post metal / black metal

From the seering hot desert to the icy cold landscapes of Siberia, for Merchants Of Air writers that could be just a small step, simply depending on the album we're trying to review. Perhaps we're a bit oversensitive to the atmosphere in some of these albums but the difference between this one and the album I reviewed before is huge. That one was sunlit, this one is dark and loaded with despair, angst and insanity.

L’Homme Absurde, a post-black metal band from Russia, was founded in 2015 as one-man band of A., who is known for being the drummer in most known Russian doom metal bands (Mare Infinitum, Who Dies In Siberian Slush, Comatose Vigil) and as the mastermind behind doom/downtempo band A Young Man’s Funeral. In 2016, other members (including Mare Infinitum guitarist Georgiy Bykov) joined in to record a first, self-titled demo and this full-length.

But this ain't no doom metal, far from it. In fact, where most post black metal bands tend to use slower passages, reminiscent of doom, L'Homme Absurde mostly maintains a fierce tempo. Some of the blast beats on this album are simply out-of-this-world and almost inhuman. To top that off, the rest of the music consists of layers of blackened riffage and haunting screams. I know, that doesn't sound very entertaining to most people, but it certainly is immersive.

This is the kind of music you want to play extremely loud while screaming out your inner demons, your fears, your frustrations while the constant drilling of the blast beats mangles you into a bloody pulp. I have no favorite song on this album as pretty much all of it reminds me of the most intense and insane pieces of black metal I've ever heard. I'm talking about acts like Limbonic Art meeting the newer scene with Altar Of Plagues and Wolves In The Throne Room.

Yet, apart from all the sheer brutality, there are some passages that prove just how talented and techically skilled this band really is. The post rock passage at the end of 'Disillusion' and the jazzy intro to 'Wanderer' are nice pieces of music, bringing a decent dose of variation to the whole thing. Besides, the latter has a Primordial-feeling to it, which is always a good thing. Black metal fans can't go wrong with this one, that's a fact.


​Serge

hard rock / southern rock / blues

Time to meet up in a smudgy saloon, put your ass on a wobbly barstool, order a few whiskeys and mentally prepare for the inevitable bar fight that will soon follow. Perhaps take a moment to grab the waitress' butt and be slapped in the face because fuck it, that's why. It's late at night. It's bloody hot in the fucking saloon and those bloody Fins on stage somehow manage to turn up the bloody heat a bit more with their filthy blues and southern fucking rock. Fuck.

Their band name is Muddy Moonshine and they are here to present their debut full-length 'Muddy & Wild'. About two years ago, they started out as an acoustic blues band, playing covers and some self written songs. However, as time passed by, the band went through some line-up changes and apparently loads of booze. The style changed too, seemingly influenced by acts like Lynyrd Skynyrd, Creedence Clearwater Revival and The Black Crowes.

Now a full-blown southern rock band, Muddy Moonshine is ready to play their seering hot songs allover the world. They will make people dance with uplifting tunes like 'Back In Jail' and 'Funkytown'. They will make heads nod with filthy blues tunes like 'Moonshineman' or 'Stomp'. They will rock your sock off with 'Bottle Of Love' and 'Russian Pussycat Blues', all with a flair as if the band members were born in the hot Arizona desert.

So if you like southern rock and blues music, this one should definitely become a part of your collection. There is little else to say about that. 'Muddy & Wild' contains plenty of variation, plenty of decent songwriting and plenty of fun, more than enough to keep you shaking your ass for an hour or two. So go ahead, check it out and heat up these cold December days with some hot rock music...


​Serge

industrial / gothic metal

After a hesitant start back in the days, metal and electronics have been flirting with each other for decades. Dance producers often add distorted guitars to their compositions and a whole range of industrial metal acts enhance their sound with strange electronics. Today, most people accept and embrace this combination, although there will always be headstrong metalheads who think synths and beat-machines have no place in the scene.

The first incarnation of Austrian outcasts Sunterra dates back to 1998 when they released a split with Virgin Seed. From then to 2006, Sunterra had been working on a decent reputation, several releases and a heap of gigs, the last one being a sold-out concert in Vienna. Now, ten years later, the band returns, seemingly with a newly invented genre, one which they like to call 'metal-step'. It's a bold move, that's true.

I'm not sure if those stubborn metalheads will appreciate the dubstep references but to me it's just the next step in the continously evolving and adapting marriage of metal and electronics. Even more so, if anything, this album reminds me of a blend between acts like Samael or Tanzwut and Lacuna Coil, After Forever and so on. So yeah, gothic metal with very modern beats and sequencers 'Reign Supreme' could be a Samael track, which is awesome.

The opening of 'This Is W.A.R.' might be another passage that true metalheads will frown upon. Opening more like a DJ Tiesto or Aviivi tune than a metal song, this might be one of the most surprising tracks on this ep. However, when the guitars kick in, heads will bang, I can almost guarantee that. For me, this is the strangest track on this album. Not my favorite because that is the harsh dubstep inspired 'Ministry Of Thoughts'.

