black metal

Another fantastic and fluently esoteric album released in May 10 by Swedish atmospheric black metal artist Rafn, under the alias of Hermóðr, Hädanfärd is a thoroughly poetic and splendid record, almost as excellent as the album The Howling Mountains, another masterpiece, released on December 2016. With eight tracks – I stillhet, Nord, Höst, Urskogen, Midnatt, Havsdimma, Under frusen älv and
Hädanfärd – the record is, evidently, another great pearl to be added to the history of the genre. Frugal, melodic, poignantly soft and delicate, the harmonies in general are expansively calm and laboriously smooth. For the most part, in fact, the album seems to be too overtly serene to be considered a black metal album – except, of course, for the vocals – as Hädanfärd is excruciatingly pure, desolate, true and imperiously divine.

The music of Hermóðr is characterized primarily by beauty, and by a profoundly sincere philosophical intonation, that has on the crest of sensible melodies the tangible colors of another galaxy, another dimension, another life. A truly captivating and uniquely intriguing album, Hermóðr is the quintessential atmospheric black metal artist per excellence, that brings back on the shoulders of its miraculously powerful harmonies the winds of a profusely comprehensive truth. 

Understandably, there are very recognizable musical features in his work. Hermóðr’s style is amazingly singular, and sensationally reflexive, conspiring against the abyssal darkness that is intrinsically bound to the restlessness of the human nature. In the dispersive thought of uplifting mountains of belief, the music of Hermóðr rises from the ashes of hope, to celebrate the strength of the human spirit over deception and failure.

There is no denial that his music is intrinsically captivating and beautiful, and that Hädanfärd is an exceptionally phenomenal album. Being so talented and releasing one excellent record after another, I wonder how far this terrific musician can go, being so astoundingly creative. Hermóðr’s music is full of intrinsic beauty, greatness and humanity, and all the major cosmogonies diluted in the sincerity of his art are monumental odes to the ashes upon which humankind reduced the scope of its dignity.    



Wagner

black metal

bandcamp

Touch of Eternity is an album by melodic/ atmospheric black metal Russian project MetalBlack, released on May 6. Almost one hour long, the album has eight tracks: Lost in the woods, Surrounded by beauty of the world, The drops of light, Remember, Touch of eternity, One day you'll wake up, Door into the world of mysteries and My Silence. With delicate, translucent and precociously ethereal, almost diluted songs, MetalBlack is another melodic/ atmospheric black metal project with a more reflexive and philosophic sensibility, which deeply translates in marvelously beautiful melodies, and graciously dilapidated harmonies, amazingly interlaced together in a wind of vast serenity, invariably frozen in a universe of dissonant and mysterious circumstances, paradoxically soft, and coherently peaceful.   
 
Touch of Eternity is a profoundly poetical album, permeated by dense, but natural artistic resources, that condenses elements ostensibly saturated by the delineating devices of a retroactive universe of gregarious thoughts, invariably dispersed by the consistent patterns of wonderful completion concentrated in the artist’s musical style, predisposed by the vigorous stupor of his creative intentions in an allegorical symbiosis of condescending waves of perceptive similitude. 

Although incredibly imaginative, Touch of Eternity is a little longer than expected, and the album resents itself from too much musical uniformity, and lack of rhythmic variations in some passages. Nonetheless, there is an undeniable musical grandiosity in the verge of its monumental musical echoes, that ostensibly resonates through the vehement grandiosity of the artist’s universal creative ambitions, that pervasively segregates the honor of his expansive harmonious purposes, in favor of a more ecstatic and dispersive hallucinating cosmogony. 

Touch of Eternity, undoubtedly, is a surprisingly good and decent album. In fact, very close to excellent, if you allow me to write sincerely. With beautiful melodies, and the vigorous authenticity of a style that knows how to adorn consistent rhythms with amazingly captivating harmonies, MetalBlack has really created a record with a poignantly impeccable musical audacity. Unfortunately, in my final evaluation, while the album doesn’t deserve to be labeled as a major work of art, it has, indeed, its fair share of qualities, and the artist in question really has a great knowledge about what he is doing, and what he has to do, to achieve his artistic intentions. When – somewhere in the future – he finds himself able to contemplate the true point of collision behind the veracity of a more concise album, combined with the highly concentrated amount of energy that he ably produced on this work, then MetalBlack will be able to release a tremendously beautiful, graceful and shocking work of art!             


Wagner

black metal

As We Were When We Were Not is the debut album of English atmospheric black metal group Mountains Crave, released by Italian record label Avantgarde Music on May 13. Almost forty four minutes long, the album has six tracks: Ynisvitrin, Istigkeit (We Saw Them Of Old), Clear Light Of The Void, Arise O Magnificent Sun, As We Were When We Were Not and Theophany. A thoroughly captivating, original, vigorous and imponderable album, that has on the axis of its genuinely creative strength a mordacious veil of authenticity the genre has never experienced before, As We Were When We Were Not really elevates black metal to a very distinct pattern, achieving a planetary degree of desperate beauty never seen in the history of the underground scene. With delicacy, sensibility, poetic splendor and graceful nobility, the music of Mountains Crave abundantly promotes a perpetual cycle of transience, that becomes indefinitely lost in the most marvelous state of its antagonistic purity, sanctioning a wonderful state of grace never testified in the sonorous atmosphere of Black Metal before, although the style of Mountains Crave vehemently retains the most marvelous aspects of the genre, reworking them with such an amazing artistry, that you really don’t believe what you are listening too. 

