drone / ambient / folk

electronic / ambient/ synthwave

bandcamp

bandcamp

acoustic / folk

post punk

post punk

funeral doom

shoegaze / dreampop

electronic / house / synth

hard rock

math rock / alternative rock / experimental / noise rock / punk

​Serge

caveman battle doom

Let's start this review with a little anecdote. Just now, while I was listening to this album for the first time, my wife walked in. "A new Conan album?", she asked. I nodded. My wife likes doom metal but, like many people, she can't tell Dopethrone from Yob or Cathedral from Saint Vitus. In fact, she knows only  a few bands' sound very well, bands like Bathsheba, My Dying Bride, Type O Negative and Conan. I think that pretty much explains all there is to know about 'Existential Void Guardian'. It is a Conan album, one loaded with fuzz, aggression, power and more fuzz. It's a steamroller, a monolithic tsunami of riffs and a crushing example of Conan's typical sound.

And what better way to start such an album than with the pulverising 'Prosper On The Path'. Here, Conan immediately sets the demons free. The sludge metal oozes out of my speakers with great vengeance. Slow, crushing and impending, this is the Conan we all know and love. From then on, we're on a barbaric journey in seven new tracks. They all have the same character, one that will drone you out of your own flesh if played loud enough. The only exception is 'Paincantation', a short but vigorous crust grind tune that will blast you through the roof of any venue.

I don't think it's easy to pick a favorite track on this album, but my personal preference nudges towards 'Amidst The Infinite'. Surfing on the classic Conan sound, this track feels like a blanket made out of Stonehenge monoliths. It's followed by the mid-tempo grinder 'Volt Thrower'. For good reasons this track had been chosen as single. It gives you a perfect taste of things to come. In fact, it somewhat reminds me of Winter, another one of my all-time favorites in the doom metal sector. 

'Vexxagon' will give many doomers a hard-on, no doubt about that. It's another one of my favorites here, an epic and genre defining example of sludge doom. It's another one of those Conan track that keeps on ramming, pounding and pummeling until the listener is three feet deep in a swamp of fuzz and misery. But don't worry, by the end you can crawl out of your hole and enjoy closer 'Eternal Silent Legend', which - unsurprisingly perhaps - is everything but silent. Legend? Absolutely, along with the other tracks, this one cements Conan's legacy.

So, while my wife is back in the garden and the houseplants are sliding off the shelves, I'll end this review by recommending this album to all doomers and sludgers. Fans of Conan can easily trust the trio to deliver the goods again and who knows, perhaps another wave of fans will now appear. Conan = legend, no doubt about that, and this album simply proves that. 


​Serge

doom / sludge metal

Most musicians, and certainly rhythm sections, know that guitarists are usually annoying smart-asses who think the world revolves around them. Quite often, you can't jam with them without hearing a horrible look-what-I-can-do guitar solo. That is, if they're done twisting the knobs on their amps and telling the soundman to turn the guitars louder.

Luckily for real musicians, technology has been improving enough to be able to rock out without the need for a guitar player. Several bands already ditched their attention-whores and some just start jamming with out them.

That brings me to German doom & bass trio Moto Toscana. A drummer, a vocalist, a bass player and a truckload of fuzz is all they need to blast venues to pieces. To me, that raises comparisons to English duo Bismuth who also come up with grinding doom riffs. Yet, while Bismuth focuses on fuzzed out tsunamis, Moto Toscana adds a touch of progressive doom to their recipe, mainly coming at you in strong lyrics, the melodic vocals and neat bass lines.

But perhaps the most surprising aspect of this music is the strange resemblance with funk. I mean, un-fuzz the bass and the whole thing can be a solid foundation for Earth, Wind & Fire tunes. Opener 'Sickandtwisted' got me both banging my head and shaking my hips. The same goes for a lot of tunes here, except for 'Craving' and 'Exclusive' which bring something grungy to the whole thing. By now, I'm pretty astounded by this trio and their surprising variety.

I think the biggest surprise on this album is the huge amount of possibilities within their minimal approach. As I mentioned before, this setting could be the foundation for a lot of different styles, from Black Sabbath to Linkin Park to Primus and from funk to grunge to punk. It depends on what you want to hear in it. The only certainty is the fact that this grooves and rolls like crazy. My personal favorite is closer 'Among The Dead', which spells pure doom but obviously I recommend this album to all doomers and bass addicts out there. 