In all, 'Reborn' is a unique album, loaded with surprises. Besides, there plenty of variation, more than enough to keep you entertained. there might even be chance that you start dancing to some of these tunes, no matter how much of a metalhead you think you are. I like that, I like it when an album challenges these genre-boundaries and blatantly crosses them. So yes, you have to check this out, even if techno annoys you...


Serge

black metal

bandcamp

Existenz is an album released by Austrian black metal artist Nahtrunar, on December 13. With eight tracks – being them Wohin jedes Wasser fließt, Woher ich stamme, Grimnir, Nachtraunen, Isa Meditation, An Archia, Ewig in der Wiederkehr and Ritualistik – what we have here is one of the most amazing and fiercely well-developed raw black metal ever to be released.

With primitive, but exceedingly stylized guitar lines, and an overall atmosphere that is less brutal than brilliantly sculpted – although there is a distinctive aggressiveness, as well as a very hostile and remarkable rudeness on its obscurely synthetized harmonies – Existenz is a magnificent exemplar of raw black metal. Obviously influenced by the classic references of the genre, nonetheless, Nahtrunar has developed a magnificent sound of his own, with an impressive coherence and a masterly designed cohesion, that makes this album a state of the art work on the history of deeply crude black metal. With a dark and sinister sound, Nahtrunar still manages to shape all tracks in Existenz with poetic beauty, as well as compelling and softly arranged harmonies.

With beautiful guitar solos as well, developed at the height of the melodic abysses of the music, spiritually converging with a magnificent stream of a conglomeration of soul lamentations, this album definitely challenges the shape and the content of raw black metal as a genre, as well as a form of art. With an amazingly conceived conscience of victory, a sense of personality, and a unique approach to the genre, the strength of this album is something never seen or heard before in the history of black metal. 

A unique work, filled with consistence, and a unique sense of artistry, Existenz is destined to be regarded as a milestone. A perfect work, astoundingly peculiar, it is filled with a liberating obscure atmosphere, that transcends the commonalities of black metal, without ever renouncing to the consistency of its true spirit. Full of meaning and beauty, exceedingly poetic but rude at the same time, this is pure black metal, done as it should ever be: strong, dark, sensible, sinister, true and authentic. A vigorous work of art, to be heard, understood and assimilated. And to serve as a reference for all the bands, projects and acts on the genre, always!   

   
Wagner

funeral doom /  black metal

Lost in Claustrophobic Thought is an album released by Canadian symphonic and melodic black metal artist Ancient Tundra, from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.
With four tracks – As the Earth Becomes My Shroud, Devoid of All Feeling, Lost in Claustrophobic Thought and The Feeble Sickness and Depressive Rot – what we have here is an impressively calm, cold and deeply resilient exemplar of melodic black metal.

With the predominance of slow harmonies, exceedingly sculpted and detailed in a coherent panel of afflictive desolation and solitude, Ancient tundra go to very specific lengths to endure, foretell and express the ambient coldness of its native place, showcasing an anxious, agonizing and depressive fate on the music, that only a great artist could engrave on the sound. 

The freezing paleness and the expressive lacerations impressed onto the sound transport you to a distant place, where you feel amazed and dilacerated at the same time, as your senses are driven to a palace where an imperial solitude slowly drags your soul to a protuberant void, and nothing can really change your perceptions about the profoundness of the dreams, that slowly dominates your mind. A work that little by little ignites a conflagration of demands deep inside your sensibilities, Lost in Claustrophobic Thought is a very lucid and unreal work. Very calmly, deeply dissolves your feelings, to make you see the world around you differently.

A more spirited, kind and gentle form of black metal – although with a very intense and disturbing appeal – devoid of any higher insinuations, this work will open your sensibilities to a different comprehension of the genre. Here standardized in a more monochromatic revelation of dissolving slowness, your soul is unbelievably stolen from the path of normality where it usually lies, to face the universe in a colder and direct form.

A very ambitious, but organically well produced melodic black metal album, Lost in Claustrophobic Thought deeply rearranges and reorganizes the basic principles of the genre onto something different, more elusive, more sensible, more fantastic, more transparent, credible and agonizing. Suffocating your soul, but liberating it at the same time, while delivers the methodical rules of a deeply transient sound, Ancient Tundra creates and exonerates a very peculiar and personal overview of the genre, that can never be properly understood or assimilated. Nevertheless, it is an intriguing and profoundly interesting work, that sees, comprehends and delivers black metal in an impressively singular atmosphere of thought, concept and philosophy of sound.  


​Wagner

crust / grindcore / hardcore

For this review we are going to travel back to the roots of our modern civilization, Italy. Not to admire the ruins of Ancient Rome nor to look at beautiful Italian women, but to figure out how the once great empire came to its downfall. Archeologists gave us several reasons: attacks from outside of the empire, the role of Christianity… Never have they told us about what really happened. The empire, the culture, the cities, they were all brought to ashes from within. Loud noisy guitars and an eardrum breaking voice caused the collapse of an entire civilization.

