Latest Reviews

Legendary death doom outfit, Cianide are one of my criminally underrated bands with them rarely getting anywhere near as much spin time as they deserve. This EP coming up in the feature release section this month has been a timely kick up the arse to remedy that for a few hours at least. Unhumanized is only a shade under twenty-six-minutes long and perhaps is not the Chicago trio at their absolute best, yet it is still a bruising and entertaining affair to listen to.

Coming out thirty-one-years after the band first got together, Unhumanized has the hallmarks of an established and mature band. The riffing sounds perfectly crafted and richly performed to accentuate the crunch and groove of the guitar of Scott Carroll. For a band with only one guitarist, he is clearly more than enough, and the mix lets him sit front and centre in proceedings alongside the barking of vocalist Mike Perun. The percussion is less prominent than the guitar and vocals but still does a fantastic job in the background. Check out the punky vibes on the title track for an example of how this is not just a standard death metal release.

Offering some of the best in extreme metal that the underground has to offer, Cianide give a decent enough acquittal of themselves on this release to pique the interest of any fan wanting to go and look at their earlier work. With a discography going all the way back to 1992 when their debut record dropped, this taster of the modern Cianide has enough of their familiar sound to tie it back to their earlier releases. Love me a short EP every now and again to whet the appetite for some further death metal listening afterwards.

Italian speed metallers Bulldozer have never featured very highly in my listening within the realms of The Pit clan. Whilst I would not put their limited airplay down to any problem they present to me, at the same time, I cannot pretend to have ever been overwhelmingly entertained by any of the stuff I have listened to from them. The Final Separation doesn’t put a foot wrong as such, yet nor does it tread anywhere particularly new or even influential either. At times reminiscent of Venom (‘The Cave’) whilst on other occasion being just as close to Motörhead, the album lacks any of the rhythmic riffs that would steer it in the direction of thrash metal and as a result I would suggest the thrash metal tag is irrelevant for this album.

If you a connoisseur of eighties speed metal, then The Final Separation probably holds more sway for you than it does with me after over three decades of listening to metal; I left this sound behind a long while ago I feel. Whilst I am not alien to humour in my metal music, tracks like ‘Don Andras’ are just juvenile to my ears these days. Serving only to break up the otherwise very similar tempos of tracks to this point, this song has little value and stinks of filler.

With, ‘Never Relax’ at least offering some hope of variety for the second half of the album, I could have been forgiven for thinking I was being a little too harsh on the first few tracks. It is cumbersome though and feels pieced together as opposed to a free-flowing track. ‘Don’t Trust the Saint’ is the nearest to thrash metal we get to on the album, but it bounces more than it chops and my interest soon wanes. Final track ‘The Death of Gods’ grumbles some promise of an epic closure to the album, however this is soon lost in an overly grandiose soundscape that pushes my interest onto other things in the room.

The new Lychgate album is likely the last new release in metal that we'll ever get before the new year dawns. And with only over 24 hours before it becomes 2026 in my country, I thought this would be the right album to check out as the clock is ticking down. It's probably the most experimental album of the year, and one that further shows how well I can keep up in The North despite that clan being the least likely for me to ever join.

You want extreme progressive metal more twisting than a supermassive black hole? It's all in this album Precipice! What we have here is the deathly progressive metal of Opeth blended with the avant-garde black metal of Dodheimsgard. Rhythm and melody are covered within heavy riffing, clean leads, and classical keys. The vocals are pretty much what to expect in extreme metal, including chaotic growls and screams. It is also lyrically based on the philosophical works of Forster, Wells, and Eliot, specifically the dark bleakness of humanity's dependence on machines.

The intro of this 9-track album, "The Sleeper Awaits" sets everything up in a haunting fashion, as heard in the piano and orchestration. "Mausoleum of Steel" crashes in with dark aggression balanced out with progressiveness. The devilish harsh vocals in front of the orchestration and metal is so strange yet tempting. "Renunciation" is even darker, further into the center of the world. Leads and vocals unite for a dissonant sound alongside the bass and drums. It's truly a beast lurking in the shadows!

"The Meeting of Orion and Scorpio" turns into clean light tainted by eeriness. Seems like the beast is having its rest. "Hive of Parasites" is a spooky progressive 10-minute epic. It may take some time for listeners to get used to what's going on, but when you do, you can fully embrace it as it embraces you. The vocals stay harsh throughout this cavernous quest. "Death's Twilight Kingdom" has some piano and bass in the intro before the metal beast moves again. Everything keeps changing before you can get a sense of what's happening, like something appears, disappears, and reappears.

"Terror Silence" has a more straight structure that's easy to understandable. Still they have the Opeth-like aspect of shapeshifting riffing. "Anagnorisis" adds to the album's lyrical focus of discovering the true existence of someone else rather than your own. Everything's so dark and deadly, and for me, it's my sweet dessert. Doom is impending... And it comes in "Pangaea". For just 3 short minutes, you feel the black hole engulf you in darkness and death. Then before long, your journey ends on a satisfying note.

Like the edge of a cliff that the album title means, Precipice will give you the feeling of hanging on to your life. It's an experience so unsettling yet pleasant. And in the end, it's all worth leveling up your metal soul!

Favorites: "Mausoleum of Steel", "Renunciation", "Hive of Parasites", "Death's Twilight Kingdom", "Anagnorisis"

Another feature whose subject is an act I have no previous knowledge of is this latest album from Icelandic black metallers Nexion. This is only their second full-length despite their decade of existence so, hopefully, they are a band who favour quality over quantity. Now I am a big fan of Icelandic black metal bands who deliver sweeping epics that conjure up images of the mountains, hot springs and ice-fields of their native land, such as Auðn and Árstíðir lífsins, but the initial impression I got from "Sundrung" was of a less epic and more violent record that incorporates significant influence from death metal, especially production-wise. This isn't necessarily the case though, as I think the band still deliver an album of epic black metal, although it is delivered in a different way to the aforementioned acts.

The death metal influence is evident and does beef up the bands sound significantly, yet the twin guitar tremolo riffing and frequent use of harmonised, viking metal-like backing vocals does imbue it with a sense of the epic. This saga-like feeling to the tracks is futher accentuated by the use of a significant layer of atmospheric dissonance, similar in tone to that utilised by the superb Ulcerate, which makes the album feel like an Árstíðir lífsins album recorded by Deathspell Omega (this is a good thing, by the way). So, despite the violence on display, in no small part due to the savagery deployed by vocalist Jósúa Rood, there is still a sense of a striking and epic scope to the instrumentation.

For me at least, this was an album that didn't instantly grab my attention and whose inherent viciousness just sort of washed over me at first, but it is a multi-layered beast and ultimately rewards the listener the more they are willing to invest in it as it is a fairly complex entity hiding in the skin of a visceral and savage beast. While I am a metal fan of fairly simple tastes, it is great to sometimes be presented with an album that challenges initial perceptions and which makes me want to keep returning to it to dig deeper into its labyrinthine depths and "Sundrung" is definitely one such album. The only real downside for me was the drums which felt quite one-dimensional and dulled in delivery, but that is a minor issue in the scheme of things here.

One of the things I love about metal is the diversity. When different genres come together, they bring some uniqueness to the table, creating a sweet feast. And one band that kinda do that is Ithilien. In their second album Shaping the Soul, these Belgians decide to do something that was unusual at the time, mixing together folk metal and metalcore to make... folk-core! And this album came out 4 years after their more melodeath-oriented debut.

Throughout this thunderous 10-song 50-minute offering, expect some Eluveitie-esque epic folk metal with more hardcore riffing, bass, and vocals. There's still some of their earlier melodeath here and there, only in smaller chunks, leaving most of the heaviness to their modern metalcore side.

"Blindfolded" starts the album with a slow march of guitars and Celtic instruments, then when the screaming vocals enter the picture, the drumming tempo really speeds up. This is basically the kind of soundtrack Game of Thrones needs for their enemy-slashing battles. And when the mid-paced folk sections come back on, they're for getting hammered, partying, and simply headbanging to the loud heaviness. "Lies After Lies" continues that pace with added flute. It's more emotional while still having that heavy energy. The title track may be the closest we have to their melodeath roots. Everything's so frantic with bursts of melody and the usual background Celtic instrumentation. This killer opening group of tracks reaches its peak in the next track...

