It seems like we were the only people who loved the last 1349, the experimental black industrial aboutface that was Revelations Of The Black Flame. A twisted, lurching tangled of convoluted blackness, and abstract black drone, some of the darkest weirdest black metal shit we'd heard in ages. But folks pissed and moaned, "why isn't it fast?", "where are the blast beats?" and on and on and on. But c'mon, were we the only ones who did NOT want to just hear Liberation Part 4, or Beyond The Apocalypse Part 3? Seems like it.
Well, all the haters can breathe easy, cuz Demonoir is a return to the frenzied black blasts and insanely furious buzz that defined 1349's sound, but listen close, and there's still some weird shit going on. First off, every song is separated by a short instrumental track, each one denoted "Tunnel" plus a digit, contributing to the seamless flow of the record, and allowing the more by-the-numbers blackness to get some breathing room. These interludes range from effects drenched metallic drones, to creepy backwards pianos and acoustic guitars, woozy minor key melodies, and blackened industrial wastescapes, super tense Herrmann like cinematic ambience, to deep cavernous drones, and washed out shimmery white noise.
But it's not just the interludes, the band may have managed the impossible, melding their grim frosty blast of old, with their obvious desire to twist and transform and experiment. The result is some seriously epic and convoluted and yeah sort of experimental black metal, but subtle enough that folks how just want to bang their hands or thrash about, will be perfectly happy, while the rest of us can strap on headphones and get way lost.
"Atomic Chapel" is total classic 1349, but not quite, creepy spoken word, some weird start stop arrangements, some atonal piano buried in the mix, mysterious voices, chanting, all tangled up with some of the fiercest black metal ever. It's a pretty potent mix. Elsewhere the blasting blackness gets weirdly melodic, almost NWOBHM in parts, but then the band stretches it out, transforming it into a droned out chugscape, rife with wild moaning leads, that turn into effects drenched squiggles.
The pianos pop up now and again throughout the record, as do some more surprising melodies, more unlikely arrangements, the title track being maybe the strangest of the bunch, a woozy midtempo workout, all hissed and whispered vox, tangled spidery guitars, a super progged out arrangement, psychedelic and moody and fucking awesome.
On first listen we were sort of bummed out, thinking that the band had caved, and ditched the experimental stuff to placate the naysayers, but after listening a bit closer, we're beginning to think that in some ways, it's almost MORE subversive than Revelations Of The Black Flame, not so overtly fucked up, but infused throughout with a sort of insidious weirdness, that will worm itself into the minds and souls of the grim kvlt masses, whether they realize it or not.
We've loved Austrian black metal horde Abigor since we first heard them back in the nineties, their sound was total true kvlt blackness, every record, as grim and black as the last: Verwustung / Invoke the Dark Age, Nachthymnen (From the Twilight Kingdom), Opus IV, Supreme Immortal Art, Channeling the Quintessence of Satan, Satanized (A Journey Through Cosmic Infinity), every one of those a stone cold classic, at least to our ears, and then nothing for 6+ years, but something strange must have happened, because when they returned, with 2007's Fractal Possession, it was like a different band, with a new sound, a twisted, industrial avant blackness, that rubbed most black metallers the wrong way, tons of fans jumped ship, but not us, who expects a band to sound the same forever? Sort of how everybody seemed to hate the last 1349, it was too slow and experimental, people wanted more of the same. Well fuck it, folks who hated Fractal Possession are REALLY gonna hate Time Is The Sulphur In The Veins Of The Saint, and let em, cuz this is some serious fucked up, freaked out outsider electronic tinged avant black metal weirdness. It's hard to even describe, other than just going through the track part by part. Epic and sprawling and dizzyingly complex, a cacophony of voices and tangled melodies give way to some ambient drones, which in turn gives way to some pounding midtempo black metal, with weirdly effected vocals, TONS of weird effects, slipping into near silence, before exploding into some pumelling industrial blackness, but rife with wild squiggly leads, everything drops out except for those squiggles, some bizarre spoken word brings us right into what can only be described as a repeated almost hip hop style loop, before launching into some epic soaring power metal with harmonized lead guitars and blasting double kick, warbly basslines, arpeggiated melodies, thick synthesizer buzz, almost like dubstep, before the band spits out more churning chugging heaviness, and we're only halfway through the first song. Shall we go on?
Whirring black ambience leads into some Khold like midtempo metal, with minor key melodies, and super processed vox, finally exploding into some frenzied black metal freakout, before again blissing out into a haunting expanse of churning processed guitars, chant like vocals, some near silence, then some awesome stuttering grinding crunch, a sort of black metal but with deep crooned vox, and some weird industrial filigree not to mention wild warbly bass, fading out in a flurry of classic metal pound, only to then immediately launch into the second track / half of the record, which if anything is just s varied and far out and fucked up, the highlights being some super distorted buzzing blurscapery, some twisted almost punk sounding convoluted lurch and lumber, some incredibly dense and complex gnarled black metal blasts, culminating in a super trippy chanted vocal outro.
Fucking nuts, and totally genius, like mad metal scientist genius, not for the faint at heart, or the true grim hordes, this is for folks looking for the most twisted blackness they can find, technical, epic, and warped beyond all comprehension. Which in case you couldn't tell, means this is one of our new favorite records, and definite contender for weirdo black metal record of the year.
And while they last, we have the limited deluxe box version...
Getting a new album from Absu is like being handed a bunch of scrolls from ancient Sumer bearing esoteric magickal wisdom - at a raging kegger hosted by some Slayer-blasting heshers! And since this is the thrashing Texas "mythological occult metal" band's first album in about eight years, AND they're one of the acts we arranged to play the Aquarius/WMFU showcase gig at the South By Southwest music fest in Austin this year (their first show in seven years!!!), you KNOW we're really excited about this self-titled album's nearly concurrent manifestation. Of course, we were equally (and foolishly, it turns out) worried that this long-overdue new Absu would somehow be a disappointment, seeing as how Shaftiel and Equitant have left the band, leaving remaining founding member drummer/vocalist Sir Proscriptor McGovern (also of Melechesh, Equimanthorn, and his solo project Proscriptor) to assemble a completely new lineup, finding fresh blood to dust off the band's old spellbooks for this new conjuration. Of course it's a bit different than before - a tad slower maybe (though still freakin' frenzied!), adorned with more atmospheric keyboards (synths and prog fave Mellotron!). But compared to anything else, it's still ABSU. Insane and arcane. The two new members are up to their awesome responsibilities, ripping fiercely through these complex but headbanging songs, leaving shredding solos in their wake. And of course, Proscriptor is still one of extreme metal's most incredible, exacting, accomplished drummers. Not to mention black metal/magickal conceptualists. So there's still weird occultic song titles to make Bal-Sagoth weep. Gotta love "In the Name of Auebothiabathabaithobeuee"!!! The eccentrick, eldritch spirit (part Celtic, part Mesopotamian) of Absu lives. Paying tribute, a bunch of guests make cameo contributions, including members of Melechesh and Mayhem, as well as former Absu bassist Equitant (giving this his stamp of approval). So call it a comeback.
2001's Tara may still be our favorite Absu album, but this sure is a worthy follow up. Hail Absu! We can't wait to see 'em. It's gonna kill!!
(FYI we should have copies of this on vinyl too next week!)
It's unclear what it is exactly that differentiates Aderlating from Gnaw Their Tongues, both are masterminded by mysterious noisemaker Mories, both feature garish frightening artwork, both feature extended wordy song titles like "And Thou Shall Breathe Sulfur As Last Breath" and "Travel The Fog As Death Reaping The Lands" and "The Ravenous Bloodlust Of Fallen Angels", and both bands are grim and blown out and epic and cacophonous and blackened and harrowing and loud as fuck. The key differences seem to be these: Aderlating is in fact a duo, whereas GTT is a one man band, and Gnaw Their Tongues is much more cinematic, and atmospheric, while Aderlating seems to be more dense and dark and layered.
Which is evidenced by the opening track here, a seemingly static wall of undulating layered dronemusic, the sound of 100 Sunroof!s playing simultaneously, a noise drenched ur-raga, a furious white hot sprawl of trancelike crumbling crunch, which over the course of nearly nine minutes goes from Merzbowian blast, to haunting black ambient creep, exploring all sorts of sonic mysteries in between. Devotional Hymns is a collection of sounds black and bleak, hymns perhaps, but to some fallen lord, grinding black shards collide with creaking ambient drifts, epic industrial wastelands, roiling, churning, every track a black hole of sound, when melody and light do escape, they are damaged, limping along, like some charred beast, some damaged machine, crawling through a soundscape of apocalyptic decay.
A few of the tracks here get rhythmic, sounding a bit like a blackened Wolf Eyes, a rotting sea of sounds supported by a rickety industrial skeleton, while others get almost black metal, but are so blurred and obscured that any riffage or blast beating, becomes blown out smears of grim sound, culminating in the hellish fury of the 12 minute title track, a sort of black industrial noise jam, that is simultaneously hypnotic and trancelike, filthy and raw, black and brutal. Incredible stuff as always.
Essential for Gnaw Their Tongues fans obviously, and anyone into buzzing black filth or crushing industrial black ambience. And these Shadowgraph cd-r's are in super swank digipaks, but are usually still quite limited, often to 100 or less, which means these will be gone before you know it...
Metalheads are definitely a weird bunch, their likes and dislikes, what is considered true and cult, versus stuff labeled poser or false metal. In some cases it's definitely cut and dried, but in others, there's really no rhyme or reason. For instance, take Depeche Mode. Almost every metalhead we've ever met, loves Depeche Mode. Why? There seems to be no metal connection, other than a sort of darkness or gothiness. Yet, DM remain a fast favorite, with more than a few metal bands covering songs by them as well. Which brings us to Alcest. For the life of us, we can't figure out why these guys are so beloved by black metallers, even the ones who go on about frosty grim kvlt hordes and generally listen to only extreme buzzing blackness, they all seem to love Alcest. Not that there's not plenty to love, it's just Alcest are barely metal at all. Sure there's some harsh vocals now and again, some distorted guitar, even some blast beats but that's about it as far as it goes metalwise. And the thing is, even when Alcest do dip into some blasting blackness, it's more shoegazey and dreamy and washed out and melodic, which speaks to why we love this band so much, their ability to create this glimmering blown out dreampop using tropes usually reserved for musics much more harsh and heavy.
This latest record finds the band perfecting their ever evolving formula, merging a sort of depressive melancholic black metal, with total blissed out shoegaze jangle pop. On Ecailles De Lune, even the heaviest moments are infused with an undeniable poppiness, a sort of ethereal dreaminess, that turns this into one of the least likely black metal records ever.
The band can be perfectly summed up sonically in the nearly 20 minute two part opening salvo, jangly guitars, hushed vocals, explode into a sort of prismatic shoegaze post pop, all big chords, pounding drums, everything wrapped in a soft psychedelic haze, crooned sad boy vocals, way down in the mix, slow builds to Godspeed like crescendos, angelic female background vocals, lush harmonies, spidery tendrils of minor key guitar, finally within the last minute of the first part, slipping into a buzzing blast, but as mentioned above, it's not so black and grim as if is epic and effulgent and soaring and majestic and beautiful. The second part opens with spare chiming guitars, before some almost actual black metal erupts, a woozy descending minor key melody that quickly shifts into something much more moody with harsh vocals showing up for the first time. It's frenzied and buzzy, but still more dreamy and druggy than black, and then just as quickly as it started, the blackness fades, leaving a loping rhythm, sweet chiming clean guitars, and then the rhythm drops out too, and the song plays out with just a soft tangle of reverby guitar notes and ethereal female vocals.
"Percees de Lumiere" begins all Lifelover-y, with swoonsome soaring shoegaze pop and harsh vox, only to splinter into prismatic dreampop partway through, dreamy female vocals over softly churning chords underneath, so nice.
"Solar Song" is some sort of Slowdive / Swervedriver / My Bloody Valentine hybrid, warm lush chords, soaring vocal harmonies, a killer main melody, total classic pop wreathed in layers of washed out fuzz and swirling sonic gauze, maybe the 'hit' here if there was gonna be one.
