drone / ambient

death metal / grindcore

death industrial / dark ambient

Exabyss Records

post rock / ambient / electronic

ambient / classical

funeral doom

gothic rock / alternative / metal

drone / ambient / folk

dark ambient 

alternative rock / funk rock

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indie / dreampop

industrial / electronic

Perc Trax

​Serge (2 & 3 by Patsker)

blackgaze / blackwave / electronic / black metal / experimental

Back to Reality is an album released on October 29, by a musician of an undisclosed location, known only by the alias Abstract Void, that does an “experimental blend of blackgaze and synthwave”, according to himself. 

With flexible harmonic grooves and a very electro-dance mood, Back to Reality is a groundbreaking and majestic album. An electronic stalwart with melancholic, but resolute black metal vocals, the level of sagacious, creative and fearless experimentation done on this album goes beyond any extraordinary measures, and the result is simply magnificent. With beautiful harmonies that traverse horizontally uninterrupted waves of colorful and tempestuous sounds, the rapid, though somewhat lugubrious tendencies of the harmonies display a very atmospheric black metal vibe on the surface of its gracious style, although the anatomic consistency of the music, in general, is very electronic, with the soul of its imperative nuances deeply resounding oceans of volatile densities from within its organic sensibilities.    

The album is very concise, though. Thirty-six minutes long, Back to Reality has seven tracks: Wind of Reminiscence, As I Watch the Sunset Fade, Back to Reality, Disconnected, Joy Night, A Reflection of Dying Past and Sigh. Its dilated vivaciousness makes it appear sometimes a very electronic techno dance album, and certainly evokes – in the epicenter of the most abrasive elements of its gracefully splendid mosaic of diluted electricity –  influences from these genres too, that are properly absorbed into the sensible vastness of the artist’s style. Exceedingly listenable and glorious, Back to Reality is a marvelously creative sonorous experience, and the most formidable and natural mixture of black metal and electronic music that I’ve ever heard.  

Evidently, an unlimited, cohesive and audacious creativity plays an important role in the majestic graciousness of its sonorous vitality. With virtually no boundaries to his wonderful artistry, the artist delivers an empire of virtuous and diligent musical cadences on this state of the art work, that lives by the monumental scale of its original standards.

A very dynamic, lucid and proverbial album, that is as much an experiment as a musical statement about style and versatility, Abstract Void has perfectly crafted Back to Reality as an uncontestable and fundamental masterpiece, that deserves to find its audience. With an unbelievably ascendant and primordial degree of originality, that feels as natural as well as carefully dilapidated, Back to Reality is a pleasant and emotional masterpiece, that will leave on by the grace of its astute and glorious level of authenticity. Definitely a wonderful accomplishment, Back to Reality is a joy of consistent grace.


Wagner

electronic / ambient

A very interesting record, that brings about on its cosmic ocean of sonorous virtues the abundance of primordial space expansion, this work is convoluted at the axis of a magnificent surreal atmosphere, thus revealing itself to be an excellent ambient music work. Despite the fact that the prominent principles of its vast musicality seems dormant in a placid comfort zone, properly located in an everlasting transcendental room of perpetual somnolence – where all humans sleep, arbitrarily locked in a fate of discredited melancholy – the sound has a natural and organic dynamic spontaneity, that revolves around its own sagacious ambivalence. 

With the prevalence of slow harmonies, the lethargic spaces of its melodies seems to open the doors of a new and more colorful dimension, although the core of its serene components seems to remain stagnant for most of the time. Quite relaxing, exponentially ascendant through the translucent crystal hemispheres of its stable harmonies, Earth Room slowly capitulates the remnants of a more enigmatic surface of sound, that dilutes in the anatomy of its existential grace the clear tones of a universe made entirely of an unconscious, but compact despair, that becomes the meaning of all lucid thoughts. 

Despite the fact that the album is relatively concise, its musical horizon is deep, and the artist clearly perceives what he has the obligation to achieve, since no ordinary boundaries of style consumes his preordained – but at the same time discreet – level of artistry. With a lot of beauty revolving around the densities of its sensible notes, Earth Room is an interesting album, despite some restrictions and limitations that makes the work to be extensively predictable. 

