[ aquarius records — Metal Black Metal ]

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Black metal fans into the brilliance (and weirdness) of Czech band Root shouldn't forget that other great black metal band from Prague, Master's Hammer. Osmose has just reissued their first two early '90s discs as a double cd digipack. First there's the raw,

RealAudio clip: Genioue
RealAudio clip: Ouveture

How can you resist a hyperbolically boastful black metal title like Barbaric Usurpation Of The Hypereonic Black Metal Throne? Andee's tUMULt label continues to dig deep into the Bay Area black metal underground, after introducing the rest of the world to such USBM luminaries as Weakling, Leviathan, Draugar and Crebain, now prepare yourself to bow before the mighty Mastery. Another one man band, known (not so) simply as Domignostika, who also does time as vocalist in local corpse painted horde Pale Chalice, as well as being the one man behind the only REAL one man black metal band (as in he plays guitar and sings while playing blast beats with his feet) Pandiscordian Necrogenesis, and who had previously played bass and sung for the late great Horn Of Dagoth (which also featured members of Crebain and Kerasphorus), Mastery is Domignostika's long running project, which over the last six years released 5 extremely limited cd-r demos, all of which are collected here, remastered, and widely available outside of the Bay Area for the very first time. Barbaric Usurpation Of The Hypereonic Black Metal Throne? A serious claim of musical supremacy? A tongue in cheek poke at the constant battle for supreme grimness and kvltness, or taking the piss? Hard to tell, but considering the sheer brutality and relentless buzz of Mastery's frenzied black onslaught, we're leaning toward that title being a serious claim. After a strange, ambient intro, a sort of John Carpenter-ish bit of creeped out synthscapery, Mastery launches into the most recent demo, from 2009, the simply titled 'I' (all the tracks here a confusionally titled with Roman numerals), a frantic, frenzied freak out of swirling chaotic black buzz, a sound that at first blush sounds like some bastard hybrid of Inquisition and Vondur and Ocrilim. Six plus minutes of relentless gnarled buzzing, the vocals a sinister beastly croak, the drums a furious buried blast, but it's the guitars, insanely tangled and twisted, not so much riffs as a continuous serious of constantly mutating rapidfire runs, with much of the 'riffing' sounding more like multiple guitars maniacally soloing, spitting off pick harmonics and jagged squeals without ever looking back. Minus the drums and the vokills, this could definitely be some sort of avant experimental guitar record, but as it is, it becomes a demented slab of blurred, blown out, frenzied and fucked up black metal weirdness. The second track is way heavier on the low end, but no less flipped out, the riffing impossibly hyper, once again a swirling chaos of gnarled blackness and nearly psychedelic abstract avant shreddery. Mastery is total berzerker black metal, rooted in the tradition of true grim blackness, but filtered through Mastery's cracked perception, transforming this into something beyond true, a droned out and damaged, outsider blackness, that sounds pretty much unlike almost any other black metal. Sure on the surface, it's blast and buzz, but as you sink into these extended black sprawls, the songs seem to unfold, and expand, buzzing blackness that blossoms into something wholly other, in such a way, that one has to fight the urge to try and figure out how these songs work, or how they're arranged, they sound almost improvised, but they're impossibly dense, and the arrangement, however esoteric, seems to be structured, but in some way that out pitiful human brains can not hope to comprehend. Of course the newest demo is the most polished, but the older demos, for what they lack in polish, they seem to make up for in sheer whatthefuckness, demo four is another series of black blasts that twist and turn, and mutate before your ears, a glancing listen will reveal some of THEE fastest and most furious BM you may have heard, but again, the riffs seem to be constantly twisting and turning, the vocals to, hateful and harsh as befitting BM, but also completely baffling and utterly alien. But demo 3, a single 33 minute epic is something else entirely, with much of the record being made up of glitched out, harrowing black ambience, crunchy and distorted, with howled raspy vox, when the guitar do kick in, the buzz and drone, with the drums sounding almost electronic, looped way down in the mix, the sound weirdly hypnotic, before slipping into something slightly more black, and then back into some creepy ambience, before launching into a long stretch of blown out black majesty, which like much of the record, as much to offer upon deep listening, revealing all manner of hidden melody, lush textures, and most notably some strange strange riffs, this track in particular, though adding a super mesmerizing trancelike element, which is in fact present throughout all the demos, in lesser measure. The second disc is made up of the first two demos, and thus finds Mastery at their (his?) most traditionally black metal, but again, it's all relative, so while much of this disc is spent chugging and blasting, raw and grim, all brittle buzz and brutal blast, the twisted sounds that would come to define Mastery's baffling sound begin to surface, strange gnarled riffs, some cool drum/guitar interplay, plenty of wild tangled squiggle guitar weirdness (especially on the first track of demo 2), which mixes in maniacally shredding guitars with more o that tranced/droned out atmosphere, not to mention some of the most anguished vokills yet, the whole collection finishing with the downright doomy final track from the second demo, a crumbling super distorted death march, with somehow even MORE anguished vocals, a woozy, washed out, blackened plod, that explodes in the final two minutes for one final burst of blasting, maniacal, demoniac blackness. Killer black, red and white space / wolf / spacewolf cover art.

MPEG stream: I (Demo 5)
MPEG stream: II (Demo 4)
MPEG stream: I (Demo 3)
MPEG stream: I (Demo 2)
MPEG stream: I (Demo 1)

It's been a really long wait, but it's finally here, the debut full length from SF one man black metal horde Mastery. After a collection of demos on Andee's tUMULt label, and splits with Palace of Worms and Skullflower, we now have Valis, which, if anything, has pushed an already confusional sound further into the realms of total WTF? unreality. That tUMULt demo collection was impossibly next level, and Valis is definitely a progression, into something twisted and cosmic, less songs as much as sprawling pieces, partially (perhaps wholly?) improvised, riff after riff after riff, the 18 minute opener boasting what has to be a hundred different riffs, some buzzy and black, others atonal and Greg Ginn-ish, all wound around each other in furious tangles, croaked vokills and wild drumming only adding to the cacophony, the end result almost like multiple black metal bands playing at once, but somehow orchestrated into something strangely cohesive, brutal and punishing, but also mesmerizing and trancelike, a prismatic sonic blur, undulating wildly, occasionally coalescing into proper blast and buzz, but more often splintering into wild gouts of blacknoize or arcing sheets of black psych freakout. It definitely might be too much for the meat and potatoes metalheads out there. This is most definitely AVANT, whether it's the sudden intrusion of acoustic guitar above simple snare roll, or the swirling kosmische interludes, the blasts of head spinning squiggly shred, or the slippery melodies, that sound like multiple slide guitars run through a battery of busted distortion pedals, the lurching, lumbering doom that oozes like the instruments are melting as they're being played, wild bursts of distorted crumble or the frantic Bernard Hermann like intro to the record, or just the sheer fury and velocity of some of the black buzz here, making other black metal bands sound like they're trudging through tar... Valis is less like black metal and more like a constellation of sonic smears and brutal blurs, all layered into one of the strangest, most challenging, and definitely one of the most deliriously demented outsider/experimental/avant black metal records EVER. Killer cover art too.

MPEG stream: S.T.A.R.S.E.E.K.E.R.
MPEG stream: V.A.L.I.S.V.E.S.S.E.L.

The long overdue return of aQ faves The Mausoleums, whose last record was a confusional swirl of grim black buzz and weird jangle pop, blown out bliss and thick dense noise. A record we fell in love with, on the recommendation of an aQ customer, long before we discovered that The Mausoleums was in fact a he, and not a they, and just so happened to be a beloved aQ mailorder customer! For this second record, the Mausoleums seem to have turned down the buzz (just a bit) and turned up the pop. That's right. POP. Not that there wasn't pop all over the last Mausoleums disc I Am The Mausoleum, but the opening track on Blackened Fawns Cleanse The Earth With Fire, "Livelihood", is a gorgeous organ drenched slab of crunchy distorted shoegaze jangle. And we're not talking about the new wave of "metalgaze" that so many metal bands seem to be glomming onto, this is just glorious and resplendent and soaring, shimmering blisspop nirvana, the guitars jangly but washed out and fierce, the melodies sprawling and sun drenched, the sound crumbling and gloriously distorted. In fact, one song in and we're thinking it well worth the price of admission. But it doesn't take long for the band to dip back into their other true love, the next track, "The One Who Sees", finds the band returning to a furious blackened buzz, howled vocals, pounding drums, insect like riffage, but even then, the sound is still rife with disembodied pop jangle and soaring guitar buzz, an impossible hybrid that sounds way better than it should. The next track is neither, instead a dense processed soundscape of soaring guitar feedback, little curlicues of buzzing melody, looped stuttering drums, dizzying minor key strum, all tangled up in a gloriously seasick hypnotic whirl. "Thief" begins as straight up pop, like some super distorted Pavement outtake, or lost Sebadoh jam, all fuzzy jangle and simple propulsive drumming, until the vocals come in, a super distorted black metal shriek, bringing with it another layer of buzzing blown out distortion. And so it goes for the rest of the record, careening from glorious shoegaze distortion drenched buzz pop, to in-the-red lo-fi black metal crunch, but with those two various sonic strains constantly bleeding and leeching into the other, resulting in the record's finest moments, the impossibly dense, epic, majestic guitar drone shoegaze blowout of "Old Woman In The Woods", impossibly heavy, yet gorgeously melodic at the same time, the strange distorted folky raga buzz of "His Reward", the frenetic ultra distorted surfy twang of "Skeletal" and finally the brief closer, "The Bees", a lovely chunk of overdriven steel string Appalachia that near the end explodes into a brief blown out buzz-drenched burst of looped digital fuzz. Be warned, these are hand made, each and every one. And by hand made, we mean, made by hand, with scissors, and glue, and perhaps not a ruler anywhere in site. Each copy is different, most of them strangely fitted together, a paper gatefold, some slightly smaller than others, some seriously skewed, the color varied from copy to copy, some slightly wrinkled, some almost normal looking, others like maybe they were made as an arts and crafts project at a grade school. But heck, that just adds to the coolness, and makes each one TRULY unique. Cool cover image (but one that has been used before, several times, sadly) and a full color thick paper stapled insert. And probably limited as most things like this usually are...

