Caged, released in 2012, is the first full length album by Emptiness of Life, an instrumental  Atmospheric Black Metal project led by a Russian musician, that identifies himself only as Levsha, that labels his music as Melancholic Post-Black Metal.

While Emptiness of Life can be – at least theoretically – considered one of those projects that associates Black Metal with sadness, apparently having started as a Depressive Suicidal Black Metal project (DSBM, for the ones most familiar with), Emptiness of Life’s music is far away from being melancholic. Setting labels and categorizations apart – which is a very subjective evaluation, relying solely on personal interpretation – his music, at least in this album, is very uplifting, being at a certain point extremely rewarding and motivational, although should not be considered less blackened because of that. With a very strong, resilient and powerful guitar work, amazingly impressive and inspirational to say the least, the ability of Levsha to create transcendental, cohesive and solid atmospheres is groundbreaking. I certainly haven’t listened to any guitar works as brilliant as this in the genre before, with a high degree of creative structural audacity, that focuses on strong and consistent guitar riffs to create different plans of harmonies. With an extremely pungent, high and fiercely grounded base that becomes the synthesis for a rhythmic paradox into the music, structuring all nerves of the songs into one firm link, the nine songs of Caged can be considered astonishing and carefully constructed works of art, upon which Emptiness of Life creates and disseminates his sonorous configuration of a vast existence. Caged, as a whole, can certainly be considered a fantastic masterpiece of Atmospheric Metal. You have to listen for yourself, to believe! It is a very out of the ordinary piece of work!

Caged, after all, can be considered one of those albums who certainly follows its own path, never mind the rules and the standards of the genre upon which we think he belongs. Setting free the patterns of his creativity, Levsha does some very uncommon things on his art, creating unusual and rare configurations of atmospheres that the metal genre certainly never saw before, his inclination towards audacity, creativity and originality, in its purest form, is no minor element in the underground today. Never worried to please whatever ramifications to which his music supposedly should belong to, what we have here, with Emptiness of Life’s Caged, is a very lucid, atmospheric and spiritually free style of sound, compromised only with the integrity of its purely transcendental originality, standardizing and establishing its own patterns of musical sensibility. With a terrific, promising, fresh and innovative approach regarding musical direction, creation and exposition, Emptiness of Life sounds spiritually minded and gifted with an astounding degree of impulsive and fearless originality, making music that, besides being beautiful, unique and apprehensively true to the point, it is absolutely free of all boundaries and limitations. With a boundless creativity that conquers all the subjectivity of the resonating transcendence of those wonderful elements that points out what great music is made of, you will be astounded with this record, if you listen to it. With impressive and very well designed lines of guitar work that makes you feel the greatest storms, aphorisms and beauty of his soul, Emptiness of Life’s music is built over an astounding superior degree of artistic sensibility, that pulls over the repentant dashboards of common ground ingenuity, that overflows so hysterically in between ordinary acts.

Be sure when I say this is one of the most amazing and astounding releases in the underground nowadays, when it comes to guitar-building ambient and atmospheric metal. Caged, by Emptiness of Life, is certainly a powerful, energetic and incredible album, that will make up your mind as soon as you listen to it! It is a supremely beautiful work of art! Check it out, as soon as you can!                 



​Wagner

Crossover music, or the fine art of blending seemingly irreconcilable genres, has always been one of my weaknesses. I usually don't care what styles they blend. I immediately became of a fan of Anthrax & Public Enemy, the whole 'Judgement Night' soundtrack, the opera metal of Therion. Hell, I even love The Soft Pink Truth's electronic adaptations of old black metal songs. But this is something I could never have imagined.

Zeal and Ardor produce some of the strangest crossover things I've heard in awhile. They blend black metal with negro spirituals. Negro spirituals are songs composed by African slaves in the United States. Back then, slaves weren't allowed to have instruments so they accompagnied their chants with hand claps and drumming on everything they could get their hands on. Now, this mysterious Zeal and Ardor project threw some brutal black metal into the mix and the results are nothing short of fascinating.