My favorite track here, "Walk Away", is the band's longest song at nearly 8 minutes. Slow folky melancholy is its main purpose, sounding epic without having to resort to much metal. The emotion is sadly lost in "If Only", which has nothing but hollow filler. The interlude "Emma" nice and relaxing but doesn't do much either.

"Edelweiss" is named after a flower in Switzerland, though the song's relation to Switzerland has more in common with Eluveitie, complete with heavy raging fire. Another exceptional track is "Hopeless". There's more variation in the vocals and atmosphere, and maybe they can have more of that in their possible next album. "The Dive" explodes in melodic rage, though I feel like there could've been slightly more to ignite. "The Bear Dance" is a fun instrumental worth a LOTR-style victory dance party.

All in all, Shaping the Soul is a better Ithilien album. This folk-core sound with small melodeath doses is quite fun and unique. And there's barely any of the repitition the debut has, other than that small mid-album slump. This should get metalheads interested and on the edge of their seats for their next album to come. Very soon, I hope....

Favorites: "Blindfolded", "Shaping the Soul", "Walk Away", "Edelweiss", "Hopeless"

Getting back into the epic folk metal zone that I was in 10 years before this review when I was into the more melodic metal genres, while still taking on the heavier modern metalcore, has made me quite curious about what those two genres would be like mixed together. We already have Equilibrium doing that with their later material, but before that was the modernized folk stylings of Ithilien...

Named after a region in Gondor from The Lord of the Rings, this Belgian band released their debut From Ashes to the Frozen Land in 2013. Celtic-infused folk metal is blended with modern melodeath similarly to Eluveitie, albeit with some Scandinavian viking/black metal elements.

The intro "Battle Cry" is a nice gentle start. When Celtic bagpipes come in, it sounds like something out of the Braveheart soundtrack, at the same time fooling some listeners into thinking is the beginning of a new Dragonland album. Punching through is "Unleashed", unleashing some Nordic melodeath power, sounding blackened in the vocals and blast-beats. Getting a little calmer while staying heavy, "Rebirth" is more mid-paced with beautiful leads. It doesn't beat the previous track which I prefer coming back to more.

A long-ish interlude "Sealed Destiny" comes in, and as good as it is, I feel like it would be better if it wasn't placed so early. Maybe it wouldn't be so odd if placed after these two 6+ minute epics coming up next. The first of which, "Through Wind and Snow", is a grand example of folk-fueled melodeath alternating between fast and slow, with similar vibes to bands like Kalmah, Swallow the Sun, Mercenary, and Hope for the Dying. Also will those crickets stop chirping at the end?! It's not boring at all! Again shining with speed is the other epic, "Reckless Child". No problems there! "Drinkin' Song" I also enjoy for its upbeat fun. I'm glad to not let seriousness get the best of me.

"Mother of the Night" is another fast standout. But then comes the repetitive "Stare Into the Deep". It's a rather hollow mess of things. "Everlasting Dawn" makes up for it as the most blackened gem here. Love that one! "A World Undone" ends up being a waste of 5 minutes. If they took that sh*t out and moved that earlier interlude up to track 6, I would've given this album an extra half-star. "Northern Light" ends the album as another bagpipe instrumental, this one as long as that second interlude.

With their debut From Ashes to the Frozen Land, Ithilien has the potential to expand the boundaries of epic folk/melodeath. However, as talented as the band members are, a few songs lack some strength. Still it's for anyone up for this kind of blend, and there's more of that in their next album, when they add some metalcore to their cauldron....

Favorites: "Unleashed", "Through Wind and Snow", "Reckless Child", "Drinkin' Song", "Mother of the Night", "Everlasting Dawn"

OK, so I'm sure there will be a few people who will question my having awarded the universally-panned eighth full-length from Swedish black/Viking metal godfathers Bathory a decent score & I would have sat in that camp when I first heard it at the time of release too but it's honestly nowhere near as bad as people make it out to be. Sure, the production has intentionally been kept as raw as fuck & Quorthon's vocals aren't gonna win any awards but surely we were all used to his vocal deficiencies by that stage & the song-writing isn't half bad most of the time, if never threatening to deviate from the classic underground thrash metal sound.

Quorthon said at the time that Bathory had backed themselves into a creative corner after 1991's "Twilight of the Gods" by releasing ever more epic albums so he was looking for the next step in terms of style. He ended up releasing a grunge solo album in 1994 so as to tick off a bucket-list goal he'd always had & it felt great to be able to simply create something he'd wanted to for a long time without worrying about what his fan base thought. Some of his fans had been telling him that they missed his older, rawer Bathory material so he decided to make a raw, DIY-style thrash record for fun with 1994's "Requiem" being the result. He enjoyed the process so much that he followed it up with "Octagon" around six months later & both were brutally criticized by fans & critics. I agree that "Requiem" was subpar but "Octagon" is a little better in my opinion, if being noticeably simple in its construction. Sure, there are a few duds to be found here (see "Century", "War Supply" & "Judgement of Posterity") but there are also some very solid inclusions like "Sociopath" & "Schizianity" & the wins comfortably outweigh the losses. I even quite like the fairly faithful rendition of KISS's "Deuce" so I guess it's fair to say that "Octagon" is a guilty pleasure for me these days. It's strange how time can sometimes change your perceptions so much, isn't it? I can do without the sections that look to tackle the classic Anthrax sound though as they fail dismally.

For fans of Kreator, Slayer & Celtic Frost.

I'm not planning on starting a Metal Academy hall on this, but there's just enough scattered throughout this album for me to call it a death metal album.  But much of it builds itself on softer vocals, much like Ulver did with black metal, but lacking reverb.  While many of the same elements are shared across the ten songs, including the random shifting between prog and melo-death, and occasional folsky elements, there are certain elements that make it hard to pick favorites among the batch, such as the occasional Arabic touches in Enemy at the Gates and Death of a King (and milder levels of it in White Night), as well as the Celtic metal sound of Tree of Ages.  As well, there's a level of melody hear that I have to say utterly astounded me as a prog metal fan.  While it maintains strong accessibility, it carefully molds all of the essential Amorphis elements together into, as one reviewer here put it, alchemically (I'm using this fake word and no one's stopping me).  As an FMA fan, I have to say that the melody here reaches Philosopher's Stone levels of purity.  Still, it's impossible not to notice a formula here that makes things a little predictable at the end, but they certainly nailed rocking the formula.  I may have to re-evaluate Elegy, but this is currently my favorite Amorphis album (and maybe my favorite Amorphis album cover).

98

Of all the genres I enjoy in my metal journey, there's one I somehow seem to neglect in favor of everything else, post-sludge. I don't think I've discovered much from that genre beyond its Big 4 (Neurosis, Isis, Cult of Luna, The Ocean) and Rosetta. Many of its songs guide you through transcending realms, showing that metal doesn't always have to be about chaos and speed. So when this Dimscua EP was brought into discussion, I thought it was a good time to catch up with what I was missing out on.

And wow, what an EP! Dust Eater is the start of a promising career for this UK post-sludge band. We haven't heard anything new from Cult of Luna for a while, but this offering feels like a solid continuation to that band's sound. Dimscua has only just formed this year, and they already have a lot of emotion and grief in their music.

"Elder Bairn" already sets up the atmosphere with its bleak guitar tone and screamed vocals. The riffing rhythm rises before reaches its height in an apocalyptic explosion. The riff storm strikes down as the screams haunt you like tortured souls. An absolutely devastating start to the adventure! The title track seems a bit stretchy in the rhythm, but that's my one and only complaint. The music still sounds huge and emotional.

Raw emotion continues to shine in "Existence/Futility", with different melodies built to last then built to fall. It's like a strong fight that you end up winning and losing multiple times. And is it all worth it? For sure! "On Being and Nothingness" is the 10-minute final epic and a true example of the post-sludge sound developed by the earlier masters of the genre, proving that it's far from dead. The chords and vocals drift through a dimension of catatonia. By the time it all ends, you become one with the astral plane. A dark satisfying end to this atmospheric journey!

As cheesy as this may seem in theory, tragedy has turned into art that can easily resonate. The tragedy that is guitarist/bassist Adam Campbell-Train losing his daughter (RIP). The end result is the amazing return of the post-sludge sound we know. Here's to a possible full album from the genre's new chosen ones!