About Earth Room, you can definitely notice that the artist follows closely and exhibits with majesty the most preponderant qualities of the genre, working very well it’s most vital and peripheral virtues. On the other hand, the album has monotonous passages, that doesn’t do any harm to the album in general, but makes the listening experience somewhat tiresome. A work that has an excellent technical groundwork, though, Earth Room certainly aggregates positive points on the fugacious tapestry of its genre of choice, exposing on the peculiarities of its singular universe the sound of a cosmic existence that has yet to be created. 

 
Wagner

ambient

A Quiet Divide is an album released on October 5, by New Zealander artist Rhian Sheehan. A dense and profound ambient music album, the record has
Thirteen tracks: Elegy for the Past, The Absence of You, Lost Letters, Soma Dreams, Between Us and the Dying Starlight, We Danced Under a Broken Sky, Toward the Sun, Last Time We Spoke, Atlas, Someplace, All Who Remain, April and 1982. With a lucid and lugubrious, but also calm and placid serenity, the overall style of the artist is gracefully organic, splendorous and beautiful, definitely beyond the constellations of an ordinary musical twilight. With harmonies that integrates thoughts and emotions into a singular universe of profoundly humane sensibility, the music of Rhian Sheehan is a marvelous experience for the sensitivity of our nature, as propitiates to the listener the opportunity to undergone a delicate journey throughout the vastness of its own perceptions, to discover a little more about the personal galaxies that sleeps inside the empty abscesses of humankind’s omniscient collective dreams. 

With a light, but horizontal musicality that sleeps inside the painful road of memories, the sound of this fabulous work is gentile and soft, and invites the listener to stay in a corner of eternity that is simple, familiar and friendly. Without exacerbated or majestic ambitions, the style derives its sensibility from the most pure desires of the human nature, converting into sound the vicissitudes of its translucent and sincere aspirations, that fragrantly exposes on the nudity of its harmonies the most fragile elements of its densely poetic qualities.

Sidelined to a ghostly atmosphere, there is a warm that comes closer to the soul, as the album slowly and warmly progresses. Deciphering the enigmas of exhausted empty days – but understanding the gratitude necessary for the human mind to redeem itself –, Rhian Sheehan seeks beyond the salutary reverences of the sound its inherent value, to elaborate a symphony where everything can converge to an everlasting love, as the vital components of his music breaths, searching vividly for life, and interacts with the ardent splendor of an infinite day of happiness, that will never fade away. This revolves gently in the mind, and perpetuates a cycle of sonorous resignation, where everything is destined to be assimilated into an everlasting state of rapture, after days lost in a tornado of increasing anxiety.       

A beautiful music that oversees its own paradigm, sometimes reluctant, sometimes peaceful and silent, A Quiet Divide is definitely a marvelous and instigating album. With a peculiar and dense atmosphere, Rhian Sheehan gives life to a somewhat stagnant style, and transforms the most placid aspects of its latent dormancy in a serene, vigorous and glorious dream, that will agitate the sensibilities of your existence for all the days to come. 


Wagner

psychedelic / electronic / chill-out / downtempo / psytrance

With its deep space virtuous cosmogonies and a voluptuous synchronic ambient layer of masterful sonorous engineering, that works at the skylight precious visibility of its fabulous technical mordacity, Ataraxia, with all of its ten formidable and exponentially delusional tracks – Ataraxia, Psylent Coral, Shamanism Eyesight, Trust The Wait, Starseed, Cosmic Hologram, Badass Wolf, She is a Nurse, Psycho Delicate and Meraki – proves to be a dense, eruptive and monumental album, with a sound condensed at the imponderable vicinities of its own universal axis of arduous tenacity. In a belligerent zone of furious beauty and serene complacency, the harmonious sonorous fragrance of Ahanjack displays the elemental and versatile capabilities of all of its marvelous and intricate levels of artistry.  

Departing from conventional, but surreptitiously deep melodic alignments that break the spiral axis of the conspicuous effigies of sound that drives the linear pulse of the beatings, the album consistently displays a dynamic creative fever that definitely understands the bizarre complexity of its own vivacious concept, and effectively plays by the rules; beautiful harmonies dance in the colorful horizon of a day that never fades away, as red twilights shine bright at the tender displacement of ascendant harmonies, that rise from the dreams of its own imperative intonations. 