Besides the black metal influences, reminding me of anything between Impaled Nazarene and Children Of Bodom, there are those powerful chants, nudging towards old blues, soul and gospel. Furthermore, there's a decent slab of electronics, making this a fascinating musical journey.
​
Check it out!!!

For the ones who are unfamiliar with him, Gimu is a dark ambient/ drone/ experimental sound artist from Brazil, with a musical career spanning more than two decades, having an experience in a wide range of musical styles and genres, specially rock’n’roll and pop music. Nevertheless, who would say, this astoundingly creative musician, that started his career in more mainstream genres, now, not only dedicates himself to one of the most dark, abyssal and underground genres of music, but, besides that, became one of its main representatives in his home country.   

A versatile and prolific artist, with an exhilarating discography that has some of the most obscure, hallucinating and daring dark ambient albums ever created, Gimu explores in great detail – technically and emotionally – the conspicuous and nefarious elements of the genre, creating somber, delusional and macabre atmospheres, that transports its listeners to worlds of infamous doom and demise, although there is an outstanding element of calmness in the fatalistic grievances that he masterly creates with the fragmented textures of his sound. With a subtle inclination for incorporating in his music abysses of devotional transcendence and deleterious stigma into a cosmic related marvelous sphere of sinister stagnation, driven by an overflow of lurid rhythms that transcends the boundaries of perceptions, through a margin of black and white layers of sound forgotten by worlds of monotonous anxiety, Gimu manages to conceal and expose at the same time the nefarious destitutions overwhelmed by the obliterate sense of emptiness created by his music, where you can see, but never truly discover, and you can feel, but never actually realize, as the antagonistic perceptions that subtlety exhilarates the basis and the principles of his sound seems to be perpetually lost in a solitary and displaced confinement of time.

Alien Ancestry is an eight track album, released by netlabel Subterranean Tide, in November 2013, that certainly can be considered one of the best albums in Gimu’s career. Dark, conspicuous, malevolent, lost, expansive, sincere and very cosmic, even the song titles are perfect, managing to capture in detail the soul and the atmosphere of the music, creating an underground hole of time and space from which you will never be able to find an exit, no matter how many times you listen to it. And this is the kind of album that, every time you listen to, will always reveal something new, something hidden, something astoundingly crude and imperiously dark, a devastating emotional surprise that you haven’t perceived in the last time you heard it. No words can describe this album: even perfection is reduced to a very insignificant word, as atmosphere, sound, emotion and space masterly blends together, to create an entire universe of its own, musically generating a form of art that transpires an ascendancy of darkness, which makes this particular album not only the most perfect soundtrack for this kind of eventful description, but its creator as well.    

As the entire album is magnificent, I couldn’t point it out a single song as a favorite. Each and every track, while having its own peculiar distinctions, manages to complete one another so overwhelmingly, that, overall, you have in the end a very dark cosmic opera, that fuels your desire to listen to more music like this. And what can be better to listen to, when you are alone in your bedroom, in the middle of the night, a little lost, a little sad, a little reflexive? Alien Ancestry – although obviously can be heard anytime – it’s the perfect choice for times like these, making significant and powerful those moments in life when music is the only friend you have. Alien Ancestry is the best choice you will ever have as musical accompaniment for these moments in life!  

For me, the music of Gimu can be perfectly described as an eternal journey of a nonexistent consciousness, falling through a delusional precipice of infinite depth, while you reiterate in the everlasting fall of your soul an exposition of your own demise, by desecrating the lost disappointments and the infinite repentance that literally grows on both sides of the human nature every day. And no matter how difficult this personal journey can be, it’s easier, and a little indefinite at the same time, with the astounding vibrating textures and escalating low rhythms that are signatures of Gimu’s music. After listening with your eyes closed this experience through the dark, when you open up your eyes, you can say: I am different now than I was before! And even then, it is just music. Which makes a sound experience like this one even more marvelous. Listen, enjoy! Alien Ancestry is a unique state-of-the-art work in the history of dark ambient music. You will never be able to listen in your life to something so extraordinary, ever!                 