Favorites: "Elder Bairn", "On Being and Nothingness"

Thundering out of Berkshire, England to truly throw a spanner in my ‘EoY Fallen Album List’ come atmo-sludge quintet, Dimscûa. I would say that 2025 has been the year that I started to explore atmospheric-sludge metal for the first time, its calmer post-metal tendencies offset nicely by the harsher vocal attacks and smothering heaviness of the riffs that are my usual (and still preferred) listening fodder. Listening to Dust Eater sort of feels like I am in familiar territory nowadays which has most certainly helped me warm to it quickly. Hidden behind the straight delivery and more subtle sections, there is a sense of the epic going on also though which adds extra interest into proceedings.

This may just be clever use of guitar tone in all honesty, with some well-placed chiming effect adding some positive volume to the already doughty performance. Dust Eater is delivered with an attack that brings to my mind that each of the band members are grinning with each blow they make in their flannel shirts and jeans – another image I have in my head for some reason. Whilst I cannot describe the EP as uplifting, it does possess a pragmatic approach that gives the music a sense of being constructive without being restrictive. There’s no question that the band have gears they can get through, but they are always in full control, not just when ticking over in first or second gear.

The poignancy in the strings that open the final track, ‘On Being and Nothingness’, set against that haunting ambience that drifts through the background of the track, shows a band who can play with real emotion in their performances. Whilst the subject matter may explore darker tropes, the five-piece are unafraid to display the inherent beauty that can still be found in the themes of grief or loss. Of the content of this sub-genre that I have heard this year, Dimscûa chart pretty highly to my ears.

When bassist Alessandro Venturella and drummer Jay Weinberg replaced the late Paul Gray and Joey Jordison (RIP), it was uncertain how .5: The Gray Chapter would turn out before its release. Of course, the critical acclaim for that album was enough for them to stick around for another headbanging album, We Are Not Your Kind. However, a lawsuit between percussionist Chris Fehn and the rest of the band would lead to his dismissal, only appearing in a bonus track that we'll talk about when we get there...

Slipknot is another band that can master their heavy/catchy blend. They're an easy band for metal newcomers to get into downtuned riffing and growled vocals. I think this was my first full-album experience when it first came out and my brother recommended it to me, though I haven't gotten to reviewing it until now.

Kicking things off with the intro "Insert Coin", an eerie electronic atmosphere sets the stage. The segue to "Unsainted" seems a bit abrupt. Nonetheless, it's a fantastic start to the action, also being the first single. After an epic rising choir intro, heavy verses rush in with all their might, and the melodic catchy chorus with the same melody and lyrics as the song's intro helps keep things accessible. OK, the choir is a little cheesy, but it's still epic, reaching its height in the final chorus. Next up, "Birth of the Cruel" is another cool highlight. The chorus is quite devastating in the riffing and vocals. Brilliant! "Death Because of Death" is a nice interlude, though a little too early in the tracklisting.

I also have mixed feelings for "Nero Forte". The verses and bridge are greatly intense in the riffing and vocals, but the chorus ruins things. Vocalist Corey Taylor's clean singing sounds unfitting, and makes it all sound like a butchered take on Demon Hunter/Mercenary. The same issue occurs in "Critical Darling", which I'm somewhat a critic of. Great verses, iffy chorus. But then we have another favorite of mine in "A Liar's Funeral", which brings it all back to the atmospheric side of Iowa. The haunting screams of "LIAR!!!!" and "BURN THE LIAR!!!", the latter in the intense chorus, all make this one of the best here. It's like Godflesh's Hymns all over again! Next song "Red Flag" cranks up the rhythmic heaviness and speed, while making room for a bit of melody. "What's Next" is another eerie interlude to get you ready for what's next.

"Spiders" is kind of an odd one for me. That keyboard melody and cheesy chorus makes it sound more suitable for the Halloween soundtrack, even sounding like John Carpenter's theme for that movie. There's not much buildup there, so it never goes anywhere. "Orphan" is another deep-cutting thrashy highlight. But the next track "My Pain" is a better one. Everything's filled with intense darkness. It probably would've been better trimmed by a minute or two, though I still approve. "Not Long for this World" is another overlong track, and this time it's too long for its own good. Fortunately, things really pick up in the second half. "Solway Firth" ends the album in a heavy bang. After the intro that reprises the album's intro, the heaviness of Iowa and The Gray Chapter bursts in with anger and destruction, all the way up to the final lyric, "I haven't smiled in years." Well I have! The aforementioned Japanese edition bonus track "All My Life", well...it continues that thrashy sound but isn't as well-executed as the actual finale.

All in all, We Are Not Your Kind is a great follow-up to The Gray Chapter. I can't deny the strength of those songs, though the experimentation in a few odd tracks could've been improved. Still it's definitely worth listening to and recommending to rock/metal fans. Be one with our kind....

Favorites: "Unsainted", "Birth of the Cruel", "A Liar's Funeral", "Red Flag", "Orphan", "My Pain", "Solway Firth"

This ‘atmospheric sludge’ tag that has grown legs in recent years is one that adorns the chests of Chicago’s The Atlas Moth from as far back as their 2007 inception. Granted, I can hear sludge in their sound as well as also being able to hear atmospheric textures, but at the same time there is the intimation of so much more over the course of An Ache for the Distance. Pure doom and stoner metal make an appearance alongside an obvious 70’s rock influence making the album something of a devious demon to contend with. It renders the genre tagging somewhat irrelevant, not that I am even sure how seriously the band themselves pay much attention to whether their sound is ‘atmospheric sludge’ or not.

What is clear on this record is that the performance is unforced, cohesive and very relaxed. It is an album that sounds like a band working free of any boundaries in all honesty which leads to this sense of flow as elements manage to compliment each other nicely. Even with three guitars in play, there is a constant coherence to proceedings. This trio of axes is thoughtfully layered, proving many moving parts can work. Whether it is the post-metal pickings alongside psychedelic loops that ooze through, or the elements of the harsher riffs, there is order to them.

I do struggle with this album though. For as much as I can recognise the quality on display, it does move styles a little too often for me, killing a lot of memorability in the process and leaving sections of the album feeling like they are wandering as opposed to progressing. After a few listens to the album, I could not fight the feeling of it getting stuck in a no-man’s land; unable to shape the obvious promise into a consistent theme. Take the brilliant final third of ‘Your Calm Waters’, a section that shows clear direction but the effort of listening to get there is taxing for me.

It is only the final track, ‘Horse Thieves’ that resonates in its Yob-like glory to the point of finally giving the album some real grounding. That big, slow and doomy riff, alongside the melancholic melody sees both elements played to a tortuously drawn-out pace. The trumpet here, although unexpected, fits well. It gives a soothing drone during the growing chaos of the track. It is a positive note to end on at least, and whilst I cannot reach for my higher scores on this one, The Atlas Moth do enough in terms of their clear quality of playing to manage to also keep the album well away from the lower end of my scores also.

I'm a bit surprised that I'll be the first one to review this album, considering that it was one of the creators who got me into this band.  Sear Bliss is known for changing things up about every album, and it typically pans out, even if the end results aren't always perfect.  In fact, some Sear Bliss albums are a bit samey when they focus on a singular sound.  Their debut album, Phantoms, was just like that, and there aren't many variations in Letters from the Edge or Glory and Perdition.  This album is completely different.  After the soaring Elysian vibes ruled their debut album, they took a completely different direction, one that's inches away from not being black metal, being dirty and traditional, and even featuring doom riffs.  Every song takes a different turn, but still bears the essentials needed for black metal.  However, songs like Soulless would rather be made up of part dungeon synth and part traditional doom metal.  The point is made as soon as the album's turned on, leaving an earthy texture in your brain.  The instrumentation is constantly impressive, boasting some of the band's healthiest melodies.  But there is one drawback in all of this: the voice doesn't always fit the melodies, and sometimes (though not most of the time), he feels like he's just there.  Hell, even the opener will probably tell you that, unfortunately.  Otherwise, this is one of Sear Bliss's most unique, least atmospheric and hardest hitting albums they've done.

97

Here it is, the final album I need to review before I finally earn my fourth clan symbol on Metal Academy, the last of the Black Metal Challenge: Nemesis Divina.  I've heard absolutely nothing but revery for this album.  When I heard their debut, Dark Medieval Times, I was quite impressed with the playfulness, but the second seemed to do away with that playfulness, so I was a bit worried.