I am talking about Thrownness, an Italian band, and their music can be placed in the genres grind-, hardcore and crust punk. The album ‘The Passage and the Presence’ will be released on 24 December. Yes, that’s right, Christmas Eve. And what does that tell you? Of course, the birth of little baby Jesus. Coincidence? I don’t think so. Quite a few interesting references to religion and philosophy are made on the album. Firstly, the name of the band is ‘Thrownness’, a term introduced by the German philosopher Heidegger. Secondly, the last song is called ‘Fragment of a Crucifixion, 1950’ referring to a painting of the painter Francis Bacon. I can go much deeper into all this stuff, but than I am afraid that I will forget to talk to you about what really matters, their music.

Personally, I think it is not easy to write reviews about hardcore (or grindcore) albums. This is not an exception. All songs are very similar in sound and rather short in length. If you don’t really pay attention to each track individually you might think that the album is just a 20-minute song. The first seconds gave me a trip down memory lane. The high tone lasting for a couple of moments made me almost scream ‘All hail the dead’ by Walls of Jericho. Instead of the big drop that you would expect you will be confronted with rushing guitars with by loads of distortion and drums accompanied by a strong and recognizable voice. What comes next are enjoyable energetic tracks but overall with little variation. My personal favorites in this album are ‘Unclean Lips’ because of the nice switch in pass at the end which brings some variation and ‘Thalassic Regression’. This last one has a particular moment at the end in which you, or I, can recognize the guitar riff from ‘In a Gadda Da Vida’ (In the Garden of Eden) by Iron Butterfly. Finally, with ‘Fragment of a Crucifixion, 1950’ the album ends with a bang.

​If you like breaking stuff, letting yourself go or just to scream your lungs out, this album is the perfect soundtrack.

​Michiel

drone / doom

After several releases Morgan Bellini decided it was time to put Italian shoegaze and drone doom cult act Vanessa Van Basten to sleep and embark on a new sonic adventure, That new adventure received the name Angela Martyr and somewhat further develops the much appreciated blend of styles, created by Vanessa Van Basten. In the past, the act seemed to be influenced by acts like Godflesh, Jesu and Swans and those references return on this outstanding debut.
On 'The November Harvest', this act once again blends shoegaze, doom metal and drones into an immersive sonic whirlpool. The whole thing sounds like a mix of Slowdive and Godflesh. Slow, droning doom songs sluggishly roll out of my speakers, accompagnied with soft, clean vocals. Some of the songs, including 'Carsleeper' and 'Deathwish' bring Nadja to mind, Undoubtedly, this music will make a lot of head nod in approval, currently including mine.
That being said, I think it's about time that bands like this one appear on psychedelic doom festivals like Desertfest and, why not, post rock festivals like Dunk! Festival. Ok, perhaps that might be a bit selfish of me because I really, really, really want to experience this live, but I also think they will both fit in perfectly and provide the necessary variation on these events. You should have guessed by now that I've already become a massive fan of Angela Martyr.
My favorite songs on this album inlucde opener 'Deviant' and follower 'Georgina'. However, what I like most, is just get lost in these massive drones and riffs, all the way to the awesome and huge closer 'Angela Martyr'. I suggest you do the exact same thing. If you're a fan of Nadja, Jesu, the late Vanessa Van Basten or anything in this genre, 'The November Harvest' should definitely have a spot in your collection.


​Serge

doom / death metal

From so-called art-rock to atmospheric death metal, it's not an evolution a lot of bands make. Usually, it's pretty much the other way around. But for the Italians of Tenebrae, that is exactly what happened. Of course, a few line-up changes often trigger a band to reinvent themselves and explore other muscial paths. For these guys, that path runs through darkness and comes with loads and loads of atmosphere.

​So in a way, 'My Next Dawn' is a new beginning for Tenebrae, but one with past experiences and a wide musical background. In a way, this album feels like the band still wants to hold on to the "art" of making music, which obviously is a good thing. The music on this album is well varied, contains plenty of synths and both clean vocals and death growls. The band wants to tell a story and put a lot of effort in doing so.

That results in strong yet emotional metal songs with fingerlicking doom riffs and brutal death metal passages. The clean vocals also give the whole thing a power metal edge, which is nice. Bands that come to mind, include Amorphis, Anathema, Septicflesh, Swallow The Sun and November's Doom, which I think is a pretty damn good set of names to be compared with. Then there are the sometimes "gothic" keyboards, giving this album such a great nineties sound.

Picking out a favorite song isn't really easy, mostly because the album truly feels like a concept. However, I noticed that I'm exceptionally fond of 'The Fallen Ones', an epic piece of death doom. Here, the Swedish death metal scene also comes shining through, you know, In Flames and company. Another stunning epos is 'Lillian (Changing Shades)' and my third favorite could be 'Black Drape' but the jury is still deliberating on that.