As the album evolves, the harmonies become more and more fluid, lucid and organic, though the flexible design of its anatomy exhibits a creatively expressive composure that is the groundwork of the artist’s style. Nevertheless, the psychedelic galaxy that vividly revolves around the charming and elegant harmonies creates surreal cadences of everlasting clouds that filtrates the impulsive beatings of the rhythm, although the general layout of the sound is left untouched, and obeys a coherent melodic elasticity that rarely moves outside its peripheral zone of sensibility.

Ataraxia is definitely a formidable album of psychedelic chill. With disruptive harmonies and a sentimental musical layer that promotes a delightful collision between effective melodies and surreal intonations, the record is definitely a sensational musical achievement. Despite the fact that the artist is somewhat relapse in terms of audacity, the consistency and the inebriant agility abundant in the music showcases a genuine charisma that overflows the ordinary elements of its inherent creative abilities, exposing a dimension of hidden splendor, which is something that the audience can experience with a high degree of satisfaction. 


Wagner 

jazz fusion / rock / electronic

'No Pussyfooting ', by Robert Fripp and Brian Eno (1979); E2-E4, by Manuel Gottsching (1982); Warsawa, by Praxis (1999) and Manifesto, by Stringmodulator (2018). This is how this album imposes itself after listening to it: as an updated continuation of works that used the electric guitar and electronic sounds together (since Les Paul and his modified overdubs). This style has been in continuous developing until the present day, either by using a simple backing track, some loop pedals, or simply the super interesting concept that this German duo "condensed" just using one bass, one guitar, electronic equipment and a two channel recorder (with no overdubs, something almost unbelievable).

It all starts with 'PROLOGUE' creating the right mood for the tracks 'THUMP & SHRIEK' and 'GROWL' which, together with 'WHITE NOISE', have excellent flirting with darkwave; 'BEETWIXT & BETWEEN' and 'ECHO CHAMBERS' could be classified as Nile Rodgers playing some "hard industrial music"; 'HORROR VACUI' has an excellent mix of ballads, industrial rock and soundtracks from 80's low budget horror movies that, along with 'GUITAR SABOTAGE ', reminded me - a lot - of some tracks from John 5's solo albums; 'MILES' BACKING BAND' could be a dubstep version (with lots of energy drinks) of an imaginary band for Miles Davies' electric period, possibly a tribute to the jazz study of the duo's members; 'A QUIET PLACE' could be an 80's style ballad (seriously, it seemed like Sting was going to sing at any time up to 40 seconds of music). This last track seems to involuntarily refer to the famous story about the creation of Dream House style, by Robert Miles, where there was a need for some quieter music to be played before clubbers get their way home, thereby reducing the number of car crashes in the Italian 90's clubbing scene. This kind of "calm down" was something needed to give maximum contrast on such an interesting album!

Of course the comparisons I made may even sound like an anachronism, at the same time, this is the best characteristic of this work, because "old" electronic music styles are evident in what concerns the aesthetics that they were influenced by, however, there is an update with the ocean of styles that have emerged till this days (something that may even be unconscious). This is what makes 'Manifesto' such a good album, because Jan and Fabian had the ability to perform an excellent re-reading of krautrock, electronic music and even jazz without intending to become "cults", and this lack of malice, in addition to an extremely freedom of creation, is the power that can make 'Manifesto' a remembered album trough the years!

Glauber

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Here we can see how the duo play the song Flow (from their first EP) in a live session

electronic / ambient

Definitely a cosmic and compact work, Synchro is an album by Denmark based electronic music artist Jesper Skovgaard, released under the alias of Noosfære. A more concise album – only forty-one minutes long – the record has six tracks: Horizon, Mnemosyne, Synchro, Beings, Demiurg and Remembrance. A very introspective and minimalist work, the style of the artist can be described as somber, cautious and extremely whimsical. Its sagacious and inherently proverbial overtones redirects its rhythmic longitudinal devices to the epicenter of a concentric atmosphere, where its own harmonically devised frontiers determine the continuous pulse of the sound. Departing from the latent perennial quest of its own lust for symptomatic disintegration, the overall sound of Noosfære – despite its allegorical density – is strictly organic, and while it can be vastly appreciated, certainly doesn’t leave too much space for interpretation. 