The mixing is practically infernal.  It sounds like fire coming from the ground just to grab you in the face and yell at you.  And these guys have a lot to yell about.  The maelstrom of flame will drown out all sound even at low volumes, but nothing suffers in the mixing.  It's incredible.  Nothing lo-fi about it like in the first two albums.  Frost is at his most aggressive and challenging with his drumkit, making for a good deal of the blackened noise that adds to the maelstrom, and the new bassist, Kveldulv, adds an extra layer that they didn't have before.  and the new And it looks like some of their playfulness is back as well.  I honestly wasn't expecting that jazzy piano outro Forhekset.  And it's nice to see them getting more heavily invested in the symphonic sound with Mother North, as well as getting into some proggier territory, especially with their opener, The Dawn of a New Age (could that be any more poetic?)  And for their grand finale, they don't go for some standard dungeon synth track like they did last time, they went for a weird piece of softer blackened rock, tribal drums and some ambient on the side.  I'd have liked to see more of that throughout the album.

Easily their most challenging and brutal, it's easy to see why the world fell in love with this album.  This is basically fire, both in the sense that it's really good and the sense that it burns you up from the inside out.  Unfortunately, this is supposed to be where the great stuff ends for the rest of their career, but if this is to be considered a sendoff to that age, then it's a hell of a good one.

95

What I greatly appreciated about the Satyricon debut was the boldness and the exploration of Norwegian influences in black metal.  There was a lot going on that added a good deal of personality to the album without ever feeling like too much.  This second album, however, trades some of that inventiveness for a more straightforward black metal sound and improved production.  This is not to say that it's a bad album, just that a more straightforward direction isn't the kind of direction I would want to take after only one album.  Inferior, but still worth checking out.

Now the structures here are very good.  There's a lot of clever riffage and some good progressiveness that drives the whole album, even when the songs last ten minutes.  It never gets tiring no matter how long any song gets, already helping it to stand out from a bunch of other early black releases that were mostly worried about the sound, the heaviness and saying something rude against Christians.  On that latter note, the lyrical poetry remains full of imagery and class.  While the typical themes such as anti-religion and Norse wartime are present, they're certainly more full of life than the standard black metal band of the early days.  And there's none of that obnoxious gore and vulgarity that Bathory was so proud of when he wrote The Golden Walls of Heaven.  I also feel that Satyr, the lead vocalist, improved his range a little on some of these songs, allowing his unique (at the time) voice to go even farther when the back's style took a step backwards.  There's more professionalism in his voice this time around.  Of course, it finally produces a dungeon synth song at the end, but that doesn't really say "variety" as much as it says "slow and mysterious ending."

This second Satyricon piece was a fun album with a lot of creativity invested in the melodies, but there was an identity shift here that I didn't care for.  Still, considering how much effort they put into the melodies and lyrics, I would still say this manages to be a great album.

90

I think I may have made the right choice in choosing Satyricon to end my Metal Academy black metal challenge.  Their third album, Nemesis Divina, is the one I need to hear, and is considered their best album.  On top of which, there's the coincidence that the previous album I heard for this, Thorns, features the lead singer as a vocalist.  Now I say that they were the right choice because right from the getgo, they dive into the artistry, genre-bending and unpredictability I generally look for.

The lo-fi production in this instance helps the tremolos a lot, which is a bit of a breath of fresh air considering how many lo-fi debuts don't manage anything with the production.  These guys knew how to utilize it.  But softer and flute-driven areas, such as the ones in the title track, have no background noise whatsoever, so the abrupt switches are much more sudden and surprising.  The first couple tracks on the album are built on these kinds of shifts, but this is not to say that the band is simply showing off.  These songs are just as intriguing and melodic as they are poetic, so this works out for the better on a consistent basis.  Some exclusions, such as the folk interlude Min hyllest til vinterland, are a welcome break from it simply because the album already made a point of exploring the world of the North through various musical styles with black at the front.  As well, the next track is pure black metal, adding a faint amount of synths in the early days, but not enough to really count towards the extreme development of the symphonic black genre that Emperor pioneered.  And while the last two tracks largely go for the black metal aspects already previously established, the songwriting remains intriguing in their own ways.  I still prefer the first two tracks, however.

Satyricon's debut album proved that they already knew what they were doing on day one.  These guys were built for black metal, and if they're only gonna keep getting better from there for a while, I expect brilliant things from them.

94

Bolt Thrower has something very interesting going on with it's songwriting and themes. They have a very characteristic minimal composition style: just a couple of simple, mid-paced riffs arranged in a logical way with enough beat variations to back it all up. Throw some badass growls over it and you have Bolt Thrower. Now, that is not to say that they are overly simplistic or boring! This is very heavy hitting death metal that in some way says something important about the genre itself. It's like boiling down the style to it's bare fundamentals and applying them with precision, and because of this the whole thing is a masterclass in efficient songwriting. But above this, I'm very interested in how this couples very, very well with their themes and aesthetics. Bolt Thrower doesn't care much about occultist fascinations or hyper-violent, gore-ridden fantasy. It's theme is the very real and brutal violence of war, an unquestionable and immutable truth. Coupled with their mid-paced, martial sound and minimalist precision, the outcome has a monolithic, eternal quality to it. That is something I can very much admire and look up to, because it is in fact very artistic, aside being awesome heavy metal.

Well, why the mid rating then? Unfortunately I do have some problems with this, which I guess is their most revered release. While there are some very good songs here, particularly Where Next to Conquer, As The World Burns and Spearhead, I do find the album too long and somewhat samey, making me lose interest a bit towards the end. Also, I don't like this production at all. The strings sound very bassy and glued, which I do like, but there's a critical lack of high end in the mix, and the drums sound muffled and don't have enough impact. That's all very unfortunate, because I actually want to like this album, the songs I enjoy are badass and awesome, and the cover art and title are incredible. Such a cool looking album, but unfortunately a let down to me. I'll be searching for a Bolt Thrower album that I can get behind and praise, because the band is pretty interesting.

Not sure why I didn't get to this album before.  Taake exploration has typically been really on and off for me.  I've always liked his albums well enough, but never really loved them.  But since I heard a few, I guess that obligates me to hear Nattestid ser porten vid.  It's conisder his best by many of his fans, after all, and it IS an influential debut album.

I have to say I have mixed feeling about... the mixing.  It's nice that the Paysage sound that is known for drowning things out creates a noisy, despondent atmosphere, but the issue is that the drumming is way too drowned out, and flows to closely to the sound of a poorly recorded demo in the guise of a studio album, when Paysage's demo was handled LIKE a studio album.  Even when I was on Taake's topic page listening to the official playlist, I thought I landed on a video with bad mixing and that video somehow landed in the topic page by mistake.  But I'm not gonna complain about the compositions.  They were a lot of fun.  There was an ass-ton of energy that was just begging to be released, like a battery is about to explode.  I would even go as far as to say some of these songs are absolutely genius, and thankfully, a couple of them have better mixing for the percussions than others.  The problem is mostly fixed on III, which is flat-out one of the best black metal songs I've ever heard.  The raw ferocity and the incurable rage are on STRIPPER display.  There isn't a lot of variation between tracks, but it remains fun throughout, and ends with an incredible nine-minute bang that almost matches III.

So despite its mixing problem, I would agree with those who say this is his best album.  The mania of the album is enough to drive you insane from metalhead zealousness.  For the most part, Furia certainly knew what he was doing.

92

Now you don't have to look too closely to notice some stylistic similarities to Dissection, Necrophobic and Dawn, but they developed their own identity by focusing more on the atmosphere than the riffs.  Their have the tremolos of one a careful mix of evil and serenity.  Hell, it doesn't even have to be black metal.  That 3.5 minute piano interlude called So Far Beyond is truly appreciated, considering that most black metal artists will just include a weird sound effect at the start for a few seconds before blasting right into the black metal.  And Vinterskogen is basically a slow instrumental ballad praising everything that's supposed to make the more beautiful side of black metal what it is.  That's easily one of my favorite melodic black metal songs ever, and melody only comes second to the artistry.  But even though they're not as riff-based as Dissection, whatever solos and riffs they do carry are generally very impressive.  But one negative I need to point out is the drums.  It kinda of beats in the back of my head in an awkward way, like a woodpecker doing its natural duty.  That can be a big distraction, and should've been replaced with another drum.  Still, it's very nice to hear a black metal band focus more on delivery and variation than on trying to set up a formula to follow.

Now there are only two things getting in the way of a five-star release: a little familiarity and the bass drums.  Otherwise, this is totally solid.  It's evil, it's melancholy, it's serene and it's gorgeous.  Yet another iconic one-album-wonder from the black metal scene gets my stamp of approval.