​Fans of atmospheric metal can blindly trust Tenebrae to deliver the goods, that's for sure. So it's no wonder I recommend this album to all fans of the aformentioned bands. Defintiely not bad for a band that once started out as a cover band named Why Not. Check it out, you just might have discovered a new favorite to get you through the cold days of winter... ​

​Serge

death metal

Inritum is an album released by Romanian Melodic Death Metal band Era Decay. With twelve tracks – Intro, Beyond Delirium, Ferocious, Perfidious, Sharp Words,
Repugnance, Restlessness, Syncope, The Past is Mine to Bear, Faker, Becoming Unstoppable and Coming for You (The day I die) – what we have here is a very good and exceedingly solid work, extremely reminiscent of classics of the genre, like early Amorphis, In Flames and Dismembered. While the comparison is inevitable, Era Decay manages to deliver an amazing record, with an authentic presence and a subtle hostility, with a strong set of qualities of its own.

With strong guttural vocals, heavy, but fiercely melodic rhythms, and aggressively obscure, but poetic guitar lines, Inritum is a solid work in the genre of Melodic Death Metal. Beautiful guitar solos and very objective songs are trademarks of the band, that has a very characteristic style, completely spirited into the values of the classic features of the genre. Nonetheless, the record is not only interesting, but very concentrated, amalgamated into a ritual of dissonant deliverance, that never passes unobserved. Without being dispersive or monotonous, the album presents to its audience a remarkable sonorous outline, extremely vivid in one hand, full of beauty and ardor, but with a pronounced and permanently obscure shift, on its more dark and sinister side.

All tracks are very interesting, and, although each one of them have its own beauty, the work, after all, is bounded by a sonorous identity, and a cohesive style that abide the band to a formidable sense of genuine sensibility, that guarantee to their work a place of honor into the pantheon of the greatest contemporary bands of Melodic Death Metal. With a brutal and conspicuous style, yet sensible, dramatic and beautiful, Era Decay really knows how to deliver true and marvelous Melodic Death Metal, honoring in the process not only their predecessors, but all of their influences. 

Finally, Inritum can certainly be described, with all words, as a very good and authentic album, able to perpetuate the strength, the beauty and the majesty, as well as all the virtues of the genre. A work splendidly done, to be proud of, certainly this album will achieve a lot of important features in the career of Era Decay, being such a mature, sensible and significant work, that not only aggregates important values to the genre, but disseminates the integrity of a sonorous soul that will never disappear. In other words, an album that emancipates the genre as something stronger than the music itself.   


Wagner

stoner rock / sludge

The Valley of Dying Stars is an album released on December 16, by Brazilian Stoner rock/ Sludge Metal band Erasy. With seven tracks – being them The Valley of Dying Stars, Sea of Sadness, Dawn of Time, Telling Lies, Nothing On The Other Side, Hollow and Living Hell – this is one of the best albums in the genre to be released in the Brazilian underground scene. Fiercely solid and amazingly composed, with strong guitars, and a coherent changing pace of rhythms, The Valley of Dying Stars not only honors tradition, but reinvents the genre in a very creative path, with a lucid audacity that strikes the foundations of a style powerfully crafted in highly stoned vocals, dilacerating fast melodies, and hallucinating guitar solos.

Extremely crude, but incredibly precise and well developed, this album really strikes a major sense of confidence at the development of a singular style, in a linear basis, and a coherently correlated pace of proverbial salutary cadences, that overwhelms the true aspirations of the sound, as a growing – but purposefully raw – artistic endeavor. And they also easily overcome their own sense of ability, while developing their individual style, that will certainly open to the band their own aggrandizing place in the underground scene.

With mostly slow harmonies, set in a straightforward conjuncture of sound, veracity, wildness and rudeness, all these elements perfectly converge altogether to deliver to the audience the best sludge/ stoner rock has to offer, in terms of originality, precise evaluation and musical appreciation. With a dense and intense paralyzing power, this album highlights the most undertaking instances of the genre, in a mostly high, but exceedingly appreciative feeling.

The Valley of Dying Stars is an excellent album, able to satisfy the hunger for good sludge/ stoner rock everywhere. With an audacious sonorous overlook of their own, they somewhat reinvent these genres with precise and ornamental distinctions, while at the same time preserving intact the core and the shape that makes their music to be recognized as such, in a remarkable association that only very mature musicians could easily maintain. With incredibly lucid and poetic guitar solos, this feature is no less compelling, as the band progressively dilutes all their influences, to rebuild their references as something bigger, wiser and stronger. A very good album, no doubt about that, The Valley of Dying Stars is a solid work, that deserves attention and recognition. You can listen to this beautiful album with no fear. You will not be losing your time. I positively assure you that! 



Wagner 

symphonic / progressive metal

The Reins of Life is an album by Italian Progressive Symphonic Metal group Degrees of Truth, released by record label Underground Symphony. With eleven tracks – Pattern, Finite Infinite, The Reins Of Life, Evolution, Civilization,
Subtle Borderline, The World Beneath My Feet, Fine Art Of Havoc, The Grim Lesson, Deep Six and Pillar Of Hope – this is album is a good exemplar of the genre, developing harmonies that evolves from very subtle, lucid and poetic melodies, that has in beauty a very mature element that constantly revolves and adorns the harmonies, as a resilient broken hearted universe, trying to fix its overall emotions in a more theatrical, but ethereal consignation of truth. 

