[ aquarius records — Metal Black Metal ]

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Showing results 1551 through 1600 of 2429.

Our favorite Ukrainian black metal band releases, not a new album, but a cd containing the music from their early demo cassette, previous to their "Goat Horns" debut. Majestic grimness from the pagan forests! If you don't already have their "NeChrist" disc,

RealAudio clip: Perun's Celestial Silver

Imagine the Charlie Daniels Band jammin' with Emperor. Or rather, playing at the same time in adjoining practice rooms -- out in the forest. The ancient forests of the Ukraine, to be precise. That's where Nokturnal Mortum hail from. This is their third album. You may remember the big fuss we made over the amazing Mistigo Varggoth Darkestra disc last year? Well, Mr. Varggoth is the main guy in this band Nokturnal Mortum. With "NeChrist", he and his comrades have created a unique sound, one that combines a raw, roaring black metal attack with the pipes and fiddles and "yee-haws" of folk/country music, Ukrainian style. And, to make us AQ-ers enjoy this EVEN MORE, all of a sudden all the music will stop and the middle part of a track will be occupied by the croaking of frogs! And you know we like frogs and the noises they make. Similarily, the final song on the disc is preceded by 78 short (3 sec.) tracks of twittering birdsounds and forest ambience. Therefore, if you play the disc in "shuffle" mode, you get lots of cut-up bird calls mixed with the occasional actual fantastic Nokturnal Mortum song! The unanimous AQ black metal pick of this lunar month!! Brilliant. Yee-haw! (Recommended.)

RealAudio clip: The Funeral Wind Born In Oriana

There's very few comparisons to listening to Nokturnal Mortum. The Charlie Daniels Band jammin' with Emperor? Bizarre black metal hoedown? Some sort of line dancing campfire jamboree gone horribly horribly wrong? The unholy spawn of the grimmest black metal and a hauntingly festive medieval gypsy folk? Okay, so maybe there are more than a few comparisons, but they all tend to center around NM's unlikely country-gypsy-folk / black metal hybrid. Precisely what makes them so completely and bizarrely brilliant. This Ukranian horde unleash the ghost hounds and the battle commences with the sounds of galloping horses, strange battle horns, the strangled cries of wounded beasts, the clatter of steel on chain mail, sounds that continue throughout the entire record. It's almost like a field recording of some epic medieval battle, a mad dash through corpse strewn villages, with occasional bursts of black metal buzz from some random corpsepainted ghouls playing in the smoking rubble of a burnt and blackened tavern, or from within a copse of twisted trees, the metal soon drifts into the background as you head deeper into the forest, are farther out upon the battlefield. Nokturnal Mortum's particular take on black metal tends toward the buzzing midtempo gallop and lope, thick and gnarled and fuzzed out, a la Burzum, Graveland, Woodtemple, etc. But more often than not, these black bursts twist into unlikely shapes, blackened metallic jigs, strangely festive and rollicking but still razor sharp and dense with guitar buzz and ripping riffs, jubilant (yet still slightly ominous) gypsy stomps, but laced with spiky guitars and blasting drums. Most noticeable this time around are the extensive ambient interludes, swooshy, starlit night twinkle and shimmer, lush wooshes over tinkly melodies, almost new age-y at moments, but it's not long before you are felled once again by a sharp slab of utter blackness, or a rollicking jubilant mace to the temple, all part of the curious journey through Nokturnal Mortum's bizarrely blackened world. While they last we have the super deluxe oversized hardcover book version (limited to 1000 copies), once we run out of those you'll get the regular jewel case version (which also happens to be cheaper!).

MPEG stream: I Feel The Breath Of Ragnarok
MPEG stream: Weltanschauung
MPEG stream: Hailed Be The Heroes

MPEG stream: Spina De Mul

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SORRY. Everyone's favorite metal magazine. Dodheimsgard on the cover, with Darkthrone, Immolation, Godflesh, and more. Ridiculously brutal reviews and bizarre nonsensical writing to the point of being surreal. Plus their newest and silliest feature; a 'sexy death goddess' will pose for readers per their suggestions (hopefully they'll heed my suggestion in a future issue and she'll dress up like a Hot Dog On a Stick girl!!).

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SORRY. More "entertainment for maniacs" from this seminal Norwegian black metal magazine. Cover stars: Gorgoroth ("What an astonishing and Devilish album 'Incipit Satan' really is. That's what we think, and therefore Infernus and Tormentor had some questions to answer"), plus Notre Dame, Necromantia, Impaled Nazarene, Necrophagia, Carpathian Forest, and more. The Gorgoroth interview is demented, as they somehow answer all the questions in even more bizarre a manner than they were asked. And, as usual, there's a ton of reviews written in the now-infamous fucked up Nordic Vision vocabulary, as well as their dumb "Sex & Satan" pictorial feature, and the "Soundcheck" department where black metal celebs like Fenriz, Shagrath, Samoth, Maniac, and Frost rate current releases. Another eccentric, silly, fascinating issue of our favorite Norwegian metal magazine. Sample editorial comment: "We have dived into the Necro World of bands like Necrophagia, Necrodeath, and Necromantia."

**SALE **SALE* *SALE** Did some cleaning in the back of the store, found a stash of these that we reviewed back on list #187. So, last ever copies, marked down, get 'em while you can... Once again, another soul chilling blast of frosty grimness from Sweden's Total Holocaust Records (who were responsible for recent AQ black metal faves Blodulv and The One!). Northstream are from Russia and are just about as raw and primitive as it gets. Guitars buzz and hiss sounding alternately like a vacuum cleaner or a blender, only occasionally like an actual guitar, but those six shrieking strings wrapped in white noise evoke ambience of the darkest and grimmest sort. The buzzing blazing black metal is balanced by stretches of mid tempo 'doom', where you can almost hear the sounds of the frozen wastelands from whence Northstream come. But it's not your typical doom, it's 'doom' only in comparison to the Merzbowian blacknoise surrounding it, a blackened doom that's all brittle ear piercing guitars, primitively programmed beats and skull piercing shrieks. Interesting album title, by the way, did they just take a particularly refreshing shower?