An 8+ minute closer might have you expecting a blasting metallic finale, but instead, we're treated to a smoldering sprawl of soft strummed, chiming gloom pop, no drums, just layers of glistening guitars, warm lush vocals, a slow burning chunk or rainy day post-metal dreamfolk balladry. woozy, washed out, hazy, dreamlike and utterly gorgeous.
While they last, we've got the limited digi-book packaging version of this fine album.
Holy shit, does Arkha Sva just keep getting weirder and weirder and better and better! These Japanese black metal freaks begin this latest assault with a tripped out swirly psychedelic intro, before the band launch into some super twisted POST-black metal, a loping super dramatic almost cabaret sounding avant metal, with super over the top crooned clean vocals, the guitars washed out and buzzy, the only hint of troo blackness are the occasional flurries of double kick, until finally those insane Arkha Sva vocals swoop in, impossibly high and totally operatic, a little eighties metal, soaring and shrieking, the band following suit, blasting into some filthy pounding blackness. The track's twisted and gnarled, and totally epic, with those vocals, easily the most amazing in BM, and this song is most definitely the best thing we've heard from these guys which is saying A LOT.
Woods Of Infinity counter with their own take on twisted dramatic blackness, super melodic metal with lots of synths, totally catchy, but all over the map, the vocals freaked out and manic, slipping from nearly spoken to crooned to shrieked, while the music soars majestically in the background, from midtempo Lifelover style black pop to almost symphonic sounding black metal, all the while the vocals never letting up. The second WoI track is a creepy abstract drift, all acoustic guitars, monk-like chanting, and more of those dramatic vocals, haunting and freaky, dark and mysterious and really cool.
Packaged in a super swank gatefold 7" sleeve, LIMITED TO 666 COPIES (of course), each one hand numbered...
We've said it before but it bears repeating, what is it with French black metal?! How is it that there are so many amazing bands? Like Norway, France has carved out a distinct and recognizable vibe and sound, and become a black metal powerhouse, so much so that just being from France gives a band some serious grim cred, and it's often well deserved, cuz really, the ratio of French BM that rules versus the ones that suck is pretty impressive. Thus we have the enigmatic The Arrival Of Satan, who besides being from France, have one other distinction that will no doubt endear them to faithful readers of the aQ list, they hail from Grenoble, not necessarily a black metal hotbed, EXCEPT for Diamatregon, and by extension, the various non black offshoots, Aluk Todolo, Gunslingers, GR & Full-Blown Expansion, and as might be inevitable in a scene as small as Grenoble's, The Arrival Of Satan just so happens to feature former Diamatregon drummer, Krukka!
But don't be expecting any sort of weird progressive freaked out psychedelic blackness, like Diamatregon's recent Crossroad masterpiece, the sound of Vexing Verses owes much more to the previous DMTRGN opus Blasphemy For Satan. It's a similarly face melting blast of furious buzz and blown out heaviness, the riffs a dronelike blur, the drums frantic and pounding, always on the verge of collapse, the vocals hysterical and hellish, but within this blurry blast lurks all sorts of weirdness, bizarre convoluted song structures, lurching start stop tempos, bizarre production, some of the tracks, even though they're buzzing and blasting away, manages to sound simultaneously warm and sort of pretty, the guitars will throb and pulse, sometimes dropping out entirely, leaving just the drums to pound away briefly, before lurching back into action, giving the sound a sort of woozy seasick vibe, the riffs are gnarled and twisted, atonal and off kilter, lending a sort of warped avant quality to the sound as well.
On the surface, Vexing Verses does indeed come across as a blazing blast of satanic slaughter and grim black fury, but beneath the blast and howl, the crush and pound, lurks a melted black heart of twisted pop flecked blackness, fucked up Burzumic buzz and a distinctly French, totally twisted what-the-fuck mentality. Grim and black enough for the true, freaky and far out enough for the rest of us...
More grim buzzing black metal from Finland! For some of us, that's all we need to know, but then, go ahead and check inside and discover that the lyrics were "written and stolen from various sources", by someone called Ancient Fisherman, who just so happens to be Albert Witchfinder of the mighty Reverend Bizarre!! Fuck yeah!
So in addition to digging through the RB archives and releasing almost as many records posthumously as when they were actually a band, Mr. Witchfinder indulges his glacial ultra doom side as The Puritan, and offers up musical black masses in both Armanenschaft, and now Azrael Rising.
Relentless and furious, buzzing and black, the Ancient Fisherman's partner Vitutor lays down some serious grimness, channeling the Nordic elite, but also countrymen like Horna, Ajattara, Beherit, Sargeist, the Finnish elite, and Azrael sounds right at home. Long epic stretches of sweeping keyboards, give way to loping sprawls of midtempo Burzumic buzz, before slipping into lightning fast blasts of blown out blackness. One track stands out, as it harkens back to Reverend Bizarre, a seriously doomy trudge, the vocals slipping from harsh and screechy to bellowy and demonic, while the riffs churn and the tempos lurch, before the last song crashes in, a blown out hiss drenched burst of midtempo drumming, washed out blurred buzzing guitars, and vocals that are wild and gloriously unhinged.
So there you go... Black metal. Finnish. Albert Witchfinder. Buzz. Blast. Grim. What else do you need?
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Debut record from these Greek avant black metal warriors, oddly named after a redwoods retreat near here that should be familiar to the conspiracy-minded, whose sound is equal parts midtempo Burzumic buzz, furious blackened blast and gnarled experimental blackness, which means, awesome!
Five long tracks that slip from pounding primitive crush to insectoid frenzy and back again, with a sound that definitely harkens back to the Norwegian elite, the riffs epic and majestic, the vocals a gravelly demonic howl, the drumming crushing and intricate, the band deftly balancing their two sides. Pounding away relentlessly, before launching into a blazing blast at the drop of a dime, only to screech to a halt, and lurch right back into the pound, often shifting gears even more, slipping into some seriously doomy plod, or sprawling out into some weirdly melodic post-BM meander, but always finding their way back to the trancelike buzz.
The record finishes with the Deathspell-ish
"Drowning In The Roar Of A Sinking World", a 12+ minute, post rock, black metal hybrid, loping and lurching, the riffs angular and atonal, the song a woozy waltz, the band spitting out intense little squalls of rapid fire double kick and grinding buzz, the track slows down even further eventually, becoming downright doomy, the vocals getting full on Popeye / Immortal, a hellish croak, the guitars getting more and more seasick and psychedelic, until they launch into an epic, blasting, midtempo, melodic outro.
Super swank packaging, 6 panel black on gold digipak, featuring super creepy evil artwork from Justin Bartlett, who among other things, designed an aQ t-shirt not too long ago. LIMITED TO 1000 copies.
Who would have thought? A new Burzum record, after his release from16 years in prison. Has it really been 16 years? And who would have thought the new Burzum would actually be really really great?! Certainly not us, especially after the last two stinkers, the made-in-jail, all-synth Daudi Baldrs and Hildskjalf. And the last one of those was more than 11 years ago! And let's not forget Varg's prison conversion, becoming a neo fascist, a Nazi, spouting white pride rhetoric, hell, this record was even originally titled "The White God", not to mention that he's in fact a convicted murderer and an arsonist. But it's always been like that with Burzum, and much of black metal, but in Burzum's case in particular, we try to not confuse/conflate the man with the music, and to be fair, for some that's not possible, no one could fault a person for not wanting to support a musician who espouses reprehensible views, and one way is by not listening to their music, and not buying their records. But as we've posited before, your record collection would begin to get pretty sparse, once you eliminated records made by assholes, and by people whose politics you disagreed with, but again, it's perfectly fair to do just that.
But for those of you who can in fact separate the music from the musician, then Belus is a pretty serious and solid return to form. Not so much Filosefem as Det Som Engang Var and Hvis Lyset Tar Oss. The same guitar tone, the same epic riffage, the same raspy vokills, for someone who was not allowed a guitar for the last decade plus, it's pretty amazing that in the space of less than a year, he somehow managed to come up with this. Granted some of these tracks are older, but for the most part this is a brand new record, could be that it was formulated over the past decade, the result of all that pent up emotion, this fierce and furious chunk of black buzz, weirdly melodic in places, very trancelike all the way through, with lots of spoken word mixed into the frantic riffing and blasting beats... The record is at its strongest when it's the most Burzumic, blown out buzz, frenzied riffing over loping midtempo rhythms, the riffing surprisingly layered and complex, check out "Morgenroede" with the relentless main riff shifting from fast picking, to dizzyingly looped arpeggiation, making the whole song swoon and warble, before lurching back into a buzz drenched lumber. The closing track, "Belus' Tilbakeomst (Konklusjon)" is pretty incredible as well, super intense and droney and atmospheric, the riffing almost static, building all sorts of tension, layer upon layer, various notes and overtones ringing out, the playing frantic and frenzied, but with very little forward momentum, almost like some weird sort of black raga drone, rendered in black buzz. There's lots of that sort of unlikely innovation going on here, every time we play this in the store, people come to the counter to find out what the heck it is, and then they can't believe it's Burzum. Or, rather, they might very well have thought it was Burzum, but can't believe it's the NEW Burzum.
It's too bad for Burzum, and for this record, that Belus will forever be saddled with so much non musical baggage, though it's his own damn fault, cuz once you dig through all the shit, get past all the politics, all the rumors and racist rhetoric, past all the expectations and the various scenesters and tastemakers, past the fact that he's really just a total fuckhead, if you can forget just for a second what led up to the creation of this record, Belus could very well end up being one of the best black metal records of the year.
NB. There IS vinyl, or rather WAS, but the first pressing is sold out, and the copies we got are long gone, but eventually they'll do another pressing.
Canis Dirus is a black metal duo from the appropriately frosty land of... Minnesota? Well, it certainly makes sense if anyone has spent winter in the Midwest, they will no doubt be aware of how oppressive and life denying that shit can be. And when you consider that Canis Dirus is comprised of the heads of the God Is Myth and Ars Magna labels, you can safely bet that this is some grim, brutal, and seriously cult stuff. The album begins with "Choking And Drowning", a surprisingly gentle piece of slightly ominous acoustic beauty that goes against what you might expect from such a song title. Next up is the title track, and at this point we're in full winter mode, as the band rides forward on hypnotic midtempo Burzum-styled rhythm. The vocals are a hysterical shriek, the guitars are like a fuzzy blanket of concentrated evil, and the drums (machines?) keep things going deeper and deeper into the woods. "Joyless And The Self Fulfilling Prophecy" is an awesome piece of murky black metal that moves slowly but surely, stopping for a cool ambient middle part, before heading back into the dirgey midtempo beat. The cool, slightly phased guitars almost sound like Alice In Chains for a second, but before long, sour, pukey sounding leads come in, giving the song a very disconcerting feeling. The vocals pretty much sound like a witch being tortured and serve as the perfect foil to the spacious instrumentation. The album closes with "In Deep Waters", a piece that utilizes negative space and some field recordings, that bookends the album perfectly. Really cool stuff, not that you would expect anything less considering the band's pedigree.
Latest disc ov blasting lo-fi fucked up blackness from this Northwestern one man horde, another super limited self released jam (the last one was limited to 24 copies, which all came to us and all disappeared pretty much immediately). So fair warning, if you want to get your hands on this sick shit, be quick, or be very very disappointed.
No idea what F.D.K.L.S.O.M.F. stands for, but this is some super intense, super pummeling, buzz drenched, grim, kvlt, frosty, lo-fi, raw and primitive black metal skree.
Stumbling, mostly midtempo, the guitars buzz frantically, the vocals shriek wildly, the drums are chaotic and confusional, the songs don't really blast or plod, instead they seem to veer wildly, and druggily from tempo to tempo, slowing down, speeding up, this is about as raw as it gets, mostly brittle high end, guessing it's just drums and guitar, if there is a bass, it follows in the long tradition of inaudible black metal bass, but it hardly matters, this is all about the riff, and the atmosphere, and both are stellar, the riffs destroy, dense and angular and atonal, the atmosphere is definitely primitive and basement / practice space / dungeon / cave, lots of echo and reverb, and at its most frenzied it's a white noise squall, the vocals especially, but when it's not so in-the-red, it's like listening to some weird lost classic outsider black metal demo, which is pretty much what this is.
