Boreal Hymn – Tundra

The Deathtrip – Demon Solar Totem

Canyon of the Skull – Sins of the Past

The Spielbergs – Running all the Way Home

Thorsten
Boreal Hymn – Tundra
post metal / folk metal
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Every once in a while a new side of a regular genre is opened and forces people to open their notions of and vocabulary for said genre. With Boreal Hymn from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada it’s quite the same. They offer an quite unique blend of medieval sounds, chants and post-metal songwriting with regular gurgling singing and guttural screaming. This EP is their debut and the four “pagan revelries” as the duo calls them show some pretty interesting ideas of composing a sound somewhere between Junius, Agalloch on the one side and Heilung, Wardruna on the other side. The soundscapes remind one of a bodhran, acoustic guitars, medieval horns and – on the other hand – some droney, ambient parts. The prominent members Colby Hink (known from Wormwitch) and Bronson Lee Norton (The Seer) have embarked one a new sound and although one naturally must remark upon the (momentary) inadequacies of the songwriting as their ideas and skills still need some refinement but one should remember this is still a demo and remember to follow this band on one of their social media outlets or the usual streaming services – they might be up to something refreshingly new.
The Deathtrip – Demon Solar Totem
black metal
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Bands like Agalloch or The Ruins of Beverast have shown how shamanistic (and in part nihilistic) ritualistic Black Metal can be, a band like Heilung stresses the ritual-aspect of the music much more than their black metal roots. And now there is a band who started more than ten years ago, The Deathtrip, who are back with only their second real full-length, Demon Solar Totem released via Profound Lore and Svart Records. A band that definitely knows how to purvey a cold atmosphere while playing with shaman chants and small bells and lots of passages that remind one more of a pagan mass that puts a spell on its audience. The production is raw to say the least, sometimes this whirlwind of an album doesn’t give away whether the sounds are real soundscapes or mere very dirty feedback. This “super-group” with members of Grave Pleasures, Dodheimsgard and My Dying Bride tries to encapsulate the essence of raw ritualistic metal aiming for an effect of fear of affection. Either you hate it or you leave it – true for most black metal bands, The Deathtrip being one of the better ones albeit not of the same level as the genre forerunners mentioned above.
Canyon of the Skull – Sins of the Past
black metal
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Two songs, one hour. No, we are not talking about a radio edit of Bell Witch’s “Mirror Reaper” but about a new release by Chicago-based three-piece Canyon of the Skull consisting of guitarist Erik Ogershok (who even moved to the US a few years ago in order to follow his dreams with the band), bass player Todd Haug (Powermad, 1349) and drummer Mike Miczek (The Atlas Moth). Ogershok is the mastermind behind it all and he wanted to purvey an image of a ritual performed by the Natives of Northern America, as he named the two tracks “The Ghost Dance” and “The Sun Dance”, the first one alluding to the ritual that should connect the living and the dead in order for the ghosts to wake up and fight the white colonialists. Clearly a sign of frustration and despair. The songs show remarkable songwriting skills as the band’s kind of black metal is really refreshing and is able to make the listener feel connected to the spiritual world due to its meditative character. An album for everybody interested in some form of instrumental music channeling stoner rock, doom and black metal. Put the record on, dive in and drop out.
The Spielbergs – Running all the Way Home
indie / rock
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The Get Up Kids, The Goo Goo Dolls, The Spielbergs. Who? The Spielbergs! A three-piece power pop band from Oslo is on its way to become the new sensation in bubblegum punk. Of course, we have heard songs like the title track or “Fake A Reaction” or “Daisy! It’s the New Me” quite often. There is hardly something new in a genre whose heydays are twenty years past. However, there will always be an audience for this kind of music as there will always be new generations of youth who need their own (loser) anthems. The title track is one of those songs to which you can already see late teens and early twens dancing and singing along to, shouting out such anthemic slogans like “I don’t wanna be worthless / Just let me go back to start” or also “I was more than good to go / I wish you finally gave in” (from “Oh No”). Interestingly, there is as much Placebo in here as there are the Replacements, just as much uptempo as there is distortion. And who knows – maybe the Spielbergs are the ignition for a revival of a music genre that can never perish but that is always forgotten by the elders!
