punk / hardcore

Hardcore will never die. And no, this is not another version of a Mogwai-analogy. Hardcore will never die. No compromises no ambiguities in that sentence. There will always be pissed off young men angry at the world. Most of them will never make it to a recording studio, most of those who do will not get a record contract, for there are simply too many of them. And from those with a contract an even smaller handful will be able to land one with Revelation Records, maybe the most prestigious hardcore punk label ever. Drain from Santa Cruz, CA, are one of the latter ones, with their debut full-length released a few weeks ago with the infamous Revelation-R-star on it. 

And, by the Gods of fast riffs, psyched-up screaming and good short songs, they deserve it. Everything about this record screams in your face “Listen to me! Listen to my worries! Listen to my anger!” They talk about the fake society and how it drowns out the will to go on, how corrupt the system is and how life in California pulls them down. Interesting is definitely the title track with its “California Dreaming”-quotes at the beginning which are then completely reversed showing how hard life in Cali is when you work a lot in order to barely get by and when you feel as if you don’t belong there in some way.

Music-wise we are talking about a band that knows about the importance of speed – many songs tick in below the 150 seconds-mark and only one is longer than three minutes. Thus the ten songs are over in 23 minutes – even shorter than some famous punk records (for example Bad Religion’s “Suffer”. The breakdowns are really nice also because they never drift off into Metalcore-spheres. The frontman is also very convincing in his despair and anger. But Drain also give you more than just speed and negativity. The short interlude “Hollister Daydreamer” is really a good moment to breathe deeply before attacking the last four songs. Or the outro to the record which is a kind of surf-beat-homage and gives you a deeply sarcastic aftertaste. Combine this with the cover of the album, which looks a bit like a negative to Green Day’s have-fun-record “Dookie” and you get a band that is really much more than your average hardcore band. 

Taking in all of this you should remember that as long as bands like Drain release records on labels like Revelation the world is not as bad as it may seem. 


Thorsten

grunge / stoner rock

Iceland’s scene is very likely one of the strongest worldwide as we are talking about a country with roughly 360,000 inhabitants and yet we all know so many bands from Iceland pushing the brim for modern music further and further. Keelrider is another one of those, although they most likely will not see as much attention as Sigur Ros, Björk or the whole Icelandic black metal scene because they are Stoner Grungers with a twist. In 2018 they published their debut album “North” and last year they published two singles from their upcoming album “Second Wind”. While “Too Far Gone” is in parts a very nice melange of Alice in Chains-vocals and Soundgarden-stoner riffs, “Sun” is much more interesting because the band some a little more variety when it comes to time signatures and giving the guitar lines more space to breathe. If you are into stoner rock and grunge, this band is something right for you! 

post metal

Post-Metal from Italy. Most foreigners automatically associate it with Postvorta but some, a little deeper in and a little longer might remember the name Calendula, the sextet from Parma, which released an EP (2011) and a full-length (2012) a while ago. After some changes concerning line-up and musical direction, they released a 25-minute-song in November which definitely doesn’t fit to the title “De Brevitate Vitae” - it’s not brevis (brief) at all. It is quite a monster with a lot of dynamic changes and oscillates between dynamic driving drums and some really clever, counteracting guitar-work following the long intro, which sometimes hints at a bit of Tool. The vocals are pretty good, they also use some samples to give it a more differentiated sonic outline. Something that can be criticized is the sound as the partially trashy Lo-Fi sound doesn’t really fit a record as ambitious as this one, although on the other side it fits to the proclaimed role models  – 90s post-rock bands such as Slint (noticeable in the very effective guitar motif after the first real break). If the guys follow this path, we might have two Italian associations with the term Post-Metal.

electronic 

Svart Records is one of the finest labels when it comes to hard, harsh music, most people know about that. Most people do not know that they also have an electronic sub-label – Svartronix which again is very open-minded. A few weeks ago they released the debut song by A Heart Beats “Dazes the Mind” which is pop music that fits perfectly in any 80s mix of songs by some tropical house producer. This songs purvey a kind of Caribbean calypso feeling but their sex-appeal derives to a large extent from the intriguing vocals of Paile who once was a member of Beastmilk. His delivery is very nice and especially the chorus is so funky that one automatically feels his feet moving, but the line also has some depth “It dazes the mind / and numbs the tongue”. The beats produced by Tuuki are layered with some space basslines in the sense of some more synth-driven Daft Punk and the beat itself is shuffling a bit, so that the sunny, opening sounds give the song a holiday feeling without the stupidity. A promising debut song, let’s hope A Heart Beats and Svartronix has some more servings.