With a poignant, but sensible esteem for a craving beauty, that adorns the melodies with the collision of a struggle that keeps the elements of its soul unforgivingly pure to the senses, Mountains Crave amazingly works at the flesh of its laboriously pervasive musical components the sideline of vibrant melodies, interchanged with the composite features of a sincere, but aggressive resurgence of a sentimental rebellion. As a result, the genuine and meticulous sonorous dilapidation effectively ordained in their work has built a cosmic veracity fairly unique, for such a monumental scale of extraordinary principles.          

Inevitably, the inherent axis disrupted by the musical dynamics of the group is characterized by a vigorous originality, that splendidly reconciles the melodic tenure of their intuitive sensibility, with the atmospheric principles of a more ethereal and diluted introspective sound, ostensibly and deliberately delineated by the natural layers of the painful solitude relevantly felt by the gracious nature of their music.  

With a tremendously impactful result, As We Were When We Were Not is a formidable album, that has generated a new level of artistic insurgency and proficiency for atmospheric black metal, in such a magnificent scale that the underground will never be same again.   


Wagner

black metal

bandcamp

Heathen Spring is an album released in May 10 by atmospheric black metal artist Herrwulf. Fifty one minutes long, the record has seven tracks: Winter's End, Maiden Of The Sun, Hymn For Victory, Sunwheel, Sigrblot, Omen and Return Of The Valkyrjur. A very interesting record, with smooth and constant melodies, Heathen Spring is, in several ways, a more typical atmospheric black metal album, with transient harmonies and softly reinstated rhythms. Nevertheless, the music on Heathen Spring is vehemently infused with a profoundly dense and intrinsically normative sense of beauty, and has a deeply understated, but subtle and extraordinary perception of normality as well, which makes the record a beautiful consonantal case of ambient infused work.   

With calmer and beautifully adorned melodies, Heathen Spring, like a lot of other albums in the genre – except for the vocals – doesn’t seem a black metal record at all, even if you labeled it atmospheric, despite the serene and soft vibration that encircles the work. With its instrumental passages reminiscent of a dark and laboriously worked alternative/ gothic rock, I think that the correct thing to reiterate about Herrwulf’s work is the fact that his style is an experimental grace, infatuated with intuitive influences from a lot of other genres, although ambient music plays a pivotal role in his magnanimous artistry.

You may not find this work – at first, at least – too daring, groundbreaking or innovative, but undoubtedly, there is a genuine quest for something new here, as the artist clearly has developed a style of his own in the work. With poignantly intense and precise razor blade guitar lines, that paradoxically can be felt as profoundly soft as well, Heathen Spring has seven amazingly conceived tracks, that brings fresh new elements to the genre, as a whole.  

With a unique understanding of his genre of choice, Herrwulf has conceived a beautiful and interesting work of art, upon which he has engraved progressive and subtle evolutionary scales into the musical mosaic of his gracious creation, that are vibrant throughout the elemental soul of his style, all the way throughout the work. With a peculiarly dense, but marvelous vision of sentimental objectivity, Heathen Spring seems to develop a new sonorous feature, that will shape a classic sonorous distinction to the genre. This becomes clear throughout the album’s splendorous journey, and only a great, audacious and exponentially creative artist will have the strength, the bravery and the overall talent to do that!    
 

Wagner

black metal

English black metal duo Hokedun return with a new ep after their 2016 album 'Succumbing to Decay' (read our review). Still incredibly loyal to their DIY-attitude, this ep comes in the form of a CDR, limited to fifty copies. The ep contains seven tracks, three of them being old school black metal tunes and the others being short instrumental interludes.

The build up and the level of variation are quite similar to their previous effort, which is a good thing. Furthermore, the three black metal tracks are excellent pieces of work, certainly suited for every fan of the vintage, grimm and atmospheric sound of the genre. In that, title track 'Bleak And Harrowing Journey' is a firm highlight in this band's career. 

I think it's good that, in times when traditional black metal is often pushed away behind the whole post-scene, bands like Hokedun excel and come up with excellent releases. I can only recommend this album to all you old schoolers out there. It has the right atmosphere, the right sound and the right attitude. Check it out, you won't be disappointed.


​Serge 

black metal

Portraits is an album by Italian black metal project Beheat Gorum de Mentheurd, to be officially released in the end of the month, on May 24. Forty four minutes and fifteen seconds long, the album has only three tracks. The first, Осень. Домотканово (which, translated, means “Autumn. Domotkanovo”), is four minutes and nineteen seconds long. The second track, Прасковья Мамонтова (which means “Portrait Of Praskovya Mamontova”), is fourteen minutes and thirty two seconds long. The third and final track – Девочка с персиками (which means “The Girl With Peaches”) – is the longest one, an epic song twenty five minutes and thirty five seconds long. Portraits reveals itself to be a beautiful and delightful album. A very experimental melodic black metal record with predominant atmospheric – and mostly ambient – elemental traits, that stays dominant throughout the work, Portraits is a formidable and calm lyrical allegory, that expresses in a frame of beauty the constant motion of surprisingly poetic cadences, overwhelmed by the serenity of silent virtues, wonderfully aligned at the intercalary sojourn of unpredictable circumstances, predisposed to the sensible degree of ecstatic waves of pale sonorous grievances, condoned at the behest of invisible forces awakened by the intensity of the ecstatic scale of invariably resourceful harmonies, that can be intrinsically felt throughout the album.   