An interesting genre work, consolidated by a very solid line of interchanged rhythms absorbed in an inadvertently sensorial musical definition, The Reins of Life departs from a very symbiotic pattern of cohesive harmonies, that relies constantly in beautiful melodic overtones, and all around the sonorous shapes of its contiguous abundant poetic stature, also inserts into the creative outlines convoluted and surprising electronic elements, precisely combining interesting components to create and develop a very peculiar style of their own.

With interesting passages, designed to fulfill and comprehend a more magical and indefinite musical cosmogony, that aligns several different sonorous elements into an unusual style of ambitious artistry, Degrees of Truth is really focused in a very antagonistically complex, but cohesive musical proposal, that never departs from absurd or overall commonalities: developing their own colossal and monumental concept of Symphonic Metal, The Reins of Life is really absorbed in an interesting pattern of poetic diversity and creativity, being a lot more ambitious and solid than other works on the genre. They truly develop a new concept, being so vigorously original, that is impossible not to recognize the new values they present to the genre, as a whole.

The Reins of Life is a very colorful and versatile album – filled with beautiful, precise and delicate harmonies –, that, despite the fact that widely explores several different layers of musical shapes at all corners of symphonic metal, does fully secure a lucid and vivid sonorous cohesion, all the way through. Destined to become a powerful reference to the genre, this work really opens new possibilities, as well as consecrates a true evolutionary road for the genre, in each and every possible aspect. Degrees of Truth is a band of enlightened logic, poetic versatility, unusual fulfillment, musical beauty, and artistic ambition, destined to take Symphonic Metal to the next level. Until them, the genre was inclined to a very monotonous decline and stagnation. Now, we can see a revival, an upheaval and a vigorous rebirth in the horizon!   



Wagner

black metal / death metal

Kepler is a full length album by black/ death metal band Aksaya, released on November 15, by a conjunction of three different labels: Satanath Records, More Hate Productions and The Ritual Productions. With eight tracks – Kepler, Laїka, Fractale, Anomalie, Prélude À La Découverte, Tau Ceti E, Syn 1.0, K-701.04 and Non Morietur – this is a highly energetic, spiritual and effusively concentrated metal work, probably more explosive and higher than everything you heard in the genre before.

With an impressive level of rapture, precise and beautiful guitar lines, symmetrical heterogeneous harmonies, and cutting razor blade furious black metal vocals, Kepler is a very appealing, amazingly creative and impressively constructive album; the harmonic and musical hard lines, even when are not heavy, are exceedingly brutal, but you feel them as crafted carefully, and composed in such a level of precise audacity, that is impossible not to feel suddenly captivated by Aksaya’s tremendous and yet universally organic sound. Beautiful guitar solos are also an essential feature, with all the right elements masterly combined, to create a surreal atmosphere of aggressive anthems filled with a lucid objectivism, that doesn’t lose itself in vague obliqueness or futile dispersive thoughts. 

A work like Kepler not only standardizes and strengthens your faith in black metal, but slowly creates the future of the genre as well, with an imperial wrath that rescues the integrity of the music in a solid path of poetic beauty, that amplifies the confidence and the truth they dedicate integrally to the genre. With songs founded in a very cohesive structure, spiritedly gifted in a coherent ground of musical technique, their sound is not only promising, but understands and assimilates black metal so perfectly, that Aksaya departs from a very peculiar development of the genre as well, according to their own point of view, as each and every track became a surprising feature, one after another, and you feel them in your soul. To contemplate their musical greatness, all expansions of sound, subtly done in an exceedingly malleable musical shape, are masterly done maintaining intact the core, the values and the sensibilities of the genre.  

Despite what appears to be a simple premise, their sound is inherently arranged in a complex layer of elemental intuition, although their music is pretty well organized in a very systematic feature at the same time. Nevertheless, what we have here is undoubtedly a real solid and remarkable work of art. Kepler is a treasure, delivered to each and every true black metal enthusiast in the world. A work effectively done with competence, technique, soul, passion, essence and heart, this record represents the great evolution by which the genre is passing right now, to be better than ever. Completely reformulated, rebounded and reshaped, and yet, being more true to its foundations than never before.   


Wagner

electronic / synthpop / darkwave

Nightcrawler is the most recent release by Hungarian electronic music artist Lazerpunk! One hour long, the album has fourteen tracks – as to know, The Message, Virtual Reality, Level One, Worldeater, Miami Mafia, Million Dollar Baby, Warrior, Radio Towers, Night Sky, This Is Not The End, Stardrifter, Nightcrawler, Endgame and The Fading Memories Of Summer And You – that reveals itself to be a very unusual and bizarre piece of electronica. With an intriguing, but exceedingly eccentric mixture of several subgenres, like dark, retro and futurewave, as well as synthwave, amongst others, Nightcrawler relies on too much generic and formulaic electronica devices, becoming a somewhat noisy album, for dealing with so many styles, doing in fact little to aggregate intelligent elements to this generally unfavorable and very conspicuous musical panel of melting electronic subgenres.