doom / death metal

Russian death doom act Intaglio released a demo version of a new track at the end of last year and in some way, the beauty lies in the rhythm. Many voices will now scream that the rhythm is nothing particular new to the genre, as the slow, dragging rhythm of the song is really quite normal, but the way that the strings connect to it, support it in certain passages, yeah, even form it from time to time, that is really breathtaking – the Gothic attitude it brings to the song turns it into a remarkable one. The lyrics, speaking about the overwhelming character of a memory of death which overshadows everything else, are delivered in regular death metal style. Another standout feature is the use of the use of an upright bass that is tuned so well, that you can hear each tap and each ring.
In some way, three pretty singular metal genres are amalgamated into one pretty dense net of emotions that will leave no open ear without imprinting a memory of itself on the listener. If this is a first sign of a new album then one might keep Intaglio in mind.

punk

Everything about this 7” screams “Old school! Old school!”, the cover (seemingly a reverse from the classic Minor Threat discography cover that also was adopted by Rancid several years ago), the cover b-side, the black-white style, the sound, everything! But first things first: The revived band released a good album in 2018 and last December followed with this 7” out on Heartworm Press. The title track is a new shotgun blast somewhere between Zeke, MC5, The Clash, Turbonegro and Black Flag (although one must say, that only the vocals sometimes hint at Rollins) – definitely a good track. The b-side is a well-made cover of “Left for Dead” by The Lemonheads another one of these late 80s punk bands that turned more and more to indie-rock. The cover is good and shows a different side to American Nightmare. However, there is one thing that is lacking in this release and that is the teenage angst that made AN famous. The despair, the sadness, the melancholy – not there. On the other hand, that might drive the listener to despair and achieves the same effect.

avant garde / folk

Dog Tunnel Records

There are genres that seemingly are so heavily steeped in tradition and customs that it is hard to imagine to hear a new sound in them. Take Irish Folk for example; most of us at first might associate it with pub nights somewhere between the Dubliners and Christy Moore (at best) or Michael Flatley and Enya (at worst). But to combine the traditional folk instruments bodhran, flute, violin, and guitar with a wall of sound, lots of spoken word (not cheerfully and rhythmically, but rather intimidating and fierceful) is something rarely heard before. Tuatha is a fierce project that will leave some of us open-mouthed. Formed in early 2019 and already a rising star on the scene, the septet uses old Irish tales from the Middle Ages and Gaelic Dindsenchas (short poems describing certain places) to deepen their already impressive style. In parts, their unrelentless approach reminds one of the approach Archive and SubRosa took in totally different musical landscapes. This here is unique, bewitching and typical Irish yet also totally un-Irish. Folks, give Tuatha a listen!

sludge / doom

A quartet from Phoenix, Arizona with a very grainy, heavy sound, Mosara released their debut demo last November. It shall be a prelude to a record which is in the making and should see the light of day before the end of the year; of course the demo should also draw interest from labels and I think it might: The musical soundscape is strongly influenced by a lot of proto-metal like Sabbath, Blue Cheer, but also by classic doom bands like Electric Wizard or Cough – that means, you get what you expect, low-tuned, richly-distorted, grainy, a bit lofi-ish doom sounds with a tinge of sludge influences (most audible on the second track “Clay and Iron”). Sometimes the howls and growls could be a bit fiercer and less despaired because, sometimes, Tony Gallegos (ex-Twingiant) is a bit too clear. Nevertheless the sound is great, as if someone mated Fu Manchu with Sabbath and their offspring was left in the desert with a guitar as the only means of communication. The riffs are dragging, the bass is dominant, the drums are supportive – all good in the Arizona desert. 

death metal / black metal / doom / noise / grindcore

Noise bastard? Yeah. Death metal? Sometimes. Grindcore? For sure. Doomy Gloom? You bet. All of that and more is “Tellurian Insurgency” by Ploughshare. With their third release in as many years (after 2017’s “Literature of Piss” and 2018’s acclaimed “In Offal, Salvation”) the quartet from Australia’s capital Canberra once again proves that the bar is always too low for them. Excellent musicians with a highly complex understanding of how music works they show that extreme metal must also rely on atmosphere that sometimes exists between the chords and blastbeasts. A great deal of the attraction of this band is the vocals, which never sound cheesy but quite on point. This EP also features a remix of their standout song, the title track of “In Offal, Salvation”, which shows that it is even possible to give this dark nightmare of a song an even more desperate twist. One thing that becomes clear throughout the record is how important good drumming is for such a kind of music as it must set the tone for everyone. If the guys can keep up their productivity we should await a new heir to the extreme metal throne in 2020.