Slowly elaborating an atmosphere where everything can be deemed a neutral disappointment of the heart, although ostensibly consistent at the same time, Portraits has in the intensity of its qualities and abilities the insurrection of a higher realm, fulfilled by the constant exhilaration of emotional battles, dragged by the painful resurgence of distant shadows overcoming the disabling despondency of a storm, lost in the sight of a preciously vivid dream.   

Especially in the third track – the long, epic and monumental Девочка с персиками (“The Girl With Peaches”) – the main features of the work are drastically and distinctly revealed. An effusively dormant and lenient ambient track with subtle nuances, the sonorous framework of the song is elevated to an expansive scale of lurid expectation, despite a fragrant – although dubious and inconsistent –sense of serenity ravenously dispersing an interpretation of morbidity in the air.    

Since black metal elements almost fade away in this work, having little to no prominence at all in neither of its tracks – especially in the last – to label Portraits only as an ambient album would be definitely more suitable. Nonetheless, this does not diminishes in any way the fantastic qualities and characteristics of this amazing work, as a record, and also as an imperiously marvelous work of art. Never tedious neither monotonous in any passage, all the way through, Portraits can be considered a terrific and wonderful ambient album. Certainly, has a dramatically unique sound, being expressively singular in its peculiar definition of a protuberant and composite atmosphere. Evidently, it is not like the ambient albums you have been listening so far, I positively guarantee you this fact.     
 

Wagner

black metal

The Bitterness Prophecy is an album by Slovenian black metal artist Tilen Šimon, under his nom de plume Veldes, released on April 28. Almost one hour long, the epic record has only five tracks: the eponymous The Bitterness Prophecy, Seeking the Land Beyond, Thorn Gatherer, Ancient Remedy and Hollow Antlers. Effectively executing a perfect mixture of traditional and atmospheric black metal – occasionally intertwining it with melodic elements –, The Bitterness Prophecy can be described as a formidable masterpiece already in the first track. With increasingly powerful components on the verge of a strength of an imponderable and magnificent originality, the epic elements present on Veldes’ music ostensibly aligns itself with the cohesive intuition of a universe in constant expansion, where the music is the axial force behind the spiritual motion of infinity. With the authentic posture of a real expressive artist, the factual confluence of Šimon’s artistic abilities underlie prominently at the strength of the poetic majesty of his surreal harmonies, ably developed over a hundred galaxies of protuberant and intensely defined sensibilities.   

Encircled by the night of an eternal dream, the music of Veldes, in the Bitterness Prophecy, announces the pungent strike of its harmonious grievances, through the poetic labor of masterly designed guitar lines, that draws in the circles of a fantastic universe the melancholic frame of a gray existence, forever lost in the dust of time. With the proper sentiment of an antagonistic sensibility ever projected into the hearts of misfortune, the music of Veldes dissipates an everlasting trade of beautiful and majestic sorrow in his music, filtrating through the planetary metabolism of his melodic sentences the pragmatic axiom of a world built by memory, condolences, dark romanticism and art.

Exceedingly consistent, underlined by the lucid cosmogony of melodies driven by a sensibility solidified over elevated principles of excellence and sagacity, The Bitterness Prophecy is a majestic pearl of black metal, imperiously designed under a multitude of personal galaxies, adorned by the beauty of an everlasting winter of solitude and reflection.   

One of the most majestic black metal pieces ever to be created in the history of the genre, The Bitterness Prophecy reiterates the strength of black metal as the highest form of artistic expression ever to exist. With Veldes, black metal ceased to be just a musical genre, to be a severe, poetic, delightful and imponderable manifestation of life itself. 
  

Wagner
  

 

folk metal / black metal

Ruoto is an album by Finnish Pagan Folk Metal band Noituma, released on April 13. A concise album, thirty four and a half minutes long, it has seven tracks: Rutonkantaja, Matojen herkkupäivä, Ruoto, Virvatulen kajo, Kaatuneiden muistolle, Jokainen hautaa omansa and Revontulet. With splendidly crafted and well created folk melodies, sidelined by a balanced spirit of greatly consistent compositions, Ruoto is a marvelous album. The first track, Rutonkantaja, already is enough to impress any folk metal enthusiast. With heavy, but consistently energized harmonies, Ruoto is a magnificent masterpiece of the genre, with a surprising degree of audacity and originality infused into the creative nucleus of the music.

With an interesting mixture of black and folk metal, Noituma has a very characteristic style, grounded in cyclic, and sometimes thoroughly irreverent harmonies, profoundly efficient and almost inherently sarcastic. Nonetheless, their sound is fulfilled by a cohesive synergy, that not only perfectly combines these two genres, but works on their innermost qualities in such peculiar techniques, that they managed to create a pervasively singular style of their own.

With more spiritually-orientated and melodic folk stylish pieces, each and every track on Ruoto has its own distinct sonorous identity. With every song sculpted in an almost indulgent state of intuitive sensibility, there is a fascinating degree of beauty delicately inserted in each and every song, with a peculiarly standardized degree of universal infinity colliding directly in the interior anatomy of the soul’s music, to such a degree that you can almost feel the everlasting and inherent strength of Noituma’s impeccable sense of artistry revitalizing all the relativities hidden inside the colorful mountains of your ordinary existence.  

The music of Noituma is the essential description of a fearless and definitive journey of the strongest musical aphorism ever to take place in the history of folk metal music. With Ruoto certainly being one of the most marvelous albums that I’ve heard on the genre, their potential goes beyond any possible description. With a vigorous inclination towards a captivating and salutary sense of originality, this is a band with enough qualities to redefine all the principles that solidified the strength of the genre, converting it into something stronger and fundamentally human.         