ULTRA LIMITED AGAIN, home brewed packaging, a weird little devil deer insert, all the cds in very generic, and entirely UNmetal primary colored paper sleeves. GRIM!
Released a little while ago on the ever eclectic and elite Profound Lore label, the debut by blackened thrashers n' bashers Crucifist is something we don't want to overlook. It's not just another band featuring Brutal Truth bassist Dan Lilker (also ex-Anthrax, Nuclear Assault, S.O.D., Venomous Concept, Hemlock, Exit-13, etc.) but also features two members of true doomlords Orodruin. So, while Crucifist ostensibly play (very) old-school black metal, they also incorporate an unhealthy helping of doom and death-grind musicks, anything really to make this disc all the more filthy and crusty sounding. Lilker's rubbery bass is simply sick, a heavy anchor for the wicked riffs, widdly guitar bits, and the wretched vokills (by a guy named Ron, who is thus nicknamed "The Rondertaker", haha). The Rondertaker reminds us a bit of King Fowley from Deceased, singing in a raspy guttural gargle with the occasional Tom G. Warrior death grunt. Throw in some horror movie atmospherics (such as "Neon Corpse", an interlude of chant and FX) and copious amounts of chaotic energy (surging to the fore on such cuts as "Witchgrip"), and you're in for a nice and nasty dose of old schoolish underground extreme metal mania. They've basically written their own review of this album with the song title "Skull-Smashing Face-Ripping Death"... if you like that, you'll like this! Another one that might do for a review, meant in the best possible way: "Putrid Mother Lode"!
This should appeal to fans of the ancient likes of Venom, early Voivod, Autopsy, and Hellhammer, especially the latter when they slow it down, which they do to crushing effect often enough... it should also be noted that Crucifist dare to blaspheme against NWOBHMer's Angel Witch with a cover of their "Angel Of Death"!
By the way, guitarist John Gallo, one of the Orodruin guys, also has a solo project called Blizaro, doing synth-based, Italian horror soundtrack influenced, eccentric doom metal, that RULES, and will have a new full-length out on Razorback sometime this spring that we expect will be amazing, look out for it!
Today's Darkthrone is a totally different beast than the Darkthrone of old. Back in the day, Darkthrone conjured up visions of mysterious corpse painted figures, of epic Norwegian black metal, of vast fields of ice, of shadows dancing in firelight, they were THEE ultimate black metal band. Transylvanian Hunger, A Blaze In The Northern Sky, Under A Funeral Moon...
But at some point, the punk and classic metal influences that so obviously informed the music of Darkthrone, really took over, and the sound of Darkthrone, instead of being influenced by that music, began to SOUND like that music, WAY more punk, with smatterings of classic NWOBHM, which we definitely dug, and with that sonic shift, came a shift in, well, seriousness? Their public persona became goofier. Photo ops consisted almost entirely of shots of the group on camping trips. And there's drummer Fenriz, outspoken as always, consistently holding court, schooling the kids on cool metal records, weird obscure bands, to the point of filling cdd booklets with liner notes, comparing their songs to classic metal jams, as well as including a list of albums to buy.
So while a lot of troo grim black metalheads probably jumped ship by now, the rest of us can dig these crazy punk metal jams, the goofy lyrics, the over the top vocals, the squiggly guitar leads, totally retro, but all twisted up into something distinctly Darkthrone.
The sound here is less classic metal, and almost kinda more like any of those "NWOFHM" metal Circle side projects, Steel Mammoth, Mercedes Hell, Motorspandex, and well, let's let the track-by-track liner notes from Fenriz point out their actual sonic inspirations: Motorhead, Inepsy, Agent Steel, English Dogs, old Metallica, Deathside, Puke, old Slayer, Omen, Savage Grace, one song is even described by Fenriz as a "Mix of speed metal and hard rock, with 40s nostalgic notes in the verse-riff". Not sure what else to say. When asked in a recent interview if Darkthrone performed "extreme metal", Fenriz responded by saying that Darkthrone is "moderate metal. With UGLY vocals." Which pretty much nails it. It's heavy, punk as fuck, definitely metal, loose and sloppy, but super melodic, weirdly catchy, with some seriously killer riffs, some ridiculous and over the top vocals, and some of the best liner notes you'll ever read. Plus more bad ass Dennis Dread artwork. Recommended of course, but only for those of you who know what you're getting into!
The return of one of our favorite mysterious black hordes, Emit, although not technically a return as the band is defunct and have already re-emerged as the similarly named Hammemit, instead, this is the second posthumous collection from these bizarre black alchemists, gathering up two old recordings, The Dark Bleeding ep from 2003 and the The Dark Gods demo from 2004. The cool thing about Emit was they were never really black metal, but their sound was blacker than many of their buzzier / blastier compatriots. They trafficked in a raw sort of primitive free black noise, more like Abruptum really, with clouds of noxious distorted guitars, howling anguished processed vocals, and often no drums to speak of at all.
The Dark Bleeding is the group at their rawest. Distorted tangles of free form guitar, drenched in reverb, vocals grunting and growling, some actual riffage for sure, but buried beneath dense slabs of crumbling distortion, and heaving low end rumble, the final of the four tracks features some awesomely distorted church organ, resulting in a super creepy, ultra noisy chunk of circusy black drone-noise.
The Dark Gods is a bit more song oriented, but only a bit, still plenty abstract, spaced out swells, melodic and downright pretty, give way to creeping black riffage, and warped and warbly low end, sick vocals, garbled and processed, drums show up, but instead of blasting or pounding, they are totally abstract, another element to drift and meander and get all tangled up in the ever swirling morass of blackened sound. Near the end, the drums do make their presence more known, giving the sound a distinctly doomy vibe, but still totally unhinged and chaotic and fractured and gloriously fucked up.
Like WOLD meets Abruptum meets Circle Of Ouroborus, noisy, heavy, abstract, weirdly pretty, totally and completely damaged, and thus WAY recommended.
Last year, in our never ending quest for the weirdest black metal ever, we discovered the mysterious and perplexing Emit. And while technically they may in fact be black metal, realistically, they are more of some sort of ambient, ethereal, damaged drone outfit, spewing a deconstructed, abstract whatthefuck crash, clang and creep. Definitely black, but more in mood than sound. Either way, we were totally taken and were super psyched to discover a new record from these freaks, a split with Vrolok, more on them later. On their half of this split, Emit start off the proceedings with all vocals, the first track a soft shimmery swirl of ghostly reverbed vocals, floating and drifting, the second track is more vocals, this time some sort of monkish chant, low and liturgical, over a whirring distant drone. It's only by track three, that any sort of 'metal' becomes evident, but even then, it's metal of the most abstract fucked up kind. A buzzing blasting burst of lo-fi blackness, that starts of blazing but as it forges forward it falls apart more and more, each separate element becoming more distorted and more twisted and tweaked, until it's like listening to Darkthrone on a transistor radio through an endless series of funhouse mirrors. Woah! The rest of the tracks delve deeply into a dark realm of medieval ambient drones, a sort of more damaged Abruptum, with haunting atonal detuned guitars, and creepy tiny monster vocals, occasional bursts of super distorted black buzz and sonic shrapnel, but for the most part, a dizzying onslaught of chaotic creepiness and bizarre blackness.
Vrolok while not nearly as weird as Emit, are definitely a bit more overtly black metal, but are the perfect match for Emit with their furious and fucked up black buzz. From the tumultuous blast of blazing lo-fi blackness of the first track "Hellchoir (Pestilence 1440)", a snarling, squirming riff, tangled up with lightspeed blast beats and buried under all sorts of suffocating sonic sludge, to the weird martial soundscape of "Black Chemical Waltz", a super blown out simple drum beat, amidst swirls of subsonic drones and buzzing weirdness peppered with creepy distorted snatches of found sound and bits of conversation, to the epic blackness of "Inverse Devotion" sounding like a glorious collision between Xasthur and Immortal, albeit recorded on a busted 4-track, to the epic closer "Between The Astral Shades", which starts off as a shimmering creeped out ambient soundscape, turns into what sounds like Bathory recorded in a high school gymnasium, and finally morphs into an ultra distorted seasick black dirge, replete with anguished howls and washed out black drone guitars, the whole thing blurring into a glorious blackened dronedrenched waltz.
More absolutely essential bizarre blackness for sure!
There's something about Finnish black metal that just kills us. Always. Every time. Horna obviously, but also Clandestine Blaze, Vordr, Ride For Revenge, Circle Of Ouroborus, Behexen, Satanic Warmaster, Jumalhamara... and as you can tell by that list, none of those bands really sound like any of the others, but still, they all somehow manage to sound distinctly Finnish.
However, within that expansive Finnish BM sound there is most definitely a distinct subset, one that is particularly grim and frosty and buzzy and blasting, furious and frenetic, which is where Exordium comes in.
Their s/t cd from a while back got short shrift here for some reason, but we did flip for their tracks on the Crushing The Holy Trinity comp. It may have been the first time we had heard them, and we described their sound thusly: "Super white hot hyperdistorted buzz guitar, lightning fast blast beats, killer riffs, the whole thing blown out and recorded so hot the speakers can barely handle it!" Which pretty much still applies, if anything the sound has just gotten more refined, tighter, more polished, but without losing any of their grimnity. Think maybe a little old Satyricon, a bit of early Immortal, some Beherit for sure, but all wound up and revved up and supercharged, even introducing a bit of Khold like groove here and there.
Pure buzzing blackened Northern darkness just the way we like it.
Record number two from these Cascadian black metallers, originally released in 2007, now remastered and partially re-recorded, replacing the original electronic drums with live drumming, and dividing the original hour plus epic into more manageable song length tracks, while still playing out as one single sprawling black metal naturescape.
Not sure what the deal is with these guys, they've obviously been around since 2006, when their debut Rain was originally released, but since 2007, we've heard nothing new, only the eventual re-release of their first two records. Not that we're complaining, well, okay, maybe we're complaining a little, but only cuz we want more, and are dying to hear what these guys sound like circa NOW.
But The Hunt will hold us over for now, like Rain before it, an expansive blackened collage of murky blasting blackness, and slow creeping ambient dronemusic, often lumped in with their Cascadian brethren Wolves In The Throne Room, and while there are definitely similarities, they tread markedly different sonic paths. WITTR channel the majestic blackness of SF legends Weakling, taking that sound and infusing it with their own naturalistic take on BM, adding female vocals, folky acoustic guitars, and plenty of polish, while Fauna seem to lurk in the shadows, with a sound more immediate and intimate, almost feral sounding at times, the drone element key to their sound, the black blasts are trancelike and mesmerizing, the ambient stretches expansive and haunting, the sound even here, gussied up and remastered, still sounds more DIY and punk than Wolves, and it suits them, the ferocity of the forest primeval, mixed with the mysterious tranquility of the endless night.
The Hunt is a blackened journey, a moonlit creep, ominous and drifting like some black fog, giving way to explosive fury, passionate howling and blasting metal, that slips into woozy melodic doominess, as easily as crushing grim blackness, in fact much of the heaviness on display leans toward a more melodic melancholia, spidery minor key guitars weaving together stretches of foresty folk and blasts of frenzied riffage, sometimes locking into dynamic doomish mathiness, but just as easily transforming that into churning gnarled black metal pound.
The final two parts here might be Fauna's finest moment, a dizzying tangle of stop start riffing, tense and dramatic, giving way to the moody final movement, a dirgey drift, with soaring vocals buried beneath the crumbling minor key distortion, melodic and mournful, peppered with furious blown out blasts, laced with acoustic guitars, finally fading out leaving just the sounds of the forest.
Swank packaging too, black on black origami style cardstock sleeve, with a printed black on black cardstock insert.
Every metalhead we know has been freaking out over Hellhammer worshipping all girl crusty black metal outfit Gallhammer. And for good reason, the dew spit up a filthy sludgey blackened pound, that pays proper homage to the 'Hammer that came before. But truth be told, there is a bit of novelty to their appeal, hard to argue with three young cute Japanese girls in bullet belts and Amebix shirts, adorned in spikes and smeared black raccoon eye makeup, making this gloriously unholy racket. And we'd be lying if we didn't admit to at least a few aQ staffers having a bit of a metal girl crush on Ms. Vivian Slaughter.