MPEG stream: Livelihood
MPEG stream: The One Who Sees
MPEG stream: Fertile Depths
MPEG stream: Thief

A customer turned us on to the Mausoleums, a super distorted buzz drenched experimental 'black metal' combo, which we later discovered was in fact an aQuarius mailorder customer! Small world for sure. But even if we had no idea who the heck this was, we would still be suitably blown away.� You think Wold and Velvet Cacoon know a thing or two about buzz and distortion, well, those guys have nothing on the Mausoleums... It's hard to even quantify how blown out and buzzy the sound is here, it might make more sense to reference Japanese noise music cuz this almost sounds like straight up super distorted speaker melting N.O.I.S.E., on the surface at least. Until you notice a roiling whirlpool of blackened riffing and howled vocalizing, just beneath all that harsh hiss and brutal buzz. It's almost like Ildjarn or Beherit recorded by Masonna and produced by Merzbow. Blasting and relentless, face melting fury, guitars so distorted they sound like they might crumble into jagged shards, drums that sound like bursts of white noise, but all deftly shaped into riffs and songs and chunks of seriously scalding blackened metal.� But then the band will unleash something like "Cicada", a gorgeous�loping slowcore jam, again doused with delay�and buried under a layer of distorted grit, but strangely lovely, with a bit of melancholy twang mixed in.� Or the freaked out blackpsych blast of "Joan Of Arc" a track that sounds like a dense slab of pure black buzz and howl, until suddenly a�gorgeous chunk of indie jangle surfaces, still dripping with distorted buzz, but so goddamn dreamy and melodic, like an even more distorted damaged My Bloody Valentine,�the drums and cymbals so corroded and decayed, they balance out the dreamy jangle. Elsewhere, riffs are dipped in molten hellfire and pushed all the way�into the red, crumbling distortion is draped over lilting minor key guitar, strange Greg Ginn-ish angular guitars are twisted and melted down into more black buzz... And while the majority of the record is some of the filthiest, blackest buzzingest metal you'll ever hear, the buzzing blackness is split up by all sorts of unlikely and not that black jams, the strangely skeletal Stereolab-ish post rock of "Lenin Not Lennon", the creepy black electro (replete with strangely Beatles-esque guitar) of "Insignificance", the metalized buzz wrapped Neu!-isms of "Running Through The Reeds", the warbly organ flecked garage stomp of "I Guess I'm Like A Prince, Maybe" and the Spacemen 3 like druggy drone of "Like A Prince", all seemingly out of place, but when listened to as a whole, seem to perfectly balance the extreme brutal buzz of the rest of the disc.� Maybe too fucked up and far out for most metal heads, but folks into super damaged heaviness, and freaked out whatthefuck metal will dig this BIG TIME.�

MPEG stream: Day Of Wrath
MPEG stream: Cicada
MPEG stream: Joan Of Arc
MPEG stream: You Die Defiant
MPEG stream: Lenin Not Lennon

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SORRY. Warning: extremely graphic cover photo of their singer, not long after his rather messy shotgun suicide. Besides that, and the performance of equally dead guitarist Euronymous (who perhaps snapped said photo after sampling some delectable brain, or so he bragged), this live album has renditions of Venom and Celtic Frost classics to recommend it.

It's here, the first full-length studio recording from these Norwegian black metal legends in years! This is the notorious band that at one point featured black metal martyr Euronymous in its ranks, along with vocalist Dead. Both are, of course, dead now--you can read all about it in "Lords Of Chaos" if you haven't already. But all this murder and suicide didn't stop these guys. Whirlwind drummer/black metal pin up guy Hellhammer and bassist Necrobutcher, along with early Mayhem vocalist the Marylin Mason-ish Maniac and new guitarist Blasphemer soldier on, with a new, more death metal, more extreme, more technical sound. "Grand Declaration of War" simply kills. While Maniac's semi-spoken, semi-pretentious vocal style takes a little getting used to, and some trip hop beats crop up on the more experimental second half of this disc, for the most part this is some very intense, melodic, heavy black metal similar to the intricate attack and evil atmosphere of the late great Dissection (not that Mayhem needed any more help in the evil atmosphere department).

Live stuff recently recorded in Europe and the U.S. by this seminal black metal act. Knowing perhaps that they have perhaps already released too many live albums (granted, some are boots, which isn't their fault), some value is added by the inclusion of a half-dozen or so "preproduction" tracks (i.e. demos) from their "Grand Declaration of War" opus. A fan's disc, therefore. And

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SORRY. One of Nordic black metal's most legendary, infamous bands returns with a brutal recording featuring new members replacing various deceased ones. Euronymous (R.I.P.) would be proud, though perhaps not happy that his band is now on the same label that releases the albums of that guy that killed him...

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SORRY.

The Meads Of Asphodel are a strange bunch, everything about them has always been just a bit off, but brilliantly so, their sound sonically schizophrenic, their black metal flecked with whatever weirdness mainman Metatron feels like throwing into the mix. In their band photos, they're always wearing medieval Crusader armor, wielding shields, maces and swords, their song titles are bizarre, their records filled with unlikely guests, and seemingly designed to baffle or piss of in equal measure, and while much of what they do seems like it must be a joke, like they're constantly taking the piss, arriving now at full length number six (and that's not counting splits and eps), it's more obvious now than ever, that these guys are deadly serious, it's just that they're also kinda nuts. And it's that seriousness, that dedication to their high concept warped songcraft, that makes this new record make a bit more sense. Just a bit. While there's no shortage (unfortunately) of Nazi black metal, there has not yet been, as far as we know, a black metal concept record about the holocaust, not celebrating it in any way, just exploring the horror, from both the perspective of the perpetrators AND the victims. Well, at least until now. That's right, like the last Meads concept record, also a pretty intense one, about the life and death of Jesus, titled The Murder Of Jesus The Jew, Sonderkommando is another concept record, one that is indeed about the Holocaust. The music is the usual twisted batch of Meads weirdness, with another collection of ridiculous guests, who only add to the confusional sonic chaos, but the lyrical content this time around is appropriately harsh, as is the gruesome cover art, and while folks will no doubt cry foul, this is serious stuff, even if sonically, it doesn't always seem like it. Mainman Metatron spent YEARS researching and conceptualizing, and the bafflingly brilliant results bear that out, an epic sonic sprawl equal parts grim black buzz, murky blackened prog, and over the top, super dramatic, melodic Broadway musical style glamminess. Yup. But what did you expect, it's the Meads after all. And just to drive that point home, in the band pictures they're still dressed like medieval warriors! The core Meads lineup this time around is augmented by a whole mess of guests, including members of Hawkwind, God's Tower, Amebix, Sigh, even Gnaw Their Tongues, and hell, Metatron's son even makes an appearance as well. It all begins with the 12 minute title track, which begins like you might expect, with samples of archival voices, all scratchy historical recordings, which is soon joined by a strange bit of wheezing almost gypsy folk, piano, female vox, but then what you might not expect, is the song exploding into some Bowie-esque glam, or what sounds like some strange stage musical, with wailed dramatic vocals, singing "You don't have to die to walk in hell, for here is hell", sounding a bit like a number from the Rocky Horror Picture Show, all over a backdrop of weirdly swirling, murky slithery jazziness. It's not until about 6 minutes in, that the sound explodes into some furious black buzz, but it's the Meads, so no straight ahead black metal here, instead it's super tangled, near proggy weirdness, laced with twisted melodies, multiple dueling vokills, cool expanses of churning chug, some stop/start dynamics, a dizzying black tangle, before returning to the glammy over the top melodic musical style bombast of the beginning, this time paired with a little black buzz. From there on out, all bets are off, the sing-songy almost folky "Wishing Well Of Bones", the synth swaddled black buzz of "Aktion T4", then there are tracks like "Silent Ghosts Of Babi Yar", which like the title track, are exactly what makes the Meads so good, and so fucking nuts, blasting out some seriously buzzing blackness, all churning riffage and pounding drums, harsh hateful vox and dizzying blasts, before blossoming into another stretch of fill on epic glam pop, soaring clean vocals, over swirling synths, all wedded to some black metal buzz, a twisted, but weirdly appealing combo, and then paired with the lyrics, and the concept, totally over the top WTF genius for sure. Dig deeper and there's still more weirdness, the creepy dramatic reading of "Lamenting Weaver Of Horror", a dialogue between a child (Metatron's kid) and death, all over some murky black ambient rumbles, and some creepy atmospherics, dripping water, distant creaks and groans, which splinters into some twisted blackened power metal, before transforming into some loping spaced out psychedelia, then there's the insanely titled "The Mussulmans Wander Through The Infernal Whirling Fires Amongst Silent Shadows To Be Fed Into The Thirsting Jaws Of A Godless Death Machine To Cough Up Their Souls To The Nazi Moloch Who Sits Within A Ring Of Smoking Infant Skulls", which begins with a weird looped vocal round, and soon explodes into some almost Viking sounding black metal, laced with soaring female vocals, wildly proggy and super melodic, psychedelic too, with dueling vokills/vocals, the whole thing suddenly devolving into a woozy, slithery blackened blooz jam, replete with harmonica! There's plenty more strangeness throughout, the clean vocals pop up everywhere, giving the record a super dramatic over the top vibe, but for every bit of melodic bombast, there's some twisted blackness, all tangled up into one epic sonic headtrip, that might be the Meads finest moment yet. Certainly their most brilliantly baffling!

MPEG stream: Sonderkommando
MPEG stream: Silent Ghosts Of Babi Yar
MPEG stream: The Mussulmans Wander Through The Infernal Whirling Fires Amongst Silent Shadows...