Wagner

dark ambient / black metal

Astronomy is an ambient music/ atmospheric black metal album released in April 17, by Spanish musician Iván Ferrús Fernández. Almost one hour long, the album has only five tracks: Trappist-1, Disloyal, Forgetting... Is Time, Recalling In My Thoughts and Winds. With a very organic principle, and a predominantly serene atmospheric soundscape, Astronomy is very quiet, lucid and down to the ground. With beautiful and poetic melodies, Astronomy allows the listener to efficiently undertake a legitimate journey throughout the sensibilities of one’s soul, with a genuine layout of correlated virtuosity, celebrated by the possibilities of a complete process of undeniable discovery, that foretells precious allegories surrounding our own versions of universal truth. 

With a consistent musicality, surprisingly, for an album that does not feature a heterogeneous sonority, the work doesn’t sound monotonous in any moment; on the contrary, it can be strongly appreciated. With an interior vivacity of its own, there is an ostensibly atmospheric sonorous beauty attached to the life of the music. Dispersing a calm, delightful and abundant reality through the vicinities of a peaceful and relaxing sound, Astronomy masterly creates an alternate universe where everything that dwells deep inside your soul is enthralled in the eyes of the unknown.

Despite the somewhat ecstatic – almost frozen – nature of the music, Astronomy is a remarkable album. With an unforeseeable intensity that culminates – and perfectly juxtaposes – into the fascinating galaxy of its lurid propensity of eternal dreams, you have unexpectedly the wonderful opening of a marvelous atmospheric black metal layer, permeated by the astounding sensibility of cohesively written guitar lines, that draws a universe of soul’s disillusion into the absence of a monumental correlated sorrow, that creates beauty from the innermost abysses of melancholy. Summarizing it, an achievement that resulted in a splendid and very artistic record. 

Working in a brilliantly sculpting style the ambient music, as well as the atmospheric black metal passages, consolidating a marvelous mixture of both genres – as well as perfectly delineating a frontier and a limit in between them in the record, as both styles have its different moments of highlight – with discreet, but pragmatic elements of post black metal wonderfully added to it, Iván Ferrús has created quite a unique work, efficient in the sonorous torrential expansion of the harmonies over its infinite diagrams, provided by the primarily philosophic melodies ambitioned by the purpose of the work. 

Astronomy is, undoubtedly, a great record. Although it has a stronger appeal to ambient music enthusiasts, the general outline of the work is mostly solid and competent. A lucid and firmly created work, this is an album abundant on powerful qualities, capable of opening new horizons of sensibility, towards a fundamental principle of audacious, intelligent, renovated and highly independent originality.  


Wagner

black metal

Lost Legends is an album by an Indonesian ambient black metal artist, known by the alias of Nicrotek, released on April 13. Forty seven minutes long, the album has nine tracks: Lost Legends, Execution, Cosmic Baptism, Mortalization, Reflection, Fog Flames, Hanging Ropes, The Shrine of the Sky and 7 Days to the Abstract. Though mostly ambient, Lost Legends has formidable and exceedingly impeccable translucent melodies, deeply infused into horizontal and expressively serene harmonies, that fly free in the crest of an immortal wave, amazingly projected into a fading universe of expansive melancholy. With an intriguing, mostly spasmodic and self-centered degree of dense and discreetly infuriating authenticity, Lost Legends intertwines a brilliantly effusive atmospheric black metal sentiment with the captivating, but almost invisible, specter of a minimalist, lucid, sober and eccentrically arranged soundscape of electronic music, anticipating a vivid amalgamation of genres that ominously creates a majestic convergence of melodies, that standardizes its omniscient patterns for a sonorous configuration of worlds.

Although Lost Legends, in certain passages, do sound imperatively ordinary and commonplace in some aspects, the overall atmosphere of the album is quite fascinating, as you almost feel yourself teleported to a very distant, different and sensitive imaginary dimension, where everything is correlated to the emotional perceptions of the sound. With the proverbial collision of an unexpectedly delusional science of rhythms, Lost Legends is an intrinsically vivacious album, with the pragmatic fluidity of its principles formidably delineated by the incision of its elementary distinct cosmogonies.  

With an introspective sagacity that explicitly aligns the sensibility of its fundamental intuitions to the consistency of its outward melodies, Lost Legends is firmly rooted in a monumental majestic proposal, that exteriorizes the coherence and the beauty of the work in a torrential display of delicate wisdom. With its lenient – almost harmful, but exasperatingly eternal – idiosyncrasies serenely predisposed in an colossal frame of majestic sonorous cadences, reinvigorated by the stream of poetic melodies, wonderfully delighted over the gray dust of melancholic rainbows, the harmonies effusively absorb the inhospitable solitude of the universe into the overall intonations of marvelous songs, splendidly integrated into the fascinating vacuum of the most wonderful elegies ever created in black metal-styled ambient music.   

A dense, pungent, relentless and incredibly fascinating album, Lost Legends deserves to be among the best underground ambient albums of the year. A formidable, unexpected and inextricably ambivalent work, this highly audacious and melancholic atmospheric piece certainly has the potential to infuse new, intense and more powerful perspectives into the genre wonderfully developed in this magnificent album, that certainly will become a milestone, in the records of the underground music scene.   


