Deadspace - Mouth of Scorpions
black metal
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With three tracks – Heart Of Stone, Mouth Of Scorpions and World Of Pain – this EP presents to its listeners a vividly sculpted, pure and savage black metal, in the best old school style. With a hazardous, intense and agonizing atmosphere, wildly saturated by lancinating and furious, but exceedingly poetic guitar lines, the mixture of melodic elements ads a fascinating charge of beauty into the moonlight melodies of its insurgent signature sound.
With a perceptive, dense and afflictive soundscape that invokes the abominable sensation of imminent end, the second song, |
Mouth Of Scorpions, which is the title track, certainly aggregates a lot of extreme brutality into the morbid and sinister conflagration of their artistic motivation, exposing with anger and sincerity the impious, but at the same time astoundingly melancholic nature of the group’s style. Certainly, this is a fascinating and marvelously lucid EP, with three wonderful songs that lives up to the true expectations of the genre, conceived and executed at the height of a genuinely creative impetus.
Sarkrista - Under Sentence of Death
black metal
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A marvelous twelve minute EP with two songs – Under Sentence of Death, the title track, and As Mountains Disappeared in Fog – Sarkrista is a German black metal group, that creates and delivers old school black metal style on its purest form. With a gracious and deceptive fury that virtually destroys absolutely everything that stands on its way, this glorious EP, despite its simplicity, has a high degree of quality and monumental standards that stands for everything that true black metal genuinely represents.
With aggressive guitar lines, powerfully insane vocals and dark, evocative sinister |
harmonies, what we have here is a formidable demonstration of style that wonderfully celebrates the fact that true black metal is more alive than ever. Amazingly eloquent, incisively honest, hostile and true to its premises, this two tracks are proverbially impeccable and intense. While the first is a purely groundbreaking and tempestuous fire of absolute destruction and exorbitant sonorous collision, the second song outstands itself by being a sordid conflagration of impious and grotesque melodic fury. Definitely, the best twelve minutes of primitive black metal released this year.
Hellevaerder - Aan De Aarde Teruggegeven
black metal
Aan de aarde teruggegeven is an EP released in June 19 by Dutch black metal project Hellevaerder. With five tracks – Langs eindeloze paden, In de greep van wanhoop, Dolksteek van angst + Zee van dromen, Heksensabbat and Aan de aarde teruggegeven – what we have here is pure, intense and aggressive raw black metal, competently conceived and executed. While there are not enough qualities to highlight, since the sound in general is too generic, and doesn’t differ from similar acts of the genre, Aan de aarde teruggegeven presents to its audience a very good, sober and lucid traditional black metal, with conspicuous and lancinating guitar lines, and preeminently agonizing grasping vocals, that creates an atmosphere of eminent demise, that certainly manages to captivate the attention of genre enthusiasts. Thirty four minutes long, the EP is objective, infuriatingly dense and provocative, and follows closely the old school style of BM, that all of us certainly love to appreciate.
Hobbit - Leaving the Shire
dungeon synth / experimental
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Despite its low production values, and the “home made” feeling inspired by it throughout the music, Leaving the Shire is an interesting and honest EP. With six tracks – Adventure in a Small Size, Leaving the Shire, The Meeting of Aragorn, Weathertop and the Morgul Blade, Enter Rivendell and Moria – the songs present the genre in a more brute, symbolic and raw state, evaluating the possibilities exposed at the epicenter of its own eccentric experimentation.
Although the music in itself is not impressive, there is a certain dynamic and a respectable degree of audacity here, that really feels and |
evaluates the sonorous possibilities hidden within the innermost corners of the genre. Interesting for listeners and even musicians inclined to voracious and underestimated experimentalism, Leaving the Shire is more relevant by the lessons it reveals than the music per se. Nonetheless, there are some qualities present on the work, that expands the general limitations of the harmonies into a wider scope, playing with the captivating and sensorial illusions of the sound, while delivering curious, authorial and moderately good dungeon synth, all the way through.
Stronghold Guardian - Eastward
dungeon synth
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Eastward is a record released by Serbian medieval dark dungeon synth artist Stronghold Guardian, one of the most beautiful, poetic and profound ever created in the history of the genre. With ten tracks – 1301 A.D., Eastward, Castlebound, The Magic of the Ages Long Forgotten, A Silent Passage (Hermit's Path), Red Dragon Tavern, The Owl and the Forest, A New Beginning, The Abandoned Keep and Lost Forever in the Tides of Time – the work is amazingly serene, vividly lucid, explores deeply the gracefully tempestuous calmness of the genre, and conceives through beautiful melodies in a vast journey situated in a lost era of medieval
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dreams and enchanting innocence the axis of an entirely different configuration of reality, where everything is more brave, audacious and relevant.