Don’t get me wrong. Nightcrawler is not a bad album, but it’s not memorable either. Only if you are a very ardent enthusiast of noisy electronica, you will like this record. Extremely exasperating all the way through, some of its tracks can work in night clubs, but only a handful of them. Some beautiful melodies do emerge along the way, but its principles, in general, are too slow or beaten up to please an audience, and the listener rapidly grows tired of so much sharp and superficial sonorous uniformity, throughout a musical anatomy that inevitably gets excessively monotonous, and ostensibly repetitive. 

There are little elements to describe positively about this album. If you think of it as specifically designed to attend a narrowed niche of electronica, then this work really becomes better understood, and you extract more sense out of it, vividly and functionally. Otherwise, it is just another work full of synth notes and noises, that makes you grow tired – at best, at worst, you die of boredom – while listening to it.

This musician is really skilled and talented in what he does. Nonetheless, he does not challenge himself on a satisfactory basis on this album. He keeps his abilities guarded in a comfort zone, and never leaves. Aside some bright moments, and a handful of good tracks, this album will hardly prove itself to be worthwhile to anyone, unless you are one of those people who can be described as an exception, that fit in the specific niche, upon which Nightcrawler is meticulously inserted.    


Wagner

stoner / doom /sludge

Ancient Rites is an album by German Stoner Metal/ Post Metal band Naked Star, released on December 16. With eight tracks – being them Purgamantic, Stoned Demon, Spawn of the Witch, Be my Sacrifice, Bound to Hell, Alter Ego, I am the Antichrist and Necrolust –, this is a furious, and lucid album, filled with beautiful and brilliant, yet brutal songs, that rescues the most fearless and restless stoner metal elements, ever to exist.

With slow, but solid rhythms, each and every musical aspect on this album converge to something beautiful and different, with all instruments perfectly aligned together, to deliver a fully great and unthinkable masterpiece. Like most works on the genre, what highlights mostly on the musical atmosphere is vocals and guitar, and, while they fully complement each other very well, the drums and the bass achieve a singular level of completeness, that profoundly aggregates a very solid coherence to the sound, as a whole.  

While the sound, in some parts, is somewhat uniform, and directed by a basic stylish underline identity, Ancient Rites manages to be a fully magnificent album. Perfectly scored, and astoundingly crafted at the basis of a true genuine musical sphere, the rude guitar lines, and the slow moving melodies tear apart every condescending molecule of replaced detachment that may exist in the genre. Nonetheless, they fully captivate a sonorous rapture, energized by a stream of perfectly created harmonies, that aligns the precise cohesion of abrasive rhythms with lucid and vigorous melodies, which makes this album a gracious and genuine masterpiece, from the beginning until the very end. And still, you will not believe how beautiful, amazing, striking and powerfully spirited this album really is. 

The general atmosphere of the album is a marvelous spectacle. While at the very beginning you can feel the shadows of a more sinister world driving your mind to consecrate a lucid rhetoric of unbound sincerity designed to reverse the sensibility of your soul, the album rapidly becomes a beautiful course of detonating rock’n’roll, led by a purely traditional reverberation of uncompromised heaviness, objectivism and liberation. 

A marvelous album, profound, brave and severe, with an integral metabolism of sound fully committed to a genuine heaviness – exhilarated by a formidable atmosphere of authentic sensitivity –, Ancient Rites is a unique masterpiece. Impossible not to like this album, here, a perfectly arranged and efficient musical technique is fully aligned with an astounding level of creativity. The result, evidently, couldn’t be other than a fully consecrated masterpiece, that has all the potential to conquer the underground with the unimaginable flame of amazingly talented musicians. Ancient Rites is a very peculiar album, a great and undeniable piece of higher art. You will not find any other album, like this one!         



Wagner

electronic / psytrance

Fireside Tales is an album by psychedelic psytrance electronic music artist Nibana, released by French record label ADN MUSIC, on December 10. With four tracks – Neuro Diversity, Mysterious Encounter, Warm Colors and A Journey Into Deep Space – this album is filled with deeply melodic tunes, and is literally abundant in a vast amount of elements that has everything to make this album the simplest, yet the greatest, psychedelic psytrance album of the year. Marvelously beautiful, with the correct, but subtle incidence of alternative and progressive elements, colorful and sincere harmonies, as well as a coherent range of wonderful rhythms, makes Fireside Tales a very audacious work, true to the most outrageous principles of the genre. But it has a very courageous overlook, that beautifully looks deep inside the genre’s possibilities.

