death metal

This one man debut was released in the beginning of February 2019. The CD was given to us by a fan when we visited one of the oldest record shops of Ghent Belgium. Ethereal Darkness is the project of a certain moniker Lars playing all the instruments and taking care of the death and black metal voices on Smoke And Shadows.

Melodic based death metal is mixed with gothic and black metal atmospheres. The album brings a story of life reflections balancing between life and death. Thoughtful lyrics tell stories about loss, love, acceptance, hope and remission. The darker side of life is etched in song structures containing heavy hypnotic guitar riffs and blasting beats. Mysterious Lars knows how to play the strings with sharp solos and slow melancholic parts precisely woven in the eight tracks of this album. 

It’s difficult to categorize Ethereal Darkness. The use of melodic guitar work with a mix of death and black metal vocals has very interesting result. Wintersun appeared in our mind to describe the varied wall of sound Ethereal Darkness shapes, but with less complexity. The production and mastering of this surprising piece of work is almost too good to believe and flirting with a strained feeling.

Smoke And Shadows  is a conceptual album about how our lives are like rivers flowing slowly into the sea. This Belgian artist provides with no doubt a nice listening session for the dark and lonely winter evenings. We will embrace this music during black X-mas days.

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Patsker

black metal / death metal

We have been following, with a lot of interest, the musical path of the Uruguayan dark metal duo for several years. Upon Shadows is Natalia Arocena (bass) and Tamara Picardo (keyboards, guitars and vocals). Modern Obscurantism is the cherry on the cake of their hard work. The duo from Montevideo started with this female-fronted dark metal act in 2003. Tamara Picardo moved to Finland in 2013 but the less Upon Shadows stayed alive and creative trying hard to spread their dark metal music into the world.

The production of Modern Obscurantism was in professional hands. We could listen to an outstanding well balanced sounding album with ten varied atmospheric dark metal tracks. Tamara Picardo’s grating voice is melted in spooky keyboard chords and guitar riffs referring to the old school atmospheric black metal days. Beautiful angelic background vocals are added to her demonic growling, creating a dark romantic mood. 

Session drummer Joonas Alaräihä (member of Finnish thrash metal band Fatal Effect) controls tightly and detailed the wood chopping with bass player Natalia Arocena. Although Tamara Picardo is the musician in charge, the rhythm section has also an important impact on this recording. Modern Obscurantism  has a vast amount of interesting details hidden in many layers. Dwelling piano riddles and chiming bells give a creepy gothic mood to the album. We could hear and feel that Tamara Picardo put a lot of inspiration from the land of a thousand lakes into this album. Even the South American roots of the band remained by adding Spanish lyrics in several songs.

Upon Shadows shows the result of dedication and persistence on Modern Obscurantism. We have listened with full attention and got fused into this atmospheric dark metal (with a black metal touch) trip. The mastering and mixing of this inspiring album was in the hands of Mika Pohjola at Soundmix Recording Studio in Oulu, Finland. We can only bow before these ladies of Upon Shadows.

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Patsker

death metal

For people not really acquainted with Tech-Death the new record by Denver’s Blood Incantation (released via Dark Descent Records) will sound like pure a fistfight between King Kong and a T-Rex, with the king of the monkeys playing the guitar and the king of the carnivores providing the growls and howls that for now shall be called vocals. This battle for the ages takes place in a desert wasteland on a godforsaken planet, revolving around a blue sun, which every once in a while makes the place so cold that even the two monsters have to stop to take a breath. 

The record starts like every good fight with a lot of rage and the monsters are exchanging their blows heavily and quickly. The audience is blown into their chairs and cannot take a breath because there is so much going on. However, after the first part of the fight (here called “Slave Species of the Gods”) the middle part of the fight starts when both contestants have to think of their stamina as they were unable to deliver a knockout in the first part and now might be facing a full length fight – Blood Incantation’s version of that is called “The Giza Power Plant” and the small stops and guitar solos show that it’s not all about speed for them, a musical structure must also have some time to breathe. After roughly two minutes the pub brawl turns technical and the band does so by displaying a doom momentum somewhere between a sitar and a western movie tune. 

“Inner Paths (to Outer Space)” follows with a calm intro and some drops of water falling on the barren ground beneath the fighters who have to sit back and wait, they’re coming closer to the final round, “Awakening from the Dream of Existence …” that is an 18-minutes opus displaying all the qualities of a good metal record – speed, doom, great guitar skills and atmosphere. The monsters are taking it out on each other again with body parts flying from left to right, while they still need to take a deep breath every once in a while because it’s been so intense. There are multiple breaks (one of them the long outro) filled with ambient passages and sci-fi noises that show a thorough understanding of dark jazz. King Kong and T-Rex knocked each other out and the dust is settling on their bodies. These calmer moments make the album worth listening – it’s not the speed and the musical skills that make a good record but its ability to look for and behold the necessities of the song. 