industrial

Describing this Oakland, CA, quartet is not that easy and not that difficult at the same time. Their sound relies heavily on synths, samples but also on guitar, bass and drums. They cross constantly between electronic noise (aka industrial) and post-punk’ish avantgarde sounds. Initiated in 2013 and having independently released already a bunch of records, Lament Cityscape set out to publish three EPs in 2020, each following some red thread and yet also standing out on its own. Something that they share with some of the pioneers of this kind of sonic assault (Godflesh, Killing Joke, Author & Punisher) are the harsh sounds that sometimes remind one of buoys warning the oncoming ships of the nearby rocks and sandbanks which here are symbolized by the rough drum attacks. In parts, this is a good record for those who like Godflesh’s Streetcleaner a bit less polished and a bit more straightforward. Partially, one is left behind by a lack of surprise, but fans of industrial noises and harsh synth-driven drums will really like this.

black metal

At first, the band’s name might sound like a nice pun on 80s karate flic “Bloodsport” (with the amazing multiple Academy Award winning actor Jean-Claude van Shakespeare) but when listening to this new face on renown Swedish Meta label Blood Harvest it becomes clear that the idea of a fungi which sits parasitically on its host and feeds of it before finally killing it works perfectly within the black metal community. It also works nicely because the record to it is really good and leaves one’s ears with an immediate wish to press replay because of its clever changes in mood, dynamics and tempi. The record (especially the second track “Cede to the Saprophyte”) is like a nice blend of groove metal and black metal with the emphasis, of course, on the latter. Thematically, the record presents the idea of the fungal mass on this planet slowly but certainly taking over and destroying all other organisms, a new take on the apocalyptic visions presented by bands like Botanist or Arx Atrata. For a band that only came together in 2018, this is really somewhat impressive. 


​Thorsten

hardcore / sludge

How you feel about an album or artist usually involves how you feel about the genre that they play in. Doom metal, jazz, pop etc. you know what you like so you tend to stick within the confines of a certain genre that you like. Some bands blend the edges between genres, other like Earth Moves, the  London based group we are talking about today, tear down the walls of genre with will full abandon and create something which, whilst schizophrenic in it's approach to genre, is an exhilarating experience which makes you think about music in new ways.

Superficially I guess you could call this album a post-hardcore one, even a punk one, but that is doing it a massive disservice and doesn't really tell you the whole story. Indeed whilst post-hardcore is a frame to hang some of these songs on, most of them don't even cover this base at all and instead veer off into other territories entirely.

 Opener 'Falling Away From the Ground' is a great example of what they are attempting. It starts with a strummed guitar part until lead singer Jordan Hills impassioned wails come in imploring you to take his hand for the journey ahead. The guitar picks up pace and before you know it, the song is a crescendo of noise. Second song 'Into the Either' sounds similar but explodes with punk energy half way through and even dips it's toes into black metal territory for a ferocious onslaught toward the end of the song. The rest of the album twists and turns between moments of savage noise making and gentle almost ambient sections which should sound jarring (and in a lesser bands hand certainly would do) but each passage has been thought about and placed there for a reason, not jammed together haphazardly for the sake of it. 

If you are interested in heavy music at all then please do yourself a favor and listen to this album, at the very least, it will introduce you to other genres you may not ordinarily listen to, sometimes within the same song!  


Simon

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

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

punk / hard rock

Well, they couldn't have made this any clearer, could they? With a band name like this and a highly promising title, these French guys appear to be prepared for a heavy rocking battle that will eventually end up in a dental hospital. Are they? We'll see.

Rock 'n' Brawl appeared on the French rock scene in 2013. That scene appears to be overloaded with hard rocking bands already but nobody seems to mind, especially not these guys. With a high energy mix of hardcore punk and hard rock they blast the competition off stage.

Looking at their facebook profile, I see that the band is influenced by Danko Jones, The Bronx and AC/DC. However, when I listen to some of the tracks here, I can't help but think that hardcore punk bands like Agnostic Front and Hatebreed also had their influence on Rock 'n' Brawl. 'Can't Stop The Fight' and 'Unbreakable' are fierce punk tracks that will undoubtedly cause crowd surfers and moshpits, with the inevitable broken teeth as a result.

However, sometimes the tempo goes down a bit, resulting in sweet hard rock tracks like 'Coughing To Death' and 'Loud Punch'. With 'Lack & Wounds' there is even a ballad on the album, be it a raunchy, gritty one. In fact, that's my favorite track here. It might sound weird but I really love this tune. Obviously it adds variation, but it also serves as a calm spot in a raging ocean of hardcore punk rock. So who to recommend it to? Hard core punk rockers, of course. They should really check out this thing.