​Serge

black metal

bandcamp

With three songs – Bǽl, Opaque and Mǽdland – Bǽl is a strong, lugubrious and poignantly aggressive EP, released by British black metal act Normakk. With a very somber, evasive, discreet and effective atmosphere, the songs are beautifully composed, and from the very beginning, denotes a pungent and starkly spontaneous originality. With a graciously sensible competence, able to display in a positively sincere fashion the most pervasive aspects of the genre, Bǽl is raw black metal done in a proverbially sophisticated and elegant scale. With strident and expansive, but sensibly reliant, and, to a certain degree, darkly sentimental guitar lines, the general musical groundwork of the band is thoroughly exhilarating, consistent and dense, and obliterates on the vicinities of its melancholic melodies the most elusive aspects of black metal. Undoubtedly, a work of irreprehensible grandeur, Bǽl is a marvelously fantastic and unique work of art. Normakk closely follows the traditional old school, with a very peculiar, creative and dense style, with premises that outstands its genuine and salutary virtuosities, shining away any possibilities of being classified as just another generic act of the genre.   

black metal / death metal

Altar Of The Dying is an EP released on July 30, by American blackened death metal group Throne, from Jackson, Michigan. Almost twenty-four minutes long, the work has seven relatively short and very concise tracks: Intro, Heresy Of The Highest Order, Not Of Shadow Nor Fog, Altar Of The Dying, Covenant Of Darkness, Where Angels Cower In Fear and Plagued Upon The Unholy. With an aggressive, dense and very rapid sound, their style can be described as methodical, rude and severely traditional, albeit a little predictable, although this does not affect their general performance. With a fiber and a level of brutality that makes their sound to be profoundly eviscerating, drastic and virulent – but also efficiently concentrated –, Altar Of The Dying is a very energetic, hostile and straightforward work. With highly consistent harmonies and incredibly lucid and somber guitar lines, the group certainly manages to deliver a powerful and pungent style of extreme metal, that is poignantly effusive and dark. Although there is nothing here that you haven’t heard several times before in similar albums of the genre, Throne is a competent, skilled and creative band, that proves their ardent and passionate compromise with extreme metal, on this exceedingly great and powerfully grotesque EP. 

doom

Ashes is an EP released on July 20, by Danish doom metal group Doomcult. Almost twenty three minutes long, the record has three tracks: Sulphur, Ashes and Black Fire. An excellent, pleasant, very delightful work, with way more poetic tendencies if compared to the traditional groups of the genre, Ashes has a melancholic and disturbing, but exceedingly ascendant, philosophic and serene atmosphere, that rises above the sensational and placid stability of its harmonious and dense sonorous configuration. While the first song, Sulphur, deserves to be highlighted, all three songs present an artistic level of security and a musical technique that stands as far superior to the average level. With a sensational style that makes them a powerfully potential reference for the genre in the underground scene, the consistency of the sound of Doomcult – as well as the audacious, but at the same discreet originality present in their music – showcases in the end an absolutely splendid final result. Certainly being one of the most genuine and spectacular releases that I’ve ever heard on the genre – being amazingly passionate and frivolous at the same time – Ashes, by Doomcult, is an exponentially marvelous experience on doom metal, highly recommended to everyone that is an enthusiast of the genre.   

black metal

bandcamp

A dark, rude, depressive and melancholic traditional black metal work, Drowning in Sorrow is an EP released in June by a Finnish musician, that presents himself by the alias of Sathanian. Almost twenty-four minutes long, the EP has five tracks: Depressing Dreams, Wanderer, Drowning In Sorrow, Despair and Kenkiintuijottaja. Despite being better described as traditional black metal, the EP has some discreet traits of DSBM, which is present in the predominantly slow, digressive and dispersive harmonies, that really stands for a surreal and profoundly melancholic mood. The cynic and sorrowful atmosphere of the work is genuinely beautiful, and has a formidable musical consistency, that is ostensibly framed by conspicuously sinister and funeral vocals, that sometimes emphasizes its presence more for its morbid, almost neutral sterile qualities, than for its grotesque nature. A promising, very interesting work, that is sidelined by its truly proverbial and eloquent understanding and execution of the genre, Drowning In Sorrow is an emotional, poetic and very somber work, that has everything to please enthusiasts of the genre.    