Thorsten
black metal
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One of the world's most unique black metal acts returns to celebrate their tenth year in existence. With 'Ten Years Of Resistance' the Arabian extremists confirm what many fans and reviewers have known for years, Al-Namrood is a force to be reckoned with.
What makes this album unique, is the unusual and daring combination of elements. First of all, this usually isn't the typical blast-beats driven black metal. 'Estorat Taghoot' and 'Fe Al Diaji' are slow but loaded with atmosphere. Furthermore, traditional instruments are being mixed into the brutality. Then, there is the rather unusual but powerful voice of Humbaba, which reminds me more of folk metal bands like Finntroll or Korpiklaani than most black metal bands. In fact, 'Hayat Al Khlood' reminds me a lot of Dutch folk metalers Heidevolk, which is another unique entity in the extreme metal scene. Of course, Al-Namrood has been influenced by wave after wave of metal bands coming from the West. They absorbed those sounds and added their own flavor to it, a flavor that pushes the whole thing straight towards the avant-garde of heavy music. The album contains seven songs and lasts for about forty minutes. I'm quite sure that all fans of black and folk metal can easily appreciate this, except maybe the die-hard racists and narrow minded right wingers but let's ignore those for a while. Let's just focus on the clenched fist that Al-Namrood has provided, with stunning pieces of music like 'Al Jahliyah' and 'Endama Tuqsaf Al Rous'. Although not your everyday black metal, all of these songs breathe the vintage air and honors the old school tradition of rebellion, pride and a strong will to be who you really are. And isn't that what black metal is all about? So I urge you to purchase this fantastic statement, just like I urge Al-Namrood to continue their path of resistance, at least for another ten years. The world needs bands like this! Serge The Vale - Autumn in the Valley
doom / rock
Empress - Reminiscence
sludge / doom
Heligoland - Coriallo
shoegaze / dreampop
Duran Duran - Girls on Film - 1979 Demo
new wave
Luke Fox - Sugarloaf
pop / rock
My Deathbed - My Deathbed
black metal
Versus The Ghost - We Don't Belong Here
post rock
(D)juret - Sök Din Sekt
punk / crust
Concrete Eden - Left
nu metal
Aidan Baker & Gareth Davis - Invisible Cities
drone / jazz
Serge
Planetariet - Planetariet
post rock
densely acquiescent serenity, majorly entangled in a human emotional diagram of omnipotent infinity, S/T is a simple, yet complete sonorous conflagration of a melodic universe, whose imponderability is virtually attached to the most restless deliberation of a wonderful and honest expressive moment in time.