By this point, if you're at all familiar with Britain's weirdest black metal bunch The Meads Of Asphodel you know to expect the unexpected. You'll be unphased by breakbeat breakdowns, trumpet solos, and syrupy strings amidst Venom-inspired vocals and Cradle of Filth-worthy black metal bombast. And you already know there's gonna be spacerockin' Hawkwind guitar on here from an authentic old Hawkwind guitarist. Yet somehow we still suspect that at some point whilst listening to their new, third album Damascus Steel, even the most dedicated Meads fan will have a "what the fuck is this, what the fuck are they doing??" moment. And that's one big reason why you're a Meads fan after all! Maybe that point will be when they burst into a sarcastic version of Louis Armstrong's "What A Wonderful Life" with the lyrics altered so that vocalist Metatron is delivering lines like: "I see newborn graves / dirt dimmed with steam / open womb flesh / death and disease / and I think to myself, what a wonderful world," over that familiar melody, his gravelly voice really rather reminiscent of Satchmo's! Or maybe it will be at the very start of the album, when you're confronted with a sampled speech by George W. Bush. They don't manipulate his words with cut and paste tricks, either, he just says what he said. It's as if in the black metal competition to be the most EVIL they couldn't think of anything more effective than to incorporate our President into their band! Though, we suspect Bush is sampled for reasons of geopolitical commentary, as he's speaking about his views on the Middle East, a region that has long figured centrally into The Meads' peculiar musical and lyrical vision (this album's entitled Damascus Steel, remember). There's a been a few metal bands with Middle Eastern obsessions -- Melechesh, Absu, Morbid Angel -- and maybe that's because of the ancient mysteries and mythology of man spawned from that land. Just the Biblical associations alone give it resonance for both the Christian and (in this case) the anti-Christian. Not to mention that it's the location today of so much suffering and strife. Warfare has always been a metal topic, terror too. So it's no wonder that metal bands would look to the Middle East for subject matter. But in the case of The Meads, we'd always assumed that it also had to do with the fact that, well, they like to wear medieval armor a la the Crusaders. Maybe that's how their interest first was stoked. But it's clear that they have something subversive to say about religion and politics and that flashpoint region of our world. Of course, Metatron's words (and song titles like the Bal-Sagoth worthy "Behold The Kindred Battle Carcasses Strewn Across The Bloodred Dunes Of Gilgamesh Mute In The Frenzied Clamour Of Death's Rolling Tongue And Ravenous Bursting Steel") take some deciphering, and it doesn't help that his band has set your head spinning with their bent blend of metal and psych and techno and ethnic music... In one song, for instance, blasting blasphemies segue into a groovy keyboard guest solo from Mirai of Japan's Sigh (one of the few bands in the world also so eccentric that they're naturally soulmates with the Meads blokes). And you'll think to yourself, what a wonderful Meads album! MPEG Stream: "Satanic Black Nubian Pharaohs" [/audio/meadsofsatanicblack.m3u]

MPEG stream: Satanic Black Nubian Pharaohs
MPEG stream: The Gods Who Mock Us

We made this Record of the Week a couple months ago, then promptly ran out of 'em -- as did their label in England, who have now pressed more copies. So here it is again, in case you missed it before. The UK's amazing, eccentric Meads Of Asphodel are back with their second, long-awaited full-length. From the get-go, this had an inside line on becoming an AQ Record of the Week -- indeed, we were so excited about its impending release that even before any of our wholesale suppliers had imports of this in stock, Andee went ahead and mail-ordered two copies from England, one for himself and one as a Christmas gift for Allan! Now, we've managed to get copies for the store to share with all of you. What's so special about the Meads Of Asphodel, besides their unusual name? Well, if you've been a long-time AQ list reader/customer maybe you'll remember how much we liked their debut, The Excommunication of Christ. Well as good as that crackpot example of medieval metal was, this new one is even more esoteric and ridiculous and incredible. As AQ's coverage of the genre has demonstrated, black metal can be a lot of different things. In the Meads of Asphodel's case, it IS many different things, all at the same time! First off, apparently nobody told them that an ostensibly black metal band shouldn't write pop songs. Sure, they are really really heavy and decidedly grim, but Meads have a pop sensibility that can't be denied. The album's second track, "God Is Rome", will have you staring at your stereo as its gruff-voiced chugging brutality gives way to an acoustic guitar lick and subsequent pop hook that is more Nirvana than necro. Not to suggest that this isn't a massively metal album. It is. Their brand of metal is like Venom mixed with Bal-Sagoth: sparkling keyboards strewn over rough-hewn riffage and pounding drums. They're also quite psychedelic (drugs involved for sure), with weird changes and spacey synths. Landing rocketships in the Middle Ages, Meads make for a creditable space rock band. Indeed, these Hawkwind obsessives do a killer Hawkwind cover ("Utopia") with two actual Hawkwind members sitting in! Other guests on this album include Mirai from another AQ fave, Japan's Sigh, one of the only other "black metal" bands on the planet as far-out as the Meads, and Vincent Crowley, somewhat infamous as an underground death metal Satanist. His presence, however cartoonish, illustrates another important point about this record. As random and spicy a goulash their music is, Meads remain a steadfastly black metal band where it most counts: in their opposition to God and religion. Indeed, unlike the majority of black metal acts whose anti-Christian, anti-clerical, pro-Satan stance is indeed just that, a stance or pose, just to conform to the standard black metal aesthetic of being "evil", Meads of Asphodel seem to take this issue more seriously. What we mean is that their lyrics are more about WHY they don't believe in God, than about how cool that makes them. So it turns out that as tongue-in-cheek as so much about them seems (from the cover pics of the band in the guise of armored knights looking rather more hapless than intimidating, to such song titles as "On Graven Images I Glide Beyond The Monstrous Gates Of Pandemonium To Face The Baptised Warriors Of Yahweh In The Skull-littered Plain Of Esdraelon") they actually have a message, if you will. Delivered quite bizarrely and confusingly of course. And that's what we like best, the confounding mixture of the serious and the silly where irony is left in the dust, replaced by question marks and half-smiles, and gleeful enjoyment of some remarkable music. This album is definitely the sort of thing that we at AQ think will both satisfy open-minded metal fans and provide a varied enough dish for folks seeking something weird on the pop/spacerock/electronic side of things. Indeed, did we mention that the aforementioned lengthy song title belongs to a ten minute epick of When-like eclecticism, that brings in techno electronica, Middle Eastern music, and even some acid-jazz organ jamming -- utterly instrumental except for samples of an utterly blasphemous nature? This is indicative in many ways of their bizarro modus operandi. Appealing in so many ways to the extremes of what we might call the AQ-aesthetic, it would have been hard *not* to make this a Record Of The Week.

MPEG stream: God Is Rome
MPEG stream: Guts For Sale
MPEG stream: Sons Of Anak Rise

We all knew the Meads Of Asphodel were a weird bunch. Every record was a baffling slab of confusional black metal, often laced with all manner of VERY non-black metal sounds and ideas. Well, no matter how weird we though they were in the past, they've totally outdone themselves this time. So much so that we would hesitate to even classify this as black metal. There's a lot to be confused by here, from a bizarre collage of military speeches and snippets of random dialogue, to huge swelling synths, super dramatic and over the top, to strange synthesized spaghetti western jams, to not-all-that-metal blasts of propulsive spaced out rock and roll, with groovy Stooges-y riffing, simple pounding drumming, some serious guitar leads, and over the top some Motorhead gone black metal vocals... but that's not all. There are lots of lots of pianos, and soaring female vocals, blissed out stretches of space rock whoosh, some full on old school punk rock. And then there's the completely fucked final track, called "Aborted Stygian Foetus", a sort of industrial electronic metal jam, drum machines, heavy riffing, weird vocals, like some weird mix of Ministry and My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult. But it's not over. After about 20 minutes of silence you'll find the secret track, an intense and seriously silly and fucked up stretch of testifying, over a swirl of church organs, a heavily (British) accented 'preacher' gives a fiery sermon on how we are all wankers and how we are all full of shit. Woah. The new sound could have something to do with the addition of a whole mess of new Meads: Alan Davey of Hawkwind, Mirai from Japanes metal weirdos Sigh, Lesion from Worms Of Sabnock, as well as some synth, trumpet, and not one but TWO female vocalists. The more likely reason for this new direction should be obvious from the cover, all sepia toned, with a crucifix, and piles of dead bodies and that instantly recognizable Crass style text. Like maybe they were going for some sort of Flux Of Pink Indians / Crass / Rudimentary Peni sort of crust vibe!! Although on the inside they're still clad in their armor and chainmail and helmets... So fucking weird.

MPEG stream: Psalm 364
MPEG stream: My Beautiful Genocide
MPEG stream: A Baptism In The Warm Piss Of Slaughtered Children

More distinctly not very black metal weirdness from some of our favorite black metal weirdos. If you might remember back to the most recent Meads release, In The Name Of God, Welcome To Planet Genocide, we were all sort of knocked for a loop by the band's new direction. Or directions. From the very Crass like cut and paste political cover art, to the punky crust and other weirdness inside, these freaks had gone and outweirded even their own weird selves. So now we have the latest single, and it seems, at least for these three songs, the band have abandoned the black metal entirely. All covers. All classics. Stiff Little Fingers, The Ruts and The Stranglers. All done pretty straight, not black metallized or anything, just raw crusty pounding melodic old school punk rock. The Stiff Little Fingers cover is a jam, an awesome song so done straight it's still an awesome song, the vocals appropriately raspy, the guitars buzzing and the drums pounding. The Ruts cover features original Ruts guitarist Paul Fox and sounds as kick ass as the original. The only place things get extra weird is on the final track, the Stranglers cover, where the vocals are strangely processed and sound about as close to black metal as anything here, but then we've got Mirai from the band Sigh with insane blasts of crazy prog synths, and some new wave female background vocals. Sounds like a bit of a mess, and it sort of is, but it's also awesome and totally rocks in this amazingly unhinged way. Meads fans who were thrown off by the lack of buzzing blackness will be even more confused by this triple shot. But if you're into metal and punk rock, you could do way worse than hearing these killer tunes revamped and twisted up a bit by the always brilliantly baffling Meads. Cool old school black and white skull cover. All the records are hand numbered and signed on the label by all the band members. Probably limited too...

The Meads of Asphodel have been a longtime favorite around these parts, not surprisingly, since they've been pushing the boundaries of how black metal is defined with their bizarre, often hilarious brand of nutso, super anti-Christian metal with notable medieval and Middle Eastern influences. Though you will find it impossible to stifle (nervous?) laughter at various moments, the Meads, however, are no joke. In fact, one could argue that their highly unorthodox stance is actually WAY more real and bad ass than the plethora of groups all adopting the same boring, pseudo-Satanic bullshit pose. Maybe some find it difficult to take seriously a band with a penchant for dressing up in medieval armor, but why not? It's certainly no less ridiculous than corpsepaint. The notes in this collection of demos from the band's first phase (1998-2002), penned by group leader Metatron, make it clear that sucking up to record labels and metal fans in general was never part of the agenda. Instead, the Meads have been, and continue to be, true to only themselves. Fuck yeah. With this anything goes mentality, the Meads have delivered some of the weirdest, most incomprehensible metal maybe ever. The influence of NWOBHM greats, notably Venom, shines bright, but how many other black metal groups would you expect to punctuate their evil riffage with parts that sound like drunken medieval wedding parties, disco breakdowns, and country western hoedowns? Not too many. The strangest part about all of these is how randomly they will pop up, when you're never expecting it. Symphonic keyboards are also pretty central to the Meads' sound, with heavy as fuck church organs and harpsichord-styled synths adding a decidedly atmospheric element to it all. There are even some moments of strummed 4AD style jangle, but take note of the covers by GBH and Italian thrashers Bulldozer to get an idea of the band's more aggressive influences. Heavy D-Beats, punkish power chords, and harsh bellowing (in addition to some nice black metal croaking, of course) exist in the mix in pretty much equal measure to everything else. We would be lying if we said this band was for everyone. But for those who like their metal adventurous, totally fucked, and pretty much without precedent, we couldn't recommend this highly enough!