black metal / post black metal

bandcamp

An interesting EP with four tracks – Dramatic Truth, Winds Of The End Of Afternoon, Jonas and Alone – the music of Sabactâni can be described as a melancholic twilight forever lost in the everlasting vicinities of depressive and anxious thoughts. A marvelous post black metal group from Brazil, their originality is amazingly eviscerating, with a powerful and afflictive sonority, that energizes the genre at the core of its structure. With powerfully ascendant melodies, that revolves around aggrandizing, but at the same time dismissive and dispersive harmonies, the disillusion that is felt as the epicenter of their style is symbolic to the mood that better defines the genre, and takes a major layer of beauty and poetry in the virtually insane musical diagram of the band, that can be felt as simple and humane, at the same time. A wonderful EP that brilliantly aggregates major qualities to the genre, with a severely robust and consistent anatomy of abundant sonorous virtuosity, B.O.R.E.A.L, by Sabactâni, certainly can be classified as a vigorous and sensational state of the art work. 

black metal / crust punk

bandcamp

Fallen From The Hull is an Ep released by American black metal act Nailwalker, from Austin, Texas. Twenty-five minutes long, and with four sensationally fantastic tracks – Juvenile, Feeding The Devil, Without A Thread To Pull On and Meant For All Fours – Fallen From The Hull is a formidably majestic state of the art work, that brings on the crest of its tempestuous, direct and incinerating melodies all the aggressive devices truly inherent to the genre. With a sober, technically proficient and genuine veracity that is the main engine of their music, Nailwalker is a fantastic musical creation, that introduces into their music in a perfectly incisive and precise manner crust punk elements, as well as more melodic and melancholically somber sonorous tonalities. With beautifully poetic and thoroughly original guitar lines – that somewhere along the way, unveils an amazingly superb, lugubrious and dissonant solo – Fallen From The Hull is one of the most perfect, authentic and astoundingly beautiful experimental black metal pieces that I’ve ever heard. With furious, but lancinating and dramatic vocals as well, as soon as this EP is over, you want to hear it again! 

black metal

bandcamp

S/T is a two track EP released on August 17, by Canadian black metal act Mandragora, from Victoria, British Columbia. With two amazingly sinister songs – In Scarlet Embrace and Beyond The Lacheist Prisons – Mandragora performs old school traditional black metal, on a virtuous and dissonant style. With somber and aggressive tunes, and pervasively grasping cutting edge vocals, the sound of the duo is thoroughly groundbreaking and energetic, doomed to fall beneath the imperial demise of its own projected desolation. With a responsive aggressiveness, that is more melancholic and lugubrious than hostile or belligerent, the overall sound of Mandragora is quite provocative and inventive. Very reminiscent of the early Norwegian black metal scene, the style of the duo is profoundly proverbial, obscure and essentially imaginative, although they do present a formidable degree of originality, that makes their sound quite distinctive, but without losing the quintessential trademarks of the genre. An excellent work – as a matter of fact, a gracefully fantastic two track EP – on the course of its seventeen minutes, Mandragora definitely gives a sonorous lesson about what true old school black metal really is.  

black metal

Dark Lore is an EP released on July 27 by American DSBM artist Moon Bog. Almost twenty three minutes long, the work has four tracks: Under Burning Leaves, Reawaken the Frost, Mount Sorrow and The Strain. A splendid, beautiful, philosophic and marvelously poetic musical work, with an abundant layer of sonorous melancholy, the general style of the artist is profound, graceful and exceedingly rough on the introspective universe of its expansive sensibilities. With genuinely patient and somber harmonies, that plays on the majesty of its precociously filtered and salutary guitar lines, the melodies are dramatically tense, but profoundly calm at the same time, as they extend to the transparent, but lugubrious oceans of its frivolous sensitivities the turbulent pandemonium of its restless state of mind. A passionate, cosmic, exhilarating work, whose pervasive sensibility plays a vital role at the cornerstone of its infuriating, but peaceful and placid sagacious artistry, the formidable level of creativity and excellence displayed by the artist on this work is simply extraordinary, and will certainly please all genuine DSBM enthusiasts that will be happy enough to listen and to enjoy this fantastic pearl of the genre. 