Wagner

black metal

None is an album by the eponymous atmospheric black metal act, released on April 11, by Hypnotic Dirge Records. Thirty minutes long, the record has only three songs: Cold, Wither and Suffer. A surprising, sinister, melancholic and exceedingly artistic album, the melodies are astoundingly poetic, and elevates to a vigorous and consistent scale of sound the omnipresent lucidity of an original and overwhelming style. 

With impeccable harmonies, a depressive tone and a frozen atmosphere, the music of None reaches a zenith where the beauty collides with the pragmatic soul of the sound, propelled by an intuitive sense of sincerity and logic, that converts the proficiently evasive harmonies into an organic panel of dreams. The precise convergence of instruments into a complete cosmogony of sound reiterates the strength and the sagacity of a very formidable and acute artistic sensibility, that not only fully comprehends the genre, but knows how to use it for creative purposes. 

With an audacious level of originality, that explores the best elements the genre has to offer, the perfect amalgamation of traditional and atmospheric black metal components gives to None’s music a vivid perspective of their own nature, abridged by a sense of fundamental infinity. With a genuinely sonorous exposition of the sentiments behind their art, the spectacle created and completed by these three songs can be seen as an overwhelming grey ocean that reluctantly emphasizes the darkness of the human character, although in a more sensible and subtle constitution. 

A very interesting album, that perfectly summarizes the spirit of atmospheric black metal, here inserted in the wider scope of a truly elegant and sophisticated musicality, None can be fully understood as a virtual journey that delicately explains the dynamics of its own sorrowful sincerity. A wonderful work that elevates the genre into a higher level of majesty, this record deserves to be considered one of the best atmospheric black metal albums of the year.  


 
Wagner

black metal

The Carnal Sabbath is an album by avant-garde black metal act HELLEBORUS, from Manitou Springs, Colorado. With nine tracks – Helleborus Black, Coils, Edge of Black Waters, Colored Spores of Yuggoth, Draconian Discipline, The Poison of Sleep, Temple of Seventh Death, Gift of Renewal and the eponymous The Carnal Sabbath – this album probably features the most expressive, beautiful and imaginative guitar lines that I have heard in a record of the genre. Like a glorious thunder strike, with solos that remembers efficiently colorful, ascendant and perceptive power and heavy metal riffs, the sonorous guideline of HELLEBORUS can be described essentially as way more heavy metal than black metal per se, with the clear exception of the vocals, although I should point it out that certain passages in some tracks are indeed exceedingly rapid and hostile. Nonetheless, their musicality is vibrant, audaciously voracious, original and profoundly dynamic. 

With uncommon creative abilities, The Carnal Sabbath is a beautiful work, that has on the verge of its consistent melodies the sagacity of its mordacious brilliance. Tracks one, three and eight – Helleborus Black, Edge of Black Waters and Gift of Renewal, respectively – are songs that deserve to be highlighted. Gift of Renewal, in special, certainly is one of the most beautiful songs that I have heard in my entire life. With impeccable and wonderfully exhilarating guitar lines, a very hard rock rooted sonorous proficiency and an impressionistic amalgamation of diffuse harmonies, this is probably the best song of the album. A firm and astonishing example of eccentric creativity in the genre, HELLEBORUS remembers nineties Rotting Christ a little, although I should say that they extrapolate the Greek band in terms of spontaneity and dynamics, as their music sounds more colorful, vivid and vibrant, and the production values are accurately clean and standardized. 

 A very intelligent and singular album – a milestone in the genre’s history – that is absolutely secure of the complex comprehensiveness of its path, HELLEBORUS delivers to its audience a lucid and cohesive work, ostensibly genuine and volatile. This work can certainly be described as an intrepid storm of sonorous beauty, embalmed with an archaic dogma of despondent solitudes, exalted by a hostile atmosphere of infinite horizons, surrounded by a tempestuous, atrocious and sulfuric planetary darkness. 

A thoroughly precious and fantastic record that certainly deserves the attention of each and every enthusiast of the underground scene, The Carnal Sabbath is a ferocious and aggrandizing work of art, close to perfection. You can listen to this album without fear. You will not be disappointed.     

 

Wagner 

black metal

End of Existence is an album by Polish black metal project Zaglada, released on April 10. Almost forty minutes long, the album has seven tracks: Pale Rivers, Without End, Existence, Company in Passing Time, Cemeteries of Our Fathers, So It Should Be and Nothing More. A very good, promising black metal album, despite its traditional sonorous layer, End of Existence reveals itself to be, unfortunately, a very ordinary and common record. Although is has fast, sinister and reasonably well-designed guitar lines, Zaglada’s music is marked by a nefarious, precariously uniform and continuous sense of monotony.

The main elements of the music are the usual black metal components, which makes End of Existence to fall somewhat into an ordinary generic category. Several passages are too extensively sonorously uniform, which makes certain moments to be quite monotonous. Nonetheless, the record has its merits, being somewhat genuine in its more subtle underlines, although you will not find too much of a novelty here.

The technical aspects of the work are indeed very whimsical, the musician behind the work really knows what he has been doing. Unfortunately, the lack of more authentic forms of inspiration has restricted enormously the musical reach of the work. Very emblematic of the genre, though, with an interesting approach concerning the fastness of the rhythms and the dynamics of the melodies, End of Existence is a work able to satisfy the more modest enthusiasts of the genre.

Invariably, the lack of more extreme variations has left the album too stagnant. A little before the middle of the album, you are stuck to the impression that you have been listening to the same song from the beginning. Eventually, although the general score of the album is reasonably acceptable, you simply realize the fact that you don’t want to listen to this record a second time. Too tiresome and severely common, End of Existence reveals an interesting musician, that has to evolve a lot more, to learn how to create a more incisive, engraving and undertaking style of black metal.   