A unique work in several aspects, the harmonies are intertwined with an integral sonorous segregation, that deeply reverberates into the cosmos of its own salutary development. Relying on more calm, yet profound harmonies, Fireside Tales is an album that reveals and works psytrance in a more reflexive and philosophic context, beautifully underlying the melodies in a more subjective definition, creating rainbows outside the sphere of its lucid, serene and wonderfully energizing sonorous majesty. 

Although the album per se is strictly simple, it is so complete, that the consistence of its poetic harmonies revolves from a more timeless overview of the music, contemplating the grace of its gregarious connotations as a perfect definition of sound, that generates uniqueness as a stream of style, relying on a strength of several peculiarities, that makes this album a great and marvelously surreal work of art.

For all enthusiasts of a more contemplative and serene work of art, to listen to Fireside Tales is almost a religious obligation. With restless hypnotic moments, and a very cohesive straightforward style that unravels a monumental diagram of sound, this album consecrates the path to a wonderful sonorous experience, that will lead you to a very different universe, where everything is possible, and related to a personal sense of artistry. Revealing in a wider scope the tangible possibilities not yet fully comprehended by the genre itself, Fireside Tales is an album that rearranges its own symmetry of sound in a calmer, but very dense atmosphere, fully assimilating the imponderable veracity of all the universes hidden in the infinite cosmogony of sound, with a desire to capture the unknown, and hold it altogether in a vast labyrinth of harmony, sensibility and life.   


Wagner

black metal

Perseiderna is an album by American Progressive Atmospheric Black Metal project Æðra, released by German record label Naturmacht Productions, on December 17.  One hour long, with seven extensive tracks – Perseiderna, The Rainflower Crest, Tracing Luna's Path, Alpenglow, Svartån, The Shoreline's a Starting Point... and ...for the Long Road Home – this is a fantastic, fully glowing, mature, evolutionary, cohesive and solid masterpiece, beautifully arranged, and fully complementing and consolidating the marvelously poetic spirit of Atmospheric Black Metal in literally all levels of its creative philosophy and majesty, upon which the subgenre is developed, and uniquely centered.

Fully poetic, intuitive and profoundly melodic, Perseiderna probably will be the most wonderfully Progressive Atmospheric Black Metal album that you will ever hear in your life. Combining a great range of archaic melodies with emotionally transcendental harmonies, this album really evaluates all lines of work that makes the genre to be as strong as it is. Although really rapid rhythms are present throughout the whole album, the ascendant overtones in all songs are never ignored, nor obliterated by obtuse commonplaces, but beauty and fastness are masterly arranged to fully work together, and transport you to a distant and superior galaxy of splendid sounds and serene dreamscapes, that is elevated beyond all cosmogonies, developing a sincere and unusual style that creates crystal realms of pacified essence, beyond all reflections, sensations and perceptions, alien to the mostly incarcerated notions of the human horizon.    

This album is undoubtedly the greatest and brightest musical achievement for Progressive Atmospheric Black Metal so far, but this work achieves a vast glorious artistry, that not only surpasses the boundaries of a continental philosophy of poetic enlightenment, but remains significant for the underground scene as a whole. Combining the superior beauty of transcendental harmonies with the sensibility of a glamorous sonorous vitality, the bright artistic tempestuous conflagration that breaths through this ulterior creative work of monumental musical expression regenerates a universe of lucid and imperial integrity, that never had taken a musical shape before. 

Perseiderna definitely takes the genre of Progressive Atmospheric Black Metal to another level. With a definitive melodic approach that promotes sensibility as a major musical aspect, without renouncing to fast rhythms or unequivocal restless harmonies, impressing a subjective, but very underlying beauty to its musical passages as well, this album has everything to improve the perceptions of the genre as a lucid and infinite form of higher art. Breaking limits and defining boundaries in a very outstanding categorical precision, Æðra consolidates the future of melodic, reflexive and atmospheric black metal as a superior place of undeniable musical values and loquacious artistic goals, never to be the same again.         
 

 Wagner

stoner rock

Rust is the most recent album by Greek Stoner Rock band Stone Cream, released on December 7. With eight tracks – being them Jail Dog, Broken Child, Snakes On My Back, Ghost, Galiandra, Aegean, Haunted Train and Bow – this is a super album, with strong and fiercely solid guitar lines, that honors the best tradition of real old school rock’n’roll, while aggregates an astounding degree of tenacious and audacious originality to genre, at the same time.

With solid melodies, that fully exposes furious and cohesive guitar lines, as well as bass, despite the somewhat slow melodies, their style is pretty well conformed to a brutal sound, underlined by a strong rhythmic axis that makes all these tracks sound absolutely marvelous, magnificent and strongly composed. The emphasis on a meticulous and beautiful guitar work is compelling, and their music communicates a vibrating coherence, that really elevates the genre to a different pattern. Their fabulous originality also strikes powerful dilacerating vocals, that adorn the music with a fulfilling sensibility, that scores the pavement of an aggrandizing work, that makes everything sound serene, true, authentic and overwhelming at the same time. 