black metal

bandcamp

Self-Destruction is a wonderful EP released on July 25, by Russian DSBM artist Dystert Natt. Very concise, only ten minutes long, the work has four tracks: Ashes And Snow, Insomnia, Scars'14 and Sing To Me An Alcoholic Lullaby. The general style of this musician is DSBM on its most typical and traditional layer. Nevertheless, it is abundant in beauty, and has several qualities that stands out on the course of its sonorous brevity. The melancholy, the mordacity, the overall serenity and the discreet sadness that is overexposed at the most frivolous panel of its virtuous musical context is excessively evasive and lugubrious, but has a poetic beauty that easily disperses and dilacerates the macabre rudeness of its shadows. The guitar lines are ostensibly impeccable and whimsically elaborated, although they are plain and simple. Unadorned, direct and full of lethargic grievances, Self-Destruction – as predictable as it is –, has a consistent, dramatic and sincere layer of sonorous beauty and stylish purity, that certainly makes this wonderful EP a very pleasant experience to hear. 

black metal

bandcamp

With only two tracks – Vacuous and Obsequious Vermin –, Histamine Haven is the debut of an eponymous Canadian project, released on July 24. With a raw and traditional approach to the genre, the record is absolutely fascinating, has a consistent style and definitely has what it takes to please a large audience. With solid, but at the same time dissolute guitar lines, Histamine Haven has a ponderable and serene conjuncture of harmonies, that – despite brief passages of virulent aggressiveness – gracefully elevates the internal dynamic conflagrations of its expansive rhythms to a fateful standpoint, where the experimental colors of the sound extrapolate the venomous frontiers of its own unfathomable hostility. Unraveling a fantastic and versatile tone of primordial stature and creative audacities, the style of Histamine Haven has mordacious peculiarities, and a very original musical groundwork. The way the artist promotes the balance of the most violent and hazardous aspects of his music with the more serene and sensible components of his sonorous splendor denotes a vigorous and majestic ambivalence that is gracefully dilapidated almost to the level of perfection, and certainly will captivate the listeners, almost immediately.  

Wagner

doom / stoner rock

Eye The Tide is a formidable album, released by Polish stoner rock act Spaceslug. A cohesive, dense, anxious and exceedingly atmospheric work, it’s fascinating musicality is proverbially intense and ostensibly lugubrious. The sound floats easily throughout the intermittent zones of your fragile anger, while the sensible, but toxic nervous breakdown experienced by the melodies are beyond the irrelevant limits of reason. With slow, but proficient, tense and pungent guitar lines, and very somber, sacramental vocals, which are sparse and occasional, that anticipates the cruelty of an imminent melancholic doom, the style of the group is a monumental harmonious treasure – where proficient technicality and intuitive creativity are perfectly combined – that comprehends the lucidity of its own furious demise, in a consonantal veil of surreptitious and discreet agony, that embraces an ocean of dust filled with a surreal dilution of sincere, but dissolved sentiments.         

While – on an overall analysis –, the musical structure of Spaceslug is more or less generic, they have a crude and rude, but strong and very genuine style, ostensibly marked by sensational and preeminent guitar lines. All the other elements are there as well, and are preciously synchronized, but the frivolous passive-aggressive razorblade style displayed by the strings certainly outstands itself in a very sensible solution of lugubrious resignation.  

At fifty-three and a half minutes long, the record has seven generally extensive tracks: Obsolith, Spaced By One, Eternal Monuments, Words Like Stones, Vialys Part I, Vialys Part II and I, The Tide. While the album do have some vague and monotonous passages, these occurrences are sporadic, and doesn’t damage nor compromise its general qualities. Eye The Tide can be firmly appreciated as a groundbreaking record, that definitely establishes a new style of doom and stoner rock, whose singularities make it difficult to categorize in an ordinary or specific musical zone. 

With melodies that are carefully elaborated – and, indeed, are amazingly beautiful – and a thoroughly original style that departs from a very authentic creative axis of nefarious desolation, Spaceslug does not fear nor recognize any limits to their creative horizon. Certainly they aren’t only a promising band, but an amazingly peculiar musical act, whose instrumentality works in such a pretentiously colorful density, that you can certainly say that they have masterly articulated their own particular universe of melodies, one that you can feel only if you are inspired enough to completely dilute yourself in it. 