Wagner

black metal

Via Mala is an album by Italian atmospheric/ avant-garde black metal group Umbra Noctis, to be released on April 22. Forty seven minutes long, the record has seven tracks: Nevica, Il sentiero del cervo, Il solco, Maree, Somnium, Nami and Spirale. A powerful and reinvigorating album, with a very consistent body of melodies, Via Mala is an impressive work of art, that has on the verge of its beautiful and heavy harmonies the enormous universe of a circumspect horizon of possibilities, where the sensibility of the music overlaps other majestic qualities, which in turn is extensively overwhelmed by a vast and complex conjuncture of elements, that inserts an indelible level of pragmatic densities into Umbra Noctis’ diversified mosaic of rhythmic projections.  

The consistency of the album is engraved by a correlated and competent sense of stylistic dynamics, which means that, although each and every song has its own peculiarities, the album maintains a distinct sonorous identity. With a lucid and ponderable sense of impeccability, the vigorous injection of strength and sobriety underlined by their style enables the music to act as a comprehensive universe of solitary confinement, quietness and serenity. 

With an appreciative degree of originality, Via Mala is like an infinite realm of overwhelming sagacious audacity, that covers the genre with a sonorous extension of poetic beauty. It has, indeed, fascinating fresh elements, that gives them very unique musical features, that can be felt as more abrasive, but paradoxically smooth as well. Although their sound becomes more stagnant and uniform as the album progresses, the work still manages to be formidably intricate and interesting. 

With a brave, fearless and voracious style that has managed to conceive a very creative album, filled with astounding and abundant qualities, like fury, density, rapidness and ferocity, without fear of innovating, Umbra Noctis has outreached a formidable level of competence in this particular album, sculpting with delicacy and determination a new breed of avant-garde black metal, without renouncing, forgetting or neglecting the traditional elements, fundamental for the creation of an acceptable work of the genre. With a precise amalgamation of components, that has counterbalanced perfectly a more conventional line of work with the introduction of unexpected and original artistic outlines, Via Mala is an album with great potential to please a large crowd of enthusiasts. Undoubtedly, this is a work that should be considered a milestone.      
       

Wagner
 

avant garde / black metal

The title 'I Thought There Was the Sun Awaiting My Awakening', is quite a mouthful, but it perfectly covers the load of one of the most interesting black metal releases this year. As some of our readers might know, I like my black metal laced with the occult and as epic as possible. I also like it to be varied and conceptual. Well, this mesmerizing piece of work by Digir Gidim is exactly that.

t contains four tracks, 'The Revelation of The Wandering', 'Conversing with The Ethereal', 'The Glow inside The Shell' and 'The Eye looks through The Veils of Unconsciousness'. Each of them is a stunning ten plus minutes anthem of occult black metal. The music on this album is ritualistic, spiritual and esoteric, which immediately reminds me of acts like Blut Aus Nord, Acherontas, Nile or Melechesh.

Besides intense and dissonant black metal assaults, there is room for ritual chants, epic bombast and tonnes of atmosphere. In that, each of the four rituals is basically similar, so it's extremely difficult to pick out a favorite. Then again, albums like these are supposed to be a concept, to be listened to as a whole and to be allowed to crawl under your skin and into your subconscious. And that is exactly what the masterpiece 'The Glow inside The Shell' does.

Fans of occult avant garde black metal can easily trust Digir Gidim to deliver the goods. In all, this is a remarkable album, varied, overwhelming, intense and highly unpredictable. I can only recommend this to all you black metal freaks out there. Check it out and join me in hoping that Digir Gidim take this show on the road. I'm sure that they will win many souls on their journeys...


​Serge

folk metal / black metal

Home and Heart is the debut album of Laochra, a melodic folk metal project of musician Stíofán De Roiste (Stephen Roche), from Irish folk metal group Celtachor, released on March 31. Almost forty seven minutes long, the album has nine tracks: My Homeland, Tongues of Flame, In Council with King Olan, A Dream of Old White Trees, The Loss of Brianna, Home and Heart, The Deception of King Rythian, Fiadan and The Battle at Lake Ulianith. Profoundly inspired in Irish Celtic mythology, Home And Heart is a beautiful, encapsulating, self-conscious and poetic album, filled with delicate, enchanting and smooth nuances, that transcends temporal concepts of culture, musicality, belief and spirituality, to fully embrace and create in the shroud of a graceful sonorous legacy the marvelous epicenter of an amazingly intricate dimensional life, where everything is completely compromised with the wonderful mist of ancient times.

With the power to fully materialize the embodiment of a philosophic, sentimental, and reflexive poetic tenure, sidelined by colorful and conceptual harmonies, an experimental spirit of technical enhancement has perfectly introduced into Laochra’s debut album the genuine soul of the cultural and spiritual elements of the old ancestral times. With the graceful presence and enchantment of folk instruments, like flutes and whistles, an atmosphere of tenacious influence, vitality, curious fascination, splendid glory and marvelous wisdom is completely evoked, as the lancinating and palpable tissue of the music amazingly creates all the majestic components necessary to conceive the precise nature of the work. 

With beauty, intensity, authenticity and splendor, Home and Heart is an album whose title perfectly exemplifies the spirit of its intentions: to sonorously recreate the home and the heart of the ancestral mythological Celtic culture, and through the power of its vociferating, but smoothly poetic emanating melodic tissue, transport the listener to a world of reverberating and vivaciously conscious beauty, corroborating through the vigorous force of the music the sensorial rescue of the visceral power of a culture that will never die, and should always be celebrated in all elements of its vital force.    