While the sound is stagnant for most of the time, there is a precocious beauty on its abrasive and comprehensively elaborated rudeness. The music of Noosfære departs from a dispersive darkness, centered in a personal universe that never sees any light. Moreover, while there is a natural flow that creates a vivacious sonority in the crest of its own melancholy, the most prominent quality of the music is a discreet and passive beauty, that understands and creates the volatile intensity of an ephemeral universe of frivolous sensibility, that never feels the necessity to locate the horizon of its own creational infinity. 

The music of Noosfære is definitely intricate, delightful and intense. At first, it doesn’t impress, but gradually – as the music penetrates deeply into the deranged vastness of your soul –, its monumental consistency engraves into the most hidden abscesses of your perceptions the greatest abysses of its congenital possibilities, presenting to elegiacally elected affections an effervescently poetic elegance, that reiterates the logic principles of a fundamentally expansive creativity, that never loses the trail of its gracefully obscure redemptive authenticity. 

While the album is not a masterpiece, it certainly has cohesive, sophisticated and perceptive merits, and the exceptional originality present in the work emphasizes its magnificent, insinuating and imposing style. With a strength that is more compromised with reticent, but overtly sensorial musical artifices, Synchro definitely can be qualified – at least, to a certain degree – as a splendid album, that will evidently reshape your impressions about electronic ambient music.


Wagner 

psychedelic / electronic / downtempo / chillout

Divine Architecture is the second album released by Hungarian electronic music producer David Vigh, under the alias of Takkra. With eleven marvelously crafted songs – Equillibrium, Merging Matter with Spirit, Armistice, Galactic Shaman, Chasing Dragons, Celestial Mechanics, The Healer (Changa Song), Sound Is God, Scienta Sacra, The Dervish and Towards the Within – the sound of the artist is a profoundly philosophic, sensorial and serene dive into the quintessential soul of the universe. In a dimensional atmosphere of perfectly devised harmonies, where gravity has no opportunity to write the downfall of its own expansive cosmogonies, but to work for them to stay on a permanent inviolable ascendancy, everything on this transcendental work is felt with the pungent plausibility of sincere and elemental human sensibilities. As the beautiful and majestically colorful sound softly penetrates into your mind, you definitely feel your soul evaporating, and becoming one with the universe, in a galactic empire of gracious intimacy, that knows no boundaries underneath its infinite horizon of everlasting redemption.

The overall sound of the album is captivating, and the style of the artist is simply marvelously impeccable, with no negative elements to point it out. Just close your eyes and enjoy the journey. Everything else is superficial. While your soul drifts away from the monumental collisions of its own sentimental atmosphere, graceful harmonies draw in the epicenter of your conscience a peripheral wall of discreet, but pervasively pungent melodies, that easily inscribes into the plural densities of your perceptions the tangentially impalpable transience of an inherently existential grandiosity, that obliterates its own overshadowed horizon of events. With a formidably expansive musicality, that comprehends and encircles on the flexible anatomy of its poetic filter the vastness of its own proverbial intensity, Divine Architecture can be described as a wonderful, monumental album, that definitely establishes a superior standard for the genre, on creative and technical matters.  

One of those albums that definitely works as a major therapy session, Divine Architecture is a gracefully cohesive state of the art work. Thoroughly energizing, sincere, and expanding its horizontal wave of harmonic gracefulness from the axis of a lucid atmosphere that understands profoundly the sensitivities of its solid anatomy, this album is a pleasant surprise from the beginning until the end, and a landmark celebration for enthusiasts of the genre.  

Definitely, the technical precision and the natural sensibility of the artist are responsible for this over-the-top, fabulous record, whose sensationally fantastic degree of artistry is just exceptionally wonderful, and establishes new boundaries and parameters for electronic music in general. Despite appearing to be simple on the surface, Divine Architecture is a majorly dense and complex album, that dissipates with its creative labor all the general commonalities found within the genre, without depriving nor distorting its fundamental characteristics. You just have to listen to this monumental work of art. You will be definitely thrilled with the aggrandizing nature of its original dispositions.   