Wagner

doom / sludge metal / drone / dark ambient

This EP, or single, is long, seventy minutes but in that timespan Boobs Of Doom takes you on a trip through your own darkest imagination. Just download the album, because this is a full length, turn the volume knob to neighbour levels and drift away. Carrie will appreciate it, Boobs Of Doom will appreciate it.

drone / ambient

death metal

gothic rock

bandcamp

drone / dark ambient

Sombre Soniks

drone / dark ambient

dark ambient / ritual / drone

death metal / black metal

drone / dark ambient

ambient / experimental / downtempo

dark rock / art rock / blackgaze

traditional / folk 

post punk / new wave / goth rock

Heading from Bristol, Naut decided to ignore all current trends and to look back to the dark eighties. Now, this five-piece comes with a baffling debut EP, containing five pitch black goth rock tunes. Influences from bands like Sisters Of Mercy and Killing Joke run rampant and come with the overwhelming energy of post punk acts like The Jesus and Mary Chain. Song like opener 'Disintegration' and 'I'm Here' are destined to fill dark dancefloors everywhere. My personal favorite here is closer 'XVI'. It makes me curious and hungry for more, but for now I'm sure that this EP will be an excellent addition to every post punk / goth rock collection. 

doom / sludge

Sheffield doom mongers Kurokuma return with a two track EP, based on the Dope Rider strip from High Times in the 70s. The artwork comes from Paul Kirchner, the creator of the strip. The music is another slab of severe psychotic sludge doom, five and eight minutes long. Part 1 also showcases something industrial, reflected by repetitive, almost methodical drums. Part 2 simply continues to slow but brutal pummeling. Fans of bands like Conan, Dopethrone and Yob can easily trust Kurokuma to deliver the monolithic riffs and fierce vocals they crave so much. So if you want your sludge metal as destructive as a wrecking ball, this EP should do.

post-metal / doom / alternative rock

facebook

Several months after the release of 'Serrated', Dutch heavy rockers An Evening With Knives unleash three songs that did not make the album because of the limited space on the vinyl. Yet, these songs were to important for the band to be ignored. Opener and title track 'Fade Out' deals with the death of Marco’s father due to Alzheimer disease. It's a long, heavy and cathartic lamentation, showcasing the darkest side of this band. The other two songs follow that example, be it a bit shorter. They all walk a similar path as the songs on 'Serrated', and thus would also fit perfectly into every sludge, doom and grunge collection. These guys are growing steadily, that's for sure.

electronic / ambient / experimental

An alienating two track EP that will leave you confused and entangled, that is what Soho Rezanejad delivers. Subtle electronics, minimalist drones, gloomy soundscapes and her vocals come together in two lengthy modern day folk songs. I can't help but think about a mix between Zola Jesus and Diamanda Galas, be it a bit less creepy than the latter. Yet, there is emotion, there is fear, mourning, wonder and hope in these two tracks. There is a mystifying atmosphere, one that borrows elements from dark ambient. Yet, above all perhaps, this is a unique piece of work, reminding me of an act like Dark Ensemble. Recommended only for eternally wandering souls.

post rock / post metal / stoner / sludge

In today's post rock scene, new bands pop up like mushrooms. Würzburg residents The Man Within are one of those newcomers. Mostly, that first effort comes with a low production and a careful introduction in what the band really is capable of. Yet, here that results in a full-blown post metal album with seven outstanding tracks. Most of them, including 'Mount Santo', my favorite 'Institution' (that rolling bass is hot!!!) and the massive 'Limitless' can easily entertain audiences far and wide. Although firmly rooted in the post-scene, elements from sludge metal, psychedelic rock and stoner rock are never far away. A great introduction, now let's hope they can confirm this in the near future.

dark ambient

The new brainchild of Nachtzeit, the man behind ambient dark metal project Lustre, comes up with an interesting dark ambient album. Although playful at time, this album takes us back to the mysterious  and dark age of the Norse gods. Early in 'Drömmarna' acts like Mortiis (on Cold Meat Industry) and Wongraven come to mind. Synths, soundscapes and dreamy melodies guide the listening on a musical tour of medieval Europe, so it seems, highlighting in 'Löftet' and 'Tårarn'. Strangely, the title track 'Hädanfärden' has an X-Files OST feeling about it, which isn't bad, on the contrary. Fans of old school medieval dark ambient can easily appreciate this album.

alternative rock / hard rock / grunge

facebook

Belgian hard rock duo Breakfast At Midnight proves that two is enough to create heaps of noise. On this debut EP they blast seven tracks through our speakers, beginning with the heavy rocking 'Kidi Coke'. From then on, the rock doesn't seem to stop. Inspired by anything between Tool, Queens Of The Stone Age and Stone Temple Pilots, these two feed an everlasting fire. Most tracks drive on sheer energy but in 'What I'm To Say' and in '1813', the band delves deeply into the Pearl Jam version of grunge rock. Here, the vocals are excellent and clean while the other tunes contain heaps of aggressive screams. Not that I mind, this is pure rock 'n roll: raw, rough and heavy.

