Destroy your modern metal, and bang your fucking head!
This discussion between Peregrinus is the continuation from Part 01 with a large bulk of it carrying-off within the same timeline as Part 01, but with little gaps of time in between. When I learned Heraldic Blaze was releasing their debut full-length later in the year, I thought it would make sense to release Part 02 after its release and that way I could cherry-pick a few questions to ask…
This discussion between Peregrinus and I took shape organically by way of a conversation he and I were initially having about the new Avmakt album and how much it feels like a "A Blaze in the Northern Sky' songs with the production and lens of 'Under A Funeral Moon'—We both agreed this was something the two of us were digging in the scope of second-wave black metal…Which then, bled into me…
This is a more brief discussion that took place over the course of a week with the venerable and fervorous A.A. Nemtheanga with the intention of poking and prodding into the intentions and ideas of his newest group, Verminous Serpent. I had an early listening promo and spent nearly two weeks straight listening to it, munching on their blend of bestial black/death metal which draws from the wells…
This is a discussion that took place over the course of a week with H.—Lone member in the atmospheric black metal project called Oerheks. I received an early listening promo for 'Landschapsanachronismen' and was levelled by the atmospheric heft and austerity flowing through the two-track demo, so I reached out to H. and bothered him with a series of probing questions in preparation for the album…
Damned by CRAWL • † • Crawl exists in the arena of doom metal as a one-man force of bone gnashing atmospherics that move around with the same agility and haste as old people fucking—It’s lugubrious and dismal and mired in cavernous noise, dank and crumbling. You’ve heard this before, many times actually, but maybe not exactly in this way. The use of ambient passages in Lurker of Chalice comes to…
Hellfriends by Demon Bitch • † • ‘ Hellfriends ’ is spastic and raw plummet through the obsidian archways of early heavy metal, albeit completely jagged with a very limited reverence for conventional structure, sounding something between early Slough Feg in need of a Ritalin shot and a sloppier Mercyful Fate in full chain mail. There's a resounding energy flowing through every song, as if it were…
Forbidden World by Antichrist • † • One of the best modern-day approaches to an old worn-out genre, beaten to death with bad production and style and a swath of copycats who have totally missed the fucking point. Not Antichrist from Sweden though, these guys understand the sound of the 80’s and shove it up your ass. Sodomy through sonic annihilation! It’s like the first time I heard ‘ Show No…
The Life Feeding Flame by FŌR • † • The Life Feeding Flame is an album that has tremendous output sonically, in that its energy is vigorous and full of weight behind it. Seriously this album has an elemental power running through it, like it's been forged through magma rather than written and performed. I don't know how to make sense of that but in the same way bands like Hate Forest , Bølzer and…
• † • The Unquenchable merchants of aural fury and barbarism ride into the end of the year with a late release of their trademark black metal and its sheer immensity picks up right where ' Hour of the Centaur ' left off. Buoyed by the tumult of this year, and no doubt the years prior, intensity and animosity is a palpable force on ' Innermost ' as torrents of icy riffs wage war with the galloping…
Untamed Force by FORESEEN • † • Finland's Foreseen have been around for a better part of a decade, throwing their weight around in the arena of thrash and crossover, and they have never before faltered in their approach of agitated dirge. They continue the destruction on Untamed Force upping the ante with riff after riff under a production that is right on the money here—Mirky and heavy to the…
Manna From Heaven by Chasm Shroud • † • You peer into the void. You see nothing, but hear faint sounds in the distance emanating from the yawning maw of black space… Manna From Heaven came out of nowhere, suddenly appearing (no demos or EP’s prior) and carrying with it some of the most intriguing black metal I’ve heard all year—It’s hard to pin down exactly, but a strange energy circulates here,…
Gurre by Ara • † • Channeling the same austerity and heft as was circling around the fjords of Norway in the 90’s black metal sound, Ara (meaning “Era” in German) ride under those same black banners—Evincing a similar raw power through a bottom of the barrel production and a flurry of icy tremolo picking. It’s form over function and it sounds PRIMITIVE! A thousand other bands released albums in…