MPEG stream: When The Forest Crying
MPEG stream: Rise Of Your War

If we had to pick the ultimate doom outfit, the band that most embodies ultra depressive sonic misery, who is able to weave vast expanses of utter blackness, able to create vast soundscapes of both brutality and beauty, glacial waves of slow motion heaviness, it would be a tough call. There are the pure dronedoom outfits like SUNNO))) who create black energy with long stretches of static buzz, or the more sort of true doom combos, who wield riffs and write songs, and then there are the black metal bands, who play slooooooow and instead of buzzing maniacally instead crawl and slither, and then there are the ultra doom outfits, the ones we use many multiples of 'o's to describe, and somewhere in amongst all of those, but not quite fitting in any particular one, is the mighty Nortt. This one man band from Denmark, is a long time aQ fave, melding the black buzz of Burzum, with the regal abstract slow motion doom of Skepticism, the result, some otherworldy demonic trudge through barren landscape and moonlit skies. Nortt have always employed a deft hand in crafting their doomscapes, generously peppering record with as much tranquil blackened drift as lurching doomic pummel, but on this latest disc, Nortt have embraced the moodier more ambient side of their sound, with looooong stretches of drift and shimmer, sometimes almost whole songs, and while the heavy parts remain heavy, they seem to grind slowly to a halt, leaving just shadows and ghosts, soft traces and outlines of what came before, which are allowed to hover and float amongst black smears of sound, interrupted by rhythms spread out into occasional bursts of lugubrious slow motion. The disc begins with some dark delicate shimmer, that is downright dreamlike, deep resonant chimes, the washed out whir of softly struck bells, which quickly gives way to the disembodied doom of the second track, the riffs crumbling and stretched waaay out, the drums, an abstract plod, and in the background, warm streaks of high end, that drift throughout the entire record, even at it's heaviest, those keening tones, drift mournfully in the distance. Even the longest tracks here, spend most of their time in some blackened dronestate, rumbles and whirs, ghostly moans, flurries of low end piano, disembodied melodies, all blurred into grey sonic snowdrifts, occasionally, the guitars roar back in, but it's more like a passing storm, as it soon drifts off, leaving just the lilting black minimalism that came before. We joked in past reviews that Nortt played a minimal black doom that Bohren & Der Club Of Gore would like, but on Galgenfrist, it sounds more like a minimal black doom Bohren would PLAY! A similar sort of impossibly brooding blackness, a gorgeous lush creep, abstract and ambient, not as jazzy, but just as moody and minimal, murky and mysterious. As we mentioned in the past, this is the sort of black doom band that could totally appeal to non-metalheads, and might just be the gateway band so beware, but fear not, this is plenty grim and heavy and black for all the rest of you.

MPEG stream: Galgenfrist
MPEG stream: Til Gravens Vi
MPEG stream: Af Dode

Finally available again, one of our favorite slabs of doomy black buzz. Remastered, reissued and on a new label! Here's the review from when we first got this in: Our doomiest customer, "Rick from Thrasher", came in the other day to ask about an album he saw on www.doom-metal.com, some band called Nortt who were supposed to be amazing; so good in fact that according to that website, Nortt's label was almost justified in charging about thirty euros for their cd (an astronomical amount, like US$40)! We didn't of course have that absurdly-expensive opus, but we actually did have this, Nortt's previous album released for a much more reasonable price on a different label. And it is pretty darn good, if you're in the mood for some "Pure Depressive Black Funeral Doom Metal" as it says on the back cover. Nortt are a one-man band from Denmark in the black metal tradition (complete with corpse paint and everything), but their fuzzing, buzzing music is sloooowww and full of despairing piano intonations and distorted minor-key laments. The vocals and the guitars both sound like last breaths, dying gasps, exhalant spirits... It's a drone-hiss of massive, gothic proportions. Nortt definitely inhabit the same gloomy petrified forest as AQ-faves Skepticism!! Perhaps if you get this and it succeeds in bringing your most suicidal thoughts to the fore, you can make it through life a little longer by trying to search out that other incredibly expensive Nortt album... (By the way, that www.doom-metal.com website is pretty cool one, for doom-fans only of course, with info on hundreds of doom acts!)

MPEG stream: Gravfred
MPEG stream: Sorgesalmen

Fresh off their killer split release with Xasthur last year, Danish black metal funereal doom lords (or lord, really, since it's just one guy) Nortt offer up a full length for your pleasure...if you can deal with the depression!! If you haven't heard Nortt before, they're a bit like Skepticism meets Burzum. SOOOO doomy and atmospheric. Ligfaerd is a sinister expanse of spooky soundtrack ambience bombarded (at relaxed intervals) with boulders... No, not boulders -- fuzz-distortion depth charges, dropped deep and echoing in the abyss, wherein dwell the cave-blind creatures that make Nortt's music... or so it would seem from this disc's raspy, weary vocal exhalations and monstrous awakenings. The thudding percussion could be gigantic footfalls amidst the droning, morose melodies, that insinuate themselves slowly into your consciousness, as there are lots of quiet passages on this depressive, lethargic record. We bet Bohren and Der Club Of Gore would love this band! We sure do. Definitely one of the exclusive several doom and/or black metal acts that we think non-habitual listeners to such musics might appreciate, if such extremes of feeling and weirdness as described above are more than tolerated.

MPEG stream: Ligpraedike
MPEG stream: Tilforn Tid

This went out of print almost as soon as we got the original Total Holocaust import version in four or five months ago but has now been resurrected and re-pressed domestically thanks to the dark souls at Southern Lord, who apparently like this stuff as much as we do. Here's what we had to say about it first time around: We barely even have to review this. Just the names of the two artists should be enough. Nortt, whose "Pure Depressive Black Funeral Doom Metal" was a massive favorite around here, and of course Xasthur, who rivals Leviathan as perhaps the most brilliant and important of the modern USBM hordes. Nortt offer up four tracks of miserable drone dirge, with mournful piano over a swirling abyss of black riffs and simple drumming, each chord slowly dissipating into nothingness before the next chord hits. Depressingly gorgeous and wrist slittingly sorrowful. Reminiscent of Corrupted's Llenandose, albeit way more grim and dismal! Xasthur gives us three tracks, equally depressive, but here, instead of tarpit tempos and drone-like dirges, the depression and misery is communicated through creepy minor key riffing, mournful melodies and what sounds like clean chant-like singing, almost choral, but buried so low in the mix it almost sounds like just another instrument. Xasthur has totally perfected the swaying seasickly black metal waltz, with relentless double kicks, anguished vocals struggling to communicate from beyond, and warm and woozy, arpeggiated guitars. So good.