black metal / death metal

Grab onto something now because Ukrainian trio Goatsperm is about to unload a hellish, chaotic and vulgar EP, loaded with orthodox black/death metal. 'Voice In The Womb' contains three tracks, each one being a pummeling piece of extreme metal, as dark as Satan's butthole but with an ambient breather here and there. Somehow, this trio manages to combine atmospheric passages with sheer metallic terror, something that might indeed make a lot of banging heads turn their way in the near future.  Besides, 'Into The Deep Waters Of Catacombs' is one of the fiercest black metal tunes I've heard this year. If you're a self-respecting extremist, you need this.

krautrock / shoegaze / punk

What would have happened if Ramones used My Bloody Valentine's guitar effects? What would a punk rock cover album of Neu! songs sound like? Well, Finnish six piece Teksti-TV 666 might have a decent answer for you. 'Aidattu Tulevaisuus' delivers six high-octane krautrock tunes with the raw energy of punk and the immersive nature of shoegaze. I admit, it is something different from the usual slabs of rock 'n roll that appear here but 'Turbo-Mondeo' and 'Aidattu tulevaisuus' can easily get your behind shaking. My favorite here is the somewhat slower 'Rauhankone', which might be described as a down-to-earth space rock track. Recommended? Hell yeah!

ambient / electronic / experimental

Hailing from Porto, Vitor Joaquim is a sound sculptor and visual artist, active around the strange borders between soothing ambient and otherworldly noise. This new album, 'Impermanence' contains seven tracks, revolving around repetitive soundscapes, almost subconscious loops and immersive musical textures. Here and there vocals samples have been added to increase the narrative nature of the music. That, along with the minimal soundscapes, makes the title track my favorite here but I'm sure that every fan of decent ambient music can appreciate these sounds. Obviously, this comes highly recommended.

ambient / drone / experimental / noise

bandcamp

An even more noisy and experimental variation on ambient sounds comes from Han, a project by Vitor Joaquim and Emidio Buchinho. This album revolves around live improvisation and real time processing, which results in something severely unusual and highly experimental. Yet, behind the gritty freestyle on the guitar, beautiful ambient loops lurk. These seven tracks are weird, immersive in one way, yet restrained and peculiar. Somehow this album feels like the early days of drone experimentation, when artists were exploring the other possibilities of their instruments. In all, this is an interesting release to dive into, but only for experienced avant gardists...

Serge

dark jazz / post rock / doom

I don't really know how to start this review. I want to write about the short appearance of A-Sun Amissa in my book, 'Cecilia's World' (---->) but I also want to write about that breathtaking concert at Trix that inspired that particular passage. I want to write about how I immediately became a huge A-Sun Amissa fan and about how they expanded the entire dark jazz scene.

But I think the safest way to do this is to dig deep into this brand new album and see how this project by Richard Knox (Shield Patterns, Glissando, founder of Gizeh Records) has evolved in the past few years. 

'Ceremony in the Stillness', to be released September 14th, contains six tracks, all slow and compelling. On this follow-up to the highly acclaimed 'The Gatherer' A-Sun Amissa seems to dig deeper that ever before. The jazz elements faded to the background, making place for post rock and doom metal. On several of these tracks, including the immersive opener 'The Black Path', Knox twists the distortion knob a bit more.

Now, I can say a lot of things about this album, but there is one thing in my mind throughout the entire duration: a front seat at the forest stage of Dunk! festival. Now more than ever I see this band being a massive highlight on this Flemish post rock event, and all other related festivals around the world. With emotional rollercoasters like 'To The Ashes' or closer 'Remembrancer' , A-Sun Amissa will undoubtedly enchant audiences far and wide.

I guess it's not a surprise that bands like Mono, Stars Of The Lid and A Swarm Of The Sun come to mind more often than the Bohren or Dale Coopers of this world, which was the case on 'The Gatherer'. Lingering guitars and steady drum rhythms now make up most of the music, but the gloomy, intrinsic atmosphere remains a constant. Just listen to the fascinating anthem 'The Skulk' which does beautiful things with ambient, noise and avant garde classical music, often with the help of Jo Quail and other guests.