MPEG stream: Just Another Time To Kill
MPEG stream: Rise In Godless Hell
MPEG stream: Another God In Another Place

A UK black metal troupe unlikely to become the next Cradle of Filth, if only because people are always scratching their heads and asking "What the heck are meads?" Regardless of their prospects for wide success, *we've* been eagerly anticipating this release, ever since reading about The Meads in a Terrorizer article on unsigned British metal bands. A mysterious band with esoteric interests, inspired by the shamanic use of psychedelic drugs, and always clad in medieval armor, The Meads of Asphodel immediately intrigued us... and others too, as they've caused quite a buzz with their several demo releases. Now here's their compact disc debut, brought to us by the same label responsible for the ungodly Benighted Leams (THEE most ridiculous and fucked one-man black metal band EVER, remember?) as well as the most recent and also quite fucked Fleurety disc. That ratcheted up our anticipation another few notches. And we have to say that while as it turns out The Meads *aren't* quite as utterly strange as we were expecting, not as insane as Sigh or as ridiculous as fellow Brits Bal-Sagoth, they're still pretty strange, lacing their super-heavy doom-riffed black metal with "medieval" keyboard melodies that seem inspired by King Arthur by way of Return To Forever's "Romantic Warrior"... Silly and tongue-in-cheek they may be (one of the booklet photos depicts the band in full armor, lined up along a wall, apparently urinating), but they seem oddly serious too in the occult details of their lyrics and their elaborate presentation, thereby keeping us guessing. The list of guests who contributed to this disc also is indicative of their unusual approach to black metal: they get help from A.C. Wild of '80s Italian Venom-clones Bulldozer, ex-Hawkwind guitarist Huw Lloyd Langton, vocalist Kobold of fellow UK black metallers Old Forest, and an electro-goth act called History of Guns...weird! The Meads of Asphodel come across as certainly smarter and more eccentric than your average black metal band. Heavy, catchy, and possibly crazed -- recommended!

RealAudio clip: The Watchers Of Catal Huyuk
RealAudio clip: Falling With Lightning Rays Beamed...

What happens when a band that's pretty darn strange as it is on their "proper" albums, goes and lets their hair down (and takes their helmets off) and does a limited-edition release documenting live-in-the-studio alternate versions of some of their songs alongside a previously unheard extended epic entitled "My Beautiful Genocide"? Well if you spin The Mill Hill Sessions by English black metal weirdos the Meads Of Asphodel you'll find out...suffice to say, anyone who was amused and/or amazed by their previous efforts will find this equally far out, or further even. Their spaced-out black metal blend of Venom and Hawkwind is as extreme and eccentric as ever here. Actual Hawkwind alumni Alan Davey and Huw Lloyd Langton are heard jamming alongside Meads band members Metatron, Urkkarmeel et. al. for these sessions, by the way! Intended for loyal fans, this cd isn't seeing wide distribution and we probably won't have it for very long... First, you get six tracks originally recorded for a British metal radio show, including versions of tracks from their The Excommunication of Christ and Exhuming The Grave Of Yeshua albums, and their split ep with Mayhem. And they also do an unexpected cover of Sepultura's punkish "Refuse/Resist" as well! Then you get a second session, one long 20+ minute track that's described as a "work in progress", and it is quite a schizophrenic piece of work indeed, as absurd and insane as you'd expect. Stopping and starting with sloppy abandon, there's metal leads, many jangly acoustic parts, black metal blur, punk breaks (sounding like Stiff Little Fingers says Byram), jazzy interludes, all sorts of stuff thrown in, including vocalist Metatron's endless, half-whispered, half-growled poetic sermon/rant on the subject of...well you can try and figure it out. Compared to your (ahem) "normal" Meads albums, these Mill Hill Sessions employ no studio trickery or extra keyboard overdubs...these tracks are more stripped-down and guitar-oriented. And since apparently they've never played a live show, this is the next best thing, although in the rehearsal space/studio (as pictured in the booklet) the band don't wear the medieval armor with which they are normally fitted out on their album covers and other photo shoots. Shocking! They do promise that their next release will see them back in their "helms and mail" however.

MPEG stream: A Healer Made God
MPEG stream: My Beautiful Genocide

"On a cold Spring morning, around AD 30, a man was hung on a tree, upon a mound of dirt, this is his story, of a man named God." And so it begins, the latest batch of Christian baiting musical propaganda from weirdo UK black metal outfit Meads Of Asphodel, and what might be their most fully realized record, both conceptually and musically, is also not surprisingly their most bizarre, and least black metal. But to be fair, Meads were never your typical black metal band, whether it be jamming out on punk covers, getting a member of Hawkwind to join their grim horde, or infusing their blasting blackness with loads of space rock Frippery and distinctly un-black metal swoops and swirls and fucked up sonic weirdness. It's of course what makes us love these guys so much. Not to mention their hilarious / irreverent approach to playing an inately grim and true and kvlt style of music. The Murder Of Jesus The Jew plays like an Off-Broadway musical, if someone decided to combine a wildly sacrilegious rant and twisted black metal into an Andrew Lloyd Weber style spectacle, and while we wish some day someone would, this is most likely about as close as we're gonna get. And right from the start, this is like no black metal record you've heard, after that haunting narration, the record blossoms into a strange cabaret, like old timey European street music, all horns, and strings, and orchestral bombast, it's not hard to imagine a cobblestone street, and a candlelit tavern, the motley collection of patrons being entertained by this strange musical combo, decked out in full armor, until suddenly, they launch into a blast of buzzing howling black metal, which lasts less than a minute until the horns come in, and the song shifts to a much more major key sounding melody, and then you realize, if you stripped away the blasting drums and the buzzing guitars, you'd still be back in some cabaret stage production, an evil / anti-Christian version of Godspell or Jesus Christ Superstar. Sounds bizarre, and it is, so bizarre, we imagine lots of black metallers will be put off big time, but for the rest of us, this is some twisted, genius shit. And twisted it is, there's not a stretch of buzzing blackness that makes it more than a minute without any weird sonic impudence, usually in the form of a swoonsome melodic bit of overly dramatic balladry, or some sweetly soaring female vocals, those parts so dramatic, and SO good, they really COULD be from some musical... "My Psychotic Sand Deity" flits back and forth between horn laced black metal, to that sort of end-of-the-show schmaltzy big finish, where everyone holds hands and sways back and forth, but it's Meads, so that sweet sunshiney tranquility is shattered in the last few seconds by a burst of black metal that is about as black and frenzied as it gets. And so it goes, a gloriously schizophrenic sonic treatise on the myth of God, and the foolishness of his followers, told in the form of the REAL life story of God, complete with more ominous narration, buzzing black electronics, soaring strings, swirling new agey keyboards, creepy monk like chants, twisted apocalyptic folk ("Stiller Of Tempests" almost sounds like Woven Hand via Godspell, but a bit more evil), "Dark Gethsemane" is a swoonsome shuffling dark pop ballad, but it's quickly followed by "Jew Killer", which is a creepy crawly chunk of lurching, lumbering, atmospheric doom, and it continues to veer wildly from atmospheric power metal classic rock epicness, to bouncy Pogues style drunken metal folk, back to some buzz and blast, and then again to something more black metal Broadway sounding. And finally, the band close the show, with the ridiculously titled "A Canticle for the Lost Amputees of Aelia Capitolina Who Have Been Trampled Under the Iron Shod Hooves of Salivating Hell Rams and Impaled on the Shimmering Tusks of Salvation Within The Abandoned Tabernacle Of A Bronze Age Myth", which according to the liner notes, is sung in ancient Aramaic, and is of course a lengthy twisted bit of warped cabaret laced, piano and electronics flecked, super dramatic, epic and melodic over the top (only sort of black metal) weirdness, and the perfect finish, to a dazzling, bafflingly brilliant record. As absurd as it seems, we would kill for someone to make this into a proper musical, stranger things have happened. Well, okay, not THAT much stranger. As always the core group of Metatron (posing in the booklet, in full armor, with his dog!), J.D. Tait and Vrakbarameel, augment their merry band of armored metal soldiers with a sprawling selection of guests, no less than 14 this time around, including Hoest from black metal horde Taake, Mirai and Dr. Mikannibal from weirdo Japanese metallers Sigh, and Alan Davey from Hawkwind (of course) among many many others. Includes a massive booklet, with tons of photos, and a 'program' with lyrics so you can follow along! MPEG Stream: "My Psychotic Sand Deity" [/audio/meadsoamurmypsy.m3u]

MPEG stream: My Psychotic Sand Deity
MPEG stream: Apocalypse of Lazarus

The return of our favorite crust punk obsessed black metal horde, Meads Of Asphodel. Not sure if they've always been so into eighties punk, but over the last few records, the band have seen fit to mix it up, sprinkling classic covers amidst their epic pagan black metal jams, seems like a weird mix, but somehow, in the twisted sonic world these guys inhabit, it sort of works. Two new tracks, a creepy, medieval intro, buzzy synths, rumbling drones, a growled distorted proclamation, some weirdly cheesy piano, tinkling chimes, sirens, a serious dose of whatthefuck, which gives way to 7 minutes of totally majestic, and classic sounding pagan blackness. NWOBHM inspired guitar harmonies, wrapped around pounding drums, chugging black riffs, the arrangements convoluted and complex, peppered with soaring synths, creepy processed vokills, some haunting interludes, with more of that creepy spoken word, and then right back into the tangled epic thrashing. And then it's on to the covers, some of which make perfect sense, some of which don't at all, which only makes them that much cooler. Doom, Hellbastard and Conflict, the Meads versions of which are appropriately raw and pounding and thrashing, the Hellbastard track has some strange piano melodies draped over chugging guitars and monklike chants, the Conflict cover is weirdly produced, turning the metallic crust punk into something almost cabaret sounding. We had never heard Skeptix before, but the Meads version is awesome, fierce and fast and melodic and heavy as fuck, definitely gonna have to track down the original. Then there's the last cover, going waaaaay back to the roots of heavy metal, The Kinks' "You Really Got me", which the Meads tweak, making the main riff minor key, so it definitely sounds black metal, the vocals over the top and WAY goofy, at first it seems so silly, but as the track plays on it makes some sort of twisted sense, and definitely suits the Meads' fucked up sound. The Meads share this disc with countrymen Old Corpse Road, a sort of naturalistic folk flecked black metal band, but barring the intro of the first song, there's nary any folk to be found, the band spitting out epic, almost orchestral sounding blackness, not that far removed from Cradle Of Filth, with keyboards WAY up in the mix, wild shrieking vox, even some creepy plonking piano melodies, and that's when the folk comes in, the band breaks down into a sort of jig, launching into a jam that wouldn't be out of place on a Finntroll record, complete with group sing along, incredibly catchy, and the more we listen to this, the more we find ourselves digging these guys. Three looooong tracks, super dramatic, over the top, keyboards all over the place, wild vocals that slip from deep croon to hysterical shriek, a tangled almost circusy bit of blackened chaos that is totally kicking our asses. Which means WAY recommended, for both Meads AND Old Corpse Road, and we definitely need to hear more OCR...