Sonorously splendorous, intense, truthful to its essence, and formidably genuine, in spiritual, musical and technical procedures, Home and Heart, in each and every minute of it, proves itself to be a vigorous and reverberating cornerstone of folk metal music. With special mentions to the first, sixth and seven tracks – My Homeland, Home and Heart and The Deception of King Rythian, respectively – this record is a masterful and glorious work of art, that really captures and perfectly reproduces in a greatly expansive sonorous reality all the essential elements of the genre. Home and Heart deserves to be highlighted as a vibrating and fundamental work, destined to be fully understood, appreciated and to become a reference in the genre, in the years to come. 


Wagner

death metal / black metal

Beyond This World’s Illusion is an album by Turkish black/ death metal group The Sarcophagus, released by Satanath Records on April 4. Almost forty six minutes long, the album has nine tracks: Reign Of Chaos, Ain Sof, Dymadiel,  The Profanity Rites, Sapremia Of Earthly Creatures, Triumphant Divine Terror, Armoured Death, Flaming Key To Divine Wisdom and Apocalyptic Beast. A marvelous and terrific album, with lancinating and protuberating guitar lines, exceptionally vibrating and effusively original, Beyond This World’s Illusion is a very original album. Although the underline core of its musicality is recognizable, their sound is so incredibly hallucinating, vividly colorful and vehemently spontaneous that almost seems to be pretty much alive. Precisely astute and formidably relevant, this record is a precious pearl of the genre. An ardent and superb masterpiece, Beyond This World’s Illusion deserves to be recognized by all the expressive qualities whimsically delineated in the expansive sonorous delusional science, displayed within the frontiers of its deleterious, but wonderful musical horizons.   

The songs in general are ferociously hostile, but there is such sentimental and lancinating sincere elements added to it, that you almost feel their exceptionally colorful harmonies ardently and fervently trespassing the components of your soul, to exponentially fuse – and infuse – each one of them into the infinite sonorous galaxy carried out by their music. And the songs have such an intrinsic vibrating cosmic rhythm and density that they appear to be sensibly alive, with all the sincere and supreme intensity carried out by the strike of their harmonic directions. 

An excellent album, with serious, direct and impeccable harmonies, beautifully conceived with amazing, incisive, conspicuous and interchangeable guitar lines, Beyond This World’s Illusion is one of the most authentic, solicit, wonderful, imponderable and visibly transcendental extreme metal albums of all time. Truly incorporating the genuine spirit of the genre, with sincerity, spontaneity, soul, motivation and a real sense of purpose, there is not a singular second on this album that is tedious, generic or weak. One of the most formidable albums of the century ever created in the history of black and death metal, Beyond This World’s Illusion is imperiously fantastic. From the very first seconds that I’ve heard this marvelous and incredibly brilliant album, I simply couldn’t believe what I was listening too. With an exceptional level of creativity, that simply goes beyond the normal standards, this is the record that I have heard that probably has captured in the best way possible the authentic spirit of extreme metal, with songs created in a crystallized shape, with a style and a structure that audaciously replicated the genre in its purest state, with a genuine sonorous fluidity that really has managed to evoke in the content of its peripheral sensibility a universal wave, forsaken and neglected by the abnormalities of the abhorrent spirit of the human nature.

Beyond This World’s Illusion is unmistakably one of the most marvelous albums ever created in the history of extreme metal. There is no doubt about it. The Sarcophagus really deserves to have a splendid, fruitful and prolific career. Better than play and create extreme metal, are the musicians that truly understand and replicate the spirit behind it.    

 
Wagner

avant garde / metal

Arisen is an album by Hungarian avant-garde metal project Hant, released on April 4. Forty one minutes long, the album has eight tracks: Desolate, Evolution of Minds, Of Longing and Lust, Black Lake, Arisen, Beyond the Astral Doors, Summoning and Mad World (a beautiful instrumental cover version of the notorious Tears for Fears song [and, in my opinion, the best track on this record]). With an incisive work competently built on guitars, Arisen is an album with interesting shapes and nuances. With generally calmer melodies, the harmonies are conceived in an anxious and afflictive layer of lancinating and acute atmospheric anguish. Somewhat interesting, there is a virtuous degree of skilled technical proficiency holding the musical structure of the work. Unfortunately, since the harmonies are mostly slow all the way through, and the songs are generally very long, a tedious, nefarious and exasperating sense of monotony overcomes the listener, and the album eventually becomes more of a boring task than an actual pleasure.

Nevertheless, there are distinct elements, as well as intriguing passages, in some tracks along the way. With minimalist and neoclassical tendencies, Arisen has charming peculiarities, and the sensational sonorous dilapidations that ostensibly arise in the outer limits of the conclusively splendid exterior layers of the songs reveal, quite surprisingly, a modest, but sagacious level of audacity, originality and creativity, well-worked and majorly conceived in the expansive fields of rhythmic dissonances discreetly dispersed throughout the album. 

Although Arisen can’t be qualified as a majestic record – and you will hardly be surprised while listening to it – this album has, indeed, several qualities. The hazard, dilacerating and meticulous guitar lines undoubtedly are the main force behind the work, and create all the major elements that consecrate the overall musical atmosphere. Taking that away, you don’t have too much components to appreciate on the album, although some harmonies are fulfilled by a lonely, restless, reflexive and poetic appeal. Evidently, if you like slow, melodic, melancholic guitar driven rock’n’roll with avant-garde elements, then Arisen is an album that you should listen. 
     