​Wagner

As some of you will already have noticed, a part of our crew have recently created and released The Metal Deck. The Metal Deck is a set of cards, making it possible to play a massive number of card games, including quartets*. We selected thirteen genres with four bands each and added seven characteristics to play the quartets-games*. The possibilities are pretty endless. We also added the regular card symbols and dedicated some to certain bands. In fact, the whole deck is a tribute to the metal scene. That's why the black metal quartet got the number six. That's why Girlschool became the queen of spades. That's why we tried to overlook the entire scene, from the late sixties up until today. 

​www.analochgames.com

1. Motorhead - Ace Of Spades

This one pretty much speaks for itself I think. When I first had the idea for The Metal Deck, shortly after Lemmy's passing, the ace of spades became the very first card which was dedicated to a certain band. I know loyalty to the scene would be an important aspect. Giving this card to any other band, would completely destroy the credibility of the whole deck and make it quite worthless. From there we started building and dedicating certain cards to certain bands, or genres. 

2. Anthrax - Indians
​
Some people have asked me 'why is Anthrax in this deck, aren't there bands that deserve it better. How about Machine Head or Pantera'? Well, in a way, they might be right. Anthrax isn't the biggest thrash metal band on earth. However, they're here for two reasons. One, they belong to 'The Big Four' and I wanted to be historically correct. Second, if it weren't for Anthrax, I might have never discovered many other bands. They were one of the bands that truly got me into metal. I think their place on The Metal Deck is legit.

3. Doro - All We Are

There had to be queens of metal, and of course they would have to be dedicated to the hard working and talented women in the scene. When I discovered Doro, it must have been in my mid-teens, I immediately had a crush on her. In fact, she made me realize that it would indeed be possible to date a girl with decent musical taste. So dedicating the queen of hearts to Doro was quickly decided. She deserves it just as much as Motorhead deserved the ace of spades.

4. Korn - Got The Life

Nu-metal hasn't always been the most popular genre in the metal scene, certainly if you count bands like Linkin Park & Limp Bizkit. Yet, over time, the four bands we entered in the nu-metal quartet proved to be worthy of the term 'metal' and eventually got accepted by the metal community. Personally, I saw a whole new generation of metal fans for whom Korn, System Of A Down, Slipknot and Coal Chamber were so-called 'gateway' bands. These kids now also listen to the classics in the genre and seem to respect where the whole thing comes from.

5. Paradise Lost - Gothic

The gothic-metal quartet was the toughest one to do because the visions on that particular subgenre constantly seem to alter and change. But again, I wanted to be historically correct. So when I searched for bands with the tag 'gothic metal' I realized that I had to include Paradise Lost in there. From there, we tried to find a balance between the different sounds of gothic metal and an overview of how widespread the genre really is. 

* you can find the rules for the quartets-games on www.analochgames.com

The Ocean is a progressive metal German collective, active since 2000, well-known for its constantly revolving cast of musicians, and unusual concept albums. With a somewhat daring, creative and audacious proposal of merging  avant-garde elements with inconspicuous metal traits and progressive rock outlines, all intertwined in a horizon of a very aggressive, but well restrained alternatively dark component, and a vigorous inclination for almost scientific lyrics, dark-toned in a perfectly described oceanographic layout, The Ocean has yet to give us another album capable of matching Pelagial, their latest.   