MPEG stream: Glemt
MPEG stream: A Curse For The Lifeless

You're probably getting as tired of hearing this as we are saying it, but it has to be done. THIS IS SUPER LIMITED!! IN FACT, IT'S ALREADY OUT OF PRINT!! (Arghhh. Why lablels just don't press more when they know they can sell them still makes no sense to us...) SO, ONCE THESE ARE GONE, THEY ARE GONE FOR GOOD!! SO ACT FAST! Here's what we had to say about the cd version a while back: We barely even have to review this. Just the names of the two artists should be enough. Nortt, whose "Pure Depressive Black Funeral Doom Metal" was a massive favorite around here, and of course Xasthur, who rivals Leviathan as perhaps the most brilliant and important of the modern USBM hordes. Nortt offer up four tracks of miserable drone dirge, with mournful piano over a swirling abyss of black riffs and simple drumming, each chord slowly dissipating into nothingness before the next chord hits. Depressingly gorgeous and wrist slittingly sorrowful. Reminiscent of Corrupted's Llenandose, albeit way more grim and dismal! Xasthur gives us three tracks, equally depressive, but here, instead of tarpit tempos and drone-like dirges, the depression and misery is communicated through creepy minor key riffing, mournful melodies and what sounds like clean chant-like singing, almost choral, but buried so low in the mix it almost sounds like just another instrument. Xasthur has totally perfected the swaying seasickly black metal waltz, with relentless double kicks, anguished vocals struggling to communicate from beyond, and warm and woozy, arpeggiated guitars. So good.

MPEG stream: Glemt
MPEG stream: A Curse For The Lifeless

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

SORRY.

As if two simultaneous full-length releases were not enough, our favorite horror-show "black metal" band spits out this two-track ep. As always, with as much humor as horror. "Give Blood...Save Lives."

One of two recent, simultaneous releases by this amazing theatrical "black metal" band... "When you wish upon a star your wish is granted here they are..." The concept here? An end-of-the world Xmas record, combining holiday cheer with apocalyptic Y2K doom, somehow referencing both Nostradmus and Scrooge. Notre Dame is ridiculous twisted genius, there's no denying it.

Absolutely one of our new favorite "black metal" bands! One of two recent full-length releases (the other being a Xmas album!). Masterminded by Snowy Shaw (ex-King Diamond, Memento Mori, etc.) with female vocalist/dancer "Vampirella" as well as the De Sade brothers (Jean Pierre and Mannequin). Yes, it's silly. But it's also weird, surprising, catchy, and really well-executed, right down to the horror comix artwork and clever graphic design. The music is best likened to an even more over the top, operatic Cradle of Filth, with influences from '70s Italian prog-horror bands like Devil Doll and Goblin. And, I suppose, a touch of White Zombie. If the Addams Family were a metal band, they'd be Notre Dame! We're not usually a fan of metal that's so obviously tongue in cheek, but this is so genuinely great we can't help but love it.

First lp from these Florida experimental blacknoise / psychedelic dronelords, and like their Solus Patior cd-r we reviewed back in 2012, it's another terrifyingly grim landscape of haunting black ambiance, post industrial crush, and blackened grimnity. The band lacing hellish vokills over softly swirling drifts, burying strange fractured rhythms, beneath cascades of glitch and squelch, often all blurred into something downright dreamy, but just as often, splintering into something abjectly noisy and filthy. The opening track here sets the template, with some venomous vocalizations WAY up in the mix, over a bed of muted pulsations, moaning melodies, mysterious chordal smears, the background sound surprisingly tranquil, those vox transforming the sound into something much more harrowing and hellish. The rest of the record tends toward the more brutal, but manages the nearly impossible task of crafting a noise record, that manages to be hypnotic and listenable, mesmerizing, and in its own way, blackly beautiful. The shorter tracks here are blasts of grinding glitch, fractured electronics, clouds of swirling static, monk like chants, and crumblingly distorted gristle, often settling into downright beauty, but before you know it, launching right back into another burst of blacknoise or churning power electronics. The longer tracks deliver some seriously stunning sound design, fields of sonar pings, woven into crystalline sonic lattices, of hushed samples tangled into strange textures, those backdrops, often perfectly offsetting the more bombastic and abrasive sonics up front, although in many cases, NRIII let it drift, creating haunting ambience, epic sprawls of mysterious minimalism, the vokills are often present there too, but are WAY off in the distance, buried in the mix, like another layer of static, while above it, barely there sounds hover and shimmer. In fact, much of the second half of the record tends towards the surprisingly serene, the noisiness dialed back, crafter into something more textural, it's as if side two was designed as a blissed out soft noise come down antidote for the beautiful brutality of the first side. Fantastic stuff, and the sort of rare noise that might even appeal to those who generally find noise music is not their thing. LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!! Each one hand numbered.

MPEG stream: Primal Misery
MPEG stream: Fall Apart
MPEG stream: I Refuse

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

SORRY. [/cat/experimental131.html]

The return of our favorite faerical blasting punk rockers, France's new wave black crust dynamic duo Nuit Noire. We went nuts for this band the first time we heard them, expecting some sort of grim black buzz, seeing as they were signed to a black metal label, were distributed by black metal distros, etc., but instead we had our blocks knocked totally off, by their furious short sharp bursts of super tweaked angular riffing, flurries of chaotic drumming, and some of the most tweaked damaged whiny yelpingly brilliant vocals ever! All tangled up into a confusional blackened aggro metallic pop, part punk rock, part grim buzz, part no wave, part new wave. In the past we described Nuit Noire as sounding like a black metal Rudimentary Peni, but we're also hearing plenty of Christian Death, Joy Division, Crass and weirdly enough, on this new one more than ever, the Toy Dolls, mostly due to vocalist Tenebras' voice which is a dead ringer for the Toy Dolls' Olga. This new disc is half new tracks, half older classics recorded live. All of em fantastic of course. The new tracks are even shorter and poppier and more fucked up than before. Take the second track "I Am A Fairy", a crusty gloomy jam, with a killer main riff, streaks of high end new wave squiggle, and the vocals, just repeating the title over and over and over, super fast, then drawn out and crooned, while the music beneath shifts from hooky and poppy to blasting and buzzing. Or how about "I Love You", another furious eighties crust punk jam, but with some black buzz spread over the top, and a totally strange, but incredibly catchy vocal line, sung sort of like "I love yooooooooooooo, I love yooooooooooooou". The rest of the tracks range from loping eighties grooves to washed out dreamy murk to chaotic old school punk rock to full on lo-fi grim black metal, usually all in the same song. It's really hard to describe the sound, we're pretty surprised this stuff appeals to black metallers at all, there is some buzz and some serious riffing, but it's way more punk, and way more new wave, and the vocals are so strange and high and hysterical and freaked out and over the top, they sort of define Nuit Noire's sound, and are definitely the element that will make it or break it for you. The live tracks are awesome. And if we didn't know it would have been hard pressed to even realize they were live. Almost the exact sound quality (maybe they're just live in the studio, but then why re-record old songs?) heavy and buzzy and furious and catchy as fuck. Even a wicked version of their "Faeries Of Paper" a song we proclaimed to be one of "the best songs EVER" with one of the greatest catchiest weirdest riffs we've ever heard. A few of the other live tracks we hadn't heard before and are just as good, if not even better than the songs we already loved. Need more reasons to love these guys? Howabout the cool pencil drawings of the band members, one depicted as a huge monster-armed drumming demon, head cloaked in shadow, the other a faerie, in tunic and cape, big eyes and pointed ears, mic cable wrapped around a broadsword stuck in the ground. Or howabout the photo on the back of the cd, a very skinny, nearly naked band member, clad in a loin cloth and a cape, holding a guitar aloft in one hand, a sword in the other, cape spread out like the wings of a bat. C'mon!!! How much more perfect can a band be? So goddamn recommended.