Wagner

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

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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

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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

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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 ambient

bandcamp

A fifteen minutes EP with four tracks, Dark Hymns lives to the glory of its simple, but energetic and suggestive title. With a very dark, subtle and obscure sound, the sensitive premises of the style are afflictive to the fullest – despite being paradoxically peaceful and serene –, and seems to anticipate the imminence of a profoundly terrible doom. While the work presents to the audience a very simple and surreal sound, its nuances are dense, and the excellence of its atmosphere dissipates a graceful and somber fear over the boundaries of the melodies. There is nothing too exceptional or extraordinary about this work, but for dark ambient genre enthusiasts, the vivid, morbid intensity displayed by the artist behind the project is certainly vast, very meaningful, and spiritually consistent. 

electronic / darksynth / dark electro / synthwave

Crossing Lights is an album released on June 22, by German electronica/ synthwave act Collapse Project. A wonderfully splendid album, with eleven tracks – Where everything began, Crossing Lights, Arise from the darkness, M.e.n.s.c.h., Pursuit,
Bloody Dancefloor, Cemetery Walk, Starfighter, Nightshift, Test Drive and Rewind – this marvelous and majestic state of the art work has colorful harmonies, a vibrant, lucid and energetic pace, an intense and cohesive style and a superb sense of rhythmic rapture. With softly pungent, dense and dynamic mordacious melodies that engraves its formidable intrinsic strength at the voracious pace of the music, the album is fulfilled with a tremendously aggrandizing and creative originality, displaying a talent that has everything to stand out as uniquely authentic in the contemporary underground scene. Showcasing a sensational musical grandeur whose artistry is effectively sidelined with the most vivid and hallucinating melodies, the genuine musical abilities of Collapse Project is a gigantic cosmic evolutionary step in what concerns the general development of the genre. With some of the most beautiful songs that I’ve ever heard, Crossing Lights is an unprecedented milestone in the history of electronica. Certainly, deserves not only to be fully appreciated, but highly highlighted as one of the most beautiful, sensational and singular albums ever conceived. 

death metal 

Coffin Birth is an album released on July 20, by Californian death metal group Extremity. With eight songs – Coffin Birth / A Million Witches, Where Evil Dwells, Grave Mistake, Umbilicus, For Want Of A Nail, Occision, Like Father Like Son and Misbegotten / Coffin Death – the record is a satisfactory, lucid and efficient, but hallucinatory and hazardous death metal album, that works decently the most traditional elements of the genre. With heavy, fast rhythms that exposes the voracity of their style, Extremity showcases a peculiar, brutal, direct style, atrocious to the core of its corrosive nature. Despite the fact that the album at some rare passages becomes a little predictable and monotonous, this does not affect the general layout of the sound, nor does any damage to the competent and precise style of the band. Their aggressive strength is somewhat inherent to the most brutal and extreme ramification of the genre, and the name of the band certainly stands for it. While you can’t expect too much of innovative features on this record, Coffin Birth displays a decent amount of virtuosity, talent and definition, and certainly honors the genre with a virulent and passionate degree of astounding sonorous hostility, that will entertain avidly the most dedicated enthusiasts of extreme death metal.    

grunge / stoner rock/ power metal / black metal / alternative rock

Released on June 22, Desolation is an album by alternative post grunge/ power metal rock group Khemmis. With six tracks – Bloodletting, Isolation, Flesh To Nothing, The Seer, Maw Of Time and From Ruin – this gracefully peculiar, audacious and cohesive record showcases the splendid abilities of a band that does an amazingly superb and exceedingly sophisticated work in their amalgamation of several different genres and styles of music. With a power metal core heavily infused by a post grunge alternative rock density, the music of Khemmis has its own singular and energetic creative groundwork, fuelled by an outstandingly voracious and rude nitroglycerine spontaneous synergy, that explodes directly in the brain of the listener. A little reminiscent of more classic and mainstream acts like Manowar, Creed and Blind Guardian – although exposing a formidable degree of uniqueness – the band does a surprisingly splendorous and excellent work on Desolation, that reveals itself as a marvelous, profoundly genuine and sensational album, all the way through. Undoubtedly, Desolation deserves to be classified as one of the greatest masterpieces of the year.  