93

Yet another unfortunate tale of a clever and skillful metal band having only released one album, just like Weakling released Dead As Dreams and we never heard from them again.  Apparently, the people behind this album, Kvist, only managed to release one single 25 years after this album.  And the worst part?  We don't know a damn thing about the reasoning behind it all!  The band said nothing.  There is nothing.  It's blank.  There is no secret ingredient.  Thus, considering the shorter length and the melodic tag, I had a feeling I would like this even more, and be even more disappointed by the one-album-wonder status.

With just a noticeable amount of the fantasy synths and abnormal guitar tricks that make up dark metal albums like this, the band is able to play up the melodic side quite easily, no matter what mood they set up for their songs.  The vast majority of their rhythms are just as enchanting as they are intriguing, like I'm listening to an alternative soundtrack to The Dark Crystal.  Honestly should've listened to this when I was writing the first Nialoca book.  One of my favorite things about the album is how hard-hitting the percussions are.  There's a real force to them that's clear and not too loud but effective.  As well, there are just enough ventures into the symphonic side to occasionally spruce it up without feeling generic (although it DOES tend to recall Summoning occasionally).  And even though many of the songs are quite similar, nothing ever overstays its welcome.  So this ended up being a cool gem to add to the black metal catalog, one that will keep people begging for a second album, even if they have to beg God for time travel.

91

Having fully differentiated themselves from blackened thrash acts of the past while improving on the strengths of their own debut as well as the strengths of the albums that influenced them, Destroyer 666 continued to prove themselves with another album that took the metal world by an apocalyptic storm.  The improved blackened production adds yet another layer of depth to an already pretty deep band.  You can hardly find any black or thrash metal that sounds this harsh.  I Am the War God will tell you everything you need to know about how far their blackened production has gone.  The first half might really impress you, and the second half is even better.  The extra ferocity in the production and riffs goes hand in hand with the more creative solos.

But I do have this to say.  In their efforts to cement themselves as great artists, there were a couple things they forgot.  For example: The Last Revelation is only 2.5 minutes long when it could've had so much more potential on its own, what with how easy these guys make complex and weird guitar solos look.  Just look at the title track.  That one needs a few people to lasso it in.  I guess they really wanted to make sure the title track specifically stood out, and they did.  As well, the diversity factor was a little bit weakened to make room for the new sound.  Otherwise, this album is five kinds of insane.

90

If there's one thing I want to see in an album, it's a strong sense of art.  On their debut album, Destroyer 666 seemed to utilize that a lot more than a lot of other thrash bands did with their debuts.  After having finished a Metal Academy Thrash Albums Challenge, comparing them to Unchain the Wolves was pretty easy.  The band is really trying to exceed their artistic limits here.  Slow-paced melodies and tempos like the ones present on Genesis to Genocide and Tyranny are so carefully handled for their long runtimes due to a strong sense of epic atmospheres.  And then you have rocket-speed hitters like Australian and Anti-Christ which makes a point of emulating the blackened thrash sound of early Bathory but with the band's own presence, and then moments that can go pure black and assault your ears and brain like Six Curses from a Spiritual Wasteland.  Now the melodies aren't always the best, but they're operable and they're varied enough in each song to ensure than nothing gets tiring.  Even a shorter song can go to three different places before it reaches the halfway point and still feel like its own song.  However, with the sharing of standard thrash and black tempos, there's also an are of familiarity present through the album.  These are most present in Side B, and they get a little tiring by that time.  Otherwise, the album is pretty well done.  These guys seem to have an authantic hatred for organized religion, and that anger drives both their creative side and the ferocious mood of the album.

87

The first two Rotting Christ albums, Thy Might Contract and Non Serviam, built themselves on a dirtier sound and a plethora of riffs, while the first one favored riffs over structure and the second album was a slim improvement in structure and production.  While I liked them, they weren't necessarily the legendary albums I was hearing about.  In fact, I even started these first three albums a couple of times in the hopes of that PERFECT melo-death album for my top 100 metal albums, and they didn't deliver due to sameyness.  But now I'm getting through them, and I'm mostly satisfied with what they did, but this third album is closest to living up to its legend than the other two were.

The third work, Triarchy of the Lost Lovers,  doesn't have dense blackened backgrounds, but rather clean and crystal production, allowing the percussions and the guitars do the talking as they are.  No noise factor, no reverb.  All clarity.  Even when the blast beats are going at their fastest and when the guitars are at their noisiest like in Shadows Follow, the whole thing is straightforward.  This is about the band, not the engineering.  Early on, the band shows off a much needed boost in layout structures balanced out with clever riffs, and a lot of those take the stage in both verse and solo.  As well, the sound is less darkened and more melodic, which means the band is trying to shift their focus, and it works out quite well.  And while many songs share some of the same ideas, the band is branching out into other emotional territories and more tempos as well, when the first two albums were quite samey and used production and technicality, as well as short length, to justify what skill they had.  While it's not as dirty and muddy, and more akin to standard black metal, the sound itself is fully justified by the extra boost in creativity and cleverness. And while the lengths of the songs are a little longer, this time, the band can fully justify the lengths without feeling incomplete because their songwriting has gotten that much better from the debut.

I get why so many people love this album, and I'll bet the Greek metal underground is more than happy to have this album representing their country while influencing an extreme metal scene of their own.  This is the most fun of the classic three albums, and shows several steps forward for the band.

91

Thy Mighty Contract, debut album of influential Hellenic black metal band Rotting Christ, has some very rough, deep and a downright dirty sound to it which feels similar to death metal or war metal.  The album is loaded with fun riffs of various shapes and sizes, which is kind of a sigh of relief considering that the songs rarely break the vibe or genre meant for it.  I imagine that a lot of these riffs would be a lot of fun to play.  One of the rare examples I can think of are the Metroid electronics heard for a few seconds in the middle of Exiled Angels, and another being only a couple of instances of angelic synths that barely make an appearance for more than five seconds.  If they were going for developing a signature sound, then they certainly did the job.  And thanks to the production, everything comes out clearly, and they still manage to make it sound really dirty in their own way.  I think that's actually very impressive.  Of course, being their first time, I'm not surprised that the album had some noteworthy flaws.  For one thing, some of the songs feel like they need another verse, like the were incomplete.  I mean, if the opener, The Sign of Evil Existence, was showing the band going for a two-minute song rather than a two-minute intro, they should've stuck with the intro, because the song had a lot of potential that could be explored.  Same goes for the next couple tracks.  As a result, the album goes by much more quickly than it probably should, clocking in at 37 minutes.  But all of these songs manage a fun perspective anyway.  So this is a good debut that shows personality and technical / melodic skill in lieu of variety and structure.

78

I can only imagine what it was like for those in the know throughout the metal scene to get invested in such an awesome band only for them to break up after one album.  I can at least understand the disappointments of a good band breaking up and the disappointment of a great band only having one album.  For the most part, I've never had to deal with the gut blow of both happening in conjunction.  In fact, it's for that reason that I didn't bother with this 70-minute album for a while.  But now that I'm taking Metal Academy tests to cement myself as a true black metal fan, whether or not this album was required to pass is irrelevant to me (although it is).  I have to stop putting this off.

This album was made just as atmospheric black metal had already made its mark on the underground world.  People were already more than familiar with the likes of Blut Aus Nord and Burzum, but this was a different monster entirely.  The muddy drum sound, the despairing and disturbing guitar tones and the overall emotional core of the music is absolutely haunting.  It might've been their first album, but as Salieri said, this was no piece by a performing monkey.  With the right doses of blackened noise, doom metal and prog metal taking the stage, the album is not only a product of its time but an aural mirror into human torment.  Hell, even the lo-fi production adds an essential factor to the construction of the mirror.  I can't imagine this album sounding as good if it has polished production.

Don't expect to bang your head to this, don't expect to dance.  Find a good chair, sit back, and let the sorrow and lapse in sanity take you away.  Breathe in every second of this muddy and horrid soundscape that throws emotions at you with the speed of a whirlwind and the strength of a hydraulic press.