Thorsten

death metal

How fast can laser beams travel on a guitar neck? Well, ask these guys! After a longer silence –
with last year‘s one-off single Plague Revival as a lonely sign of life– Seattle’s death metal-sci-fithrashers Xoth are back with their second self-released full length Interdimensional Invocations and
again they show how speed metal and tech-death can spawn a solid technical animal.

The band embarks on a 40 minute journey of speedy dual guitars, lots of double bass and a great
mixture of different voices which is one of their strongest trademarks.


Everything blends nicely into this lyrical chaos of rising cybernetic kings, a plague for mankind and the phantom queen at whose feet we kneel. It is evident how much fun Xoth had when writing these lyrics, because this is all taken with two grains of irony and that is what separates them from a lot of their tech-death colleagues. A genre laden with so much sterility and precision can definitely use a band that has a twinkle in the eye. The post-machine-takeover science-fiction theme is a good contrast to a lot of the over-serious topics you encounter in this genre. Nevertheless, do not mistake them for the Coheed and Cambria of tech-death – here is no solution to end wars, here those battles are over and mankind lost.

On the other hand it must also be clear that musically Xoth does not add anything new to this genre, they can compete but not challenge. Many other bands that they already shared the stage with are capable of the same dual-threat guitar attacks and double-bass massacres; nevertheless, the Seattle quartet can say for themselves that having three vocalists is a bonus as each voice is clearly identifiable and different, ranging from a bar brawl shouter to clear black shrieks and deathly growls.

The band is definitely at their best when they give the songs a rest, even if it’s only a momentary
one, but that makes them even more interesting, for example the little slap-bass part in Plague Years 20XX or the dancing and dueling guitars at the beginning of Mountain Machines. If they can focus their songwriting more on songs like the final Melted Face of the Soul in which classic metal guitar work alternates with on-point death metal riffing the next album can become even more of a genrebender. 

Xoth will release Interdimensional Invocations on October 18th and it can be purchased through
their bandcamp account.


​Thorsten

post rock / post metal

noise rock / jazz / experimental

doom / sludge

psychedelic / doom / stoner rock

ambient

house / techno / electronic

dark ambient

ambient / experimental

electronic / downtempo

bandcamp

heavy metal

black metal / death metal

ambient

Audiobulb

​Serge

metal

metal / death metal

facebook

progressive rock / experimental

psychedelic rock / doom

hard rock

progressive metal

psychedelic rock /  doom

sludge metal / doom

black metal

alternative rock / psychedelic / noise rock

black metal / death metal

From the crypts of underground label Aesthetic Death comes another unnerving release, this time Voz de Nenhum's Sublimation. This record strikes a nice balance between nasty and clean sounding, thanks to producer Carlos Ribeiro, who incidentally also recorded Belgium's Enthroned upcoming new album.

Voz de Nenhum is based in Portugal, although it looks like members from several bands collaborated in this effort. Among them, for example, is labelmate Alex Dictator, who recently released his own (very fine) record under the moniker Diktator.


The band wastes no time and, from the first notes of opener "Ia'Iaxa" starts summoning demons. I like the fact that all songs are spiced up by synthesisers, and in the case of Ia 'Iaxa this results in a moody droning middle part. Other songs, such as Nails and They, feature a mix tortured screaming and ritual chanting over slow semi-acoustic riffs. It just shows that you don't need hyperspeed riffing to create the right atmosphere...

Closer Voidsworn is an exercise in psychedelic Black Metal, hinting at Oranssi Pazuzu.
But for me, the real highlight of the record is Chains; it has a great, non-black metalish guitar riff is so infectious I could hum it all day long. It's a slow, brooding song, spiced with synth sweeps and anvil hammering. Glorious! All in all a very enjoyable offering from these Portuguese dealers of Blackness.It clearly shows that nowadays the most exciting music doesn't necessarily come from the best known names.