MPEG stream: On The Surface
MPEG stream: Same Mind (Doom Cover)
MPEG stream: Hob Headless Rises

The Khrysanthoney label returns after a bit of a break, with a barrage of new releases. Including this, the debut full length from Russian depressive black metal one man band Melankoli, whose sound is a perfect fit for Khrysanthoney, melding the downtuned dirge and melancholic creep of depressive black metal, with something much more lush and cinematic. The nearly 20 minute opener begins with lush synth swirls, strange field recordings, tinkling chimes, dramatic pianos, swirling FX, it almost sounds like M83, or some strange sci-fi soundtrack, the drums come in gradually, a spare, echo drenched pound, a deep dramatic spoken vocal, over a shimmery swirl of piano, total haunting shoegaze slo-mo blissout, swirling harmony vocals, wreathed in the sound of wintery winds, until finally, the guitars come cascading in, and the harsh vokills, but even then, they're paired with the more dreamy, dramatic sounds of the first few minutes, lilting and lovely, anguished and aching, epic and majestic, at times, the sound does grow dense and blackened, seriously heavy, but just as quickly, those moments dissipate, leaving soft synth swirls, or weirdly processed sprawls of electronic flecked drift, the programmed drums transformed into something much more trippy, before once again returning to the brooding, moody, cinematic churn, sprawling like the score for some end of the world epic. And while nothing else on the record is nearly as grandiose, the other four, shorter tracks here conjure up similarly stunning sonic moments, from the whispery electronic intro to "Embrace Of Winter", which runs throughout the whole song, giving it a weird electronic gloom pop, goth wave vibe, to the moody minimal blackened slowcore of "Coma", which should have Alcest / Amesouers fans in heaven, to the synth soaked sprawl of "Through The Shining Stars", which true to its title, sounds like the score to some super psychedelic sci-fi epic, images of huge expanses of space, of endless starfields, super melodic and darkly emotional, peppered with minimal percussion, and lilting electronic melodies, again, hard not to hear a little M83 (maybe M83's recent score for the movie Oblivion?). Melankoli finishes things off with a Death Aura cover, a weirdly epic, murky, moody death march dirge, the sounds blurred and washed out, the vocals a buried-in-the-mix demonic rasp, the melodies minor key and melancholic, a beautifully brooding bit of black buzz loveliness. LIMITED TO 250 COPIES!!!

MPEG stream: Wind
MPEG stream: Embrace Of Winter
MPEG stream: Coma

Ok, so American death metallers Nile might have the market for Egyptian-themed metal all to themselves. And they're damn good at it. But what about the rest of the Middle East? Well, the guys in Melechesh play "Mesopotamian Metal"! And, they actually hail

RealAudio clip: Whispers From The Tower
RealAudio clip: A Summoning Of Ifrit And Genii
RealAudio clip: Oasis Of Molten Gold

Holy crap this band SLAYS. What (the death metal band) Nile are to Egypt, this black metal outfit is to Iraq... That is, Melechesh consider themselves to play "Mesopotamian metal", lyrically focused on the mythology and mysticism of ancient Sumer. Except that, moreso than Nile, the music of Melechesh more fully incorporates influences from the traditional folk musics of the Middle East. So they're kind of an extreme metal version of the '60s Turkish psych bands we love so much, the garagey fuzz guitars replaced with downtuned distorted METAL guitars, making bellydance music with blastbeats. And, unlike Nile who are Americans, the guys in Melechesh actually all originally hail from the region (they're Arabs, emigrated to Europe). Well, they used to have a Texan in the band, the illustrious occultic drumbeast known as Proscriptor (of Absu fame) but on this album he's been replaced with a new drummer, Xul. Proscriptor's a tough act to follow but this Xul guy manages to do so quite well! Wow. We've raved about 'em before, so hopefully you've already got some Melechesh in your collection and are as excited as we are about this new release, which is from the get-go a raging maelstrom of vicious riffage and masterful metal composition. Crushing AND catchy, technical, and very very METAL, yet with that extra Middle Eastern X-factor that makes it even better in our book, and allows the band to slow down for extra-ethnic, atmospheric interludes like "The Scribes Of Kur". Really, there's nothing we can find fault with here at all. A seriously great Middle Eastern metal assault, which even includes a cover of a song by a (Middle Eastern influenced) Canadian pop band, The Tea Party, weirdly, and cooly, enough. It's a shame that it's impossible to think about the ancient cultures and traditions of Middle East, and Iraq in particular, that Melechesh drawns such inspiration from, without of course dwelling on the current fucked up situation there, which sadly hasn't gotten any better since the release of Melechesh's last album back in 2003...

MPEG stream: Rebirth Of The Nemesis
MPEG stream: Deluge Of Delusional Dreams

Good grief, but Melechesh certainly makes it tough for other 'extreme' metal bands to compete. If it wasn't enough that they're masters of razor sharp, ripping blackened deathly thrashy metal, they've also got the Middle Eastern thing going for 'em. Not just lyrically (they're into Mesopotamian mythology) but musically as well this has Middle Eastern motifs, heck there's even some bouzouki on here, and you know how much we like Middle Eastern influenced rock music, all that '60 Turkish psych stuff, well this is the modern metal equivalent! Plus these guys are a lot "closer to the source" than, say, those Egyptology obsessives in Nile, who are Americans. Melechesh are Palestinian Arabs, originally from Israel, and this album was recorded at a studio in Istanbul. It's been four years since their last album, the amazing Emissaries, and they haven't changed much, except to get even better if possible. These songs are, as always, both crushing and catchy, as well as mystically, "magickally" atmospheric... mesmerizingly so, via the heaving heaviness of such tracks as "The Magickan And The Drones" (the magick wins out), full of sinuous, serious, seasawing riffage that leaves us utterly hypnotized. Elsewhere, the blazing fast battery does the same trick. Yet another AQ-approved aspect of Melechesh is how fist-pumpingly metal they manage to be, showing that their Middle Eastern sound might also have something to do with Iron Maiden's "Powerslave"! Definitely for fans of Absu (whose Proscriptor was in fact a Melechesh member for a while), with whom they share some similarities of sound and vision; also of course the aforementioned Nile (though those guys are much more death metal) and Morbid Angel (who also are inspired by ancient Sumer). For another concocted comparison, imagine Dissection with a Middle Eastern makeover, maybe. Highly recommended, this pushes a lot of buttons for us, definitely gonna be a major contender for 2010 top tens. Like we said, when you're listening to this, it's hard to see what else could compete. Comes packaged in a digipak, with suitably esoterically evocative artwork.

MPEG stream: Grand Gathas Of Baal Sin
MPEG stream: Sacred Geometry
MPEG stream: Mystics Of The Pillar

This is the first we've heard from this one woman black metal band, the work of a single entity almost comically named Climaxia, but there's nothing comical about Hel, an epic and super progressive slab of experimental atmospheric black metal. Inspired by Fritz Lang's Metropolis, this six part songsuite finds ME weaving an impossibly lush landscape of black buzz, industrial murk, dreamy almost psychedelic ambience, part one pretty much lays it all out, loping black metal, more muddy and washed out than buzzy, giving the whole thing a seriously dreamlike quality, the sound sound shifts, and splinters into a strange soaring blackened majesty, with some insanely deep demonic bellowed vokills, which get processed and transformed into clouds of hisses and whispers, before the buzz peels away, leaving clean guitar, murky drumming, a sky full of tangled voices, the sound super cinematic and WAY creepy, and then in swoop some angelic clean female vox, the effect choral, almost liturgical really, the sound seeming to grow more and more abstract, more psychedelic, the metal elements disappearing in a cloud of druggy FX heavy swirl. But we're still only partway through, the sound explodes into a grinding gout of heaviness, before once again transforming into a sort of gloomy dirge rock, the vocals now a throaty croon, haunting and heavy. The second track begins in full black metal buzz mode, but again, the timbre and quality of the sound makes it much more dreamy and tranced out, those growled demonic vokills the only thing making it sound truly black metal, and even here, after a minute, the sound devolves into a stretch of clean guitar drift, before launching into another blast of blackness. The whole record, while heavy on the black buzz, spends much of its time drifting through fields of psychedelic shimmer, distant buzz, and slow, dirgey atmospheric creeps, and it's those interludes and non-metal parts that seem to seep into the blacker buzzier parts, transforming them into something much more moody and melancholic, not to mention all sorts of strange effects, warble guitars, twisted harmonies, dubbed out drumming, each song imbued with a sort of soft cacophony, that constantly threatens to overtake the black buzz, and often gloriously does! Packaged in a super swank black and gold six panel embossed digipak...

MPEG stream: I
MPEG stream: II
MPEG stream: III

One of four new releases on the always fascinating, and often perplexing UK tape label The Tapeworm. This one comes courtesy of long time aQ customer and pal, bad ass artist, and scribe for the mighty Wire, Mr. Edwin Pouncey, aka Savage Pencil, along with his partner Sharon Gal, a UK artist and broadcaster. Besides doing time together in a noisy rock outfit called Pestrepeller, the duo unleash a pretty grim din as Meltaot, whose sound is a strange assemblage of abstract guitar drones, whispered incantations, abstract percussion, all woven into a candlelit crawl through some subterranean sonic doomscape, equal parts harrowing atmosphere, noisy abstraction and blackened beauty. Imagine a more artrock Abruptum, lots of squealing feedback way off in the distance, thick chordal buzz up front, lots of space, plenty of scrapes and creaks, moans and whispers, the female vocals are feral and haunting, sometimes slipping into some sort of demonic processed chantlike vokills. We also definitely hear some Angelblood, but picked apart and stretched out into some sort of unholy soundtrack to an endless night lost in a haunted forest, pursued by some unspeakable evil. Intense, and weirdly beautiful, each side a single track, each titled a 'rite', which is precisely what these sound like, the mysterious rites of some forestkult, conjuring up all manner of sonic demoncy. Fans of atmospheric blackness and grimnoize will for sure dig, and even people into other abstract foresty weirdness, a la Sylvester Anfang, Avarus and the like, as long as they're up for something a bit darker, could do with a wonder through these black woods. LIMITED TO 250 COPIES! With a killer Savage Pencil cover illustration.