MPEG stream: Les Fees Volent Dans La Nuit
MPEG stream: I Am A Fairy
MPEG stream: Fantomatic Plentitude
MPEG stream: Nuit Blanche

We love this band so much. We were never able to get enough of their last record to list, but now that the new one is here, it's time to finally share our crazy love of this band with the loyal AQ faithful. Ostensibly a black metal band, but sonically anything but. Imagine a super lo-fi, sort of new wave, gothy crusty punk rock band but with buzzing insectoid riffing and occasional furious blast beats. Sort of like a black metal Rudimentary Peni, with a vocalist who sounds a bit like a cross between Roz Williams of Christian Death and Mark E. Smith from the Fall. Whiney and snotty, super dramatic and over the top, even at their most buzzing and black, the vocals kick in and the band is transformed back into some crusty black new wave weirdness. And the guitar parts are super weird, strange harmonies, a little new wave, but a little NO wave as well. But the band themselves don't consider their music to be black metal anyway. A quick look at their website reveals the fact that they consider themselves "faerical blasting punk!" Just check out the note from the band on their website: "Nuit Noire is the only faerical blasting punk band in the world. The music comes directly from the depths of the night, where the fairies stay hidden from the humans. We love them and they love us." Woah. Just one more reason to love these guys. Weird angular guitars, fucked up arrangements, damaged new wave riffing, some black blasts, a demonic shriek here and there, all that and faeries too!!

MPEG stream: Creatures Of The Night
MPEG stream: Are You Ready For The Night?
MPEG stream: Turn On Your Light
MPEG stream: Enfant Spectre

Our favorite 'faerical blasting punks' return. Well, not exactly. Inner Light was actually recorded way back in 2003, and remained essentially unreleased until now (barring some bootleg tapes floating around). Apparently, after all of the early demos, NN mainman Tenebras abandoned the blackened vokills of those early recordings, in favor of a new, strange, dramatic singing style, which defined Inner Light, would go on to define NN's unique sound, but at the time drove Tenebras's brother and bandmate Akhron from the band, after which, Nuit Noire would remain a one man band (literally, with Tenebras playing guitar, and singing, while simultaneously playing drums with his feet!). Some of these songs were later re-recorded in one-man-band form, but the sound dramatically different than they do here. Impossibly lo-fi, murky and muddy and washed out, with less insectoid buzz, and more blurry swirl. The drums are wild and chaotic, and the songs are still peppered with the occasional feral howl, but for the most part, the vocals are a weird punish croon, that sounds a bit like some unholy mix of the Dickies, Crass, the Cardiacs and the Toy Dolls. When paired with frantic blackened buzz, it makes for a potent, and bafflingly brilliant combination. In addition, there's some strange sound effects going on too, like on the opening track, that's laced with weird boinky squiggles, that sound like a theremin, or scraped violin, or some primitive synth, and then somehow the drums are effected too, so it sounds like weird electronic drums. Very psychedelic, and very cool. And there do seem to be strings, pizzicato plucks here and there, but all wound up into some furious galloping blackened punk, and soaring epic outsider metal majesty, and at times some super melodic almost post rock sounding atmospherics. The vocals get seriously unhinged and hysterical at times, the songs slipping into full on WTF mode before eventually settling into yet another sprawl of punked out black metal weirdness. Essential, twisted, feral, primitive, demented, avant garde, black metal / crust punk / noise pop genius!! LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!

MPEG stream: Inner Light I
MPEG stream: Inner Light III
MPEG stream: Inner Light IV

Every once in a while, someone out there is thinking just like us. It's a little scary, sure, but we gotta love it. Of course -WE- think that the buzzing blackwave of French outfit Nuit Noire is the perfect match for the confusional acoustic depressive black metal of Finnish duo Circle Of Ouroborus. But to see it finally happen. It's the metal music nerd version of fantasy baseball, when that team that you made up but could never happen in real life does... And so it is with our league of fantasy black metal. These two bands have very little in common, except for the fact that they are about as unconventional as black metal can get, so much so that most "true" black metallers probably wouldn't consider either to actually be black metal, or metal at all for that matter, and the fact that both bands completely and utterly rule. It's a pricey one, this 7", due to high manufacturing costs, and the ever worsening dollar, but this is most definitely a $12 single. We've shelled out $2 for singles in the past and felt ripped off, but once we got our ears on these tracks, money was no object! Nuit Noire return with their bizarre blackened new wave buzz, a sort of Darkthrone meets Rudimentary Peni, or Immortal covering the Toy Dolls, a killer snarling hook filled blast of whiney vocals, queer guitar melodies, furious blast beats, all swaddled in loads and loads of buzz. Recorded during the same sessions that yielded the AQ fave Infantile Espieglery, these two tracks are blinding blasts of punk rock sped up and painted black, thrashy, and blasting, simple and hypnotic, with stretches of just guitar and drums and some outrageously melodic bits nestled right there amidst the furious fuzz, all peppered with strange squiggly licks and clouds of spacey FX and those perfect wailing about-to-crack vocals. So goddamn good. And as if that weren't enough, Finland's Circle Of Ouroborus just keep getting better and better and more musical and melodic, which would normally spell doom for most of the bands we love (and we don't mean the good kind of doom), but these guys manage to retain all the fucked up-ness that made them so special, while continuing to forge ahead. A plodding depressive buzz, moody and melancholic, loping rhythms, and super weird Joy Division-esque vocals. Swooping majestic guitar leads and spidery guitar lines sprawling everywhere. They still sound a bit like a black metal Fall, but here they sort of sound like a more lo-fi, slightly less melodic Katatonia, which is of course a very good thing. Has us chomping at the bit for new records from both bands. But for now, repeated plays of this seven inch will have to hold us over. Nice thick full color jacket, thick cardstock inner sleeve, printed liner notes / lyric sheet. Not sure how limited, but with stuff like this, it's usually safe to assume VERY VERY!

