Turia Archives - NO CLEAN SINGING

TURIA: “DEGEN VAN LICHT”

Feb 272020

(This is Mike Johnson‘s review of the new album by the Dutch black metal band Turia, which was released by Eisenwald on February 14th.)

Feel the chill gnaw at the marrow of your bones, as you trudge through the frozen snow. Shards of ice feel sharper than obsidian as they tear away beneath your cloak. Each step a masochistic delight as the lure of the great grey summit beckons you forth.

It stands amongst its peers with a crown of haze masking its highest peaks. As time disappears the ascension up an unforgiving pass becomes a torrent of lunacy as the shadow of a giant looming over you blocks the sky. A sliver of hope emerges as the pass opens to reveal the sun, its soothing warmth brings a spark of euphoria before disappearing in the shadow of the natural obelisk towering above piercing the sky.

An atmosphere such as this, sonically, should be dissonant, unforgiving, and a relentless fury of pure despair. Turia, a Dutch black metal trio, portray a scene of majestic desolation weaving lush landscapes soaked in reverb into a serrated hail composed of vicious tremolo riffs. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: DAWN OF SOLACE, TURIA, TOMBS, AINSOPH

Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 2 Responses »

Dec 122019

It’s been another of those weeks when the rest of life has rudely intruded on my NCS time, and so I haven’t been keeping up very well with new songs and videos. Haven’t even had time to add to my list of things to check out based on what has popped up in the various sources I use. Still, I did pay attention to the following four new songs, and the attention was rewarded.

Be forewarned: If you come to NCS expecting us to rigidly adhere to the site’s title, today’s collection includes a couple of exceptions — two of four.

DAWN OF SOLACE

Fourteen years is a very long time between albums. And in the case of Dawn of Solace, there was no reason to expect a follow-up to The Darkness (released in 2006), because in 2013 the band’s alter ego Tuomas Saukkonen announced the interment of all of his previous bands and projects, and the decision to replace them all with Wolfheart.

But now there will be a second Dawn of Solace album, the title of which is Waves. It’s set for release on January 24th by the new label Noble Demon (who will also be releasing the debut album of Night Crowned, for which we hosted a song premiere last week). Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: GROZA, DRATNA, A FLOCK NAMED MURDER, SLEGEST, HISSING, SOLAR TEMPLE, FLUISTERAARS, TURIA

SHADES OF BLACK 12 Responses »

Sep 302018

I struggle with these picks every week, and resolve the struggle in different ways. Sometimes, when I’ve got the time, I double-up the column so I don’t have to leave out quite as many possibilities. I don’t have that kind of time today. And to make the task harder, a lot of the music I wanted to talk about today turns out to be extra time-consuming — full releases, really long songs, many minutes that don’t lend themselves to pithy introductions.

Days like this I’m reminded that the main value of what we do here is “curation” (to use a pretentious term), i.e., the sifting and sorting of music and the selection of what we find appealing and think might be worth the time of people like you. If the writing itself proves to be entertaining, that’s a bonus. Mainly, we just do that to entertain ourselves. Hopefully, the curation alone will carry the day today — my own words are limited to begin with and kind of tail off into tiny dribbles the further you get into this.

GROZA

My friend eiterorm found Groza’s new album on Friday, said it was obviously inspired by Mgła, and expressed completely certainty that I would like it, judging from our common tastes in metal. “So make sure this one gets top priority. ;-]”, he wrote. So I did, and my friend was right — this is really good. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: FUNERAL MIST, GAEREA, VILKACIS, TURIA, ABIGAIL

Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET 21 Responses »

Jun 102018

As you can see, I’m resuming this column after failing to get it done the last two Sundays due to other commitments. As a result of the hiatus I’m even more awash than usual in new music from the black realms. So much to choose from… and so perhaps there’s an even greater element of randomness in these choices than usual as well.

FUNERAL MIST

This solo project of the man who goes by Arioch here (and Mortuus when he fronts Marduk) has a habit of surprising people. After a trio of demos and an EP between ’95 and ’98, five years passed and then the Salvation debut album appeared — a record that a great many people still swear by. Six more years passed, and then Funeral Mist released Maranatha without warning. As I recall, it garnered a more mixed response than the widespread praise provoked by Salvation, but I’m one of those who thoroughly enjoyed it. And then so many years passed with nothing new that most fans probably concluded, sadly, that Arioch had laid Funeral Mist to rest, permanently.

