SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: AN EVENING WITH KNIVES, ARKAIST, HAVUKRUUNU, NOVARUPTA, SADIST, GOJIRA, THY CATAFALQUE

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Dec 142024
 

(written by Islander)

If you’ve been visiting us recently it’s obvious that we’ve dived into year-end LISTMANIA. Andy Synn just finished his week-long series, which always starts us off, and we’ve re-posted a few lists from sites much bigger than our own. But if that was the dive, we’re about to sink way deeper into lists, like someone who offended a crime lord and are now being pulled into a watery abyss with concrete blocks chained to our thrashing body.

To preview what’s coming, next week we’ll roll out DGR‘s week-long Top 50 list, a three-part list series from Neill Jameson, and a couple of year-end lists from other NCS writers, with a lot more to come in the weeks after that. Continue reading »

THY CATAFALQUE: “XII: A GYÖNYÖRÜ ÁLMOK EZUTÁN JÖNNEK”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Oct 252024
 

(Professor D. Grover the XIIIth rejoins us today with his review of Thy Catafalque‘s latest album, which will be released on November 15th by Season of Mist.)

Greetings and salutations, friends, and a happy impending Thy Catafalquemas to all who observe. It is at this point all but an official position of mine here at No Clean Singing as Guy Who Reviews The New Thy Catafalque album, a duty I relish. It is established canon at this point that Thy Catafalque are one of my favorite bands of the last two decades, an opinion bolstered by their consistently excellent output and clockworkesque album release cycle. Impressively, even with bandleader Tamás Kátai solidifying Thy Catafalque as a live entity, this new release (XII: A gyönyörü álmok ezután jönnek, or “The Beautiful Dreams Are Yet to Come”) comes only a year after its predecessor, Alföld. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: THY CATAFALQUE, ANOMALIE, ANGANTYR, SPIDER GOD, ACID COFFIN

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Oct 062024
 

“Tenterhooks” is an exceptional word, even though I’m confident I’ve never used it in any conversation and even though it hasn’t appeared in a single one of our 15,889 life-to-date posts before this one (a suspicion confirmed by a computerized search of our entire site).

In its original meaning, which dates back to at least the 1600s, a “tenterhook” was a hooked nail used to affix washed woven fabrics to a wooden frame called a “tenter”, on which the woolen cloth could dry outdoors — stretched, straightened, and under tension. But, as The Font of All Human Knowledge tells us, “By the mid-18th century, the phrase on tenterhooks came to mean being in a state of tension, uneasiness, anxiety, or suspense, i.e., figuratively stretched like the cloth on the tenter.”

Why did this word pop into my head today? Well, because some of the music below put me on tenterhooks, and expressing those feelings in any other way would seem slightly drab by comparison, when the music itself is definitely not drab. (By coincidence, “drab” is another old English word dating back to the 1600s which also had something to do with woven cloth; it was the name for undyed, homespun wool with colors that were dull brown, yellowish, or gray.) Continue reading »

TRANSMISSIBLE SPONGIFORM ENCEPHALOPATHIES OF ’23 — PART II

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2023  No Responses »
Feb 282024
 

(Our editor wasn’t able to compile a list of Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs from 2023, but our supporter Vizzah Harri, a resident of Hanoi, Vietnam, has stepped in to fill the void. We published Part I of his list here, and now we’re proceeding with Part II. The remaining four parts will follow in fairly short order.)

‘We live in uncertain times’ is both clichéd and antiquated. Fear has been a massive driving-force towards change and, just like anything else, conceivable change is not always good. We understand change as a constant, almost a law as such, yet we fear it and our fear of it more often than not is what drives us towards horrid acts against our fellow human beings.

And so in order to inoculate against fear (of the other), of change, of that which we do not understand, we can take cues from why some of us are so compelled to find that new riff, to experience something for the first time, for our minds not just to open, but to bend around that axis of perdition into a fused vessel. Transported into worlds hitherto unknown. Always keeping a keen ear to the ground and another filled with that which challenges and provokes, that is what keeps us, and therefore also our art, closer to our initial true intentions. Continue reading »

OVERFLOWING STREAMS: BAXAXAXA, BLUT AUS NORD, CELESTIAL, DECOHERENCE, FABRICANT, FORTIÐ, FREYA, HARM’S WAY, MANTAR, SKÁLMÖLD, THY CATAFALQUE

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Jul 182023
 


Baxaxaxa

Today is the 199th day of 2023. On this day in history, among many other instances of idiocy and abuse, the First Vatican Council decreed the dogma of papal infallibility and Adolf Hitler published Mein Kampf. It’s also the birthday of Nelson Mandela, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, Hunter Thompson, Vin Diesel, Geno Suarez of the Seattle Mariners, and maybe you, as well as the death-day of Caravaggio, Jane Austen, Benito Juarez, Machine Gun Kelley, and hopefully not you.

It also happens to be a rare weekday when I had time to pull together a roundup of recommended new songs and videos, which has nothing to do with commemoration of any of the preceding events. There’s so much here that I’ve throttled my usual descriptive verbosity (Satan knows there’s more than enough hot air in the atmosphere today already) and left aside some of the cover art until I can upload it later today. (Presented alphabetically by band name, which led to some interesting juxtapositions).