'No Perception Of Light' makes me realize that this project didn't really chance. It just continued its evolution towards ever more intriguing slow and murky music. Back then, I thought 'The Gatherer' was a highlight in the so-called "slowism" scene but this new work surpassed that, even though the much beloved jazz elements are now backgrounded. 'Ceremony in the Stillness' is a perfectly balanced album, one I would like to recommend to all fans of slow and dark. 


Serge

doom / black metal

Flammarion is an album released on July 20 by black/ doom metal act Khanus. With eight tracks – The Serpent's Harvest, A Timeless Sacred Art, Titan Souls, Ageless, The Uncreated, Secular Spiritual Existence, Surrupu and Magick And Numbers – this exceedingly interesting extreme metal work showcases to its audience a formidable mixture of doom and black metal, with poignantly effusive, dense and incisive guitar lines, whose main focus is the elaboration of a sordid and conspicuously sinister atmosphere, that surrounds the harmonies in a lugubrious emptiness, that seems to lurk for a rapturous epicenter of agony at the crest of an everlasting fall.

The creation of the atmosphere is increasingly effective, and the morbid insinuations that goes along its sinister harmonies are astoundingly intense. The pace of the songs are generally very slow, but the sound is not monotonous at all – there is a hallucinating device that keeps growing all the way through, as grows in your mind the impression that you are sinking through a voracious dark tunnel, towards the deepest corners of the earth. As darkness enters you, the overall consistency of the sound penetrates into your soul, and liberates your heterogeneous zone of fears.

The album is very intelligent and bright at the evaluation and creation of its degrading, sordid, ambiguous, fearful atmosphere. Since the rhythms of the songs in general have little to no variation, the uniformity of the sound keeps your mood low through the dark process of the glaciation of your conscience. Nevertheless, the group do maintain an elaborate sonorous diagram of pervasive paradigms, keeping a labyrinth of sound that leaves your conscience wondering alone in the everlasting darkness of a world faded to disappear. 

While I wouldn’t consider this album a masterpiece, it is certainly effective and marvelously competent displaying the sovereignty of its disruptive intentions, as to know, the consolidation of a dark atmosphere of fear and demise. Undoubtedly, Flammarion will be more appreciated between devoted followers of the genre; nonetheless, the record has enough qualities to captivate slow dark metal enthusiasts everywhere. 


Wagner

doom

With a direct, lurid, abrasive approach, and a very sinister and funereal sound, Cinereous Incarnate is best described as a stereotypical death/ doom metal album. With seven tracks – Nether, Cinereous, Ashen Reign, Wings Of Annihilation, Incarnate and Devouring Night – the songs are all generally ten minutes long, more or less, with the exception of two tracks, Cinereous and Incarnate, the second and fifth, respectively, that are just brief interludes, and combined, give the name of the album. A very methodic, but at the same time brutal and digressive album, there is nothing exceptional about this work, which can be described as purely conventional, although with some modest reservations. Nevertheless, there is a definitive display of competence that outstands itself in the work, that is finely executed, decently produced, and expresses a great deal of appreciation for the genre in a somber and expansive context, in a more general evaluation. 

While you aren’t allowed to expect anything extraordinary about Cinereous Incarnate, definitely the album has valuable, interesting elements, that are properly combined and fused altogether; as the album evolves, it is possible to notice a decent degree of authenticity, that prevents the group from being labeled as just a generic act. Exposing a dense and sinister atmosphere, that revolves around the darkness of its own sonorous stigma, the patient harmonies – finely structured over cohesively tempered guitar lines – are elaborated over a vacuum of sincere melancholy, that slow down behind virulent melodies, that wonders over a lost universe of dramatic deterioration and deliberate despair. 

While Abstracter is pretty effective and competent in conceiving and delivering the ordinances of insanely sinister and afflictive melodies, unfortunately, as competent as they seem to be, what the band showcases in Cinereous Incarnate is no better or different to the vast majority of bands in the genre. With a flagrant lack of audacity and innovation, there is not too much perceptions to highlight about this album. It’s a good record, but doesn’t go anywhere beyond a simple evaluation. 

Recommended to the most ardent and passionate enthusiasts of the genre, this album does achieve a degree of satisfaction that a lot of other albums in the genre aren’t capable of. But as I wrote above, and I repeat, there is nothing on this album that you haven’t heard a hundred times before in similar records. With a modest result, Cinereous Incarnate is not a bad or precarious album, but on the other hand, doesn’t have enough qualities to outstands itself either. 

 
Wagner