​Koen

ambient / classical

Sound In Silence

experimental / noise

alternative rock / psychedelic rock

death metal

post rock

ambient / classical

doom / black metal

black metal

hardcore

metal / death metal / metalcore

facebook

black metal / death metal

Chaotic Symbiosis is an album released on November 15, by American blackened death metal band A God or an Other. A little more than thirty-five minutes long, the record has six tracks: What Keeps Us Here, Exhaustive Perturbation, Tacit Alarum, Torrent of Failure, Ritualistic Devitalization and Chaotic Symbiosis. With a dense, brutal and very aggressive sound, Chaotic Symbiosis is a characteristic genre album: it has a very sinister premise, revolving around an excruciatingly painful, hostile and visceral sound, displaying occasionally more sensible and surreptitiously slow harmonies. Hunger to prey on the dark vicinities of a fatalist cosmogony, that highlights a permanently obscure universe, lost in the infinite despair of a primordial demise, this album is a mordacious descending into an exasperated reality, infuriatingly immersed in chaos . 

The style of the band unfortunately suffers from a severe lack of originality, being neither surprising nor impressing, although they can work also in a more subtle and lugubrious context. A God or an Other definitely knows how to elaborate and to vehemently display very tense and slow-pacing interludes, that normally anticipates the hazardous and horrific doom of excessively tempestuous harmonies, that descends over the listener like a definitive cataclysm, eager to destroy everything that comes on its way. Probably, these macabre, melancholic and gothic serenades are the greatest triumph of their music.  

While you can feel a sharp, genuine and brutal ferocity embracing the consistency of a very aggressive, hostile and lancinating style, the most negative aspect of the band is related to the fact that it’s so brutally ferocious, and its melodies are so ostensibly rapid for the most part, that the sound invariably becomes too homogeneous. You inadvertently feel lost in the terrible storm of sameness compelled over its ferocious brutality, and eventually, becomes even incapable of differentiating one song from another. While there is genuine aggressiveness in their abrasive sound, there is little versatility and flexibility, which makes the album too predictable, and monotonous to a degree. 

While Chaotic Symbiosis is not a bad album, it’s style is very limited. Definitely, the tempestuous malevolence is genuine, and, to a modest level, interesting. But its creativity is too petrified to a restrictive musical diagram, getting close to brutal death metal for the most part. Resenting itself from stylistic limitations and a severe lack of originality, this album is mostly recommended to passionate enthusiasts of extreme metal. Outside this particular zone, the album will hardly find any appreciation. 
 

Wagner

black metal / death metal

The blind leading the blind is an album released on November 11, by independent Ukrainian record label Archaic Sound. Work of a musical project conceived under the alias 1914, this is blackened death metal on its most inventive, pressurized and obscure prominence. With sinister atmospheres, but abrasive guitar lines adorned by imperatively rapid harmonies, The blind leading the blind reunites in graceful cohesion all the fundamental elements of the genre: dense melodies, a guttural voice, pungent but dilacerating musical arrangements, and dubious melancholic sensitivities, that falls between the exhilarating devices of narrow ambiguity and glorious objectivity. Beyond the summary astute easiness of its aggressive downfall, this album satisfies coherently the mostly general qualities of the genre, while being too obvious and generic – almost predictable – by a more oblique perspective. Nevertheless, The blind leading the blind manages to be, more or less, an intense, intelligent and pervasive album, with some satisfactory songs that makes this work worthwhile listening it.

With eleven tracks – War In, Arrival. The Meuse-Argonne, A7V Mephisto, High Wood. 75 Acres of Hell, Beat The Bastards (The Exploited cover), Hanging On The Barbed Wire, Passchenhell, C'est Mon Dernier Pigeon, Stoßtrupp, The Hundred Days Offensive and War Out – this almost one hour long album is a profound, lucid, pertinent and belligerent anthem in preparation for war. With versatile elements that dispatch vividly its musical strength, The blind leading the blind is mostly characterized by powerfully exhilarating and brutal harmonies, that never dares to be condescending with its own ferocious and implacable plausibility. 

While there’s nothing on this album that could be regarded as deeply surprising or original, 1914 knows how to elaborate and to execute a solid, proficient, somber and cohesive musical work. With a salutary vividness that embraces its own virulent propensities and archaic glorious dimensions, the sonorous densities of the musical layers are characteristically well elaborated, and respect the boundaries of its own passionate, but effusively dark cosmogonies, that always explode in a tempestuous rebellion of nefarious harmonies. 

Like I’ve pointed out some lines above, The blind leading the blind definitely is not a marvelous album, but manages to be modestly good and interesting, all the way through. Its sophisticated enough to captivate an audience, solidify a cohesive sound and redefine intelligently the more discreet elements of its own style, while maintaining intact its general musical premises, and reevaluating this particular genre as a more extreme form of expression.  


Wagner