just talk.  Talk about stuff within metal, within the scenes, share my thoughts.

I figured a good start would be to talk about this djent thing.  I just reviewed a djent album in Uneven Structure’s Februus (here), and two of my above-mentioned choices for future reviews, Vildhjarta and Ever Forthright, are also djent bands.  I know that before I hopped on board with NCS they covered Ever Forthright quite a bit here, though Vildhjarta not so much.  Fuck, part of the reason I think I was picked up to write for NCS was to be the designated “djent guy”, since it was an interest of mine outside the tastes I shared with the other writers.  So I thought, finally, I might try to collect my thoughts about djent. Continue reading »

TESSERACT: THE “EDEN” VIDEO

 Exceptions to the Rule, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Oct 272011
 

TesseracT isn’t the kind of band we typically feature at NCS. Y’know, because of all that clean singing. BUT, I do like the band and their music. The songwriting is creative, the instrumental work is sharp, the mix of heavy, Meshuggah-style rhythms and penetrating melodies works well, and I tolerate the clean vocals because I like the instrumental work so much.

A few hours ago, a new music video appeared for the song “Eden”. The music on the video is is a revision of the song that appeared on the band’s album, One. It’s shorter than the original, and it includes the band’s new vocalist Elliot Coleman instead of the now-departed Dan Tompkins. I know there’s been a mountain of shit-talking controversy among the band’s fans about Elliot Coleman joining the band — not that I really care all that much about the issue — but I don’t hear a huge difference between the two performances of this song.

As for the video, it’s well-made and interesting to watch. Coincidentally, it’s the second video we’ve featured today that involves mermaids. Granted, the sea creatures in this video don’t have tails, and they seem to have glowing boxes in place of hearts, but it’s close enough. The video is after the jump. Continue reading »

MORE 2011 SICKNESS (PART 4)

 Forthcoming Albums  15 Responses »
Apr 022011
 


Technically, we should have posted this yesterday, but yesterday was April Fool’s Day, and people might have thought we were making up some of this shit. But it’s all true, and nothing happens on April 2 to plant doubt about truth. Except for what causes doubt to be planted about truth on any other day of the year.

Here we are at the beginning of the second quarter of 2011 — the time when for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, spring is supposed to spring.  Where I live, spring has apparently been victimized by a brutal street mugging and is hospitalized at the moment.  A few plants have been deluded into thinking it’s spring, but for the rest of our local world, it’s still fucking winter.

Fortunately, the change of the seasons have fuck all to do with the release of metal. What we do with these installments of METAL IN THE FORGE is collect news blurbs and press releases we’ve seen over the last 30 days (or in this case, the last 31 days) about forthcoming new albums from bands we know and like (including updates about releases we’ve included in previous installments of this series), or from bands that look interesting, even though we don’t know them yet. And in this post, we cut and paste the announcements and compile them in alphabetical order.

This isn’t a cumulative list, so be sure to check the Category link called “Forthcoming New Albums” on the right side of this page to see forecasted releases we reported in previous installments. This month’s list begins right after the jump. Look for your favorite bands, or get intrigued about some new ones. There’s some awesome shit on the way. Dive in after the jump. Continue reading »

MISCELLANY NO. 23

 MISCELLANY  No Responses »
Feb 062011
 

Well, I thought I’d be able to get up another MISCELLANY post during the past week to help myself catch up, but that obviously didn’t happen. (Yesterday’s MISCELLANY post was a hybrid, since I already knew two of the bands, so that didn’t really count.) At least this time I didn’t let two or three weeks go by before readying another installment.

This time I visited four more bands whose music I’d never heard, and it turned out to be an unusually diverse listening experience — and in one case pretty far outside the usual bedlam of the NCS asylum. Per the usual MISCELLANY rules, I randomly picked these bands off our running list of music to check out and tried to limit myself to one song per band (and failed). After the jump you’ll get the chance to hear the music for yourselves if the write-ups get you interested enough.

Today’s picks are Shroud Eater (U.S.), Eschaton (Austria), and The Omega Experiment (U.S.) — and in a late addition, The Villain Avian Symphony (Canada). If nothing else, these bands have a knack for picking good names, don’t you think? And, as a bonus, it turns out that almost all the music is free.

(Yes, this is a lengthy installment, but for fuck’s sake, it’s Sunday. What else have you got to do? Oh wait — it’s Super Bowl Sunday. Well, fuck me, maybe people outside the U.S. will wade through this . . .) Continue reading »