As far as my personal evaluation goes, Arisen is a good album, but is incapable of going beyond that. Too much accommodated in a common concept, with an ostensibly exacerbated uniformity, with little rhythmic variations, the overall sound, in the end, reclaims an ordinary and inefficient final product, that will probably appeal more to guitar players and guitar students in general.     


Wagner

black metal

Mörk is the most recent album by death/ black metal group Lava Invocator, released in March 27 by a partnership between Satanath Records and More Hate Productions. With seven tracks – Awaken, Empyrium Et Nihil, Gestapofallos, Black Dawn, Dark Thunder Sky, Totenkampf and the eponymous Mörk – this is a very concise and abrasive, but intelligent album, with vigor, spirit and style of its own.

With a straight to the point approach, and an objective style, the songs in Mörk are punctuated by an aggressive and direct sonorous volatility. With ostensive and rapidly pungent guitar lines, the rhythms generally are sordidly excavated, to reproduce a tempestuous feeling of radical demise, where everything is simply destined to be destroyed, corroded or to fall apart. 

Although there is a general lack of new elements into the overall musical layer of the sound, the style of Lava Invocator has a genuine magma of fury, originality and liberal creativity reflected in the sound. You can literally feel the spontaneous tremor and the ambivalent carnage proposed and intensely delineated by the ardent belligerent stream of the music, surreptitiously exposed by the vivaciously dispersed sentimental tissue hidden in the subterranean fields of the sound. 

Black Dawn can be considered a formidable example of a tempestuous and impeccable song, conceived in the precise horizon of the lurid and lugubrious style practiced in the album, with the tremendous – but masterly contained – fury of the creative capabilities of the musicians involved, correctly directed towards the sensible point of the true potential that their abilities can achieve. The next song, Dark Thunder Sky, can be considered another marvelous example as well, about how the group conceived with more nefarious elements the fragmentary sonorous ocean of a dying sentimental world, being slowly diluted, with the counterpart of its infinite sorrowful corrosion being formidably reproduced by the precisely synchronic convergence of the instruments. The next song, Totenkampf, is exceedingly marvelous as well. With a lancinating, but more cautious and reflexive fury, and brilliantly amazing, hallucinating and reflexive guitar lines – with the juxtaposition of an imponderable, colorful and melancholic guitar solo – you simply are meant to travel to a world where a new universe of solitude has been forgotten, and a new one has been conceived.  

Although Mörk has its limitations, in general, it is a very exceptional album. With a life and a graceful color of its own, this record really deserves to be highlighted, in all four corners of the underground scene.  


Wagner

black metal

Hey kids, do you remember the time when black metal bands from Finland and Norway couldn’t stand each other? You know, that time when Impaled Nazarene put messages like ‘no orders from Norway accepted’ on their releases and Mika Luttinen received so-called threat phonecalls from Norway, which turned out to be Marko from Beherit playing pranks on him? When Black Crucifixion called Darkthrone ‘trendies’? Feuds galore! Since I’m old, I do sort of remember that time. Fun times indeed.

As we all know now though, we’ve come a long way and determining superiority based on geographic location is complete and utter nonsense. It’s a given fact that every single country on this wretched ball of dirt, hurtling through the immeasurable nothingness we call the galaxy, is equally worthless.

What isn’t worthless, far from it, is IFP’s latest release. Doedsvangr is a, you guessed it, collaboration of Norwegian and Finnish black metal musicians and it’s really rather good. Doedsvanger consists on the Norwegian site of Doedsadmiral (Nordjevel e.a.) on vocals and Anti-Christian (Tsjuder, Grimfist e.a.) on drums. Finland is represented by Shatraug (Horna, Behexen, Sargeist e.a.) on guitar and bass. Based on this line-up, you’d expect some decent, well-crafted albeit not very original black metal. And you’d expect correctly.

 Satan Ov Suns is a well constructed album that oozes confidence which is to be expected from the band members’ curriculum. And while it may not be the most original black metal release I’d much rather listen to this than some stuff that’s groundbreaking for the sake of being groundbreaking. Most of the tracks on Satan Ov Suns are mid-tempo, with a bit of groove and some black ‘n roll influences. Think Tulus meets early Dodheimsgard. There’s the occasional shift up in speed which creates some welcome variety in the tracks. My favorite track is ‘Northern Watchtowers’ for the simple reason that it showcases all the variety that Doedsvangr has to offer, in one neat slab of grim ugliness, with a killer main riff.

Production-wise it falls into what I consider to be the ‘modern’ black metal sound. Instrument levels are nicely worked out and all the parts get plenty of room to breathe. There is however that hint of rawness that keeps it from sounding too over-produced. In a few tracks there are some issues with the drums that sound a bit too 'hissy', or 'shimmery' (for lack of a better word) but that’s me nitpicking now. Also, given the choice, I wouldn’t have the fade-out at the end of each ambient interlude between songs. And because they’re so cool and creepy, I wouldn’t have minded if they were a bit longer.

In conclusion: I know I start to sound like a broken record, but IFP has proven time and time again they know what they are doing. I’m not afraid to proclaim that by now they have reached that stage that labels like Osmose , Necropolis and Moonfog for example had reached in the 1990s. A name that is a sign of quality that you could blindly purchase any album that they put out. Doedsvangr is yet another proof of that.

 

Björn