Thus, those not afforded the luxury of actually seeing Gallhammer play live, have been clamoring for a live video. The music is awesome, but somehow more awesome when that harsh hellish howl is coming out of such a diminutive frontwoman, and this din is being produced by this all female trio. So here you have it, Gallhammer, performing live, like the title says in "the ruin of a church", the band set up upon the altar, in front of glowing stained glass windows, pretty striking visually for sure, and the sound is fantastic, thick and chuggy, pounding and blackened, the vocals a blasphemous presence in this house of God. BUT, the band aren't all that exciting to watch play. They don't headbang, they don't jump around or thrash wildly, and to be fair, maybe this music doesn't lend itself to that sort of action. Instead the band sort of sway back and forth, entranced, occasionally stepping to the mic to bellow hellishly (and it's revealed that both axeslingers have wails that could peel paint!). So minus any sort of extreme action, it is mesmerizing, helped along by the massive riffs and pounding rhythms, the whole band conjuring up some early eighties demons and channeling them into filthy crusty buzz.
There are plenty of extras, two other live shows, a bunch of videos (that are mostly the band rocking out live, but they rock out WAY harder for the camera), a photo gallery (!), and a band interview, but again, it's slow going as it's subtitled, and being translated, so there's plenty of waiting for questions, answers, and nothing wild or shocking, just a mellow conversation, interesting for sure, but not mind blowing.
But so what. It's GALLHAMMER!!! And for all our minor kvetching, this disc is pretty cool, and for now, as close as we're gonna get to sweating and swaying wildly in the pit at a Gallhammer show, and certainly as close as we'll ever get to actually talking to Vivian. Swooooon. So yeah, recommended. ----* ----* In Stock, Not Yet Reviewed : ----* If you want to order one of these, just search for the item, then click on the buy button and it will be added to your cart! ABSOLUT NULL PUNKT "Absolute Magnitude" (Blossoming Noise) cd 14.98 AETHENOR "Betimes Black" (VHF) cd/lp 13.98/14.98 AIR "Moon Safari" (EMI) cd + dvd + book 26.00 ALLIEN, ELLEN "Sool" (BPitch Control) cd/lp 15.98/19.98 AMEBIX "No Sanctuary" (Alternative Tentacles) cd/lp+7" 14.98/13.98 AMON DUUL II "Hijack" (Revisited Records) cd 17.98 ANAKRID "Banishment Rituals of The Disenlightened" (Beta-lactam Ring) cd 16.98 ANAKRID "s/t" (Fever Dream Fever) lp 13.98 ANAL MAGIC & REV. DWIGHT FRIZZELL "Beyond The Black Crack" (Paridigm) cd 16.98 ANIMUS "Hallucinations: Ideals Surrounding Water, Sand, And Clouds Of Dust" (Ars Manga) cd 14.98 ANNIVERSARY, THE "Devil on Our Side: B-Sides & Rarities" (Vagrant) cd 14.98 ATAVIST "Alchemic Resurrection" (Rise Above) 10" 17.98 AVSKY "Malignant" (Moribund) cd 14.98 BEHEXEN "My Soul For His Glory" (Moribund) cd 14.98 BUN B "II Trill-(Chopped up not Blopped up version)" (Rap-A-Lot) cd 14.98 BUN B "II Trill" (Rap-a-lot) cd 14.98 BURNING BRIDES "Anhedonia" (Cobraside) cd 14.98 CELESTIAL BLOODSHED "Cursed, Scarred and Forever Possessed" (Moribund) cd 14.98 CLOUDLAND CANYON / MYTHICAL BEAST "split" (Not Not Fun) lp 14.98 CLOUDS "We Are Above You" (Hydra Head) cd 14.98 COFFINS "Buried Death" (20 Buck Spin) cd 14.98 COFFINS "Mortuary Of Darkness" (Kreation Records) 2lp 22.00 COUGH "Sigillum Luciferi" (Forcefield Records) cd 10.98 COURTIS, ANLA / SEIICHI YAMAMOTO / YOSHIMI "Live At Kanadian" (Public Eyesore) cd 10.98 DEADBIRD "Twilight Ritual" (At A Loss) cd 13.98 DISKJOKKE "Staying In" (Smalltown Supersound) cd 16.98 DRUMM, KEVIN "Imperial Distortion" (Hospital) 2cd 19.98 DRUNK INJUNS "From Where The Sun Now Stands I Will Fight No More, Forever" (Alternative Tentacles) cd 10.98 EATER "The Album + Singles Plus" (Anagram) 2cd 17.98 EMPIRE AURIGA "Auriga Dying" (Moribund) cd 14.98 FERN KNIGHT "s/t" (VHF) cd 13.98 FLAMES OF HELL "Fire and Steel" (Draconian Records) cd 18.98 FLEET FOXES "s/t" (Sub Pop) cd/lp 13.98/15.98 GOTO80 "Made On Internet" (Pinipung) cd 17.98 HOLLENTHON "Opus Magnum" (Napalm Records) cd 15.98 I SHALT BECOME "Requiem" (Moribund Records) cd 15.98 IHSAN "Angl" (Candlelight USA) cd 12.98 INDIAN JEWELRY "Fake and Cheap" (dLTD) lp 17.98 INDRICOTHERE "s/t" (Gilead Media) lp+cd 14.98 ITAL TEK "Cyclical" (Planet Mu) cd 14.98 JEPSON, WARNER "Totentanz and Other Electronic Works, 1958 - 1973" (Melon Expander) cd 19.98 JEX THOTH / PAGAN ALTAR "split" (I Hate Records) 7" 12.98 JIMMY CAKE, THE "Spectre & Crown" (Pilatus) cd 17.98 JOAN AS POLICE WOMAN "To Survival" (Chrysalis) cd 13.98 KULTIVATOR "Barndomens Stigar" (Mellotronen) 2cd 28.00 KWELI, TALIB "Eardrum" (Blacksmith) cd 13.98 LES TROUBADOURS DU ROI BAUDOIN "Missa Luba" (El / Cherry Red) cd 17.98 LIL MAMA "VYP Voice Of the Young People" (Zomba) cd 17.98 MACHINEFABRIEK "Bijeen" (Kning Disk) cd 14.98 MACHINEFABRIEK & STEPHEN VITIELLO "Box Music" (12K) cd 14.98 MANIACS DREAM "Turku Hold 'Em" (Lal Lal Lal) cd 15.98 MASTERS, MARC "No Wave" (Black Dog Publishing) book 29.95 MGR "Wavering On The Cresting Heft" (Conspiracy) cd 14.98 MONOLAKE "Hongkong (Remastered)" (Monolake) cd 17.98 MONOTONIX "Body Language" (Drag City) cd/lp 12.98/12.98 MORGEN "s/t" (Phoenix) cd 17.98 MY MORNING JACKET "Evil Urges" (ATO Records) cd 13.98 N.E.R.D. "Seeing Sounds" (Star Trak) cd 14.98 NACHTMYSTIUM "Assassins: Black Meddle Part 1" (Century Media) cd 13.98 NATURAL FOOD "s/t" (Porter Records) cd 16.98 NEED MORE SOURCES "Shed" (Moteer) cd 15.98 NEGATIVLAND "A Big 10-8 Place" (Seeland) 2cd 15.98 NEGATIVLAND "Presents Thigmotactic" (Seeland) cd 13.98 NEMESIS "The Day Of Retribution" (GMR Music) cd 23.00 O LEVEL (TEENAGE FILMSTARS) "A Day In The Life of Gilbert and George: 1977-1980" (Artpop!) cd 17.98 OMEGA "10000 Lepes" (Hungatron) cd 17.98 OPETH "Watershed (Collector's Edition)" (Roadrunner) 2cd 23.00 PATE, JOHNNY "Outrageous" (Dusty Groove) cd PEACE, THE "Black Power" (Groo) lp 30.00 PENTEMPLE "s/t" (Southern Lord) cd 15.98 PINK FAIRIES "Finland Freakout 1971" (MLP (Major League Productions)) cd 27.00 PLUXUS "Solid State" (Kompakt) cd 16.98 PRISONERS, THE "Rare And Unissued" (Big Beat) cd 17.98 PUMICE "Quo" (Soft Abuse) cd 14.98 QUANTEC "Unusual Signals" (Echochord) cd 16.98 REATARD, JAY "Singles 06-07" (In The Red) 2cd 17.98 RILEY, TERRY "The Last Camel In Paris" (Elision Fields) cd 14.98 RUSSIAN CIRCLES "Station" (Suicide Squeeze) cd 14.98 SARMANTO, HEIKKI "Moonflower" (Porter Records) cd 16.98 SEMIMUUMIO "Vamos" (Lal Lal Lal) cd 15.98 SEVEN THAT SPELLS "Black OM Rising" (Beta-Lactam) cd 26.00 SHY CHILD "Noise Won't Stop" (Kill Rock Stars) cd 14.98 SIC ALPS "U.S. EZ" (Siltbreeze) cd 13.98 STAR STANGLED BANGER "s/t" (Aztec) cd 24.00 STOOGES, THE "Gimme Some Skin" (Get Back) cd/lp 17.98/16.98 STUDIO "Yearbook 2" (Information) cd 17.98 TAPE "Luminarium" (Hapna) cd 16.98 TILLY AND THE WALL "s/t" (Team Love) cd 15.98 U.S. CHRISTMAS "Eat The Low Dogs" (Neurot Recordings) cd 14.98 UNEARTHLY TRANCE "Electrocution" (Relapse) cd 15.98 V/A "Des Jeunes Gens Modernes" (Naive) 2cd 27.00 V/A "Disco Italia" (Strut) cd 14.98 V/A "Do The Pop! Redux Part One" (Savage Beat) 2cd 24.00 V/A "Ed Rec Vol III" (Ed Banger) 2lp 29.00 V/A "Ethiopiques 23 : Orchestra Ethiopia" (Buda Musique) cd 15.98 V/A "Japanese New Music Festival 2008" (Magaibutsu) cd 13.98 V/A "Well Hung: 20 Funk-Rock Eruptions From Beneath Communist Hungary - Vol.1" (Finders Keepers) cd 23.00 VILLALOBOS, RICARDO "Enfants (MAGMA REMIXES)" (SED) 12" 17.98 WHITE STRIPES, THE "De Stijl" (Third Man / Warner) cd 12.98 WHITE STRIPES, THE "Elephant" (Third Man / Warner) cd 13.98 WHITE STRIPES, THE "Get Behind Me Satan" (Third Man / Warner) cd 14.98 WHITE STRIPES, THE "Icky Thump" (Warner Bros.) cd 16.98 WHITE STRIPES, THE "s/t" (Third Man / Warner) cd 13.98 WHITE STRIPES, THE "White Blood Cells" (Third Man / Warner) cd 14.98 WHO'S YOUR FAVORITE SON GOD "Out of Body Diva" (Holy Mountain) cd 13.98 WICKHAM-SMITH, SIMON "Love & Lamentation" (Pogus Productions) cd 14.98 WICKHAM-SMITH, SIMON & RICHARD YOUNGS "Veil (For Greg)" (Jagjaguwar) cd 14.98 WILSON, GARY "You Think You Really Know Me: The Gary Wilson Story" (Plexifilm) dvd 26.00 WOLF PARADE "At Mount Zoomer" (Sub Pop) cd/lp 14.98/14.98 YA HO WHA 13 "Feather Of Wisdom" (Phoenix) lp 23.00 YELLOW SWANS "Deterioration" (Modern Radio Record Label) cd 11.98 _______________________________________________________________________ ABOUT MAILORDER
Geist are a German black metal horde that features the rhythm section of another BM band we reviewed a while back, Funeral Procession, and Geist, much like FP, offer up the same sort of classic Nordic sounding grim black buzz, right out of the gate, their cold atmospheric black metal reminding us of Satyricon, the production tight and slick, but the band have a definite flair for the ambience, creating dark creepy intros and outros, but unlike the usual wolves or wind or rain, it sounds like a seaside, or a harbor, the sound of lapping water, distant foghorns, deem rumbling tones, laid over what sound like field recordings, evoking some serious haunting dread before exploding in a frenzy of lurching super dynamic, mathy start / stop black blasting. Other tracks introduce what sounds like recordings from beneath the surface, a gurgling shimmer wrapped around rumbling pianos, and distant drones, again leading directly into some amazing blasting blackness, tight and heavy and epic, as much as we love raw and primitive and lo-fi, hearing a band this fast and furious sound this tight and heavy never gets old, and these guys DESTROY. Total depressive melodic black buzz majesty.