While we've definitely dug the last few records from Canadian blackened neo-folk duo Menace Ruine, we were initially a bit confused by their shift from grim, psychedelic, experimental black metal, to their newly minted neo-folk incarnation, and while much of the mood and musical ambience remained, some of us still longed for the group's previous incarnation. But over the course of the next two records, we grew to dig their witchy, mystical sound, one that shared seemingly everything but sound with the black metal that birthed them, sinister and haunting, abject and ritualistic, it's no surprise that they continue to be embraced by the BM scene, even though they had essentially ceased playing black metal long ago. But on Alight In Ashes, their blackened strain of neo-folk has definitely drifted even closer to the great black abyss, the sound already grim, but here even more cloaked in shadow, the soaring dramatic vocal incantations, the perfect foil for the roiling blurred riffage and muted power electronics that churn underneath. In fact, the music sounds like slow motion black metal, blurred into sinister swells of smeared riffage and buried rhythms, it makes for a fantastic combo, when coupled with the vocals, which we've seen compared to Nico, but we still hear Jex Thoth or Blood Ceremony or Christian Mistress, and in places, the vocals sound remarkably like a female Mike Scalzi from Slough Feg. The vibe throughout, much like the record before it, continues to be haunting and harrowing, very much like these are in fact mysterious rituals, and arcane incantations, the music often building to dense, near psychedelic crescendos, or slipping into hushed mesmer, the opening track might be the most black metal thing we've heard from Menace Ruine since they shed their black buzz, a sprawling, dynamic expanse of murky metallic churn and smeared shadowy psychedelic shimmer. Elsewhere, the sound shifts to something much more medieval, that ancient music simulated by electronic buzz and minimal percussion, or the music groans and heaves, like a symphony of moaning strings, even sans vocals, the music here would be some fascinating collection of blackened electronic ragas, but with the vocals, the sound is transformed into some sort of divine doom-ed blackened medieval folk, and we find ourselves no longer missing the black buzz one bit.

MPEG stream: Set Water To Flames
MPEG stream: Salamandra
MPEG stream: Burnt Offerings

What to make of a black metal band that has releases on both the Alien8 (Nadja, Merzbow, Acid Mothers Temple) and Tour De Garde (Ash Pool, Marblebog, Tomb Of..., Uno Actu) labels? That they're probably pretty weird? They are. And intense too. This is some sick stuff. Also beautiful, if you, like us, have fallen under the spell of this most extreme aesthetic, if you're someone whose eyes/imagination can scan the soot-blackend skies of an apocalyptic otherworld, and still spy flights of swans and stars beyond. Menace Ruine, from the "frozen north" of Quebec, are the mysterious male/female duo of S. de La Moth and Genevieve. This James Plotkin-mastered Alien8 release is their debut album, after one demo (being reissued as a cassette on Tour De Garde). MR's original black metal art really made an immediate impression upon us despite how easily jaded we can be with the glut of black metal out there. It's the unholy layering of sometimes melodic feedback-sculpted ambient drone howl, with machine gun blasting... long stretches of atmospheric synth heavily infiltrated with sheer noise and distortion, scattered further with clanging industrial raw rhythms. There's almost 20th c. avant-garde moments of majesty, like some Romanian electronic composer gone insane in his or her sound laboratory, and others that with the occasional female vox bring to mind Wolves In The Throne Room wandering in another dimension. Or simply blaze with the burning black metal fires of not mere churches but whole civilizations. For Alien8's first foray into the troo cvlt world of black metal, they couldn't have done much better, with a release that's indeed (oc)cult and true but also experimental, and not something that we've heard already a thousand times before, a rarity indeed! Fiercely recommended.

We reviewed the debut cd from this boy / girl black metal duo from Canada, a few lists back, released on the not typically black metal label Alien8, and gushed appropriately about its gorgeous drone drenched minimalist black buzz. We mentioned then that they also had a release on Tour De Garde, the label run by the guys in Akitsa, and we've now finally managed to track down a bunch of copies of that first tape. If anything, this one is more metal (but in parts just as experimental), less minimal, with a sound much more intense, drums and vocals the focal point. The sound less blissed out and atmospheric. It's a strange sound, one that changed pretty dramatically for their next record, but we ended up digging this as much as the Alien8 release. It's both the drums and the production that make this record so intense, the sound is super hot, the recording vivid and loud without being blown out, and the drums, programmed we assume, are furious and LOUD and pretty much drive all the action. Way up in the mix, pounding relentlessly, peppered with flurries of double kick and blasting fills, the guitar alternately unfurling clouds of harmonics, or grinding riff for riff right alongside the drums, turning the metal into something more looped sounding and trancelike, eventually exploding into a weird processed dronescape, all glitchy buzz, and streaks of hiss, whirring electronics, and bits of crumbling distortion, drums still there, buried now underneath this churning slab of fuzz and buzz and blur, until those drums lurch up of the murk, and the guitars lock back into a strange static riff, the rhythm more sparse, with dark throaty female vocals, suddenly the sound is some black gothic doom, still the guitars grind and soar, chunks of jagged melody are hurled back and forth, the sound is just so good, so intense, and so strange. This is so unlike any other black metal we've heard. Listening to this tape has us wanting to go back to the Alien8 disc and dig deeper into that one too. Later on, the band dabble in huge trudging black doom, the guitars so processed and blown out, they emanate a warm fuzzy aura, the programmed drums monstrous and pummeling, making the rhythms sound almost like dance music at times, while sounding like a less lo-fi Nadja at others. Distant howled vocals, throbbing distorted low end. This shit is just so crushingly heavy but not at all in the way we're used to. Hard to describe. But we've listened to this tape about 4 times in a row now, and have no plans to stop� Packaged in beautiful textured paper sleeves, some blue, some red.

For their sophomore full length, Canada's Menace Ruine return not exactly as the heavy noise inspired black metal band you know and love, but as a neo-folk, noise-rock powerhouse. You may be wondering like us: did we miss something? And what exactly is the link? Well, maybe it's the misanthropic, anti-humanist ethos shared by both neo-folk and black metal artists that somehow ties them together. Or maybe it's the fascination with all things medieval. Or maybe it's the general brooding and ever-present sense of darkness. Could it be written off as a shared love of sonic tension? Wait, wait ... there is a difference between them somewhere, right? As the label astutely points out, in the wake of both Leviathan and Nachtmystium covering Death in June, this sort of explicit crossover makes tons of sense. And really, it might be a tad reductive to simply say that this sounds like a black metal band that wrote songs for Der Blutharsch, but it's not too far off the mark. Menace Ruine probably couldn't escape their uber-noise tendencies even if they wanted to, but other than that, the comparison essentially holds true. It is also worth noting that the label mentions an upcoming Merzbow collaboration. Woah! Man, you know a record is good when it isn't simply good, but it leaves your head spinning trying to figure out what just fucking happened, and if you've read this far then you've seen all our questions. This is what you'd hear if Moss, The Dead C, and Douglas P were caught in the middle of some bizarre, church burning audial orgy. Potential fans of something that could convolutedly be described as tortured, grim, militaristic folk-noise will absolutely want this. And if that doesn't scream recommended, then we're not really sure what the hell does.

MPEG stream: One Too Many
MPEG stream: This Place of Power

Not quite black metal, though doubtless Menace Ruine would happily bask in the smoldering embers of a charred church somewheres up north. Not exactly militaristic neo-folk either. Nor are they a noise band. Well, maybe noise. But that's only part of it. Their dark, distorted drone textures are also often adorned with witchy female vocals, a la Jex Thoth. So, three albums in, this Quebec girl-boy duo of Genevive and S. de la Moth are still quite hard to define, though we know we like 'em, and the Menace Ruine music they make (indeed a mix of noise, drone, folk, and black metal moves) is grim as well as sometimes quite gorgeous, that is if you're like us and can find the beauty in ten-minute long tracks of misanthropic sonic miasma. Perhaps it's the way the ceremonial lamentation of Genevive's gentle singing merges with the slowly churning electronic extremes of intense, dense distortion and feedback... Certainly this new release via Aurora Borealis (following previous efforts on Alien8 and Tour De Garde) is a fine continuation of their unique post-black metal noise-folk aesthetic. If you liked The Die Is Cast that came before this, you'll probably like this too. And fans of bands as diverse as Burial Hex, Dead Raven Choir, Velvet Cacoon, Current 93, Wolf Eyes, and Alcest, among others, ought to check out Menace Ruine if you haven't already.

MPEG stream: Collapse
MPEG stream: The Upper Hand
MPEG stream: Not Only A Break In The Clouds But A Permanent Clearing Of The Sky

The list can get a bit frustrating, in more ways than one, but we're constantly frustrated by too many records and not enough time, which means inevitably, some badass band that we love somehow never makes it onto the list. It happened with noiserock mice-fits White Mice finally reviewed elsewhere on this list, and it happened with French black metallers Merrimack, who are on full length number three, and who are only now making it onto the list for the first time. What can we say, we do our best, and as far as Merrimack is concerned, they rule, you should definitely buy this new one, and if you dig it as much as we think you will, you should buy the other two as well. Why you ask? Cuz there's just something about French black metal. Something special, a definite vibe, a certain sound, although Grey Rigorism sounds very modern, and very Scandinavian, which is not a bad thing at all, but don't be expecting insane gnarled blackened weirdness or fucked up freaked out damaged black metal, Merrimack are super tight, their songs are dense and grim, slipping easily from midtempo pound, to furious blast, to almost industrial sounding stop start lurch, these guys would definitely have been right at home on Moonfog, along with Khold and Satyricon and other super slick sounding buzzing black hordes. There are some strange moments here for sure, a couple tracks where the band lock into some doomy dirge while some mysterious French sample plays over the top, and the lengthy closing track, a multi parted epic that finds the band slipping from frantic blast to loping post rock to slow lumbering doom, there's some strange female spoken word part too laced amidst the howling vokills, but for the most part, Grey Rigorism is some super tight, well produced black buzzing grimness, and we dig it. Features members of other elite French BM hordes Ancestral Fog, Corpus Christii, Glorior Belli and Morte Incandescente, and killer artwork by Seldon Hunt...