91

The 90's metal scene was all about two things: crossing the dark side to the radio world of alternative and exploring the true darkness by experimenting with the limitations of extreme metal.  In the blackened vein, after Emperor and Cradle of FIlth built up symphonics, and winter atmospheres were growing, Windir took the stage for the raw, untamed sound of old time Scandinavia.  While the viking aspects of the intro sound dated and cheesy, the sound of the rest of the album is quite good.  It fleshes out the style they built for themselves on their debut with a stronger sense of melody.  The production of the edition I'm listening to isn't bad.  I'm given the black metal feel I demand, which is busy, somewhat noisy, and yet clear enough for everything to be properly displayed.  I understand that many RYMers wrote reviews long ago about how the production was below average.  Considering that I may be listening to a rerelease on YT, I have to wonder if they remastered this edition.

As opposed to the outright evil displayed in many different kinds of black metal bands, Windir took a very different approach.  This album shows how far they can go into the triumphant, positive and epic vibes that come with the pride of being a viking.  This is music right of the the ancient North.  And it rarely even takes this direction to weird, seemingly inappropriate directions, like playing up the vibes to an obnoxious extent.  The most obnoxious and not-so-serious thing about this album is the dated intro.  In fact, the album is even so much fun that when I checked the name of the track I was on, The Blacksmith and the Troll of Lundamyri, I didn't realize I had heard four-and-a-half minutes of it, and that I was halfway through.  I honestly thought I was three minutes in at most.  But because the band was focused on developing a sound, there's not a lot of room for branching out beyond that.  In other words, the album is mostly about the identity of the band, and justify it with the skills they have.

This is one of those albums I gave a 100 to when I was first exploring black metal, which was a whole new world for me on a multitude of levels.  But now that I'm much more familiar with it years later, I've been lowering the ratings of many black metal albums.  So I would even go as far as to say that this album is more on the level of Cruelty and the Beast, being a 9/10.  I'm pretty happy about this though, as this common element of my recent reviews showcases how much I've grown and become aware of standards to develop.  This is a fun and influential album, but having started this earlier a few days ago and having fallen out of favor is what lead me to start a plethora of melo-black albums in an effort to find that PERFECT one.  So, Windir's re-evaluation helped me grow and discover something new.

89

We online metal nerds are basically ordinary people, except we listen to Cradle of Filth.  These guys were one of the several bands who were key in developing the symphonic black sound, largely through their second and third albums, Dusk and Her Embrace and Cruelty and the Beast.  As you can probably tell from the album names, they were all about the romantic side of Gothic imagery as opposed to just singing about the devil.  Their signature sound made heavy usage of the Gothic metal sound, and it helped that they were easily able to switch between various vocal styles ranging from low death to shrieking black, and include heavy usage of whispers and occasional soft, female singing.  This helps the creative flow a lot, but isn't perfect.  It honestly sounds like Dani Filth's shrieks are largely made up of one vowel.  He might as well be going, "DA DA DA DA!"  His growls are fine, but still.  It's also nice to see that early on in their career, the had the right production quality to allow their Gothic sounds to mature properly.  It's not OUTSTANDING production but it works well for the sound they have.  A cheesy band like that needs the synths to shine a bit, right?  And these guys love their synths as much as their blast beats.  The compositions themselves are quite fun and energetic, going to a lot of places quite naturally.  Some are very impressive while most are good and fun.  The album stays like this throughout the whole, so the band maintains the style they've cemented quite well on the sophomore.  That right there showed some kind of prowess, and that sound would last for quite a while.  Cradle of Filth was all about a new identity, and this album shows them doing everything they could to maintain it, even if the combination of genres didn't fully allow them to write "different types" of songs.

90

God was finding a melo-black release with some real creativity an annoying three days.  Everything I tried on my own from Windir re-evaluations to key players of the development to modern giants were basically writing the same song over and over again.  I had to rely on two different Reddit metal communities and Metal Academy to pass around recs.  After starting many and deciding they weren't the creative geniuses I was looking for, I finally checked out Ben's recommendation, The Arcade Odyssey by Sear Bliss.  This was the one.

Now the album started out with a clever rewriting of the standard tropes you often find in the atmospheric brand, but it wasn't long before these impressive melodies found their way into other territories.  The first two songs were good, but I was worried that the rest of the album would follow too closely to the examples of the first too songs.  This worry was largely counteracted by a moody and somewhat slow venture into blackened doom with Lost and Not Found, and almost completely eradicated when they decided to go hard, heavy, fast and furious immediately afterward with Thorns of Deception, the shortest song at exactly four minutes.  There were psychedelic moments, symphonic moments, the experimental package I was looking for, but never once did the band steer so fast as the destroy their sound or endanger the flow or the consistency.  I can't see myself picking favorites out of this bunch, even.  But the best thing about the album is this: when the second to last track, Somewhere, fades out 7 minutes in and stays silent for two minutes, we get this surprisingly folksy black metal song which basically screams at you: we're not done yet!  We're giving you the ending twist you didn't see coming!

This is my current new standard for melodic black metal albums to beat.  This is my first Sear Bliss album, and I'm perfectly satisfied.  They restrained themselves while allowing other influences the have a strong enough say to differentiate everything, even if they never fully broke away from the melo-black that they have been working on since their debut in the 90's.  But who knows?  Maybe I'll like one of their other albums even more.  And if not, I still found what I was looking for.

Black metal releases from my more established favourites in 2025 have been mixed affairs. After the recent disappointment with the new BAN record and my growing distance from Drudkh’s offering this year, my EOY black metal list is full of a few less than familiar faces this year. Enter Canadian one-man outfit, Nordicwinter. By all accounts still very much a recent discovery of mine from the past three or four years, it is up to him to maybe forge a space in the top 10 or top 20 of my list for this year.

The early signs are good. The stabbing melancholy of ‘Whispers of the Frozen Abyss’ is a delicious interjection in the slow-moving pace of the track, emphasising the harrowing tone of the guitar brilliantly. With the haunting, yet strangely calming opening of ‘The Howling Void’ perfectly setting the track up for an exploration of a truly vast and dark space indeed. It is clear, even at this early stage of proceedings, that evillair is not deviating away from his established sound that I have experienced over all his albums to date. This traversal of a well-trodden path as something I was particularly critical of the latest BAN record for doing. However, by way of context, Nordicwinter is no experimental artist. Over multiple releases he has honed his sound to the point where I personally do not want it change. As a result, a Nordicwinter album is something of a safe space for me.

I am expectant of the inclusion of a morose sounding piano. Greeting those slow-picked strings with welcoming arms as the notes appear through the thick atmospheres of the tracks. The depressive melodies resonate through the speakers into my very soul, ironically filling me full of emptiness. As usual, production values are high and all the instruments are audible in the mix to the point where they can easily be picked out. This is the standard that evillair has set over eight albums and I doubt I would ever want it to change.

His ghastly, rasping vocals never stray into clean territory and this is an important feature for maintaining the darkness in the core black metal sound. Thankfully, Solitude sticks to a core atmo-black vibe, staying well away from gaze and post-metal territory. The album possesses a great comfort for me, something that only actual solitude itself can usually offer. As someone who revels in my own company, easily going for days without seeing or hearing from anyone, this album is the very embodiment of the state that its title uses. Time alone with your own thoughts and reasoned choice is precious, permitting you to ponder your own mortality and contemplate what is important to your very existence. That’s the setting for how I will endeavour to enjoy this album moving forwards.

Neura Bunget are a band I've always somewhat appreciated for balancing their boldness in the avant-garde department with a consistent flow.  The album tight before their signature OM, named 'n crugu bradului, is known among black metal fans for pushing those boundaries, walking the tightrope until picking a love or hate side is basically unavoidable.  I suppose this is the album that cemented them as an experimental band.  I never really had a problem with it, personally.

When I first heard this album, I gave it a 94/100, almost matching their signature, OM, which had a 97.  In fact, I would even go as far as to say the opening epic (the album is divided into four 12-13 minute epics, each numerically named in Roman) is one of the finest black metal songs I've ever heard.  It's like what would happen if Rod Serling and Edgar Rice Burroughs decided to collab, and the end result was a Twilight Zone venture into the mythology of an ancient tribe.  As for the other songs, they deliver some new ideas while following up on the same format as the first, also showcasing another side of them by perfectly implementing light amounts of the folk sounds of their home country, Romania, like people have been doing it for fifty years.  There's one very mellow, lengthy and carefully constructed solo in the middle of III that just tugs at the back of your head, demanding that you try to go to sleep and let yourself be absorbed in the sound until you're rudely awakened by a black metal alarm blaring like a vulture.  Now some of the general black metal riffs here are not the most originally compose, but the production style allows the storminess of their black metal genre to burst through the headphones while going above the Richter scale.  The windiness aspect is made into a piece of wonderfully empty but chilling ambiance on IV which only allows the faint echoes of singing and guitars to bleed out, giving it personality.  It drags on just a little longer than I'd like before the black metal comes back, but it was still impressive.  even then, it includes alien whistling in the midsection that I honestly wanted more of.