The return of our favorite masters of faerical blasting punk! Who else could it be but Nuit Noire? We just raved about their most recent disc, the brilliantly titled Fantomatic Plentitude, and were already hankering for more when what should show up, but MORE! This split 7" matches up Nuit Noire with Italian noisy new wavers His Electro Blue Voice, who end up being a perfect match for the Nuit Noire. What can we say about Nuit Noire that we haven't said before. A blackened buzz wrapped around spiky crusty new wave-d punk rock. A blackened Rudimentary Peni. The guitars kinetic and buzzy, the drums rapid fire and frenetic, the vocals a wild caterwaul. These two new tracks are awesome. Crusty and catchy, lo-fi and super rocking. The opener is mostly instrumental, an epic extended intro, leading up to what could very well be the NN theme song: "Faerie Punk", ultra catchy and with some of the best lyrics EVER: Stardust all around the drums Stardust all around the guitar Stardust blown away from the high speakers Stardust everywhere on stage Faerie punk in the moonlight Faerie punk in the starlight Faerie punk far in the night Faerie punk on stage tonight Hell yeah! The lyrics just reaffirm what the music is already saying. Wild forest faerie freaked out black new wave crusty punk pop madness. So who could possible share a split with these guys? His Electro Blue Voice are up to the challenge, and are a pretty good match, their moody bass heavy new wave post punk, perfectly balancing NN's high end howl. Their sound is very 45 Grave, like some band you might have seen play the Scream in LA in 1985. Murky Joy Division riffing, wrapped around lugubrious Cure rhythms, the vocals a throaty gothy croon, the first track playing out lie a more metal Smiths, the second, some sort of dark doleful surf rock, with a Dick Dale riff stretched across and expanse of moody melancholia.

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

SORRY.

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

SORRY.

SUNNO))) freeks, heads up! This here is a super limited recording, of a piece used in an art show by Banks Violette. You might remember Violette from a dvd we carry featuring an installation he did Norwegian black metal outfit Thorns supplying the sounds. We'd like to tell you more about what this piece is all about, but the description of the art, and the music, is in that insanely convoluted artspeak, so we'll just try to go it alone. Originally recorded in 2001, this piece features Stephen O'Malley (SUNNO))) et al) playing a Travis Bean guitar through a Fender Twin Reverb amplifier, and Hungarian vocalist Attila Csihar (Mayhem, Aborym, SUNNO))), Tormentor), this recording is a portion of the original lengthy recording and finds the two crafting some sort of blackened sinister liturgical ceremony. O'Malley's guitar is used mostly to make creaks and rumbles, piercing shards of feedback, crashing chordal fragments, but mostly it works as a tone generator, various bits of feedback allowed to stretch out and slowly shift, creating strange tonal variations and layered expanses of extreme sonics and minimal ambience. Csihar contributes vocals, haunting and mesmerizing, delivered in a deep monk like chant. Lots of reverb and natural delay, the result sounds ancient, like some middle ages church ceremony. Those two elements O'Malley's tones, and Csihar's vocals combined, sound a bit like Ryoji Ikeda jamming along to vespers. Not at all an easy listen, but definitely creepy and mysterious. Cool oversized sleeve with photos of Violette's art as well as band photos, and the lyrics printed in both English and Hungarian. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES.

MPEG stream: 6�F Skyquake

The band name definitely had us envisioning the tree beasts from Lord Of The Rings, wandering through the blackened forest, their hulking forms casting ominous shadows, their skeletal branches outlined against the moonlit sky. And you know, the music fits pretty well with that image. Oakeater is a blackened ritualistic 'power' trio made up of dudes from noise outfits the Coughs and Panicsville, but this is not noise music, well, at least not 'noisy' noise music. Instead the sound of Oakeater is dark and mysterious, abstract and black ambient. Primal and raw, primitive and ritualistic. There might be a drummer, and a guitar player, and even a bass player, or it could be three guys hunched over effects pedals on the floor, regardless, they conjure up some seriously evil sounding black sonic mojo. Almost the whole of side A is made up of whispery shimmer, hushed alchemical whirs, creepy voices way down in the mix, flickering fluttering melody, creaking industrial groans and moans, until nearly the end, when the various sounds coalesce into something more musical, but no less evil sounding. Big black resonant chords ring out, over a heartbeat like throb, the vocals a weary liturgical chant, the sound like some industrial abstract doom metal, but way more spacious and moody and minimal. The flipside follows a similar pattern, beginning all hushed and whispery, building gradually into a buzzing almost-song. But here the drone is much more pronounced, a buzzing layered Niblockian tone that seems to run through the whole track, while all around it strange fragments of melody and percussion drift and shimmer, the track looping and mesmeric, strangely hypnotic and almost pretty, drone-y and soft focus, only slipping into something slightly more sinister in the last few minutes, the tones becoming more and more warbly and atonal, until some more melodic organ drifts in and the record fades out more dreamy that dreary. Packaged in killer hand silk-screened sleeves, silver and black and grey ink on plain black jacket, with a silk-screened insert inside.

The same people who have been going on and on about the death of the record store, have also been heralding the end of print media. But you know what, screw them. Who wants to spend their whole life sitting in front of a computer? Listen to music at your desk, shop for mp3's, read that article on the laptop... whatever. Sure that stuff is convenient, and we all partake a bit, but nothing will ever replace your local record store, thumbing through bins of lps or digging through stacks of cds, just like a gorgeously designed and laid out magazine will never be�replaced by a website. Especially a magazine as gorgeous and jam packed with black metal weirdness as Oaken Throne.� Beginning life as a super strange, WAY oversized zine, impossible to ship, and difficult to display, but brilliant in its obstinacy, Oaken Throne has just gotten better and better, easily the best magazine devoted to underground black metal and strange heavy musicks. With amazing writing, great art, and some of the most stylish, but subtle layout and design of any magazine we can think of. The cover is always metallic silver on black, inside, the ads are often as striking as the illustrations accompanying the articles (which makes sense considering one of the two OT head honchos designs many of the ads as well). But Oaken Throne is not just another pretty corpse painted face. Nope, it's packed with articles and interviews on and with some of the most infamous artists in the black metal (and generally heavy) underground.� This time around, a bunch of AQ faves: Asunder (featuring John from Weakling), Harvey Milk, Wold, Portal, Moss, Coffins, Caina, as well as some other amazing groups who have yet to get reviewed on the AQ site:�Acrimonious, Adorior, Archgoat, Blacklodge, Cult Of Daath, Dapnom and Necromorbus... Tons of killer photos and yet another amazing illustration from AQ pal Justin Bartlett (whose art has also adorned a bunch of SUNNO))) and SUNNO))) related records). In addition to all that, there are a bunch of record reviews too... easily one of the best mags, metal or otherwise going today... This is the first issue that includes comes with a cd, containing tracks from each of the bands featured in the magazine, none of them exclusive or rare really (except maybe the Asunder track, recorded live on KFJC) but a pretty killer metal mixtape (er... cd) for sure... As always, totally recommended and essential.�

