Woman Is the Earth Archives - NO CLEAN SINGING

WOMAN IS THE EARTH – DUST OF FOREVER

Aug 192021

(Here’s Andy Synn‘s take on the new album by long-time NCS favourites Woman Is The Earth, whose new album is released tomorrow on Init Records)

They say, whoever “they” are, that bands are supposed to mellow as they get older.

And while, certainly, this is true in many cases (the new Wolves In The Throne Room, for example, which I almost wrote about instead of this one, definitely feels that little bit more reflective and restrained, and all the better for it) it doesn’t seem like anyone bothered to tell Black Hills trio Woman Is The Earth, as their new album – their first full-length release since 2016’s Torch Of Our Final Night, and their first release of any kind since 2017’s Thaw EP – is more than a match for anything they’ve done before, and proof that their last few years spent in the musical wilderness haven’t dampened their inner fire.

AN NCS PREMIERE: WOMAN IS THE EARTH — “BREATH OF A DYING STAR”

Premieres 2 Responses »

Jul 192021

Five years have passed since Woman Is the Earth‘s last album, Torch of Our Final Night. It’s possible that some of you are thus new to this South Dakota group. If you are, Andy Synn‘s SYNN REPORT on the band wouldn’t be a bad way to get caught up, since it includes reviews and streams not only of that last album but also the three which preceded it. In that extensive essay he summed up their music as a special “blend of grim grandeur and metallic majesty”, “a brand of Black Metal that’s as heavy in atmosphere as it is in aggression, with songs that meld writhing riffage and rolling drums with passages of acoustic contemplation and ambient meditation, all without falling prey to the more generic tropes and clichés of the over-saturated ‘Post Black Metal’ scene”.

And now five years later we are about to receive a new album, which should be regarded as a signal event of this half-finished year. Entitled Dust of Forever, it will be released by the distinctive Init Records on August 20th, and is a timely reunion of these two musical forces since this year marks the label’s 20th anniversary.

Not long ago Invisible Oranges premiered the new album’s first single, “Spiritual Rot“, and today it’s our great pleasure to present the second one, “Breath of A Dying Star“, which happens to be the track that immediately precedes “Spiritual Rot”. Happily, we have a Bandcamp stream that allows you to hear them back-to-back. Continue reading »

NORTHWEST TERROR FEST 2018: A PHOTO RECORD (DAY 1)

Concert Reviews 2 Responses »

Jul 112018

For the second year in a row, NCS was proud to co-present Northwest Terror Fest, which took place this year on May 31 – June 2 in Seattle, Washington. Several of us in the NCS family helped organize and present the fest, and I guess that makes us a bit biased, but we’re not the only ones who thought it was a fantastic event. The feedback from bands, fans, and the venues has been uniformly very, very positive — so much so that we and our co-conspirators are already at work planning the third installment of NWTF for 2019.

We will of course be bringing you news about next year’s fest when the time is right, but we now want to take one more look back at NWTF 2018. And to do that, we’re fortunate to be able to present some of the amazing photos that New Orleans-based photographer Teddie Taylor took while the festival was in progress. Today we’ve got a selection of pics from the first day — and Teddie managed to shoot every band that performed; that’s one good thing about the rotation of bands between two stages, with no overlap. You can see every minute of every show as long as your energy holds out (and that hasn’t been a problem, given the caliber of the bands who’ve thrown themselves into their NWTF performances).

So, without further ado, here are Teddie Taylor’s photos from Day 1 at NWTF 2018. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: DER WEG EINER FREIHEIT, WOMAN IS THE EARTH, LEPRA, HELLEBORUS, ULVEN, EORONT, PALE HANDS, AMERICAN, BARBARIC HORDE

RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHADES OF BLACK 6 Responses »

Jun 262017

Yesterday, in the first part of this week’s SHADES OF BLACK, I recommended five recently released albums and throttled my tendency to put my own impressions into words. In this concluding part I opened the throttle, sort of. The music of nine bands is included here, ranging from individual advance tracks or singles to full albums or EPs. I know it’s a lot, but you’re men and women of steel, you can handle it… probably.

DER WEG EINER FREIHEIT

Most of us here were enormous fans of this German black metal band’s last album from 2015, Stellar. My friend Andy went so far as to call it in his review “a near-perfect snapshot of the genre. Its power and its potential. Both what it is, and what it can be.” And on August 25 we’ll have another album from this band, one entitled Finisterre. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2016’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 21): WOMAN IS THE EARTH, DEATH FORTRESS, UPRISING, SKELETONWITCH, BEYOND GRACE, WINTERFYLLETH

MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2016 2 Responses »

Jan 312017

Welcome to the 21st — and final — installment in our list of 2016’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs. Is the list complete? No, it isn’t. I could easily continue doing this for another month or more, and it pains me to leave so many other infectious songs lingering on my giant list of candidates. But it’s time to shift our focus more intently to what’s coming out this year.