BAXAXAXA (Germany)

Prepare for: low-end rumbling and thrumming plus grim vibrating riffage, immense jolting chugs and ethereal gothic synths, dragging tones of agony and fanatical serrated-edge yells. The experience is menacing and morbid, feral and ferocious, infernal and infectious…. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: THY CATAFALQUE

 Interviews  No Responses »
May 162023
 

(We have been devoted fans of Thy Catafalque for a very long time, and the band’s new album Alföld has only strengthened our ardor [see the review here]. And so today we are very happy to present Comrade Aleks‘ interview of Tamás Kátai in advance of the new album’s June 16 release by Season of Mist.)

Thy Catafalque celebrates its 25th anniversary this year. It started as the duo of Tamás Kátai and János Juhász, who were highly enthusiastic towards black metal with an avant-garde edge, and it took just a bit before Thy Catafalque established their own unique blend formed by elements taken from different genres and sub-genres, from extreme metal to electronic and folk music.

Years passed, and the band turned into Tamás’ solo project, but he managed only to sharpen his skills and it seems that he never suffers from a lack of ideas. Alföld is Thy Catafalque’s forthcoming eleventh album. It’s still unique and unpredictable but you can already form an impression about its direction if you check Season of Mist’s Bandcamp and find there three new songs: “A csend hegyei”, “Testen túl”, and “N​é​ma vermek”.

Recorded in Budapest with a dozen guest vocalists and musicians, it turns out to be one of most exciting releases in the metal underground. Tamás reveals a few secrets behind Alföld and the project’s current status. Continue reading »

THY CATAFALQUE: “ALFÖLD”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
May 022023
 

(Thy Catafalque‘s latest opus Alföld will be released by Season of Mist on June 16th, and today we present a review by our old friend and ardent Thy Catafalque student Professor D. Grover the XIIIth.)

Greetings and salutations, friends. It is once again my favorite time of year (well, my favorite time of every two or three years): Thy Catafalque season. That’s right, my favorite Hungarian multi-instrumentalist and musical genius, Tamás Kátai, has maintained his reliable release schedule and graces us once more with a new Thy Catafalque album. While the core principles of the musical project remain the same (Kátai is the sole member, supported by a sizable rotation of guest musicians lending their talents in various capacities), the Thy Catafalque sound continues to evolve, aided by a significant musical development.

If you’re a fan of the band, or happened to read my top album list from last year, then you’re likely aware that Kátai took a huge step on the past year or so by taking Thy Catafalque into a live setting for the first time. The band’s first live performance was recorded and released as a live album, and there have been a handful of other live performances since, with a shifting lineup appropriate to the band’s history. While Kátai‘s involvement in the first live show was surprisingly limited (only playing bass on a handful of songs), he has in subsequent shows taken up full bass duties, and it feels as though performing live has affected the tracks on this new Thy Catafalque album Alföld. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: GABESTOK, REVA, THY CATAFALQUE, DAUGHTERS OF SOPHIA

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK  No Responses »
Apr 022023
 


Gabestok (2019) – photo by Adriana Zak

Every week we receive what mathematicians used to call a metric shit ton of black metal submissions. Maybe it’s because we tend to spend more time than many other metal sites focusing on that ever-expanding genre, and maybe because we try not to limit ourselves to well-known bands with substantial label backing or PR apparatuses.

But as some people still don’t understand, there are very few of us here, and our NCS time comes after paying work, family and friends, and every other demand and distraction that everyone else deals with on a daily basis. So, lots of worthy submissions just don’t get attention in our pages.

From amongst the worthy, there’s truly a high degree of randomness in what we choose to write about, and even more so on days like today when my own NCS time has gotten further compressed by unexpected events (including the Third World quality of internet service on the island where I live).

Yeah, I hear you — “Shut Up and Get On With It, you could have covered one more song in the time it took you to write that pathetic introduction!” I hear you, so let’s get on with it: Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2022’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 11): ENSLAVED, THY CATAFALQUE, TISHINA

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2022  No Responses »
Jan 162023
 

Starting the third week of this annual songfest I picked three that go together so well, in addition to being infectious standouts on their own. It happens that two of them were also presented by two of my favorite videos of 2022.

ENSLAVED (Norway)

In putting together these lists there’s always been a bit of confusion in my mind about what to do with songs that premiered in one year from albums not due for release until the following year. Here’s a case in point: Enslaved‘s new album Heimdal isn’t due out until March 3rd of this year, but the song “Kingdom” from that album debuted in August of last year. So should it be considered for the 2022 edition of this list or should I wait a year and make it a candidate for the 2023 list?

I don’t think I’ve had any consistent policy on this issue, though in general I hate waiting. In this case the song was first released as a stand-alone single almost three months before the album was even announced, so that seems like adequate justification for putting it on the 2022 list now. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: THY CATAFALQUE, HERON, OTUS, VARMIA, ILLUMINE

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Nov 052022
 

 

As you know if you’ve been here routinely, I make lists, lots of lists, of new music I want to check out. Last night when I began making my way through the latest one (an extremely long one), it happened that the first five selections were so good and fit together so beautifully that I decided to go no further, for fear of breaking a powerful pattern that had serendipitously taken shape. When I listened to them again this morning, it still made sense.

I’ve set out these songs in the order I heard them. I said they created a pattern, but they were also a journey, and one that ended in stunning fashion.

THY CATAFALQUE (Hungary)

Well of course I started with a new video from Thy Catafalque, especially because the video is for a performance of my favorite song from one of my favorite albums of 2011. Yes, more than a decade ago! But until senility encroaches I’ll never forget “Fekete mezők”. Continue reading »

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