Finally a new issue of the mighty Oaken Throne magazine, and they continue to gradually expand their scope, moving slowly and slightly further away from their position as thee ultra grim and ultra true "Elite Black Metal Skripture" and toward a much more varied and AQ like tome. We're certainly not complaining obviously, but there must be a whole lot of troubled true black metallers, as most of the two intros by editors Ben West and John Mincemoyer are spent apologizing for / explaining the lack of grim corpsepainted hordes and explaining the new shift. But as far as we're concerned, Oaken Throne just keeps getting better, focusing on black metal, but expanding enough to allow for other blackened musicks. This time around, the line-up reads almost like an AQ list: Black Boned Angel, Celestiial, Thralldom, Graves At Sea, Wolves In The Throne Room, Nachtmystium, Villains, L'Acephale, Temple Of Baal, Withered and Vorkreist. All the articles are super in depth are gorgeously laid out (as is the whole magazine), well written and interesting (one of the pieces, the Black Boned Angel one was written by our very own Andee) most with killer photos and/or amazing illustrations (including the most bad ass drawing of Wolves In The Throne Room by AQ customer Justin Bartlett). Also includes tons of reviews (also super varied and all over the map, from Solar Anus to Bone Awl to Dead Raven Choir to Mrtyu to Moss To Nadja!) and the cover is that immediately recognizable and super striking, silver ink on matte black paper, and once again, the Ben West designed tUMULt ad on the back cover (he also designed the I Hate Your Band poster!) looks so cool, it's almost nicer than the actual magazine cover! One of our favorite magazines and of course HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

It's finally here, the latest issue of one of the best magazines going, Oaken Throne, specializing in the grim black metal underground, but gradually expanding their scope to cover all things dark and heavy and droney, definitely our kind of rag, and yours too judging from how many we sell, and how many emails we've been getting asking about this new issue. The latest issue has indeed arrived, and is mindblowing as always, bigger than ever, now a perfect bound 7" x 7" book style mag, the covers printed silver metallic ink on black cardstock, as always, a gorgeous tUMULt ad on the back cover (designed by OT designer Ben West) and inside tons of aQ faves and then some. Canadian black metallers Akitsa, French metallic post rockers Aluk Todolo (featuring members of Gunslingers and Diamatregon), Swedish black metal duo Avsky, long time aQ favorite, Dialing In, weird black doomscapers Gnaw Their Tongues, Polish black metal folk freak Dead Raven Choir, legendary death metallers Immolation, Swedish black metal supergroup IXXI (featuring members of Ondskapt, Lifelover, Dimhymn and Zavorash), Dutch brown metal weirdos Lugubrum, Nordvargr's black metal incarnation Vargr, legendary Polish black metallers Throneum, German blackened death metallers Necros Christos and Swedish death metallers Necrovation. The layout and design is fantastic, with illustrations by Justin Bartlett, Ben West, Adam Watson, Scott Langlais, Chris Parry, as well as tons of striking photography, plenty of reviews, and loads of ads for stuff you need. Pretty much ace all the way through. And as if the magazine on its own wasn't enough, it also comes with a cd featuring a track by every single band covered in this issue, two of 'em (for now at least) exclusive to this comp. The price of OT has gone up slightly, but holy shit is it ever worth it. This is the kind of magazine you'll save forever, that will sit on your bookshelf with the BOOKS, not in a pile with the rest of the magazines, OT is something you'll read over and over, and odds are, eventually you'll need to at least check out all the artists covered. So totally recommended. We're already looking forward to the next issue!

The return of the only true, cult, black metal magazine out there. Immediately recognizable beacuse of it's unweildy format (17" by 5" or thereabouts) and it's gorgeous silkscreened silver on black cover. This time around there's articles on / interviews with SF black metallers Ludicra, the mighty Watain, Crebain (who had a recent split with Leviathan on Andee's tUMULt label), Unearthly Trance, Atomizer, Gospel Of The Horns, Hell Militia, and of course Leviathan. As well as some record and demo reviews. Well written, and nicely laid out. With some serious financial backing these guys could easily topple the Terrorizer / Metal Maniacs / SOD / PIT / BWBK metal mag monopoly in one fell swoop. Be sure to peep the gorgeous tUMULt ad on the back cover, designed by Oaken Throne designer Ben West. Wow! Maybe even nicer than the actual cover! And remember, that due to the magazine's size, unless you want it folded up, you're gonna have to spring for a little extra postage for it to be shipped separately. But well worth it!

If your cover art looks like a lost Unleashed album, sign me up. Portland's Oakhelm arrived at our fortress walls with axes in hand -- both electric guitars and battle weapons, yes. Their debut album, Betwixt & Between, shows these rookie Vikings doing some serious shredding that would easily make it onto Dan Swano's iPod, possibly even Peter Tagtgren's just because of the vocals. That being said, these North-Westerners probably don't think you should be laughing because this ain't no joke, it's a call to arms. What are we fighting? Our best guess is dragons and Christian invaders. But seriously, all of the necessary ephemera is here, while a sense of irony is thankfully conspicuously absent. A very good thing. Now that that debate is over, you're free to embrace everything fantastic and mystical that died out alongside the popularity of many of the classic Century Media bands of the past. This is a die-hard attempt to re-create the glory of mid-'90s Northern-European death/black/Viking metal. We're especially reminded of ol' Viking horde Mithotyn at their most dark and doomful. Go ahead and headbang, but make sure not to fall off your horse. Did we mention that they have members of Fall of Bastards, Wormwood, L'Acephale, Black Queen and Assuck among their ranks?! Well, they do. Recommended!

MPEG stream: Of Wood And Blood
MPEG stream: These Boundaries

Debut release from this mysterious local black metal horde, who have been seemingly operating well under the radar, as the announcement regarding the pending release of this record was the first time we'd heard anything about them, but their sound is definitely right up our alley, depressive and droned out, a mix of raw buzzing primitivism, and blown out almost psychedelic blackened drift, the band slipping easily from old school blasting blackness, to midtempo slow burn majesty, the guitars thick and layered and lush in places, but appropriately buzzy and brittle in others, the whole record underpinned by field recordings, wind in the tress, running water, most effective when laid beneath chiming clean guitars, unfurling a sort of melancholic folkiness, replete with haunting shimmery swells and distant reverbed trills, eventually exploding into some seriously harsh heaviness, a roiling blurry black churn, wreathed in swaths of soaring synth, a strange mix that turns what would otherwise be pure sonic violence into something much more spaced out and melodic. There are moments of spidery post rock, and meandery clean guitar minimalism, the folk element constantly surfacing throughout, finally finishing off with what we expected to a brief instrumental outro (the way most black metal records finish) but instead, ends up being a brief but blown out blast of furious epic heaviness, that might be the best two minutes of the whole record. Housed in super nice, silver on matte black sleeves.