Serge

doom / rock

sludge / doom 

shoegaze / dreampop

new wave

pop / rock

black metal

bandcamp

post rock

punk / crust

nu metal

drone / jazz

Serge

drone / ambient

shoegaze / ambient rock

ambient / experimental

bandcamp

hard rock / heavy metal

industrial metal / alternative metal

thrash metal

death metal

dark ambient

black metal

dark ambient

stoner rock / grunge

post punk / dark wave

metal

stoner rock / psychedelic rock

alternative rock / post punk

punk / alternative rock

progressive metal

black metal

punk / grindcore / crust

First, a little background on the band name. A "Pink Mass" is a Satanic ritual performed after death that turns the deceased's heterosexual spirit into a homosexual one. It's an actual thing and has been performed, for example, on the grave of Westboro Baptist church (of the anti-gay picketings at funerals and tragedies in the US) founder Fred Phelps' mother. Who, according to the ritual is now lesbian in the afterlife. Now, as a devout atheist, I have no beliefs in the supernatural or spiritual or religious but as a firm believer in blasphemy I think this is hysterically funny. Especially because I am 666% pro-LGBTQ rights. 

It's pretty safe to assume then that in a genre filled with über-manly theatrics, interests and poses, Pink Mass is one of the, if not THE most forward thinking bands with their brand of pro-gay crust grind. Needless to say, I love this to bits. They released an album last year called 'Slvt Kvlt' which I am definitely going to check  out, but first this one: the wonderfully named 'Necrosexual'. With an album title like that it's pretty obvious that this is pure sexual debauchery transformed into sound. Blasphemy, sodomy, necrophilia, BDSM, you name it, it's all fair game (or should I say 'bear' game *badum tss*) for Pink Mass. 

What all this aural debauchery amounts to is dirty, disgusting crusty grindcore. Filthy, raw, full of dirty riffs, d-beats, guttural growls, high pitched screams, blast beats, some old-school deathmetal, some hardcore punk, some blackmetal. It's a wonderful mix for everybody who likes their metal disgusting, decidedly unsophisticated and naaaaaasty. That's not to say there isn't some really great musicianship behind it, because there is, especially in the sparse guitarsolos and the basslines. And for something this dirty, the production sounds unexpectedly clear. Nasty it may be, but all the individual parts of nastiness can be heard clearly. It's not just a muddled mess. Bonuspoints all around!

A wonderful release for everyone who craves for something nasty. Just not with all the clichéd nasty grindcore tropes. Even more bonuspoints for the final track 'FOAD NSBM' because, you know, fuck national socialism! Do yourself a favor and check them out. And if you're up to it, look them up on YouTube as well.. 


Bjorn 

psychedelic rock / experimental / electronic

In 1890 Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky premiered his opera 'The Queen Of Spades', with Nikolay and Medeya Figner, who sang the roles of Herman and Liza. In French speaking countries, the opera is known as 'Pique Dame'. For the record,  'Pique Dame' is also an operetta in two acts by Franz von Suppé, premiered in 1864.
In October, another  'Pique Dame' will be revealed upon the world. This time, it had very little to do with opera, operetta or classical music as a whole. This time, it's an album by two women from Swiss, one on e-bass and one on drums. But now it gets complicated.

THe album opens with a song called 'Slutwalk' which is mainly based on bass and percussion. Is it rock music? Is is punk? I don't know. All I know is that I'm suddenly thinking about acts like Chicks On Speed and The Breeders. 'Slutwalk' is actually a pretty energetic piece of basement punk rock and I like it. But, like I said, it gets complicated from now on. 'Be Loud' comes up with sludge and doom metal riffs, just not as heavy and pulverising. Instead, this turns out to become something rather psychedelic.

'72 Vierges' suddenly drags us into the world of electronics, where bands like Suicide and Crash Course To Science come to mind. Yeah, weird, isn't it? But again, I like. There is something highly infectious about this act, infectious and unique. Then, there is 'Forgotten Responsibility' which flirts with soundscapes and dark ambient. What? Yeah, I know. We're only four songs into this album and I'm already checking out if it is not a compilation. Turns out it's not, it's just incredibly versatile.

Right, what else do we have? 'Big Bang' is a piece of space rock inspired jam rock. Nice. 'La Vie En Rose' suddenly turns into a highly danceable piece of music. Neat! 'Dienstag' is another jam piece and title track 'Pique Dame' goes from eerie avant garde towards post punk. 'The Rise Of The Witches' is almost horror doom and by the end we get an industrial/future pop remix of 'Slutwalk'.  Varied enough for you? Oh well, this is simply a surprising and immersive album which indeed comes highly recommended.


​Serge

dark ambient

black metal

post hardcore

drone / dark ambient

doom / post rock

death metal / punk 

doom / sludge 

hardcore / metal

experimental / ambient / noise

bandcamp

funeral doom

black metal

speed metal / black metal

bandcamp

death metal / grindcore

techno / rave / house

techno

Serge