MPEG stream: The Golden Door
MPEG stream: Omniabsence
MPEG stream: By Thy Grace

MPEG stream: Seraphic Conspiracy (Of The Angels And Their Mission)
MPEG stream: Melancholia Balneam Diboli (Of Acedia And Her Daughters)

Dethklok is back!!! Our favorite animated purveyors of apocalyptic metal destruction have returned to face their demons both mighty and petty. In season two, they venture into the horrors of fashion, P.R., detox, the dating scene, state politics, as well as staging the largest public criminal execution of all time and of course botching it big time. This season they are faced with new mortal enemies from the Tribunal (one voiced by Malcolm McDowell), as well as an army of disfigured and damaged former fans called The Revengencers. Can Dethklok finally release their new record to save the World Economy, or will they be crippled by their childish infighting and developmentally challenged destructive behaviors? We never listed the first season, but we were all pretty much OBSESSED. The music is amazing, so good it's hard to believe they're not a real band, and the band members various accents are SO impossible to understand which almost makes it funnier and will probably have you turning on the subtitles, and the carnage, oh the carnage, so much blood... Brutal!

Leave it to the Russians to school us on the dark realities of existence with their relentlessly insular take on black metal. Everyone knows and loves Old Wainds and Nav, and now we have Meti Bhuvah, an intense whirlwind of blackened punk fury from the icy North that sounds like it could have easily stepped out of 1986. The abundance of stripped down thrashing punk riffs and guttural, bile spewing vocals, combined with appropriately lo-fi yet powerful recording quality, pretty much sound like the perfect balance of crusty D-Beat punk and Bathory's first record with bursts of pre-crossover American Hardcore a la Siege, COC, and SSD. The drums are generally a medium paced pound, the guitars are like napalm with occasional moments of phased out weirdness from the archaic recording devices, and the bass sounds amazing as it gurgles and distorts its way around the rest of the maelstrom. There isn't much variation to the affair, nor should there be. Instead, Meti Bhuvah stick to the basics, much in the vein of Ildjarn, and never let you forget why you relinquished your soul to the dark side in the first place. The riffs are evil yet catchy as hell and the saturation of pure metallic rage begins to take on a throb of psychedelic proportions if you just let it sink in and take over. In a little more than thirty minutes, Meti Bhuvah takes you on a blackened journey through the Russian wilderness that skews your perception and pummels your eardrums into senselessness. Just the way we like it.

MPEG stream: Immersion
MPEG stream: Desire
MPEG stream: Pleasure
MPEG stream: Blood, Flames And Ice

THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

SORRY.

Got just a handful of these tapes, from a batch of 120, from this new-ish group featuring members of several aQ faves including Pussygutt / Wolvserpent and A Story Of Rats, recorded a few years back, and sold mostly on the recent Wolvserpent / ASOR tour. And for folks who are familiar with either or both of those bands, the sound of Mezektet isn't that far removed, shimmering strings, melancholic steel string guitar, ominous percussion, all hazy and woozy and otherwordly, sounding at times like some sort of gypsy folks spinning at 16rpm, definitely a dark doomfolk vibe, but like the players' other projects it leans toward the black and the metal, and in this case, actually does spend much of it's time in metal mode, pounding drums and frenzied riffage, howled vokills, but here, those sounds are smoothed out and blurred, wreathed in high glistening crystalline tones, the sound a murky loopscape more than a proper black blast, almost as if Tim Hecker was trying his hand at black metal, needless to say, it sounds incredible, tripped out and heavy, atmospheric and darkly moody, definitely need to hear more from these guys (and gal). Hope this wasn't just a one off, cuz it's definitely as good as anything the various members have done in their other projects. Sadly, we only have about 10 copies left, and pretty sure it's already sold out and out of print. So grab one quick before it's too late. LIMITED TO 120, each one hand numbered, recorded on cool metallic green tapes.

NOW ON VINYL!!! This is the first we've heard from Mgla in a few years, they the cloaked nihilistic Poles making some of the most tantalizing modern black metal. Mgla have long had aversion to anything resembling self-promotion or ego; their matching black outfits worn during live shows that blot out any individual identity, all untitled tracks, and, this release in particular, which was uploaded with nary an announcement except to tell us that we should wait for a proper physical release for optimum quality. And here that release is! Exercises in Futility perfects what Mgla have always done best: combine the nihilistic and bleak fury of the best black metal with the songwriting and melodies of a pop band. That's not to say there's anything cheery about this record, just that Mgla can somehow make a melancholic, knuckle-dragging riff into a catchy melody that won't leave your head. The guitar work is intricate yet dissonant, nihilistic yet made with great care, and the rare combination of tragedy and victory. The rhythm section is held down by the mysterious Darkside, who also drums for Kriegsmachine, in which he shows off a much mathier, chaotic style of drumming, but on here, he works more to service the already top-notch songwriting. There's an unmistakable style to Darkside's drumming, a sort of rolling disco beat on the ride, hard to describe but impossible to forget, and which somehow totally works to make those parts sound totally furious. The production on here mimics that perfect combination; clear enough to have full war-like force but murky enough to still feel bleak and rain-soaked like any good black metal record should. It's clear to us at this point that Mgla are in a league of their own. Exercises In Futility is a modern black metal masterpiece, and easily one of the top metal releases of the year.

MPEG stream: Exercises In Futility III
MPEG stream: Exercises In Futility IV

The long awaited and first proper full length from this Polish black metal horde with the unpronounceable moniker (Mgla means 'fog' in Polish btw). We first heard Mgla on the incredible Crushing The Holy Trinity compilation, sharing sonic space with such black metal luminaries as Deathspell Omega, Clandestine Blaze, Exordium, Musta Surma, and Stabat Mater. At the time we had never heard Mgla, let alone heard OF them, but they definitely held their own, and then some. Soon after came their Presence ep, which continued to demonstrate Mgla's mastery of loping minor key buzz, layering the Burzumic murk with woozy melodies, and adding flurries of double kick blast beats, managing to invoke the old masters while somehow creating a black sound all their own. So now comes Groza, a 4 part, 36 minute full length, and holy shit is it good. Everything we loved about Mgla before is present, but the songwriting has improved greatly (songwriting is not always a priority in black metal, not as much as stringing together kick ass riffs) and the sound is better to. An excellent production that manages to keep plenty of buzz, but makes the guitars burn bright, the drums don't get lost at all, especially the double kick which adds awesome percussive accents to long stretches of buzz. The opener alone is worth the price of admission. A ridiculously catchy main riff that manages to still sound grim and black. The drums a simple groove (some Khold-ish moments for sure), with brief flurries of double kick, but it's the second part/riff that truly transcends, after a gorgeous midtempo bridge/breakdown, the band launch into an incredible arpeggiated mid tempo groove, a minor key melody as melancholic as it is catchy, wrapped around the main riff, those double kick drums leaping to the fore, it's hard to explain, but it's just awesome, it has the same power as a timeless pop song, that riff is just so emotional and intense. Every time the song loops back around to THAT part, it's just perfect. Even when the est of the instruments explode into a blast, that main melody keeps swirling endlessly, and makes even the blast haunting and moving. There's also a awesome drum breakdown in the middle, before the band lurches back into dreary woozy minor key miserblist action. So awesome. It took about 10 listens before we could even review this record cuz we just kept listing to the first track over and over and over. So imagine our surprise when the second track hit the very same spot, offering up a gorgeously mournful minor key melody, a killer groove, all wrapped around some incredible drumming, verging on mathrock, but never going quite that far, instead just pounding away, letting the riff transform the blackness into something special. And the last two movements follow suit. The more we listen to this, the more the Khold comparison seems apt. Only insomuch as there is a distinct pop element, and a groove, falling in that no man's land between blast and dirge, and the guitar parts don't just buzz, they swirl and whirl and shimmer, there are vocals too, of the growly demonic sort, but they bow before the riffs, and the beats, and unlike a lot of black metal, there is definitely some bass happening, adding to the thickness of the sound and that element of groove. It's funny, we get so much to listen to every week, so not everything gets the amount of listening time it deserves, and when we set out to review this, actually, it was definitely going to be positive, but nothing too effusive and fawning, but on repeated listens, and on closer headphone listens, we're realizing this could very well be a contender for one of our favorite black metal records of the year....

MPEG stream: Groza I
MPEG stream: Groza II

We reviewed the massive triple cd black metal collection, Crushing The Holy Trinity a while back, a compilation of some of the most fucked up and amazing black metal we'd heard in ages, due in no small part to the contributions of long time AQ faves Deathspell Omega and Clandestine Blaze. The rest of the collection was made up of lesser known bands, all of whom managed to kick our asses as well. One of the bands we had never heard of, but whose contribution etched itself in our memory like an upside down crucifix held in the fire and then pressed into our foreheads was the bizarrely monickered MGLA. This Polish (as far as we can tell) horde traffic in the same sort of loping midtempo black metal as their countrymen Graveland. Nods to Nargaroth and Woodtemple as well. That gloriously droney, midtempo, murky and fuzzed out blackened buzz we can never get enough of, interrupted by occasional bursts of stumbling blast beats, lightning fast mosquito buzz riffs, glass gargling demonic howls, all with a subtle Viking vibe. The whole thing is swathed in Burzumic ambient fuzz, and laced with mournful Xasthur-ish arpeggiated minor key melodies. Awesome. Can't wait for the forthcoming full length!

MPEG stream: Presence I
MPEG stream: Presence II

Odorously belched from the cesspit of Lucifer's most depraved sulphur kegger, Midnight have returned as subtly as a spiked fist in a circle pit to deliver only their second proper full length since first slithering forth from Cleveland's fetid devilwomb over a decade ago. Those most cult and initiated know what's on tap here: Only the filthiest blackened punk & roll clatter in the truest MotorVenom mold, vocalist Athenar's depraved howl literally sounding like Cronos reborn. The songs ranging from uptempo necksprainers to mid tempo plodding fist pumpers, but always fucking dirty, fucking rowdy, and above all really fucking catchy. In fact, that's the only real noticeable difference between No Mercy For Mayhem and these hooded menaces' previous output - the hooks. Every song is an instant sing-along speedball, chockfull of brainworm choruses and dangerously addictive riffs - it's basically impossible not to get caught up in all the sleazy fun. So no, this ain't no grand departure for Midnight, but who in the hell would want that?? No Mercy instead finds them refining their sound to the point of bloody leathered ecstasy. Obviously recommended for fans of the aforementioned Venom and Motorhead, but also newer upstart maniaxe like aQ faves Speedwolf. But don't think about it too much. Just turn the stereo on, turn your brain off, turn the cross upside down, etc etc. And then spend the next 36 minutes losing your mind. (Satanic side note: Include a bonus live disc for further aural devastation!)