Wagner Dead Neanderthals - Organ Donor
heavy jazz / grindcore
Brosandi - Music For An Unknown Galaxy
ambient / post rock
Boltzmann Brain - Sentences
jazz / noise rock / experimental
Knight – High on Voodoo
heavy metal
False Flag - EP
crust / hardcore
Scarlet Phantom - Singleness
progressive metal
Akadama Bros - Sunshine
hip hop / j-rap
Build Buildings - Glass EP
electronic
Vantablack Warship - Abrasive Pulmonic Speak
black metal / metal / death metal
Mist of Misery - Fields of Isolation
black metal
Hundred Year Old Man - Rei
doom / post metal
Obscene - Sermon to the Snake
death metal / thrash metal
Nordheim - RapThor
folk metal
Project Renegade - Cerebra
alternative metal
viking metal / progressive metal ![]() A fantastic and tremendously magnificent album to be released on September 1st by Downfall records, From North is the self-titled debut of the eponymous Swedish avant-garde metal group, that enters the underground scene in a marvelously aggrandizing and effective style. With eleven tracks – Volund The Smith, He Who Hates, Last Appeal, Ships Tale, Mead Of Poetry, Sworn Brotherhood, The Sacred Oath, Ormr Inn Langi, The Catch, The Longest Wait and From North –, this wonderful debut defies the norms and patterns usually applied to alternative metal, in favor of a more authorial and organic sonorous conception. Already in the first track, Volund The Smith, the listener is savagely, but spiritually introduced to a divine state of splendorous glory, where a brutal, but sophisticated musicality conceives an everlasting twilight of stone that draws the line of a genuine and accurately precise axiom of artistry. This grandiloquent atmosphere of an omnipotent parallel reality rapidly follows in the second track, He Who Hates, with a monumental melody that furiously dissipates the diagram of a sound impulse rotated by a diluted, but explicit viking ferocity. And this marvelous greatness continues intact until the final track. With ferocious, but whimsically dilapidated guitar lines, and almost clean vocals – although incisively strong and harsh at certain passages –, From North is an exceedingly genuine band. With a style impossible to properly define or categorize, they wisely reunite and easily compress in a wonderful sonorous galaxy of creation several astute and intelligent elements from a lot of different musical genres: from hard rock to progressive metal, from alternative rock to speed metal, going through avant-garde, power and post metal as well, with occasional viking, folk and symphonic arrangements, From North is a pluralistic cosmogony of excellent musical eclecticism, that keeps on their audacious and virtuous authenticity the greatest formula for sensational creative abilities that has potential to highlight the band as a rising and prosperous act in the underground scene. Exceedingly versatile and flexible, the strong musicality of the group takes the virulence of sonorous ascendancy to another level: with a melancholic icy poetry that rapidly shifts from a solitary, but aggressively reflexive rapture, From North comes to explode the musical possibilities to the highest degree, and explore all sonorous possibilities to a maximum, pursuing a perfect degree of artistry dying to be properly appreciated and recognized. One song in particular, The Sacred Oath –, a camp folk ballad that warms the soul and heats the heart –, is a majestically monumental and sensible poetic anthem of faith, hope and tenderness, profoundly humane, protective and paternal, that calms the spirit, and sets the world into an ecstatic moment of reflection. A song that sings the everlasting quest of human beings for interior serenity, you instantly envisions in your mind a night around a bonfire in a camping site with close friends, with the eternal forest fulfilled by snow in the background. Although the entire album is gracefully fabulous and beautiful, this track is certainly my favorite. One of the most wonderful songs that I’ve heard in my entire life! With absolutely anything to be criticized negatively about this album – on the contrary, I would massively suffer from the lack of adjectives to qualify this imponderable and masterful work –, From North rises from the distant icy landscapes of Sweden to defy the perceptions of our musical horizons, with their creatively exceptional and unconventional harmonies. I would love to wish them luck in their career, but they don’t need it! Their astounding beginning can be described in just one word: P-E-R-F-E-C-T! Wagner Lucifer's Dungeon - The Dark Army Raises
black metal
Lød - Folder
krautrock / post punk
Last Bullet - 80-69-64
hard rock / grunge
Svartsinn - Collected Obscurities
dark ambient
Dominique Charpentier - Esquisses
classical
Putrid Offal - Anatomy
grindcore
Moon Circle - The Cosmic Penguins
stoner rock / psychedelic rock
Misantronics - Contraformance 3
drone / ambient
Mutank - W.H.A.T.S.T.H.A.T.
thrash metal
Totengott - Doppelgänger
doom metal
Neverending Winter - Хиус
black metal / folk metal
Tristan da Cunha - Soçobrar
post rock / ambient
A Pale Void - Songs Of Sirens
electronic / downtempo / psychill
Santiago Niño - Cosmic Clearance
electronic / downtempo / dub
Elder Devil - Graves Among The Roots
grindcore
Elizabeth Shaw - I
drone / black metal
Show of Bedlam - Transfiguration
doom / avant garde
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