After agonizing over the last 24 hours about what songs to select for this final edition in the series, I cut that Gordian knot in a fairly impulsive way — by simply picking the six songs on a playlist I made for myself in December.

I made that six-track list in December mainly, but not exclusively, because I had just been reading through the year-end list from Panopticon’s Austin Lunn that we were going to publish and was reminded of some addictive tracks I hadn’t listened to in a while. I put those on the playlist along with a couple of others that I wanted to hear again and thought might work well in the flow of the music.

As it happens, before today I hadn’t yet included any of these songs on this Most Infectious list, and so today I decided, why the hell not make all of these into the final Part of this series? They really are all damned infectious, and I do damn well like them. Continue reading »

THE SYNN REPORT, PART 75: WOMAN IS THE EARTH

Album Reviews, THE SYNN REPORT 5 Responses »

Jul 212016

(In the glorious 75th edition of THE SYNN REPORT, Andy reviews the discography to date of South Dakota’s Woman Is the Earth.)

Recommended for fans of: Agalloch, Wildernessking, Wolves In The Throne Room

Hailing from Black Hills, South Dakota, Woman Is The Earth deal in a brand of Black Metal that’s as heavy in atmosphere as it is in aggression, with songs that meld writhing riffage and rolling drums with passages of acoustic contemplation and ambient meditation, all without falling prey (in my opinion at least) to the more generic tropes and clichés of the over-saturated “Post Black Metal” scene.

They do this by never forgetting that – unlike some of their more populist peers — they’re definitely, even defiantly, a Metal band at heart… and a Black Metal band at that… so their music is never in danger of pandering to the notions of bland accessibility or pretentious artistry which undermine so many other acts of this type.

Having released their latest (and greatest) album earlier this year, and with the recent demise of Agalloch still weighing heavy upon so many of our hearts, now seemed like an opportune time to expose our readers to the band’s particular blend of grim grandeur and metallic majesty! Continue reading »

HAMMERHEART’S OSTARABLOT 2016: A REVIEW

Concert Reviews 4 Responses »

Mar 282016

(Our guest from the Midwest, Ben Smasher, was fortunate enough to attend the Ostarablot festival organized by HammerHeart Brewing Co. (the brewery and tap house located in Lino Lakes, Minnesota, that’s co-owned by Austin Lunn of Panopticon) and hosted on March 18-19, 2016, at the Triple Rock Social Club in Minneapolis. Here’s Ben’s review of the festival, along with some photos and videos the editor has scrounged from the internet.)

DAY 1

Hammerheart Brewing Company and the amazing people that comprise it consistently put themselves second to their intentions. Austin once said to me, “I want to make beer that brings people together.” So, as it would turn out, if you bring the world’s best beer and music under one roof, the best people in North America will join in a two-day celebration of the vernal equinox.

Though 2014’s Winterblot was a pretty remarkable event for bringing UK’s Wodensthrone to the US shores alongside some of America’s finest bands, Ostarablot brought artists from even further reaches to Minnesota. Vemod traversed all the way from Norway and Germany’s Waldgeflüster came a long way as well. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: BESTIA ARCANA, MORTUUS, LORD IMPALER, DIZZINESS, HELL POEMER, NEGATIVE VOICE, WOMAN IS THE EARTH, CHIRAL, ULULATUM TOLLUNT

Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHADES OF BLACK 11 Responses »

Mar 272016

It’s Easter Sunday, so of course I have a Shades of Black collection to share, with new music in a mainly blackened vein from 9 bands, because we need an extra large round-up of black today. The first two selections are more in the nature of teasers, while the balance of these selections are complete songs, EPs, or albums. There are lots of contrasts in this collection, from the utterly savage to the dreamlike and spellbinding.

BESTIA ARCANA

Last week Daemon Worship Productions launched a YouTube video which said nothing more than “Bestia Arcana. Holókauston is coming.” After doing further research I was able to find… no more details.

I presume that Holókauston is the name of the new second album by this Colorado black metal band, whose members were last reported to include Naas Alcameth of Akhlys and Nightbringer, K. (formerly of Nightbringer), and drummer Menthor (Nightbringer, Enthroned, Lvcifyre, etc.). And if those names don’t make you sit up and pay attention, then you’re in need of serious remedial posture training. Continue reading »