MPEG stream: Evil Like A Knife
MPEG stream: Prowling Leather
MPEG stream: Degradation

We listed this amazing black metal disc way back in July '99 (AQ-list #77) but somehow it never made it on to our website database! Also, it's been out of print for about a year now -- but just this week we got newly-repressed copies from the label. "Yes, that's plural Apocalpyses, how evil is that?! And only one key to those gates...anyway, this disc is perhaps Allan and Andee's favorite new black metal find. A one-man side project of Russian (!) Emperor-clones Nokturnal Mortum. While that band was merely ok, this project absolutely rules. One track only, an over-seventy minute long 'song' that begins with dark ambient rumblings, encounters growling wolves, delves into Burzum-like fuzz-trance, all that before erupting into truly epic black metal riffing...an hour later you'll be hiding under your bed trembling with fear (or perhaps slaking your thirst with blood and howling at the moon) but the song still isn't over! A very impressive piece of work. Triumphant evil!" Since I wrote that, pagan folk metallers Nokturnal Mortum (who are actually Ukrainian, really, not Russian -- a distinction important to them, I'm sure!) have released some newer albums that we really liked, notably their latest, "NeChrist", which many of you bought and presumably enjoyed. Anyone that applies to MUST get this disc too if you don't already have it. Likewise for fans of other avantgarde black metal like Caacrinolas or the aforementioned Burzum and Potentiam... Let me (Allan) quote myself again, this time from the pages of, uh, Cool Beans magazine: "...this disc is amazing! Not just for the novelty of a seventy-minute 'song' that incorporates both ambient forest-rumble (I swear, you'll smell the breath of the wolf) and straight-up black metal riffarama, but for the sheer quality of the music alone! ... Perfect for staring out of a train window into a darkened, rainy and unknown landscape of a foreign land." Obviously, recommended!

THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

SORRY. The original Invasion label version of this has been out of print for along time, but now we have it back in stock, repressed on Hammerheart, with new (not so ridiculous but not really better either) cover art. This is what we said about it before: Viking heavy/black metal at its alehorn-swinging best (with album title related cover art that is either so stupid it's funny or so funny it's stupid). This band manages to incorporate folky melodies yet rock like a heavy metal band should. Better than Einherjer, not as extreme as Enslaved (but maybe more fun). The song with the line about "my magic hammer" is my favorite.

Record number two from these twisted avant Canadian death metallers, whose sound has less in common with Morbid Angel or Deicide and WAY more in common with the warped and twisted metal of groups like Portal, WOLD, Impetuous Ritual, Cremation and Gorguts. Years in the works and meticulously assembled, Parasignosis is a dizzying, ultra prog outsider death metal blow out, rife with impossibly obtuse arrangements, super demented time stretched vocals that sound like a blurred droned out gurgle, the guitars don't buzz and chug as much as they ooze and swirl and soar, the sound muddy and murky and blurry and chaotic, a churning, roiling morass of downtuned guitars, of chaotic intricate drumming, of those fucked up vokills, as well as strange samples, buried whispers, the normal blast and pound and pummel, infused with super druggy psychedelia, with the tracks constantly slowing down and spacing out, the guitars unwinding into loose tangles of psychedelic leads, and unfurling layered, textured spidery melodies, the riffs themselves gnarled and twisted, the band locking into long stretches of hypnometal, sounding almost looped as they pound out mesmerizingly cyclical blasts of grinding blackened crush, or alternatingly letting the guitars spiral skyward unleashing frenzies of super dense melodic psychedelia, draped over the furious pounding blasts below, the whole thing an undulating ever shifting super complex and convoluted deathmetalscape, as likely to pummel relentlessly, as slip into some heavily effected blackened drift or trip out into some sort of death metal space rock psychedelic hybrid, finishing off the record with an extended ambient outro, all abstract guitars, strange twisted organs, buried industrial crunch, all smeared into a hazy sprawl of blackened otherworldly deathlike drift. AWESOME.

MPEG stream: Tetravirulence (Pestilentiam Intus Vocamus, Voluntatem Absolvimus Part III)
MPEG stream: Trials
MPEG stream: Parasignosis

Mutiilation, Vlad Tepes, Belketre, Torgeist... all groups that typically inspire a certain amount of reverence and awed respect in black metal circles, those outfits being the more well known members of Les Legions Noires, aka the Black Legions, a small underground group of black metal musicians, who came together in the late eighties / early nineties, and created a super distinctive, and extremely kult body of work. The Black Legions numbered maybe ten people, but in different configurations, those ten formed multiple bands and projects, and released super limited, and nearly impossible to get demos, from strangely named hordes like Vzaeurvbtre, Brenoritvrezorkre and Vermyapre Kommando. And while the sound was typically raw and primitive, black and buzzy, noisy and super lo-fi, there was another side of the Black Legions, groups who trafficked in a sound a bit more mysterious and moody, a black ambient strain that gave us outfits like Amaka Hahina and Aakon Keetreh. But by far, our favorite of those more black ambient Black Legions groups, was Moevot, aka Vordb Dreagvor Uezreevb, who also played in loads of other Black Legions outfits like Belketre, Torgeist, Brenoritvrezorkre, Vagezaryavtre, etc. Moevot conjure up a seriously grim and creepy sound world, brooding and murky, the sound fuzzy and low fidelity but somehow simultaneously lush and layered. The overall sound has a vibe much like current soundscapers like The Caretaker and Tim Hecker, but more home brewed, more raw and primitive, stripped down and skeletal in places, but almost noisy in others. Some tracks sound like black metal riffs, played with no distortion, slowed down and blurred into swirling streaks of pulsing mesmer, others are just voices, and sound choral / liturgical, haunting and hushed. Scattered throughout are field recordings of crackling fires, chirping birds, whispering winds all woven into softly whirring organs, gentle acoustic guitar strum, monk like chanting, and woozy spectral croons, long stretches of near silence, bleed into dreamily melancholic slow motion melodies, tranquil and soporifically hypnotic. Hushed, barely there drifts, float over distant sonic swirls, buried murky melodies unfurl throughout, there ARE raspy vokills here and there, but they sound so much more mysteriously abject when placed amidst the otherwise dreamlike blackened sonic landscapes. So gorgeous and otherworldly, a bleary, balearic sprawl of soft focus, creeping black beauty, a grimly blissful songsuite that's equal part slowed down nightmare lullaby and woozy atmospheric dreamdrift thrum. If this weren't a cassette that was LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, you can bet this would have / could have / should have been a Record Of The Week!

MPEG stream: In Einem Friedhof - Errance
MPEG stream: Notre Pere
MPEG stream: Oraison
MPEG stream: Voultehtr Voaguprueeb

Finally, the first proper full length from Ukrainian one man black metal horde Moloch. As we mentioned in our review of the split tape from a while back (the only thing we'd been able to get in sufficient numbers to list), we have been totally obsessed with Moloch, doing whatever we could to get a hold of everything and anything he's recorded. Which is quite a feat as he's released about 40 records, many of them box sets, and making it even more of a feat is the fact that most were limited to between 10 and 40 copies. Argghhh. Andee has even been emailing with Moloch about possibly releasing something on tUMULt, all in the interest of making these gorgeously grim sounds available to more than a handful of connected diehards. So in steps the fine folks at BlackMetal.Com, who have released Depression Of Surtr, a best of compilation, gathering up various tracks from a handful or releases, as well as a bunch of unreleased tracks (although since barely anyone has heard most of this stuff, they're essentially ALL unreleased). So what has got us all in a tizzy about this Moloch character? Hard to explain, but with most black metal, it's as much about vibe as it is sound, and these tracks, besides sounding amazing, are so weirdly haunting and mysterious, the guitars so saturated and blown out, the drums buried in the mix, more of a pulse than a beat, and the vocals, somewhere between Weakling and Silencer, howled and wailed and utterly anguished. So tortured and over the top, again simultaneously adding to the vibe and mood as well as the sound. But besides the vibe, which is about as harrowing and haunting and GRIM as can be, the sound is fucking epic, Burzum by way of Abruptum, mostly midtempo, even the blasts are only slightly faster, the guitars are super distorted and droney, the sort of trance-y buzz that has us immediately entranced. There are also some long stretches of black ambience, of shimmery drift and rumbling dronemusic, which makes sense, as Moloch has also released 10 or 15 entire discs full of ambient music, but here they nicely balance the blown out grimnity of the more buzzy blown out tracks. There's even a couple covers at the end, one a Burzum cover, all pianos and synths, lilting and minor key, the other a Darkthrone cover, which is totally bizarre, swooning synths over an awesomely cheesy drum machine (which sounds remarkably similar to the one built into the boom box in the back room). Not sure what to even make of it, so strange, and a little bit silly, but once you get immersed in it, it does seem to sound a bit more haunting. But only a bit. But then that's what we were talking about, the vibe, and the mood, and Moloch creates such a strange unpredictable vibe, with his skewed perspective on black metal, which is what makes his sound, and his records so amazing. And which is exactly why we're so obsessed...

MPEG stream: Ljosalfaheimr
MPEG stream: Throught Halo Of Fire-Brands
MPEG stream: En As I Dype Skogen (Darkthrone Cover)

These two most recent release from Ukrainian one man black metal band had us seriously confused. We originally reviewed the OTHER one that wasn't out yet, thinking it was this one, then did properly review that one, and are now finally reviewing THIS one, a 4 song, 20 minute ep that was originally released as a super limited lp on Prison Tatt records. Not surprising we'd be confused, as we mentioned in out other review of the OTHER new Moloch tape, these two come on the heels of over ONE HUNDRED releases! And yet, every time we hear something new, we immediately remember why we've always dug Moloch so much, and Depressive Black Metal Plague is no different, a loping, dirgey, depressive black metal that is thick with crumbling buzz, primitive stumbling drumming, sung/spoken vocals, the first track a slo-mo creep, that lumbers along before the sound grows gradually more and more noisy and buzzy, building to an almost psychedelic blackened squall before the guitars and drums drift away, leaving just the bass to wind down to the end. Somehow the second track cranks up the distortion even more, thick swirls of blown out crumbling buzz, the vocals too, and anguished wail way up in the mix, those two elements almost entirely obscuring the haphazard drumming below, harsh and lo-fi, grim and melancholically black, that sound oozing into the next track, droned out and trancey, the biggest sonic shift coming in the final track, which sounds almost freeform by comparison, the guitars cranked and in-the-red, the drums total free jazz freakout mode, a dense dizzying blast of black buzz dirgery, before everything drops out, leaving the final few minutes to just stately synths, and mournful melodies. LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!!

MPEG stream: Plague I
MPEG stream: Plague IV