This may come as absolutely no surprise to anyone who knows me, but IMO, 'n crugu bradului boasts a lot of brilliance in the way genres are played with among the more typical black metal riffs.  This could make the album a regular for me to blast while trying to drown out noises on the outside, and maybe just because I wanna soak up some of the weirdness.  Like I said in the first paragraph, when I first gave this album a spin, I gave it a 94.  I think I was right.

Along with Dissection, Sacramentum is considered essential to the development of the melodic black metal subgenre.  When I was first exploring the satanic side of black metal, I finally got around to trying these guys and many other classics.  This album specifically was one of the 95/100's, when the other Sacramentum albums couldn't even keep up with it.  Ironically, I just heard both Dissections as well as the first two releases by a more recent band called Stormkeep, and both bands blow this beloved debut album out of the water.  From a genre perspective, it has more strengths than weaknesses.  The epic personality matches perfectly with its production technique.  Somewhat noisy yet still somehow clear, everything comes out beautifully.  A collective of fine melodies and riffs rules the album front to back, never once even allowing a dull moment to enter through the gates of the castle painted on the cover.  For a fan of the genre, this would be some good, easy fun, and because of its influence it remains a revered classic.  But the thing is, I can't revere it the way I used to back when I was still new to black metal.  I admit, this album's a good amount of fun, but I can't compare any one of these melodies, rhythms and riffs favorably to the things I heard in those two Dissection albums or those two Stormkeep albums.  It's like The Aaron Carter to Dissection's Nick Carter, except still listenable.  Either way, unlike the first two Dissection albums, this didn't age quite as well for me, now that we have so many emulators of the two at least being able to match and surpass this one when they usually can't do so with Dissection.  ANd strangely enough, now the other albums are closer to keeping up with this on in my honest opinion.

83

Dimmu Borgir is a much more accessible black metal band than most, so they're probably a very good starting point for exploring black metal in general.  In their best albums, there isn't as strong of a blackened atmosphere as most black metal albums, and their melodies are a bit poppier.  But I haven't heard anyone complain about Dimmu Borgir the way metalheads have done when other bands from other extreme genres end up sounding too "poppy," and maybe this is because Dimmu Borgir maintains a dense sound loaded with gothic energy and textures.  I've even heard that they're one of the highest selling black metal bands in the world.

While the symphonic / melodic / gothic combo prominent in Enthrone Darkness Triumphant is maintained as a constant with minimal variation through the album, the accessibility of the album is lived up to due to the melodic strengths and clever production.  There isn't a single part of it that's not balanced perfectly between catchiness and darkness.  This was different from a much more revered symphonic black album, Emperor's Anthems to the Welkins at Dusk, in the sense that it was more about having fun than it was about developing a style.  And they had done that beautifully, keeping things entertaining and somewhat mystical along the way.  While riffs and extreme technicalities are absent, overall, the catchiness and mystical vibes are almost addicting.  And since the songs are typically between 4 and 6 minutes, it's a miracle than none of them feel too long because they kept on delivering various kinds of catchy and mystical ideas as opposed to be guitar wankers.

I suppose many imitators these days may end up beating this album at its own game with some extra creativity, and part of the reason I'm such an Emperor fan is because of what was done on Welkins.  But I won't deny that every time I hear this album, which is rare, I have fun with it.  They make it easy to get invested in the mystical moods without drawing away from black metal tremelo textures.  The two go together perfectly on this album, and in my opinion, an excellent sense of melody definitely justified the fanbase, historical status and the high sales for a black metal album.

90

I haven't heard the first two Deathspell Omega albums yet, and I heard they were actually kinda mediocre.  That's not gonna stop me from checking them out at some point, but as far as their best stuff goes, Si Monumentum is the album that put them on the map.  Helping to popularize Orthodox Satanism in black metal, revitalizing a topic that was becoming cheesy and unoriginal, they created a repetitive yet complex take on black metal that's just as scary as it is intriguing.  With the right headphones, this production style makes the blackened guitars sound like a freaking tornado.  The title track will even say all of that.  It's like their are constant specks of dirty flying against your window.  If you could drive into an album the way you do on the road, you would NOT want to drive into this.  It'll turn you upside down the way it'll do to your mind and soul.  And it maintains this ride throughout.  However, at 77 minutes, I would say this is a bit much, since the band was able to prove its point time and time again across the first 40 minutes alone.  Still, if the first two albums are considered mediocre by the masses, then Deathspell Omega's tertiary effort is a step forward not only for the band, but for black metal in general.  Easily an important album worth exploring.

87

What can be said about Mental Funeral that hasn't being said? Truly a foundational pillar of death metal, specially of the doomy variety, and it doesn't disappoint. I do prefer the sludgier and rawer debut, but this is undeniably some disgusting and skull-crushing death doom, with tons of memorable riffs that can't be ignored.

Heretoir are a German atmospheric black metal band that have been around for a surprisingly long time. I had never heard of them prior to being introduced to them late in 2025 and their new record, Solastalgia. And the only reason I gave it my attention at this point in the year is because I was told it was right up my alley in the style of black metal that I typically enjoy. Well, that friend was right because Solastalgia is like a modern day love letter to Agalloch's Ashes Against the Grain.

Now I do need to choose my words very carefully from here on out, because Ashes Against the Grain might be one of my favourite albums of all time. And Solastalgia does more than enough to separate itself from Agalloch. In fact, the main reason why I enjoy Solastalgia so much is because of how much it shares in common with a band like Svalbard. This is huge sounding atmospheric black metal, but with a hip, metalcore front. The promotional single "You Are the Night" and "Burial" are far less in common with Agalloch, but no doubt matching in instrumental beauty. The acoustic passages on "Seasons of Grief", the piano bridge on "Inertia" and the earthly tonal center of "The Heart of December" are undoubtedly Agalloch in presentation.

Perhaps it is ironic then that Heretoir named their album Solastalgia. A word whose etymology is a portmanteau of the words "solace" and "nostalgia". Nostalgia is a word typically associated with positive thoughts and emotions, whereas Solastalgia is the antithesis; where the places and people that you once knew and grew up with have all changed and have become affected by the passage of time. As such, it is less surprising that Heretoir are developing the sound of Agalloch to places that band could have never gone. And with this bands roots in depressive suicidal black metal, the grief and distress felt within the music and lyrics hits with its meta commentary that I never expecting out of a black metal album! Although, if I'm being nitpicky, a few of the lyrical choices to feel quite cliche and could have been written by nearly anyone.

Despite all my praise for the instrumentals so far, I do have to mention the obtuseness in the percussion. I think that it sounds fine and it's performed with an extreme level of precision, I just feel like the drums are mixed way too close to the front. At the beginning of "Dreamgatherer" it begins with a pleasant clean guitar with reverb and before you know it, the percussion is playing on top of you and the guitar melody has nowhere to go. It also becomes rather intrusive during blast beats like the bridge of "Solastalgia" among others.

All told though, I really enjoyed Solastalgia. The band really captured the essence of the word here; an album that has aspirations of Agalloch, brought into the modern age with metalcore and blackgaze textures. It will be a struggle for those who just want to enjoy Agalloch, but if you're willing to come to terms with Agalloch not coming back (and Ashes Against the Grain being nearly two decades old), then I can assure you that this album is a clinic in modern day post-black metal.

Best Songs: The Ashen Falls, You Are the Night, Dreamgatherer, Solastalgia, Inertia

I believe this is the third time I've heard this album.  I've given several Drudkh albums high marks as I was less experienced in atmo-black, and loved the production and the autumn vibes.  I don't feel like I forced myself to enjoy them, but now that I've heard more than enough metal for a couple lifetimes, going back to this album, I can see why people like it... but not why people love it.  The album's music is basically the equivalent of a musical white noise machine.  There's excellent percussions that are light, speedy and creative, backing up every perfectly produced piece of atmosphere.  Slow melodies can be hypnotic if you just want some slow melodies to send you into a state of total calm.  Drudkh is one of those bands that can make perfect examples of total calm with extreme metal last 40 minutes on end.  But as a guy who craves creativity, suffice it to say, while this album feels like it would be good for the brain and soul, nine minutes without changing pace, especially when all forty minutes of the album do this, doesn't necessarily say great things.  The band is good at this one thing that they can do, but now I don't feel any need to go back to this ever again if I want something calming yet more inventive.  Still, no fear factor, total atmosphere and an almost heavenly sound make this stand out amongst others who try the same thing, at least vibe and production-wise.