electronic

A beautiful, outstanding, lancinating and colorful EP, Gated Soul has four tracks: Blues For Jekyll, Last Raver, Hocus Pocus and To The Woods. With beautiful melodies, and very sensible, delightfully plausible harmonies, there is a genius spontaneity coming out from these songs that actually make you feel quite enthusiastic about it. With an exceedingly serene, but at the same time ostensibly sensational and mandatory vibe, the artist reveals a subtle, but formidable sense of originality on the framework of the sound that is the embodiment of this work. From within, the melodies gradually expand from a synergy that relocates the rhythm directly to the point of its graciously moving syncope. Exposing lucidity and showcasing an extraordinary degree of creativity, this electronic music artist from Great Britain has no fear in demonstrating his superb, masterful and singular talent, that easily reinvigorates in a more sophisticated sonorous artistry the greatest elements of electronica. Here you have four amazingly wonderful songs, that you will be pleased to hear over and over again. 

black metal / death metal

A very impressive, hostile and energetic album – although widely using exceedingly crude and conventional elements by some standards – Krwawy Sztorm, by Polish extreme metal group Moloch Letalis, is an aggressive, furious and bloodthirsty album. Only thirty minutes long, the record has nine tracks: Wielka Egzekucja, Sztorm, Krwawa Ziemia, Zatańczysz Ze Mną Kurwa W Piekle ?, Przysięga, Zdychaj Psie, Palownik, Gotowy Na Piekło and Żar. With ostensive and abrupt rhythmic grievances, the style of the group is simple and direct, a little reminiscent of punk rock, given the atrocious voracity, objectivity and rudeness of its style. With a solid fidelity to the most brutal aspects of the genre, the work is amazingly competent and full of acid rage. Although there is nothing too aggrandizing nor original about the work, certainly this album is a pearl for avid enthusiasts of the genre, since Moloch Letalis literally practices closely the most ardent, extreme, raw and violent aspects of death and black metal, executing a refined breed of these marvelous genres. If you like astoundingly heavy material, Krwawy Sztorm is something you would like to hear. 

electronic / techno / industrial 

With six tracks – Entrance of Gargoyles, Dance or Die, The Order, Mechanical Vampire, The Cavern of Noise and Theunderdogme 2018hardrem1x – The Cavern of Noise, by techno industrial French artist McClane is a formidable, very intuitive and lancinating work. With abrasive and disruptive rhythms, increasingly grotesque and infuriating harmonies, cohesive dilapidation of sound and very unpredictable, dense musical compasses, The Cavern of Noise is an interesting work of art, astoundingly engraved at forefront of the best tradition of techno music. With elements that plays on the fundamental axis of the noise and industrial genres, the artist evokes at the colorful blast of the music an atmospheric vitality that rejuvenates the harmonies and the anatomy of the music. With a lucid, compulsory and graceful creativity that is exponential to the ardent mordacity of the melodies, on this album, you certainly get the best the genre will ever offer you. The title track – The Cavern of Noise – is absolutely the best, and will leave you with the dense exposition of what electro techno music should really sound like. 

black metal

Mysteries of Earth, released by British black metal group Blutvial on July 5th, is a formidable, lucid and splendorous album. Fully energized, mortally intense and with sordidly aggressive, rapturous and impulsive, but lugubrious and poetic guitar lines, Mysteries of Earth is better described as a marvelous state of the art work. With ten amazingly placid and cohesive tracks – beneath the moon, black silence, existential rite, vault of unrest, carving nihil, midwinter's halls, urnacht, doomed to eternal night, in praise of noctula and where graves spring open – this fantastic work, besides its subtle originality, extraordinary grandiosity and proverbial musical audacity, consolidates firmly and brings about intrinsically the best qualities of the genre: hostile mordacity, somber harmonies, an aggressive stylish impetus, creative melodies, a rapid pace and an exceedingly volatile density. With the organic virtue of a profoundly vital and conscious musical dynamic, you can certainly highlight this record as one of the best black metal pieces released this year. Mysteries of Earth is a punctuating device and a majestic work of art in the history of the genre.     