MPEG stream: Desolation
MPEG stream: Grievance

Another warehouse find (which in our case actually means closet find, since our 'warehouse' is in fact, more like a closet, well, it actually IS a closet, anyway...), we discovered a stash of the 2007 full length from black metal horde Obscurus Advocam, whose name might not be all that familiar, but the members of OA have done time in a couple other black metal groups we've raved about in the past, Glorior Belli and Wolfe. And c'mon, they're French, and we have a serious thing for French black metal, and as one might expect, fans of Deathspell Omega would do well to check out OA's swirling darkened black metal progginess, not nearly as next level and head spinning as DSO, OA nonetheless weave sprawling epics rife with tangled riffage, sinister moodiness, mathy intricate arrangements, LOTS of bass, and some killer grim vox, all wound into slow burning blackness, that tends more toward the creep and the midtempo, than the all out blast, but fear not metalheads, some serious buzz and blast is peppered throughout, but it's what's between that makes this stuff so cool, moody and murky, haunting and creepy, melodic and sorrowful, but still seriously and satanically grim. Had we reviewed this back in 2007, this would most definitely have been a contender for black metal record of the year, as it is, if you somehow missed this, now's the time to right that wrong.

MPEG stream: Bounded Artefact
MPEG stream: Verbia Daemonicus
MPEG stream: Starlight To Twilight

Pagan forest dwellers and Kvltists alike, unite, a new Obsequiae album has been brewing in the cauldron and is ready to be drank from the goblet! Like a medieval Marduk or a madrigal Mayhem, Obsequiae capitalizes the METAL in folk metal. Ostensibly a band since 1998 (then called Autumnal Winds), Obsequiae released their debut Suspended In The Brume Of Eos in 2011, a stunning and powerful debut that left many, like us, wanting more. Finally, enter Aria of Vernal Tombs, a mighty follow up to that record. Obsequiae's Tanner Anderson and Co. mange to combine beautiful, haunting medieval harp tracks with a riff-centric and heavy-yet-melodic black metal assault. On the black metal tracks, Anderson's dueling guitar melodies are the driving force, catchy, melodic, but always heavy. Aria Of Vernal Tombs (Google tells us "vernal" means of or relating to springtime, fyi... still don't know what a "Brume of Eos" is, though) never feels cheesy or hamfisted in its attempt to incorporate medieval melodies into the songs; rather, these feel like cohesive, melodic pieces that are equal parts beautiful and heavy. Obsequiae is much more interested in making you breathe the medieval air and feel the crumbling stone than playing make-believe at the Ren Faire (no offense to Ren Faire lovers, aQ's own Harry among them). This record will easily slide into our top metal albums of the year chart!

MPEG stream: Autumnal Pyre
MPEG stream: Pools Of A Vernal Paradise
MPEG stream: Wewilweorthunga

Though we spend a lot of time toiling over our carefully worded, expertly-informed, well-thought out (ahem) reviews, we realize that a lot of folks probably just scan 'em looking for a few keywords that might jump out, and to see whether we are giving something the thumbs up or not (and furthermore, if we seem particularly enthusiastic in doing so, by like, using all-caps or something). So... here's some keywords for you: CELESTIIAL, FOLK-METAL, AWESOME. Working those terms into sentences, results in the following: this blackened but not necessarily black metal (they say "melodic dark metal") band from Minnesota, who started back in the '90s as a demo-only band under the moniker Autumnal Winds, is a duo featuring guitarist/vocalist Blondel de Nesle, aka Tanner Reed Anderson of fellow Bindrune recording artists Celestiial. Suspended In The Brume Of Eros is Obsequiae's debut full-length, and while we don't know what Obsequiae means (help, Heavy Latin blog!) nor are we sure what a "brume" is, let alone just who or what "Eos" might be, we do know we like this. A lot. And we didn't even know they were related to AQ frosty, forest-y funeral doom faves Celestiial when we first heard this and dug it, though we did know it was on Bindrune, almost always a sign of quality pagan metal with a weird or avant garde bent. We said Obsequiae play folk-metal, that's right, it's real medieval /madrigal sounding for sure, but with the emphasis on METAL, despite an assortment of minstrel-like acoustic interludes. So the melodic, intertwined twin guitars are heavy with fuzz, and their harmonies more twisted than twee. Likewise, the vocals are harsh, and rhythmically the band gallops like true metal ought to, propelled by the other half of the Obsequiae duo, drummer/bassist/guitarist "Neidhardt von Reuental". In other words, it's something that even those of us a bit burned out on "another grim black metal band" found quite compelling. Lots of (autumnal) atmosphere, lots of actual music, Obsequiae doing justice to both halves of the folk-metal equation, mixing acoustic guitars in with weird, killer riffage and soloing for an album that's epic and interesting and, as we said, AWESOME. There, 'nuff said?

MPEG stream: Altars Of Moss
MPEG stream: In The White Fields
MPEG stream: Suspended In The Brume Of Eos
MPEG stream: Estas Redit

MPEG stream: With Hate
MPEG stream: Teachings In Cruelty

Expect nihilistic, misanthropic one-man-band black metal on this album, the follow-up to his brilliant, raw, and catchy Welcome To My Planet opus. Fuckhole Armageddon is fast & tinny the way it's supposed to be, as Mr. Octinomos gets a really good droning buzz

The Profound Lore label begins what we hope will be an extensive reissue campaign, focusing on some of the more obscure members of the Twilight Black Circle, a tightly knit USBM scene/collective based in Southern California, similar in sound/spirit to the legendary French Black Legions (Mutiilation, Vlad Tepes, etc.), which counts bands like Dolorvotre, Volahn, Blue Hummingbird On The Left, Ashdautas, Arizmenda and others among its members. Odz Manouk, named for a character in Armenian mythology, is a one man band who like many of his Black Twilight Circle brethren, traffics in a furious, raw, almost primitive black metal, but one that takes that primitivism, and somehow manages to create something epic and massive and sonically dense. The primitivism here is not the sort of lo-fi practice space tinniness that so many legendary kvlt outfits spew, the sound here is massive, chaotic, gnarled, dense, thick, black and bristling with energy. The arrangements are twisted and droned out, repetitive riffs, blasting programmed beats that are as motorik as they are brutal, with multiple layers of guitars in constant motion, each track a weird swirling blur, the drums buried in the mix (minus the occasional strange bit of percussion that seems to surface here and there), the tracks shifting constantly from smeared frenzied white noise blowout, to old-Deathspell like churning crush, to loping Burzumic buzz, rife with plenty of surprising melody, little bits of mournful melancholia tucked within heaving slabs of buzzing blackness, a dizzying tangle of dissonance and repetition, of texture and tension, on the surface, raw and black, but closer listening reveals all manner of blackened mystery, long stretches of droney murk, atonal angular melody, weird buried clean vocal harmonies, pulsing almost electronic sounding rhythms, bleary synth shimmers, hazy washed out atmospheres, demonik vokills that growl, mewl and screech in equal measure, all woven into some seriously dense and dark and fantastically fucked up black metal savagery. This cd reissue contains OM's 2010 demo and tacks on OM's tracks from the split with Tukaaria (whose reissue is reviewed elsewhere on this week's list)... LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, housed in a super swank oversized A5 book style digipak!