Surprise! Continue reading »

CULTHE FEST 2018

Metal News 4 Responses »

Feb 262018

The fifth edition of Culthe Fest will take place on March 31, 2018, in the city of Münster, Germany. When the festival’s organizers invited us to help spread the word about the event as a co-sponsor, the answer was a no-brainer, based on one glance at the line-up. Feast your eyes upon these names:

UADA (USA)
THE GREAT OLD ONES (FR)
VERHEERER (DE)
HEMELBESTORMER (BE)
TURIA (NL)
ALBEZ DUZ (DE)
BELTEZ (DE)
VYRE (DE)

With only one exception, these are all bands whose music we’ve enthusiastically praised at our site — and the one exception (Vyre) are a band we’ve happily discovered for the first time as a result of their confirmed appearance at Culthe Fest 2018. So it wasn’t a difficult decision to lend our own putrid name to the event. The difficulty is that we’re far away from Münster and haven’t yet gotten the teleporter operational, because this would be a hell of a show to attend in person. If you can be there, you damned well should! Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: TURIA — “WATERZUCHT”

Premieres 1 Response »

Jan 092017

The Dutch black metal band Turia made a powerful first impression with their debut album Dor in 2015. Much of the music (which was recorded live) could be characterized as propulsive atmospheric black metal, with teeth — barbed with melodic hooks and relying on sequences of repeating movements that drove the music into your head like railroad spikes. But the album revealed other dimensions as well, including slower and gloomier ones, all of them equally seductive.

The band’s second album, Dede Kondre, will be released on January 23 by Altare Productions (12″ vinyl) and Haeresis Noviomagi (cassette tape). Its title track was released near the end of last year, and today we have the pleasure of bringing you a second song, “Waterzucht“. Continue reading »

HOLIDAY CHEER: SVART CROWN, DAEMONIAC, TURIA, TÓXICA, DESTRIERS, UNDRASK

Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC 2 Responses »

Dec 242016

Once upon a time everything seemed to slow down during the holiday season… or at least everything other than the consumerist frenzy of gift-buying. But now in many ways the final weeks of the year seem as busy and eventful as all the other weeks, both at work and almost everywhere else. This year we even got announcements of a new nuclear arms race that no one asked for — what better way to celebrate peace on earth and good will to men!

I did notice a fall-off yesterday in the flood of messages arriving in the NCS e-mail in-box, but there were still a lot of new-music announcements, and I found even more in my Facebook news feed. There’s a risk that much of what I saw and heard will be overlooked, with many metal-oriented sites and blogs taking time off and many fans diverted from their phones and computers by holiday activities. So I decided, for the hell of it, to devote this Christmas Eve round-up exclusively to news and music streams that appeared (or that I discovered) for the first time yesterday.

Mind you, what follows isn’t everything I noticed, or even everything I enjoyed. I’ve made these selections to provide diversity of sound, and I’ve saved a few nasty things for tomorrow because NCS always does its best to reduce Christmas Day to a smoldering ash heap — praise and glory to Sol Invictus! Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: TURIA — “ZUIVERHEID”

Premieres 1 Response »

Nov 252015

Four days ago I included a review of an excellent debut album named Dor by the Dutch trio Turia in one of our new-music round-ups, and today it’s our pleasure to bring you the premiere of a video for a song from the album called “Zuiverheid“.

For me, Dor was an unexpected encounter, but it has proven to be very seductive. As I wrote in the review, much of the music (which was recorded live) could be characterized as propulsive, atmospheric black metal with teeth, barbed with melodic hooks and relying on sequences of repeating movements that drive the music into your head like railroad spikes. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: LYCUS, FÓRN, VREDEHAMMER, SKÁLMÖLD, TURIA, DAVID BOWIE

Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET 16 Responses »

Nov 202015

I came across a ton of new music yesterday that lit me up, too much to cram into a single post. So I made some hard choices, and selected this grouping from six artists with an eye toward creating a diverse listening experience. The last item, of course, isn’t metal — except it kind of is. You’ll see. If I have time I might be able stitch together some more new songs for later today, and if not, tomorrow (because tomorrow is the glorious sixth anniversary of our site’s birth).

LYCUS

January 15 is the date set by Relapse Records for the release of the new album Chasm by Oakland’s Lycus. As you can see, it features cover art by Paolo Girardi. The band’s last album, 2013’s Tempest, was fantastic, and I’ve been curious to see what Lycus would do next.

The new record consists of four long songs, and one of them, “Solar Chamber”, debuted yesterday. Drummer Trevor DeSchryver described its concept this way: Continue reading »