Despite the brevity of the album, being only thirty three minutes long, this work is also an absolute lesson on stoner rock, with an unimaginable degree of competence in all aspects. With a corroding and effusive atmosphere, a little reminiscent of American seventies psychedelic rock bands, their vintage style undertakes a great authentic solidity, scored at the astounding eccentricity of genuine compositions, engraved by the beauty of a strong style, that makes you feel the music, reverberating inside your soul.

Definitely, Greece, with this marvelous work by Stone Cream, has achieved an impeccable degree, as well as a great representative on the genre. Pointing it out the outstanding work of guitar and bass, this album represents everything that stoner rock really is, but also defines all the possibilities and goals that the genre can reach in the future.               

A marvelous and compelling work of art, Rust is a true, genuine and solid masterpiece. A great work that really pays the respect the genre deserves, the album not only honors tradition, but shows the development of a style of its own, becoming a true achievement in everything concerning the genre. Definitely fabulous, amazing and gracefully artistic, Stone Cream has everything in their power to become in their native country the next big thing, in stoner rock. Their talent is unbelievable, and their musical creative power is exhilarating. In just a few words, you have to listen to Rust. For each and every stoner rock enthusiast in this world, it’s an obligation, an honor and a duty. 



​Wagner

stoner rock / sludge

Withdrawal From Continuous Circulation is an album released by German Stoner/ Sludge Metal band The Wiring. With seven tracks – IZ, Python, The Blocking, Eyes, Unearthed, Warped Apparition and Belltower General – what we have here is a very good album, that, although seems formulaic and generic at first, is interesting. True to the principles of the genre, Withdrawal From Continuous Circulation is a loyal and remarkable exemplar of Sludge Metal, that certainly can please a lot of enthusiasts of the genre.

Since Sludge Metal is a very noisy genre, and the very stilted sound can be tiresome for people who dislike this type of music, obviously the record is destined to a specific audience. But it has everything in full and easy disposition to conform to standards, and be likable to ardent enthusiasts. Awesome guitars, blistered rhythms, hazardous hysterical grievances compelled to a dirty wall of blasted notes, and an intense savage sound scrutinizes a traditional epic of the genre. While I personally couldn’t point it out remarkable moments anywhere in the album, it has undeniable qualities, especially if you feel the sound, inserted in the righteous context. 

While there is a certain lack of innovation, or even the development of a personal style, Withdrawal From Continuous Circulation remains authentic to the principles of Sludge Metal. Slow harmonies collide with the sluggish wild beast animal sounds that easily revolves the entire time, and you feel consumed by it, in the presence of mindfully stricken guitar doses of anarchy, and the very well developed dedication to the process of creating and performing these songs.        
I cannot say that this is a great, or even remarkable album, but it certainly has a solid and coherent panel of qualities for the Sludge Metal scene to be proud of. Like most bands of the genre, they probably cause a lot more impact in live performances, since, in an album, the genre naturally sounds more ecstatic and uniform. Nonetheless, if you listen to this album, be sure you really like the genre. It is not for beginners, nor amateurs, even less easy listeners. Certainly the strong guitar lines are the most audacious and fearless qualities the album has, holding the entire musical vision of the work in a very cohesive panoramic artistry. But sadly, sometimes, it becomes a little fragile and monotonous. But if you like a wild, fully intoxicated, exasperating and filthy Sludge Metal record, you can listen to Withdrawal From Continuous Circulation with no fear. But you have been warned: this is not an album for weak, fragile listeners, or beginners. This is for the experienced sludge community, exclusively.   


Wagner

dream pop

jazz / krautrock / post rock

electronic / idm

techno

rock / experimental

stoner / doom

psychedelic doom

black metal / doom / thrash

thrash metal

metalcore

drone / ambient / psychedelic

folk / rock

thrash metal

punk / hardcore

post rock / psychedelic / progressive

ambient / experimental / folk

IO Sound

Musical schizophrenia can be a beautiful thing. If you don't know what that means, I'll explain. Some artists start out as a noise act, but are also quite interested in folk music. Others make blissful ambient but like to add some heavy beats over their soundscapes. So what do they do to solve that dualism? They simply start a side project. I did it, and chances are big that yet another one will be coming up soon. Jim Wylde did it too, trading his repetitive death industrial (in the sp3ct3rs project) for gloomy winter folk under his own name.

​'Songs for the Brokenhearted from the Departed' feels like a collection of distant folk melodies, created by a tribe you will never see but always hear from across the cold wintery landscapes. There, often harsh, melodies release a strange, bleak atmosphere, here and there coming quite close to the musical scenery primitive black metal bands try to create. These melodies contain an eerie, distorted sound, making it tough to identify the instruments Jim Wylde used to record this album. Piano and guitar perhaps? Probably.

I think 'Without You' is my favorite track on this one, uncoincidentally it's also one of  the mildest ones on this album. But what strikesw me most about this one, is the sense of solitude it breathes. There is a composer, all alone, nobody to be seen or heard in miles and he makes strange, otherworldly tunes. My advice? Try it out, chances are big that you never heard something like this before, even if you're a noise-adept...


​Serge