The record finishes off with a 16 minute sprawl of awesomely complex, gnarled, drone laced doomic black metal, that shifts from lurching crunch and stutter, to loping almost sea sick waltz, peppered with mysterious samples, totally intense and mysterious, eventually drifting into a soundscape of creaking ropes, plucked steel strings, the sound of waves and wind, a mournful seaside lament, the haunting sounds of sea and sky and storm.
Hallow is a group of blackened noisemakers loosely related to blacknoise merchants Ancestors (whose new ep is reviewed elsewhere on this list) and their debut double lp is in fact the soundtrack to an art show by Hallow mainman (only man?) Mark McCoy, who is also the mainman of Ancestors, which means the two are probably more than loosely related. Fuck. Who are we kidding, Hallow sound like a meaner, less black metal, more fucked up hardcore Ancestors, and anyone, and we mean ANYone who loves those Ancestors records, absolutely needs this too.
In addition to fronting these to monstrous metallic behemoths, McCoy also creates some super intense artwork, strange assemblages of ruined buildings, of crumbling riggings, collapsing structures suspended in space, intricate to the point of being the work of a madman, these drawings are captivating, incredible, precise and ultra detailed, and in their own way, they are imbued with some sort of fucked up energy, they seem, sad, they seem violent, abandoned, lonely, possessed, EVIL even. And thus, McCoy created Hallow, who recorded a series of songs, of soundtracks, each to accompany one of his pieces. Included is a booklet, oversized, featuring the various drawings, it's up to the listener to determine which song, accompanies which drawing. But again, it hardly matters, on their own, the images are breathtaking, and the music, even minus the art, Hallow create a serious racket.
The A side plays out like an Ancestors records, a bunch of short sharp tracks, furious frenetic post hardcore black metal buzz and pound and blast, super harsh, hellish, hateful, awesomely buzzy riffs, wildly blasting beats, walls of feedback wrapped around lurching anti-grooves, the songs stuttering and lumbering and exploding into jagged freakouts before locking back into some churning rhythm or white hot blast.
The B side is split into two longer tracks, sonically similar to the A side in some ways, but a whole different beast in others, the first a noisy depressive dirge, epic and spacious, definitely doomy, the guitars heavily distorted and processed, effects all over the place, the vocals insane and harsh and noisy draped over the sheets of buzz and blur and the spaced out plod below. While the second track is similarly plodding and depressive, the sound is even more blown out, the guitars blindingly effulgent, all of the sounds on the verge of total collapse, but at the same time strangely melodic and epic.
The second record is split into two sidelong tracks, and for some reason we can only think they accompany the images on the front and back cover. The first is a thick corrosive noisescape equal parts Wolf Eyes and Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, caustic and abject, tangled strands of feedback wound around thick heaving slabs of distorted low end, all melted down into something thick and black and viscous. The flipside is super abstract, all high end, chittering, chirping, stuttering, squeaking shards of upper register squelch and glitch, Morse code beeps, chirping crickets, wheezing creaks, a hauntingly melodic field of fragmented skree, chaotic and abrasive, but also textural and abstract and actually sort of beautiful.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!! Gorgeous packaging, striking McCoy drawings on the front and back, pressed on thick vinyl, inside a thick oversized booklet featuring all of McCoy's drawings and some practically unreadable liner notes.
Before even hearing a note, we were sold. You really can't argue with an album called Into The Cryosphere, not to mention the fact that this bears the stamp of the always amazing Profound Lore label, AND this duo features Ryan Lipinsky of doom lords Unearthly Trance and punkers Villains. The Howling Wind definitely writhe in some of the same blackened sludge as UT, but with an approach that is heavily indebted to the hateful black metal we can never get enough of, with a thrashiness that is hypnotic, relentless, and pretty much the kind of thing your mother wouldn't ever want you listening to. Their punked out approach snakes around the Cryosphere through all sorts of passages, taking you along for a super negative death trip reminiscent of Deathspell's more thugged out excursions on Kenose. The riffs are thick and burly, the drums heavy as fuck, and you will marvel over how appropriate a name like The Howling Wind is, as the whole album seems shrouded in an uncontrollable, icy wind. Not surprising then that the band would cook up song titles like "Teeth Of Frost", "Ice Cracking In The Abyss", and "A Dead Galaxy Mirrored In An Icy Mirage". Lipinsky certainly sounds like a man of conviction here, with his super tough, throatshredding vocals telling you how it's gonna be. Totally nihilistic and hateful with a sense of fuck all despair, it's also surprisingly catchy with riffs just won't let up, which will surely keep this one blasting out of our speakers for quite some time.
The easiest way to describe Les Discrets is thus: anyone who loves Alcest or Amesouers, is gonna love these guys too. Which makes perfect sense, they're French, their sound is a blissed out shoegazey post-black metal pop, and heck they even share members with Alcest.
But unlike Alcest, whom these guys shared a split release with not too long ago, Les Discrets have pretty much eliminated all and any blackness from their sound. Only the barest traces, only shadowy vestiges remain, no harsh vocals, no blast beats, no frenzied riffing, no Les Discrets is like an even more poppy blissed out Alcest, all jangle and chime and soar and shimmer. And as we mentioned in the Alcest review elsewhere on this week's list, these guys are inexplicably beloved by black metallers. With Alcest it makes a bit more sense, as there is actually some blackness, but the blackness in Les Discrets has been infused with sunlight, transforming black into bursts of greys and blues, hazy and gauzy, a sound more akin to Katatonia really, majestic and epic and heartfelt and emotional, still heavy for sure, even a little mathy, but more than anything, lush and dreamy and shimmery, shoegazey and softly fuzzy, lots of clean guitars, acoustic jangle, crooned vocals, warm whirling effects, all mixed into the woozy distorted crunch and softly blown out buzz, the result, while not remotely black metal, is turning out to be one of our favorite shoegaze gloom pop records ever!
About time! After eight years, finally the debut record from this fearsome local black metal fivesome sees the light of day ON VINYL. The cd is currently out of print too, making this all the more essential. Like the cd version did, the lp comes in a rather deluxe package. Mastered at 45 rpm for extra fidelity, it's two slabs of clear vinyl packaged in a gatefold, handbound booklet with art and handlettered lyrics, inside a thick silkscreened cover, limited to 500 copies! As impressive as the original cd's "storybook" packaging, definitely the way this deserves to be vinyl-ized, in style.
Here's what we said back when about the cd release, though by now you probably know all about this band, considering all the accolades they've garnered here and elsewhere, with their latest opus The Tenant, on Profound Lore, being highlighted here not long ago...
Ludicra is yet another project from the fertile metal mind of John Cobbett (Hammers Of Misfortune, The Lord Weird Slough Feg, Iron Cemetary, etc.), this time with the help of local rockers/scene fixtures Aesop (Hickey, Dr. Dre Del, etc.), Christy Cather (Missile Command), Ross Sewage (Impaled), and Laurie Sue Shanaman (who works at the veterinarian where Andee's girlfriend and Erik his housemate take their cats!).
Ludicra's debut reveals them to be a highly advanced black metal creation. They're complex, moody, darkly psychedelic, and 'post-rocky' like AQ-faves Enslaved - a very good thing. The droning savage trance rock of another AQ black metal fave (and fellow San Franciscans) Weakling is also evident. Maybe it's Aesop's punk-derived drumming, or the song-writing dynamics, but while this is very metal indeed it also betrays an awareness of other strands of underground rock. And of course it's heavy, textured, and exceedingly well-crafted, as you would expect from the pen/plectrum of Sir Lord John Cobbett.
Ludicra has two singers: Christy (who also plays guitar) and Laurie Sue, and while both vocalists are women, you won't hear any of the sweet singing that Hammers of Misfortune's female vocalist does. No, it's all very extreme - except for some wordless background choruses and an interlude or two of gentle chanting, they mostly deliver scary throat-shredding screams that upend gender stereotypes. But, like Hammers, having more than one vocalist allows for interesting variety and dynamics. Lots of acoustic interludes and dark and rhythmic breakdowns that hint at the band members' diverse indie rock/post punk/punk rock backgrounds. That, and Ludicra's ability to yet generate at the same time such a convincing black metal atmosphere, makes for a very satisfying and compelling listen.
Local black metal favorites Ludicra return with The Tenant, their first for the great Profound Lore label, and as always, the band delivers. Ludicra masterfully mixes majestic black metal with brooding post-rock for a formula that pretty much touches on everything we love about metal in 2010, including some of the most vile and amazing female vocals we have ever heard, not that you'd necessarily think it was a woman screaming when you first hear this. Another strength is Ludicra's awesome male/female vocal harmonies which certainly add an element of beauty often missing in this kind of music. The amazing arrangements are certainly the work of a group dedicated to forging their own blackened path. It's clear that this is a band of lifers, all of them veterans of the fertile Bay Area metal scene, having served time with the likes of Hammers Of Misfortune, Agalloch, Slough Feg, Impaled, and quite a few others.
"Stagnant Pond" opens the album with some cool acoustic flourishes before the shrieking female vocals come in, sounding a bit like a banshee clawing its way from the depths of hell, as the song builds and builds in intensity. "A Larger Silence" is a super melodic piece of baroque sounding metal with some great harmonies, while "Undercaste" rocks at a nice midtempo groove before going into a surprising outro that seems to owe just as much to British folk music as it does to metal. Throughout it all, the lengthy songs flow into one another perfectly, making for one of the most well thought out metal albums we've heard in quite some time. It's rare that a band is able to seamlessly merge a wide array of influences into something they can call their own, but Ludicra appear to be up to the task and we couldn't be more thrilled. Highly recommended.
Originally released in 2008 (hence the title) as a tape and a 7", this killer two way split is now available on cd, featuring two Hungarian hordes: long time aQ faves Marblebog, and Vorkuta, who have just one split to their name, but about a million splits.
Marblebog should need no introduction, a weird group of nature obsessed black metal warriors whose sound shifts easily from blackened atmospheric drift to blazing buzzing blackness. Their contribution here falls into the latter category, with some of the heaviest Marblebog we've heard, churning Burzumic riffage, over pounding drums, and some of the creepiest sickest vocals EVER, an impossibly distorted raspy gargle, demonic and alien, and so cool. The track is a long one, and slips from frenzied blast to almost doomy pound to woozy melodic midtempo lope, complete with reverbed guitar solos, to epic almost Viking sounding metallic majesty, to skeletal clean guitar post metal meander. So good.
Vorkuta, counter with an epic 3 part single track, that explodes out of the gate, super raw and primitive, buzzing insectoid riffing, pounding blast beats, and weird croaked sing songy demonic growls that follow the guitar melody exactly, making the whole song seem seasick and twisted, until it breaks down into a tribal drummed churning breakdown, only to lurch right back into the frantic blasting blackness. Vorkuta too dabble in some abstract ambience, clean spidery guitars over crystalline shimmer, cool effected backwards loops, distant chimes, before finishing off with a buzz drenched tangle of grinding black crunch.
Definitely need to hear more from these guys. Who knew that Hungary had such a serious BM scene, beyond just these two outfits too? Judging from the list of related bands, and the pedigree of both Marblebog and Vorkuta, we definitely have some more digging to do...
In the beginning, Swedish black metal horde Marduk were a special breed, a sonic panzer division onslaught, that mostly consisted of locking into a riff, dropping in an insanely fast blast beat, and then letting rip, rarely veering from their course. Fast and furious and heavy. Lots of folks thought they were boring, but for us, the sound of Marduk was transcendent, mesmerizing, hypnotic, cyclical, it was trancelike, and we loved it.