The 2013 Pelagial album, their sixth studio effort, is an outstanding, completely out of the ordinary work, with very heavy and aggressive beats, yet amazing melodies, proving once more that they can do an excellent mixture of the traditional with refreshing new elements. A concept album, the tracks are all named for the different layers of the ocean depths, like if you’re descending deeper and deeper into the ocean’s dark abysmal plains, further and further on each track, with the music accompanying this lower descent, becoming progressively darker and claustrophobically tense. According to some band members, this descent into the darkness of the ocean serves also as a metaphor for the human psychological condition as well, since it explores the most afflictive side of the human mind. 

The ones familiar with the work of the band will not be disappointed. Pelagial is The Ocean at their best form, and this is no surprise, since Germany long has a tradition for giving us some of the best metal bands in the world. Their unbound, unrestrained and unlimited creative layout, while preserving in the surface of their music the most common traits of metal music, underlines in the core of their work the most beautiful, calm and proficient harmonies, and the whole concept fits perfectly with the tone of the music in each track, giving, in the end, the impression that you heard only one evolving music, one progressive orchestral masterpiece, that evolves gradually from a very dark starting point. All set, arranged and perfectly executed in the deeper layers of The Ocean zone.   

While Pelagial was initially planned as a purely instrumental album, vocals were added later. Nevertheless, both versions are available. So, pick up yours, and enjoy the journey into the deepest darkness of The Ocean. Or you can dare listening to both versions, and decide for yourself which one fits better your taste. For my turn, this amazing work of art has definitely conquered, with all rights and merits, its place in progressive metal history.      


​Wagner

Trying to redeem one of the most neglected albums in history 

A-ha, like most people know, is the top best-selling Norwegian musical act ever, having sold in excess of 80 million albums worldwide. Although being mostly well known for catchy singles like Touchy, melody-driven songs like The Blood that Moves the Body, happy spicy sugar flicks like Take on me or romantic-nostalgia hits like Stay on these roads, Memorial Beach, their fifth album, released in 1993, despite little commercial success, deserves its place in history.  

Memorial Beach is unique in a wide variety of ways, but – most of all – have the distinction of revealing the darkest side of an otherwise happy, flavored and colorful band. With extremely dramatic songs, filled with gloom, melancholy and sadness, wrapped up in an intense darkness, surrounded by depressing atmospheres, Memorial Beach does reveal a side of A-ha that you will never see in anyone of the band’s other albums. 

Considered a commercial failure – having sold at the time of its release only 40.000 units in the United States –, maybe because their usual fan-base was incapable of understanding the low mood of the album, and, unlike their other albums, didn’t produced any single, this is a great album not only for its amazing, downward and abysmal descending songs, but for being completely distinct from anything the band has released, before and after it. The cold reception the album had upon its release is frequently cited as one of the reasons A-ha disbanded, soon afterwards. 

I had the opportunity of seeing A-ha live, back in 2002, when they were touring to promote their most recent album, Lifelines. At the concert, however, they haven’t played any songs from Memorial Beach. Considered by music critics and fans alike – and apparently, by the band itself – the black sheep of A-ha discography, nevertheless this is a great album, and once you had the chance to listen to it, probably you will never stop listening. The greatest songs, undoubtedly, Move to Memphis, Cold as Stone, Locust, Lie Down in Darkness and Lamb to the Slaughter, are certainly, each one of them, a unique masterpiece in its own right. Memorial Beach is A-ha at their best – and darkest – shape, being for the first time in their careers, black, pessimistic to the bones, and blatantly non-commercial. 

This is a major album for all the great reasons. When a band, deliberately or not, decides to do something out of their comfort zone, the result will be either an astonishing masterpiece, or an irreversible failure. Seen as a failure from a commercial point of view, from the artistic one, this album is starting to be seen as a turning point in the band’s career, that accidentally produced one of the best – and most ingloriously dark – masterpieces of the pop/ soft rock genre in music history, that remains somewhat neglected and under-appreciated to this day. A masterpiece not only close to perfection, but a very intriguing work of art, that they would hardly be able to duplicate, even if they try.  


Wagner