As a deeply surreal sensitive journey to another period of time, Eastward guides the listener to a more cosmic and sagacious dimension, using ascendant and imperiously captivating melodies to propitiate to the senses a sensational dream closer to reality. With amazingly evocative sonorous layers suggestive of Celtic and Arthurian imagery, the music displayed by Stronghold Guardian on Eastward is a true gift to the lovers of the genre, as it captures on the truth of its vigorous, but soft harmonies, the voracious elements of a gracious fantasy, and translates them to a level of perception that is close to the heart. Undoubtedly, a majestic and poetic state of the artwork, that you are going to love it.
As a deeply surreal sensitive journey to another period of time, Eastward guides the listener to a more cosmic and sagacious dimension, using ascendant and imperiously captivating melodies to propitiate to the senses a sensational dream closer to reality. With amazingly evocative sonorous layers suggestive of Celtic and Arthurian imagery, the music displayed by Stronghold Guardian on Eastward is a true gift to the lovers of the genre, as it captures on the truth of its vigorous, but soft harmonies, the voracious elements of a gracious fantasy, and translates them to a level of perception that is close to the heart. Undoubtedly, a majestic and poetic state of the artwork, that you are going to love it.
Arsule - La Cité Enfouie
dungeon synth
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A formidable dungeon synth work from France, La Cité Enfouie is a marvelously melancholic, serene and poetic work, that explores at the profound layers of its philosophic conscience the imponderable, but frail sensibility of the human nature. Although only nineteen minutes long, it has seven relatively brief and concise tracks: La source, La procession des Hauts Flambeaux, Les portes, L'allée du peuple pétrifié, Errances dans le dédale aux chimères, Au cratère cramoisi, la complainte du volcan and Le sanctuaire luxuriante. With magnanimous, but incisive melodies, that floats freely throughout oceans of harmonious sentimental
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dissidences, the fractal, but beautiful ambivalence of this EP certainly reevaluates on its exponential and graceful capacities the mordacious elements inherent to the genre, like its light expansion through the tissues of time, and the preeminent volatility of its melodic simplicity, that brings along on the genuine abilities of its ambitions the primordial grievances of sound composition. A simple, but marvelously lucid and beautiful work, La Cité Enfouie is poetry to the ears, and wonderfully rejuvenates the soul at the highlight of its pure perception and exposition of human sensibilities.
Forelunar - Wine and the Limerent
black metal
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Wine and the Limerent is a twenty minutes EP released in June by Iranian atmospheric black metal act Forelunar. With two tracks – Lunar Wine and Ephemeral Light – the work is calm, exceedingly well done, impeccable and expresses an artistic and ambitious sonorous vastness within the major highlights of its qualities, that reveals a solid and true consistence on the disposition of its harmonies. With a profound poetic proposal, that invites the listener to dive deep into a universe of nostalgic and ethereal dreamscapes, Wine and the Limerent mixtures the masterful majesty of the omnipotent traces of a serene, eloquent and
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lugubrious atmospheric BM with the more aggressive outlines of the traditional verve of the genre. Definitely, this work has an abundance of expressive and mordacious elements, as creates and exposes a philosophic density upon which the general harmonies prevail over a context of patient serenity. With a pungent, sincere and gracefully latent style, the discreet beauty of Wine and the Limerent reveals a very astute and audacious band, that definitely knows how to engrave their own style onto the anatomy of the genre.
Curse Upon A Prayer - The Three Woes
black metal
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The Three Woes is an EP released in June 21 by Finnish black metal group Curse Upon a Prayer. Almost seventeen minutes long, it has three tracks: Let Thy Kingdom Come, Thou Shalt Be Cursed and Woe! Woe! Woe! Exceedingly impressive, with a tremendous amount of authenticity, originality and energy, Curse Upon A Prayer displays a formidably marvelous degree of artistry within this work, with rapid guitar lines, melancholic, sinister and pervasive atmospheres, and an aggressive, but imperiously lugubrious harmonious density, that conceives within the framework of its melodies the galactic
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emptiness of distorted shadows, that corrodes on the sidelines of its hideous idiosyncrasies the fatalist musical overtones upon which their sound is elaborated, and wonderfully consecrates over the destruction of its sordid demise the bloodlust chaotic ordeal of an audacious conflagration of rhythms, that amazingly exhibits the deep and furious hostility upon which the genre is made.
Wagner