The something changed, and Marduk began to morph into something new, something much less one dimensional (even though it was a great dimension), their sound began to drift more toward the avant garde side of BM, becoming more gnarled and convoluted and fucked up, where was once old school classic Swedish blackness, aligned with the Scandinavian pantheon, was now some strange modern avant black weirdness, now more in line with groups like Deathspell Omega, Funeral Mist and the like, which make sense considering Funeral Mist vocalist Mortuus joined the group right around this shift.
And while we still hold the old Marduk records near and dear to our hearts, it's hard to deny the twisted beast Marduk has become, especially considering how much the BM envelope has been pushed lately, Marduk may be old guard, but they've stepped up and put most of the new guard to shame.
2007's Rom 5:12 was a totally twisted game changer, bumming out lots of old time fans, but reinvigorating the group, and turning on a whole new legion of fans enmeshed in the more progressive side of BM, which has all lead to this, easily the best Marduk record yet. Certainly the weirdest, and catchiest, the same folks who hated Rom 5:12 will probably hate this one too, unless they've finally come to their senses, for the rest of us, it's a chance to dig in to an incredibly dense and bizarre record by a band at the top of their game.
There's plenty of furious blasting blackness on Wormwood, it's just that there's so much more, and even when the band is blasting blackly, they're still twisting it all up. After a creepy intro the band explode into a frenzy of super complex convoluted thrashing, the riffs are strange, atonal, warped, the arrangement is incredible, with the band stopping and starting, lurching wildly, slipping into a doomy creep, only to launch right back into it, the sound is MASSIVE, there's bass all over the place (in a notoriously bass-less genre), Mortuus' vocals are SICK, an inhuman gurgling rasp, and the riffs amazing, wild and tangled and melodic, it's 3 minutes for Marduk, but for other bands it would be a whole record. Which leads right into the seasick lumber of "Funeral Dawn", with an almost industrial martial vibe, soaring epic and melodic, the main melody impossibly catchy, while streaks of noise swirl around the riffs, there's even a breakdown where Mortuus's sick vox are laid over a thick undulating bassline, the resulting sound is like a blackened Laibach.
"The Fleshy Void" is a 3 minute hyperblast of black intensity, still tangled and warped, but impossibly heavy and fast, giving way to the super creepy "Unclosing The Curse", all tolling bells and pulsing bass, abstract guitar chords, and hateful vokills, spare and spaced out and super ominous.
Wormwood is not inherently a 'weird record', it's not fucked up and freaky the way Furze or Necrofrost are - the weirdness here, the strange song structures, the freaked out non black parts, the fucked up samples, the drones, the doomy breakdowns, they're all seamlessly integrated into Marduk's sound, for every blast of Swedish blackness, there's some soaring melodic almost NWOBHM sounding melody, for every stretch of doomy pound, there's some gurgly bass heavy creep, the whole record is twisted, but subtly so, it's not about being weird or fucked up, it's about making a truly original piece of black art, which by its very nature IS both fucked up and weird. But the fact that's not the be all end all, keeps Wormwood from being gimmicky, instead it's a fierce and furious ultra heavy black metal record, with lots of twists and turns, which in a nutshell, means quite possible black metal record of the year for sure.
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...
We're a sucker for a band name, you should definitely know that about us by now. And a lot of you are the same. The thinking is, if you're that creative with just the name of your band, imagine how nuts the music must be?? Sure, that doesn't always hold true, but in the case of the awesomely monickered Tremor Of The Black Manx, the name couldn't suit the music more.
On the same label as last week's record of the week, the bizarre black metal weirdness of Jute Gyte, comes TOTBM, who we know NOTHING about, but it hardly matters, what does matter is that this is some awesomely confusional and fucked up stuff, like some sort of fractured electronic hyper grind, or maybe we could call it grindtronica, or something like that. The structure is definitely grind, the songs are short, the arrangements are head spinning, but all of the sounds seem to be synths and not guitars, although sometimes the sounds DO seem to resemble guitars, maybe they're just super processed, regardless, the result is a strangely synthesized bit of frantic buzz, tangled melody, moody murky drift, all wrapped around skittering, stuttering programmed drums, that go from plod to pound to inhuman blast in the blink of an eye, dragging the rest of the sounds along with it. Really rad, and WAY weird.
TOTBM are teamed up here with Night Troll, who sound like a slightly electronic, WAY fucked up, ultra lo-fi raw primitive black metal. Ildjarn, Bone Awl, Akitsa, if you love that stuff but wish it was WEIRDER, more damaged and demented, with throbbing sub bass, tangled atonal guitars, processed death metal grunts, and all sort of other random fuckery, then this is for you. Total lo-fi stumbling ultra raw outsider electronic black metal. Which to us reads: SUPER RAD.
It's been a while since we've listed any UNblack metal, the twisted Christian variant of the more traditionally heathen black strain of metal that we hold so near and dear to our black withered hearts. But as longtime readers of the aQ list no doubt know by now, we LOVE unblack metal, not necessarily for the message (we don't love black metal for its message either), but instead, the sound of unblack metal is so far out, so far removed from the tired tropes of BM, not sure if it's divine inspiration, or just the particular group of unblack metallers we tend to be drawn to, but it seems like the unblack tends to be weirder and more warped than the black in most cases, and thus, we've found ourselves looking to the UNdark side for that which our musical soul yearns for.
This latest slab of abstract experimental UNblackness, comes courtesy of aQ faves Njiqahdda, which just so happens to be the work of the man behind a bunch of other aQ unblack faves including Light Shall Prevail, Agathothodion, Glaciial and others. Which already meant this was gonna be some seriously experimental, evocative buzzing brilliance. Which it is, we're happy to report, but much has changed, the sound here is much prettier, much more stripped down, with less of an emphasis on buzz and blast, and more on mood and texture, ambience and emotion.
The epic 15 minute opener, is all jangly clean guitar, and wild drumming, at least in the beginning, the song soon explodes into something much more black, but after the initial burst, it sort of smoothes out, and instead of being crushing and punishing, it's hypnotic and mesmerizing, there are still harsh vocals, but the buzz is smoothed out, and the melody is lilting and melancholic, not hard to imagine this song could be stripped down to a gorgeous hazy drone, without losing to much of it's actual form and structure. The follow up skips the buzz entirely, and offers up a bit of dreamy, slightly gothic indie jangle, a sort of sweetly minor key post rock, wrapped in a light haze of shimmery ambience.
The next two tracks look back to the opener, both lengthy drone drenched black metal jams, with that muted buzz, tangled guitar harmonies, and super catchy melodies, both, even at their heaviest, manage to remain poppy and melodic, that blend, and the push and pull between light and dark, is what makes those tracks so emotional and powerful.
The closing track is an extended dronescape of whirling haze, shimmering high end, and deep cavernous rumbles, it almost sounds like a field recording set to music, one can almost visualize, the epic forests, the moon reflecting off the water, the glimmer of starlight on the frost covered branches, quite beautiful, and a fitting finish to a strangely beautiful batch of buzzing washed out unblack post metal.
Sometimes you can tell what you're gonna get just by an album cover. Rarely is that more true than with metal records, and the stern looking bearded dude with the winged helmet on the cover of I: Redbad is a pretty good indication of what lies inside - furious, overblown pagan black metal that buzzes and rages like a fucking war. Ophidian Forest is a trio with members stationed in the Netherlands, Croatia, and right here in San Francisco - imagine that. They conceive their music through file swapping online, and the liner notes explain that the three band members have never communicated through phone and wouldn't even recognize each other in person. So how are the results so amazing? Dark forces are surely at work with this one, not only is the music way more "natural" (not to mention totally awesome) than you might expect from such a lack of formal communication, but it may even work in the group's favor; with nothing to focus on except the creation of thrashing metallic glory with an extra heaping of mythological nihilism, the project has taken on a greater meaning than if it would have been defined in the traditional sense of what a band should be. Obviously these three are connected on some higher plane in the realm of black metal, because I: Redbad is a perfectly realized vision, a take no prisoners onslaught of filth and transcendental power. It's also a well thought out concept record focusing on the life and times of the Frisian King Redbad (c. 680-719), who in true metal fashion resisted the Christian onslaught of the Merovingian dynasty while maintaining the pagan ways of his people, who lived near the North Sea extending along the borders of the Netherlands, Germany, and Denmark.
But this is hardly just for you history buffs out there. The guitars remain firmly in the red, the drums keep things blasting relentlessly, and the atmospheric keyboards add a nice touch of otherworldly ambience. And then of course, you get the singer's hateful, distorted screeches, adding a nice witchy element to the affair. Things are as filthy as you could hope for in a metal band, but the songs are also so punky and catchy that you might be surprised to find these sticking in your head for quite some time. To top things off, the band members all look like nefarious forest dwelling wizards, which certainly adds to the mystical vibe they have effortlessly obtained. One can only hope these guys keep up with the collaborations, because this stuff definitely covers everything we love about our black metal.
Brand new 7" of grim buzz from two mysterious Swiss black metal bands, neither of which had we ever heard of, and neither of which feature members of any other notable bands. Switzerland is of course the home of Paysage D'Hiver and Darkspace and Enoid among others, so we had high hopes for these two hordes.
Wacht begin the proceedings with what almost sounds like a metal Star Spangled Banner, a sort of twisted guitar intro that soon gives way to a furious murky raw buzz, the drums and bass (if there is any) lost in a storm of relentless riffing and howled anguished vokills. Some killer riffs lurking in that roiling blackness, and the drums do leap out here and there, but for the most part it's like a heaving black cloud of sound, dense and hypnotic.
The much less simply monickered Ordo Infandorum Rituum Occultus (or OIRO for short), offer up their own bit of frosty grimness, a much more stripped down buzzing blast, pounding almost D-beat style rhythm, grunted vocals, raw and old school, but with some strange stuff lurking in the details, maniacal screams, some cool gnarled riffage, layered guitars, that seem to drop in and out, giving the track a sort of dizzying vibe, at times almost like a more stripped down straight ahead Deathspell Omega.
Definitely laves us dying for more from both bands, and as is always a good sing with a single, we've found ourselves flipping this over constantly and listening to both sides over and over again...
After a protracted legal battle over the name Gorgoroth, various members went their separate ways, with Infernus keeping the Gorgoroth name, and recently releasing a decent slab of black metal under that moniker. Meanwhile former Gorgoroth guitarist King Ov Hell and vocalist Gaahl went on to form the oddly named God Seed, but before the duo could release a record, that band fell apart, resulting in the formation of this group right here, Ov Hell, which finds King (now sans the Ov Hell) teamed up with Dimmu Borgir vocalist Shagrath, along with a pretty serious supporting cast: Frost from Satyricon, Ice Dale of Enslaved and Teloch of Nidingr and 1349! But initial reports had been grim (and not in a good way), with a pretty much across the board dismissal of the new record. So we were prepared for the worst, which could be why we find ourselves digging this so much.
It's not groundbreaking or revolutionary (then again little black metal is), but it's also not terrible, in fact, it's pretty dang good, and not that far removed from what you might expect from the various contributors. Plenty of the record is blasting blackness, all furious beats and insectoid buzzing, and Shagrath's demonic vokills, but the record is surprisingly varied, with some cool warped dirgier numbers, with strange samples, and tangled spidery guitars, some definite grooves, gnarled riffing, epic melodies, all under a seriously glossy modern production, and every song that seems to be on the surface some sort of a throwaway black metal by the numbers jam, has a lot more going on than meets the ear, and there's plenty of awesomely twisted, blasting and brutal tracks that stand up pretty well to any of the bands in Ov Hell's pedigree. It takes a few listens, definitely, and if you were hoping for some sort of return to classic Gorgoroth, you'll probably be disappointed, but every spin we dig this more and more...
The return of Lithuanian black metallers Poccolus! Well, not so much a return, as these guys split up a while back, but we're super psyched to hear more from these guys. Their Supernal label full length was a huge hit with the metalheads around here, gloriously thrashy keyboard drenched, post rock flecked Pagan blackness, originally released in 1996, but reissued a couple years ago. The tracks on Ragana date even further back than that, 1993 and 1994, with a couple live tracks tacked on as a bonus, originally released as a super limited cassette in 1997.