Leucosis by Leucosis • † • This is a record that's been put up on here before but it's high-time for a re-up since it's been buried by a swath of posts that have come after. Leucosis ' self-titled output from 2013 is the bands pivotal release, in my opinion—Its heft hasn't been dulled by the years one fucking bit! It remains a force of brute and murky doom metal flanked by a raw and oppressive…
Avindskjold by Ærekær • † • I can't recall if I have already posted about these guys back when they released their first full-length back in 2018—Blowing right passed the process of writing and recording a demo or EP this Danish duo launched themselves into the sonic stratosphere via a full-length album rife with atmosphere and tonality through a musical cloth woven from early 90's black metal and…
The Divide by Sepsis • † • Here's an illusive slab of frenetic crust punk/hardcore from the murky depths of Australia few here will be privy to but likely interested in! Drenched in reverb and grime. every corner of music is ransacked by overblown tone and bass, giving little time for reflection beyond total destruction—It sounds and feels like the halcyon days of newly-shaped hardcore, when early…
I reached out to D.B. during the tail-end of the pandemic to see if he had any interest in chewing the fat with me about the many projects he's been involved in— Negativa had just put out a new record and it quickly became something I overplayed, which spawned a relatively short discussion as you see it below! D.B. doesn't miss, so check out all of his releases through Negativa , Délirant and…
Effigies of Obsolescence by Chaotian • † • Denmark’s murky death metal scene has been fertile ground for a death metal sound that I would say is uniquely its own—Purveyors of an atypical cavernous and oblique output with festering guitar chords and drums from hell! It’s not that these things aren’t being done elsewhere, it’s just that Denmark is on its own level with its own ethos—Similar to New…
Hadean Tides by Assumption • † • In the arenas of doom/death metal, Assumption are a brutish juggernaut of sheer force and gargantuan magnitude, wielding — Hadean Tides was officially uncaged yesterday and its presence is a seismic amalgamation of glacially paced doom with bouts of frenzied death metal peppered throughout. As I search my skull for fashionable adjectives and pithy aphorisms to…
Häxenzijrkell - Urgrund by Amor Fati Productions • † • Häxenzijrkell 's, Urgrund , is some far out there black metal, heavily entrenched in a angular and obscure atmosphere that practically exhales something arcane… something at the very least, different then what we've all come to accept under the banner of black metal. A whirling plume of esoteric sounds swirl around here in a woozy haze of…
The Conjuration of Nebula by Cer • † • The Conjuration of Nebula has seemingly flown under everyone's radar and it's a crucial misstep because Cer 's newest (and apparently last) output has done all the right things, and has done them with total fucking control! Two tracks running three-quarters of an hour of blown-out ambient black metal annihilation. The entire aural experience is drenched in a…
The Pact by NEGATIVE PLANE • † • This is a big one! A new Negative Plane release announced and committed to wax is something to be hopeful about—A full decade and one extra trip around the sun later of muted silence, New York's esoteric black metal sweethearts of the underground are back and just as infallible as ever… But I'm rolling my eyes into the back of my skull by all these eager…
Mortuus Infradaemoni - Inmortuos Sum by Iron Bonehead Productions • † • This record came out a few days ago through the always promising Iron Bonehead Productions , and since then, I have been listening to it every day picking it apart in my head. At first I thought this was going to be another black/death record with a penchant for the avant-garde, but upon the 4 minute mark of the first song…
Ordalies by Véhémence • † • Nowadays whenever I see anything that looks like this album (crudely illustrated) or is slapped with a "medieval", "epic" or sometimes even an "atmospheric" black metal tag I approach with the same type of caution Nosferatu might have towards a garlic factory. I used to gobble it up, things of this ilk. But now that I'm a decade older and grumpy it just mostly sounds…
Relics of the Dead by Druid Lord • † • I've been meaning to have this new Druid Lord album up on here since it came out in late January but got distracted somewhere along the way. Relics of the Dead is a perfectly executed pastiche of old school death metal a la Immolation with the mid-tempo execution of Disma flanked by the THC soaked doom of Acid Witch with less vintage horror campiness, albeit…
Resilience & Despair by QAALM • † • I've been sitting on my hands patiently for Qaalm 's debut album ever since Hypaethral Records announced it and then benevolently dropped me an early listening link—The small perks of being a sonic traveller is that you can use tact and guile to convince people to send you unreleased records in exchange that you might put together a few (positive) words to…