MPEG stream: A Mymex Omen
MPEG stream: Mechanics Of A Nightmare
MPEG stream: The Indisciplinarian

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

SORRY.

MPEG stream: Mysterion Tes Anomias
MPEG stream: Chained To Redemption

A long overdue review of this insane and brutal chunk of Swedish UNblack metal. We've had this in stock for ages and� wait! What? Swedish? Yeah, you heard correctly, you thick the Christian unblack metal movement was only happening right here in the US of A. Nope there are Christian black metal bands all over the world. It just so happens that the hub of all things UNblack is stateside, E.E.E., who have been unleashing a never ending torrent of gloriously fucked up and totally demented UNblackness with no end in sight. So Offerblod share not only an ideology with their US brethren, but also a truly fucked up sound. Hard to describe. It's definitely lo-fi, outrageously so, but it's also blown out, super distorted, in the red, some tracks are so muddy and murky, the riffs sound like a underwater rumble, the drums barely able to penetrate the muted buzz, other tracks are super brittle and high end, the cymbal wash a cloud of high end hiss, swallowing up all the sounds around it. The combination of Offerblod's raw primitive black buzz, and the insanely erratic, but totally crucial-to-their-fucked-sound production, makes this one of the coolest, weirdest and definitely one of our favorite black metal records of the year. Fans of Bone Awl, Akitsa, Ash Pool, Ancestors and other practitioners of ultra buzzy raw blackness will definitely dig! Packaged in a plain black digipak, with pasted on front cover image and printed black and white insert.

MPEG stream: Drick Mitt Blod Och Lev Forevigt
MPEG stream: Manskligt Avtrade

This latest batch of tapes from local label Merz Tapes finds the label expanding and rebranding, now known as Merzbild, and no longer limiting themselves to cassettes. It is however this most recent batch of cassettes we're here to discuss. In this case, it's the first release (and apparently part on of a trilogy!) from Ogham, a duo made up of Kevin Gan Yuen of Sutekh Hexen, and Thomas Martin Ekelund of Trepaneringsritualen. The project is named for an early medieval alphabet, which according to the label is "known for obscuring runic inscription", and the sounds here reveal themselves to be equally obscure and obfuscated. Two sidelong sprawls, crumbling expanses of black ambience spread out over a landscape of murky and clatter, all blurred into heaving subterranean transmissions, greyed out and pocked with moaning metals and reverberating overtones, dripping water and a constant ambient thrum gives the whole thing a sort of post apocalyptic field recording vibe, the soundtrack to a lone figure, trudging through a desolate wasteland, ominous and cinematic, shot through with subtle streaks of melody, and wreathed in crackle and static that ebbs and flows, all seeming to drift in a bleary haze of abstract shimmer and soft clouds of gentle black noise. The flipside is a much darker dronier affair, as if that same lone figure has chose to wander deeper beneath the ruins of a lost city, the hum of some mysterious machine at the center of the planet, revving up for some seismic event, the hum blossoming into a rib cage rattling drone, layered and corrosive, a black blur that threatens to swallow up the surrounding sounds, but which is soon joined by some unlikely percussion, a slow-mo cascade of tinkling delicate melodies, which are soon lost as that low end rumble explodes into a huge squall of swirling murk, a blown out blur that is surprisingly textured and nuanced, hiding chantlike vocals and strange muted melodies beneath the roiling, churning blackdrone surface, simultaneously crushing, and weirdly hypnotic. Super sweet packaging, printed silver-on-black tapes, reflective silver and black J-card.

MPEG stream: Side A (excerpt)
MPEG stream: Side B (excerpt)

One of Andee and Allan's favorite black metal records ever. So grim and buzzy, but so completely and utterly baffling and beautiful.

We never thought the day would come, but the return of Old Forest is nigh!!! The first release from these UK black metal anti-legends in 7 years! Their first record, Into The Old Forest is an all time aQ weirdo black metal fave. And their second unreleased record, None More Black, was meant to finally see the light of day via tUMULt, but instead, will be released by the original label later this year. And when the world hears that one, well, Old Forest just may rightfully reclaim their crown as masters of genius fucked up grimness for sure. The real surprise though is the band surfacing from whatever dark hellish abyss they retreated to nearly a decade ago. With a new full length in the works, but also this three part ep collection, focusing on the myths and legends of the Sussex countryside from which these guys hail. Sonically very little has changed. The sound is still murky and buzzy, the guitars thick and blurred, plenty of keyboards, pummeling drums. Lots of atmosphere, and haunting ambience, the vocals a demonic croak, the songs ranging from blasting and black, to creepy midtempo dirge. Haunting baritone monklike chants drift in and out, field recordings of crickets and birds, wind and rustling branches, the songs are packed with super memorable riffs, sing songy "woooo, ooooh" sort of call and response vocals, double kick blasting away, even during some of the more mellow bits, the songs lurch and pound woozily, peppered with incredibly catchy and unlikely little keyboard figures, the band occasionally launching into some furious blasting, but just as often slipping back into a fuzzy dirge or midtempo pound. And everything, no matter how true or grim, is infused with the cracked black sensibilities of Old Forest, much like countrymen Meads Of Asphodel (who may have one times shared members with Old Forest), not taking it too seriously, but at the same time taking it all deathly seriously. Dark and buzzy, spaced out and psychedelic, heavy and black, but also slightly cracked and definitely warped. And this is only part one� LIMITED TO ONLY 222 COPIES. Each packaged in a mini 3" jewel case, with super striking red and black artwork, and liner notes and lyrics.

MPEG stream: Cocks Crowing At Poynings
MPEG stream: Chanctonbury King

Fourth album by evil-looking bald-headed Norwegian black metal dude Galder and his various creepy cohorts (no session musicians this time). Mid-tempo, keyboard-heavy melodic blackness in the standard vein. Pretty good, though, as all OMC releases have been, due to Galder's ability to come up with some excellent riffs.