Here, Poccolus sound even more raw, and strangely more melodic. The guitars offering up classic metal sounding harmonies, locked in with the drums, pounding way down in the mix. Shades of Iron Maiden, and at least one of the tracks musically is a dead ringer for Slough Feg, that is until it slips into grim blackness, the bellowy reverb drenched croon, switching to harsh hellish shriek, but even then, the music continues to lope along all mournful and minor key, with plenty of keyboards, although here they're buried under the buzz and lo fidelity hiss. The opening track is so melancholy and catchy it's almost not even black metal. More like some gloomy gothy slightly blackened hard rock, but whatever it is, it's pretty excellent.
In fact, as we dig deeper, all the tracks here are barely black metal, although they're buzzy and heavy enough to keep metalheads' attention, the sound is much more raw and old school and classic sounding, the vocals are the blackest element, but even those shrieks and howls just as often revert to clean-ish croons. And it sound like this was mastered from a cassette, so it's all a little warped and warbly, giving it a haunting woozy off kilter vibe, which only adds to the band's unique sound. One track does actually get super grim and blasty, but that's after about 6 minutes of super minimal rumbling drones. The record closes with another strange only sort of black metal jam, lurching, mid tempo, the guitars warbly and minor key, the keyboard drifting like a haze in the background, the melodies getting more and more grand and epic, the band whipping their lo-fi stumble and buzz into something truly majestic sounding.
The live tracks are way more raw and fierce, lo-fi, but still plenty blown out and brutal, but even then, the weird melodicism of the proper tracks still creeps into the bands grim buzz. The Pagan element is also more present on these later tracks, the overall sound sitting somewhere right between the more polished Pagan crush of the full length, and the warped lo-fi classic metal of the demo tracks included here.
Rimfrost is either a totally grim and kvlt name for a black metal band, or a sort of goofy, possibly questionable one. These guys are from Sweden though, so odds are the rims there are indeed frosty. And the sound? Frosty as well. Super dense and heavy and punishing, a sort of Viking black metal but without all the folk, this is thrashing blackness of the highest order. Fans of classic Enslaved, old Immortal, you know, that classic Scandinavian sound, which is obviously what these guys are shooting for, and they pretty much nail it. No synths, no acoustic guitars (okay, well, maybe a few), no pretty fluttery interludes (only one, or two), instead, these guys pepper their blasting panzer attack with some super dynamic stop start arrangements, plenty of weirdly mathy bits, some incredibly drumming, the sound MASSIVE and so epic. Riffs gnarled and explosive, the rhythms galloping and relentless, blazing double kicks, the guitars chugging and crunchy, the vocals a demonic croak, the songs themselves, epic and majestic, the tempo often pounding and midtempo, but Rimfrost mix it up, exploding into a full on black frenzy here and there, or sometimes slowing down to a doomic lumber. There are melodies and hooks too, usually subtle, but sometimes brought to the fore for a moment of almost NWOBHM sounding radness, before blasting black into the (g)rim frost. Excellent.
We've always had a certain fascination with Eastern European black metal. Sure, there are some similarities to the hordes of Scandinavia, but there is just something about bands from places like Russia, Romania, and the Ukraine, home of Shadows Ground. At this point in black metal's long history, things are usually a little more raw, more bleak, and just a little more mysterious with bands from these places. Shadows Ground are very reminiscent, both sonically and lyrically of Old Wainds, who you might recognize as one of our favorite black metal bands of all time. Like Old Wainds, and to a similar degree OW-related project Nav, these guys give you a first hand glimpse into the cold wintry realms of their homeland. Depressing insectoid melodies buzz relentlessly over the non-stop blasts, and the vocals are a harsh demon croak spitting out classic black metal truths of darkness and despair. There are some nice pics of the band being irresponsible with knives and fire, and this certainly harkens back to the days when black metal still seemed like a threat, or at least something you would want to avoid in a graveyard. Even though there are plenty of other bands who may be doing things more unique in the way of instrumentation and presentation, sometimes you just don't want to fuck with classic formulas, and anyone who yearns for some Transylvanian Hunger styled madness will find plenty of reasons to rejoice with this.
You'd never know from listening to Solstafir's Kold, that this Icelandic post-black metal horde began life as a Viking metal band, since now they traffic in something much more spaced out and psychedelic. We've never heard any of those Viking records, but this one is for sure kicking our ass.
Barely even black metal, mostly their lineage tying them to the genre, the sound of Kold is droned out propulsive riff heavy space rock, think the Heads, Hawkwind, White Hills, the band locked into long stretches of totally hypnotic and propulsive heaviness, with guitar melodies pealing above the main riff. But they are heavy, and definitely metallic, crushing at points, but it's the vocals that will make or break it for most folks, totally emotional, anguished and passionate, a mournful wail, that fits perfectly when the band slow down to a waltzy doomy dirge, and offer a strange foil to the band's sound when they're pounding away full bore. Reference points would definitely have to include Katatonia, Lifelover, that sort of melodic post-metal heaviness, but these guys are definitely more psychedelic, letting many of the songs unwind into sprawling jams, many of them full on psychedelic metallic blues rock freakouts, others brooding drone drenched drifts, the vocals push the sound somewhere way more mainstream, they wouldn't be out of place on modern rock radio, so even at its weirdest or most distorted, when the vocals swoop in, the song immediately becomes more accessible, which is not at all a bad thing, in fact it's a nice balance to the way-more-gnarled and blackened parts that pepper the whole record. Might be too poppy for some metalheads, but if you're looking for something heavy AND melodic, epic and psychedelic, this might do the trick!
It's strange what a huge influence Bay Area black metallers Von ended up being on pretty much everybody. Not really all that surprising really, they did after all totally destroy. Filthy and grimy and so heavy and primal and raw. It seems like every black metal band has at one time or another covered Von, there was even a full length tribute, and of course, there have been about a million bands who did everything in their power to channel the spirit and ferocity of Von, one of the most successful being Swine, the Von worshipping side project of a guy called Swine appropriately enough, frontman for Hateful Abandon, whose most recent record, Famine (Or Into The Bellies Of Worms), a collection of blackened gothic gloom, we highlighted a while back.
On Marked By The Baron, it's Satanic Blood Angel time, ALL the time, blasting drums supplied by a furious frenzied drum machine, the guitars thick and gritty, buzzy and intense, the vocals drenched in reverb and effects, grunting and growling, as much as howling and shrieking. The sound manages to be weirdly moody and dramatic too, with moaning guitar melodies drifting over the churning black filth below, giving most of the tracks a weirdly wistful vibe, considering how fast and furious the rest of the music is. Rapid fire, frenzied and relentless, pounding and punky, but so atmospheric and with such a vile vibe, and that aforementioned moody melancholy, culminating in the final track, that dips into some super emotional classic sounding doom, even slipping into some mournful clean guitar, and after a few minutes of silence, returning with a bit of washed out dreamy drone, weird.
But beyond those little bits of strangeness, this is some gloriously heavy, harsh, beautifully depressive, raw blasting blackness.
The Belgian duo Trancelike Void have somehow managed to slip through the cracks here, though at least two of us are big fans, but somehow, we've never listed on of their records until now. Which is a shame, especially considering the current obsession with post black metal shoegazers like Alcest, Les Discrets, Lifelover and the like. TV are definitely black metal, but their sound is warm and lush and blissed out, more Sigur Ros or Godspeed than Darkthrone or Immortal.
Which brings us to Where The Trees Can Make It Rain, the latest from TV, which only furthers that sort of non black metal vibe, in that it's wholly acoustic, just acoustic guitars and drums, two long tracks, each, doleful and meditative, dreamy and tranquil, softly reverbed notes ring out and hang in the air, the overtones spinning off into the ether, the drums, simple and spare and skeletal, darkly moody and melancholic, subtly dynamic, building to softy emotional crescendos, only to slip back into a somnambulant drift. Clouds of strummed steel strings hover and slowly dissipate, leaving, stray notes to flutter and fade out.
The two songs here are quite minimal, almost like shadowy sketches of songs that could have been, which is precisely what makes them so appealing, they're hushed and abstract and shadowy, they drift and shimmer, flicker and fade, the sound is lush and organic, but also fleeting, a soft sound, that manages to evoke all sorts of emotional responses, a fleeting glimpse of some otherworld, where these hushed sounds are the soundtrack.
Celtic Frost is dead, long live Triptykon! Yes, this is the debut disc from the new project of Celtic Frost and Hellhammer mainman Tom G. Warrior (aka Thomas Gabriel Fischer), a band he formed after the recent implosion of Celtic Frost. It's billed as an "official" continuation of the CF legacy by other means, and it's even got an H.R. Giger cover painting to prove it. Well, that's not all that proves it, just listen! This album contains several songs originally written for CF's aborted followup to their 2006 highly-regarded comeback album Monotheist, and is much in the tradition of that excellent album: an oppressively heavy juggernaut of black/doom metal mastery with avantgarde elements. Parts are speedier than Monotheist, though others trudge with riffage on the slower side... While a long way from the raw primitive dirge of Hellhammer so many years ago (the subject of a lavish new book by Tom G., also reviewed this list), Triptykon IS plenty dirgey, just not so "garagey", with high tech production. And all Celtic Frost and Hellhammer fans will be relieved to know that Tom's trademark death grunts made the transition to Triptykon intact, along with his more gothic and guttural, spoken/sung/chanted vocal style. Furthermore, just like when we saw him on Frost's final US tour, he's still wearing that knit hat pulled down to just over his raccoon-painted eyes...
The nine, mostly long songs on Eparistera Diamones (which means, uh, what's it mean?) are proof that even 28 years after Hellhammer's formation, and 26 after Celtic Frost's, Tom G. is still relevant to today's "extreme metal" scene, matching anyone out there for relentless density, negative expressivity, anti-religious artistry, and sheer heaviness. If we have to cite his previous band(s) as a reference point, that's no surprise. If CF didn't exist, or all we had ever heard was Triptykon, maybe we'd be comparing 'em to Neurosis or something. Heck, the female vox and classical grand piano that appear on track 7 "Myopic Empire", and the similarly moody experimentation that continues onto the entirely un-heavy, atmospheric track 8 "My Pain", is not only worthy of latter-day, trip-hopped Ulver, but in its Teutonic seriousness could be Tarwater or something, yet is followed by the pounding "You shall perish I shall live" metallic affirmation of "The Prolonging" (which also lives up to its title by being almost 20 minutes long!), ending the album leaving nobody wondering about Triptykon's place in the hierarchy of hell.
Reverently packaged with a thick cd booklet that includes not only more sexy/scifi perverted alien H.R. Giger art, but also portraits of each band member by another equally disturbed artist, as well as lyrics to each song AND personal liner notes from Tom G. about each track too. While in these the sometimes self-important, self-absorbed nature of the whole Celtic Frost thing is evident, so is Tom's artistic torment and sincerity (if you're read his autobiography, Are You Morbid?, which we recommend, you know what we mean). Hail!
Latest in the ongoing series of super limited 3" cd-r's, paying musical tribute to H.P. Lovecraft. Past installments have come courtesy of UK avant black metaller Caina, Appalachian heathen metal horde Harvist, black noise occultists LVTHN, Kentucky one man USBM outfit Sapthuran, blackened French metal combo Smohalla, legendary Italian dark metallers Frostmoon Eclipse, aQ faves, Texan black metal Lovecraft worshipper Brown Jenkins, Frostmoon Eclipse side project Stroszek, and now, Italy's The True Endless, whose split with Angmar was a big favorite around here (we still have a few copies, just ask), and whose sound we described as buzzing black Mayhem worship, and very little has changed, the guitars buzz maniacally, the drums pound relentlessly, the songs are epic and majestic, blazing and frenzied, but often slowing down into churning chugging stretches of lumbering doom, before exploding back into another burst of frenetic Norwegian style classic blackness.
The True Endless here sound a bit like some weird hybrid of Khold and newer Funeral Mist, with midtempo almost-grooves, killer stuttery start stop arrangements, some super intense and epically anguished guttural vokills, woozy melodic guitar melodies, all wrapped in a gauzy blurred black buzz production, and surrounded on all sides by furious bouts of blown out blasting blackness. Awesome.