black metal

Cosmic Autumn is the debut album of an eponymous black metal project from Germany. Released on July 13, the record has five tracks: The Last Deception, Event Horizon, Indistinct Visions, Realms Of Eternal Light and Solitude (Instrumental). With a beautiful and very original musical layer, very sober and proficient, the sound is definitely strong, sensitive, dynamic and fundamentally cohesive. Although the record retains the fury typical of the genre, Cosmic Autumn is also a lesson on sincere and poetic artistry, as the music revolves itself around a shroud of mortifying serenity, like a twilight that dies in the agony of an everlasting moment of unspeakable affliction. Since the music translates into sound these imponderable passages of pervasive anger, the overall loyalty of the project’s style to the genre is emphasized, but without compromising the ability of the artist in showcasing his own peculiarities. A very good work, that certainly exposes the mordacious talent of an exponentially promising black metal artist, Cosmic Autumn is the opening gate for a musician that has everything to aggregate into the genre a whole new conjuncture of possibilities, with his audacious and ostensibly brilliant creativity. 

stoner rock/ psychedelic rock 

bandcamp

Earthborn is an album released by Greek stoner rock group Stone Age Mammoth. Forty minutes long, the record has seven tracks: Fearless, The Dark, Whispers, The Mysterious Life Of Mr Krips, The Secret, Earthborn and My Darkest Hour. An exceedingly calm, methodic and meticulous, but exceedingly vigorous and lucid album, undoubtedly, Earthborn is a fantastic state of the art work, that dissects, reverberates, comprehends and exposes the best aspects the genre has to offer. With singular, serene and soft guitar lines, a configuration of sonorous walls that grows from the sincere stylish leniency of the group and a marvelous sense of timing that knows from instinct what has to be done, Stone Age Mammoth has a formidable artistic security and a powerful domain over the genre, that comes out naturally. Revealing itself as a graceful masterpiece as the album evolves and revolves around its own atmosphere of calmness, omniscience and existential perception, the glorious creativity of the group certainly highlights them among other bands of the genre. With a singular conjuncture of sonorous qualities, Earthborn deserves to be greatly regarded, widely appreciated and publicized as the wonderful and fantastic work of art that truly is.

black metal

Nostalgia is an EP released on July 23 by German black metal artist ColdWorld. With five tracks – Cosmos Devourer, Demon Speed, The Dark Ages, Let The Devil In and Silva Nigra – the EP, almost twenty six minutes long, is concise. Exceedingly beautiful, with the typical elegance that is an engraved milestone of the artist, the proverbial guitar lines and the poetic harmonies anticipates the general conflagration of its overall majestic serenity, deeply fulgurated with the sensible character of its everlasting, elegant and somber  horizon of artistry. With rapid passages that are profoundly surrounded by graciously atmospheric interludes, the music on Nostalgia is overloaded with the imperial fragrances of its own rudimentary darkness, that is sustained by a lucid and dense, but marvelously whimsical ferocious resentment, whose vitality extrapolates the shadows of its own arrogant beauty. With everlasting precipices of color surrounding the rhythmic fortunes of the songs, I must confess that I wasn’t particularly overwhelmed by this work. Nevertheless, Nostalgia has all the elements that are characteristic of a ColdWorld work, and, to a certain extent, has enough qualities to be deemed valuable for its sincere and splendid level of singularity.    

post rock / experimental

Return is a three tracks EP released on July 25, by a musician from India, who works under the nom de plume of Phet. With three marvelous songs – Return, Distance and Liberation – Phet works very distinctively the interior perception of the harmonies, to articulate an ascendant, protuberant and expansive, but at the same time discreet, lucid and introspective degree of sonorous exhilaration. With a pungent, incisive axis of conscious melodic devices, correctly assimilated by the lenient, but purposeful stability of its glorious symbiosis of organic dissonances, that seems lethargic at first, the intrinsic nature of the rhythmic serenity that grows within this musical horizon slowly works towards the digressive elements of the harmonies, revolving around a certain complexity that obliterates the cosmic volatility of its formidably eloquent style. With a futurist, colorful, modernist musical approach that made the external shape of the songs, indeed, to sound in an exceedingly beautiful and elegant fashion, Return can be positively described as a very gracious, audacious and original work of art. The last track, Liberation, I would certainly highlight as my favorite. If you want to listen to something very surprising, astute and genuine, I definitely recommend this marvelous and surreal EP. 

Wagner