LIMITED TO ONLY 100 COPIES, we got 20, and can't get more, so grab one quick, cuz these always disappear right quick. Packaged in a slim jewel case, with a 4 panel booklet and a thick card insert with a photo of Lovecraft on one side and an essay on the other. And it's always worth mentioning, that TTE bassplayer Soulfucker, is still quite possibly the foxiest babe in black metal...
Whoa. Just when we warmed ourselves to the idea that this would NEVER happen... it happened. The return of Twilight, described out of necessity as a "black metal supergroup", a bad description for something so awesome, but more or less to the point. The core lineup of Blake Judd (Nachtmystium), N. Imperial (Krieg), and Wrest (Leviathan/Lurker of Chalice) soldiered on without past contributors Hildolf (Draugar) and Malefic (Xasthur), and made themselves even more super with the additions, on this recording at least, of Sanford Parker (Minsk/Buried At Sea), Aaron Turner (Isis, etc.), Robert Lowe (Lichens, 90 Day Men, and now OM apparently), and Stavros Giannopoulos, who is new to us but whose presence is at the very least justified by the his awesome name. And yes, we realized how many bands we had to list in parentheses, but if anything, that should accommodate you to the awesome pedigree on display here, letting you know that there is no way in hell it could be anything except completely awesome.
Monument To Time End is not only great, but full of unexpected turns throughout. Unlike its self-titled predecessor, which was pretty much as black as black metal can get (opening song "Woe Is The Contagion" being one of the most terrifying things EVER), there is a surprising amount of diversity here. For example, would you have ever expected this horde to whip out an emo-ish breakdown with disco beats? Probably not, and the good news is that it doesn't suck at all, it just confounds in the best way imaginable and makes you love this band even more. And while the other album was created by swapping tapes through the mail with the fidelity being pretty much what you would expect from such, Monument is a work of well thought out, amazingly produced ART. This no doubt has much to do with Parker's presence and the use of his Volume Studios, not to mention the amount of time that has passed since the first album. Best of all, none of these upgrades in any way represent a more subdued or cuddly Twilight; on the contrary, this shit sounds even more dangerous, unstoppable, and out to kill. But enough rambling, let's talk songs here.
Doomy opener "The Cryptic Ascension" sounds a bit like a more evil Pelican, and Turner's signature is in full effect for the aforementioned emo-ish breakdown replete with disco beats. Imperial's vocals, however, definitely help bring things to another darkened realm. And while we really don't need to say this, we will: FUCK is Wrest an amazing drummer, and his bell heavy work on the ride cymbal helps carry this song to its amazing fadeout before everything is overtaken by Parker's spaced out synth buzz. The word "epic" is thrown around all the time in metal these days, to the point where it seems to have lost its meaning, but here Twilight completely own the term. Really no other word will do; this shit is EPIC. "Fall Behind Eternity" is up next, sounding a lot like Leviathan's creepy ambient moments with more spacey synth until the brutality kicks in with a dizzying blast. On "8,000 Years", things manage to be both soaring and pummeling, and the combined talents of these guys gives birth to some of the most adventurous and impressive metal we have heard in, well, forever. "The Catastrophe Exhibition" opens up with some ominous acoustic strumming and weird ambience with effected martial drums before venturing into unknown terrain where the band sounds a bit like an evil Don Cab being broadcast out of a portal to Hell. The album closes with "Negative Signal Omega", another awesome surprise that begins as a crumbling drone experiment and ends with a choraled vocal chant that is stunningly beautiful. Did you ever think we would use words like "stunningly beautiful" to describe this band when they first came out? Neither did we.
We say a lot of things about all the metal coming in these doors, but Twilight have set the bar pretty high with this album. Monument To Time End will without question end up on many year end best ofs, and with good reason. The greatest success here is the fact that everybody's dirty, blackened fingerprints are all over this project, but the end result is something totally of its own creation. Not many guys could pull this kind of thing off without seeming at least a little bit self-indulgent. Twilight have surprised us all by putting out one of the best metal records in recent memory. Until we fully understand what the fuck happened in Chicago, where the album was recorded, we're just going to be blasting it nonstop. While words may fail to convey just how amazing this is, we give it our highest seal of approval and have no doubt you too will agree...
Last list we reviewed one of two records released in 2009 by Oklahoman one man black metal horde Unhuman Disease (we still have a few copies left if you missed out), and here's the second, another crusty, vicious, filthy blast of super distorted black fury, drum driven big time (due in no small part to the fact that Unhuman Disease is former Thornspawn drummer Nocturnus Dominus), so much like Leviathan (another drummer), the rhythm is as important if not moreso than any other element. Of course present are the usual BM tropes, buzzing riffs, relentlessly pounding blast beats, screeched inhuman (or UNhuman) vox, but UD traffic in a sound that's mesmerizingly cyclical, repetitive, and hypnotic, droney and trancelike, the songs lock into a riff, and pound and pulse and throb relentlessly, extended stretches of total black buzz mesmer, woven within are plenty of subtle textural and melodic variations, but those subtle slow shifts only reinforce how totally hypnotic the overall sound is. The music of Unhuman Disease is not especially far out or fucked, but then it wasn't meant to be, it's raw, and furious, Burzumic for sure, definitely heavily indebted to the Norwegian elite, but with its own gnarled vibe, that makes Black Creations Of Satan its own uniquely Satanic black creation, and keeps it on heavy rotation in the homes of the most black hearted and black souled of aQuarians...
It's always interesting how the dispersion of music takes place. It's harder than one might think to get a record from artist, to fan. Case in point, the tons of Japanese customers who order records by Japanese artists from our store in the US, or the Europeans who order records from us that were released by labels in Europe. And of course we often find ourselves ordering records from overseas, by bands who live right here in the US, often right here in California.
Which is sort of how we discovered Unhuman Disease, a killer USBM band from Oklahoma of all places, and who we had never heard of until we ordered their records from Black Hate over in Germany.
It really doesn't matter in the long run, as long as the music gets to the people, so we're psyched to introduce folks to Unhuman Disease, even if we had to get to Oklahoma via Germany.
Unhuman Disease is the one man BM project of Nocturnal, who is probably better know as the former drummer for Texan black metallers Thornspawn, but in Unhuman Disease, he whips up a seriously frenzied black blast of satanic fury. Into Satan's Kingdom is one of two UD full lengths released last year, and it's a killer, slipping deftly from hiss drenched blackened doom, to blasting frantic hyperspeed black buzz, to plodding midtempo Burzumic blackness, it's lo-fi and raw, grim and blown out, the whole record seems cloaked in a sonic haze that is definitely reminiscent of Striborg, with some distinctly Nordic moments of soaring majestic riffage, and even some weirdly melodic prettiness, but for the most part Unhuman Disease is for the corpsepainted true grim warriors, who want nothing more than to fill their caves with sick black buzz.
Killer black metal / black ambient match up, featuring one of our favorite mysterious ritualistic drone combos, Uno Actu. But let's start with Maledicere, a duo from Minnesota of all places, and whose sound is a sort of raw pounding black metal, with a bit of a post rock vibe. After an intro of tinkling tones and dreamy ambience, the band launch into a loping Burzumic pound, but with strange howled vocals, very melodic, but still plenty buzz drenched. Mostly midtempo, but the band do explode into bursts of frenzied buzz with soaring majestic melodies, before slipping back into something more pounding and primitive. Definitely be psyched to hear more from these guys.
But no matter how good Maledicere is, Uno Actu are the reason we're so excited about this record. With only a handful of demos over the last few years (a couple of which we've raved about on past lists), a new record from these guys (or this guy), is like an (un)holy message sent from another realm, a rare occurrence that produces much rejoicing, and much huddling around the stereo late and night by candlelight.
A cloud of muted feedback and textured buzz, swirls and pulses, over delicate acoustic guitar, some sort of dreamy blackened noisefolk, slipping from corrosive and caustic to washed out and meditative. Demonic vocals gurgle over smears of fracture melody, and distant guitar strum, eventually spiraling into a looped bit of minor key droneguitar mesmer. So fantastic.
Someone needs to collect all the demos and release them on cd, or vinyl, or something, but until then, we'll just have to make do with these little offerings, everyone a black joy to behold.
It's been ages since we reviewed a record by Norwegian black metal horde Urgehal, but since we've been flipping out over Urgehal side project Angst Skvadron, we figured it was definitely time to check back in with the grim black mothership.
For those of you who missed out on our raving about Angst Skvadron, the twisted black industrial avant prog black metal side project of Urgehal member Trondr Nefas, take a second, read the review, check out the side project, probably buy one, then come back here, so we can rave about this record too.
Urgehal is not nearly as abstract or out there as Angst Skvadron, but someone capable of that sort of weirdness, well, you gotta think those twisted thoughts and messed up musical ideas must seep into their day job, and they do for sure, albeit subtly.
The sound is total third wave classic Norwegian black metal, epic, majestic, buzzing blasting, with hints of classic thrash, some old school eighties metal, but make no mistake, this is grim, frosty, kvlt shit. Opener "Stesolid Self-Destruction To Damnation" is everything we want in black metal, frantic insectoid rigging, blasting drums, convoluted and complex, but, the vocals are seriously twisted, not shrieked, more a sort of demonic croak, and there are wild guitar leads all over the place, adds a little weirdness, without detracting from the grim core. The second track is a woozy, almost waltzy blackened dirge, with more sick vox, and some killer riffing, not to mention all sorts of haunting ominous atmosphere, until the song explodes again into a monstrous burst of crushing blasting heaviness, with some throbbing rumbling bass, which is definitely a rarity in black metal.
And so it goes, a fucking beast of a black metal record, just twisted enough to make it special, but not overtly weird or fucked up.
The final track is the gem here, super melodic, with all sorts of lush layered guitars, arpeggiated melodies, a seasick tempo, and a cool final movement wherein buzzing soaring riffage is draped over haunting reverbed piano, super creepy, but really beautiful too, until the riffs drop out, leaving just the piano, to play the record out.
Recorded back around the time of Subliminal Genocide, Xasthur's debut on Hydra Head, which was a momentous occasion in the BM underground for sure at the time, with many of the troo grim hordes crying foul, an underground black metal icon signing to a very UN-underground label, but it worked, SG was incredible, murky and intense and epic and grim as fuck and no one could really argue with the Xasthur / Hydra Head union at that point. Things quickly changed though, the next few records found Xasthur mixing it up, once again to the chagrin of the same haters whose feathers were ruffled before. Personally, we loved those records too, we even dug the eventual switch to real drums, we've yet to really hate a Xasthur disc. Although as far as we're concerned, nothing will ever touch Nocturnal Poisoning, the first and still maybe best Xasthur record, and the 3 records that preceded the Hydra Head debut are nearly as good, The Funeral Of Being, Telepathic With The Deceased and To Violate The Oblivious. So this demo comes right after those records, and just before Subliminal Genocide, and sounds like it, it may be designated a 'demo' (although with Xasthur, it's hard to really imagine there's much sonic polishing that goes on from the demo stage to the record proper stage), but essentially it's a couple unreleased Xasthur jams, vintage Xasthur, and that's all we need to know.
The first track is a pounding, super distorted murkscape, the buzzing riffage laced with arpeggiated clean guitar melodies, those anguished howls, drums BURIED in the mix, a seasick ebb and flow, woozy and warped, and gloriously low fidelity, lumbering through thick fields of haze and buzz, a weirdly washed out ambient vibe, even at it's fiercest moments. The second track is way more mellow, a dreamy blurred doomic plod, the guitars muddy and WAY out of tune, which only makes the music that much more twisted and atonal and grim, this finds Xasthur at his most Striborg, creating mournful blackened dirges behind a constant wall of smeared fuzz, lo-fi hiss, and tangled gnarled riffage, occasionally slipping into weirdly melodic interludes, only to stumble back into the buzzy fray. There are some awesome sort-of-leads, flanged and seriously psychedelic, totally druggy doomy bleak buzz. So good. Fans will want this for sure, maybe not the place to start necessarily (that would be Nocturnal Poisoning or Subliminal Genocide) although this does make a pretty tempting two song teaser of muddy murky grim black genius. If we weren't already fans, this might lure us to the dark side for sure...