75

I can't say I'm really a fan of Atheist. Piece of Time was a kind of a let down to me: I can see them being ahead of their time in complexity and technicality, but the band just sounds so convoluted and seems to trample over itself to the point that I don't really enjoy the album very much. This release on the other hand, is a whole other beast! The band sounds somewhat lighter, with a clearer production and better execution, particularly on the vocals, which sound way more on point. Composition wise, they really went through the roof, leaning very heavily on their jazz influences to make what sounds pretty much 50-50 death thrash and jazz fusion. This was very much the correct decision, as this is where the band's insane musicianship and chaotic nature really gets to shine it's brightest, the result being some of the most interesting metal releases I've ever heard, perfectly balancing awesome complexity, sheer heaviness and plain fun. Honestly, not a single bad minute on this, absolutely incredible record.

Leviathan is one of the forerunners of the more emotional brand of black metal.  He has an almost unmatched ability to create sonic textures that leave you haunted, angry or crying.  This is most artistically present in his side project, Lurker of Chalice.  Not sure why he chose a different name, as I imagine that's not great marketing (maybe I'm naive about that), but the album still ended up being a staple in modern day atmo-black metal.  I ignored it for a while because I didn't realize it was a Leviathan project until only a few months ago.  Kickstarting my new List Challenge on Metal Academy, I figured this diversified work would be a good starting point, and it really was.  Songs are drenched in atmosphere, flawless and even elegantly disturbing soundscapes that are more shift in atmospheres than compositional melodies.  This is one of those albums that shouldn't, and I mean SHOULD NOT, build itself on melody, and I'm addicted to melody.  There are moments that are doomy and sorrowful, noisy and disturbing, beautiful and slightly melodic, all organized to put you through an alternate would where pain lies on every road and you're smackdab in the intersection, where the forks in the road stab you and feed you to the wolves.  There are a million different ways for the album to do this, and on most occasions it justifies absurd lengths, such as the ten minute This Blood Falls as Mortal Pt. 3.  Ironically, I found the first song, Piercing Where They Might, to be a bit too repetitive, even at six minutes.  The rest of the album is largely perfect.  I had a feeling this would end up being my pick for the best Leviathan release, and I was right.

98

I'm not very well versed in Abigor, but since I'll be joining Metal Academy's North Clan soon, it's time for me to get started on a North List Challenge. But first, before I handle the 2nd Decade Challenge, I'll celebrate with some classic black metal from Abigor.  I'm familiar with their debut album and thought it was quite good, but nothing special.  This is special, in a million ways.  There's a cinematic approach which allows the band to maximize their abilities.  Flawless production and mixing allows the full extent of their black metal prowess to bleed through like a big gash in the gut.  Not only is the balance between black metal speed and proper compositions perfected, allowing the band to constantly surprise every half a minute without breaking the essence of any song or the album itself, but the crystal production allows that second layer in the background to be heard quietly but clearly.  It would be nice to see them diversify their ideas more, but at least we have some brilliant playing and clever layering to back it all up.  To be honest, the first couple songs astounded me, but it felt less original as it went along.  Still, I'm happy to get through yet another classic in the traditional black metal scene, and I'll definitely check out more Abigor albums later on.

93

I've been very busy with metal today.  And I am two albums away from completing my third List Challenge on Metal Academy: it all ends with Razor's Violent Restitution.  Now the first two Razor albums (heard them both with a replay of The Years of Decay in between) were good thrash exercises with properly noisy production, but neither one was able to impress me on the technical side other than featuring the band being self-aware enough not to go into overdone six-to-eight-minute territory.  So they were pretty good, but that's about it.  This album's different.  The three-minute intro makes a point of going the extra mile in aggression while giving us some much weirder solos and more unpredictability by going even faster than ever.  When they pull the buzzsaw out, it might as well be replacing the guitarists and you'd barely notice.  That kind of revelation gave me a similar feeling as Todd Rundgren's motorcycle-style guitar solo in Bat Out of Hell.  That same song, named Taste the Floor, boasts a number of wild decisions and twists in its two-minute runtime.  That's the album these guys made. Of course, since many of these songs are between 2 and 3 minutes, it's safe to assume that many of these songs have the same basic goal: be a buzzsaw, a hyperactive and indomitable exercise in the thrash energy and production that defined them.  Rarely does the album take any time to slow down, with the best example being Edge of the Razor, the longest track on the album (4 minutes 15 seconds).  But a dozen songs of the same formula can still get tiring, so by the end, it becomes obvious that this album should never even have been 40 minutes.

So this is easily the most fun Razor album out of the three I've heard, and like many other thrash albums, the reason for its status as an essential is because it manages to be so freakin' heavily and pull it off.  But there's not a lot of originality among the excitement and riffs, so that's enough to knock off a full star from a perfect rating for me.

80

Overkill's always been a fun band before anything else, and back when I was first exploring the thrash scene many years ago as a total noob to metal, these guys were one of the major players.  But I rarely return to their albums now because of so many other ventures and the fear that I was neglecting other genres for metal, just like when I neglected too many other movie genres for horror.  So now that I'm back on metal for the time being, this is the perfect time to go over this.

Now once again, these guys are fun, a lot of fun.  Because they focus so much on songwriting and twists and turns each song, it's easy to see why this album became a staple for the band and the thrash fans.  The production is their clearest so far.  They've earned it after an impressive catalogue beforehand.  Of course, it started out with a couple of little problems, despite being a lot of fun.  First of all, the album's all about shifting places, but song of these songs are sharing some of the same ideas and twists.  It doesn't help that they share the same tempo as well.  Nothing super-surprising happens until the guitar solo to Nothing to Die for.  As well, despite perfectly clear production, this also makes the album feel a little empty in the background, like the album's missing another layer that should never have been neglected or removed.  This also allows for some songs to become overlong.  I mean, 56 minutes can easily be too much in a genre where one of the four leading icon albums of said scene is literally half that length.  And I'm talking about Reign in Blood, with the others being Ride the Lightning, Master of Puppets and Rust in Peace (forget Anthrax for me, will ya?)

But the album has a good deal of creativity and shows much more effort in this vein than with previous works, even if I may call those previous works better for doing a much more impressive job with the elements they had than this album does.  The Sabbathian rhythm to Playing With Spiders was totally unexpected but very much apprciated.  Hell, the singer's iconic voice is just PERFECT for this.  He's basically a thrash variant to Bon Scott, but a better singer overall, so pairing this with doom metal was a good move.  On top of which, how often do we even get thrash bands that venture into doom metal?  Can we just take a moment appreciate the fact that an iconic thrash band with an already good set of albums decided to take this turn and pull it off?

...

...

Thank you for enjoying that moment with me.

This might not be their most well-fleshed out album, but it's good to see that they were trying out some new tricks.  Overkill rarely ever does a bad album because they always have spirit and the willingness to branch out behind them, and ironically, The Years of Decay seems to be the perfect album to fully describe their personality.

88

You'd think a leading influence in the world of crossover thrash would've lasted longere than 2 studio albums, especially considering how popular the combination of hardcore punk and thrash metal got in the thrash scene.  Slayer and Voivod were both rocking the influence, even if they rarely ever reached the blatancy of S.O.D.  Now this album is made up of nearly 20 similar songs, all going for the same basic goal: combine the two genres and complain about the things punk rockers complain about.  This leaves little room for guitar solos and is mostly built for the explosion of quick songs built to cater to the youth growing tired of modern politics and authority.  But there are a number of strengths that need to be considered here.  First of all, for a thrash debut, the production is practically FLAWLESS.  No demo-style noise which is extremely common for thrash debuts, not studio saturation of any kind.  It's pure, simple punk, through and through.  As well, these guys are excellent at the one thing they do: thrash punk traditions as hard as they can.  And the lyrics might be to the point, but they embody the multiple facets of the punk spirit perfectly, even when they're going into the comedy of it all.  This isn't a perfect album in terms of the art, but it's a perfectly punk album, so it's essential both punk and thrash.

86

With the band having expanded their sound into more artistic territory on their second album, Dreamweaver, further emphasis on that was placed on their third, which was ironically the last thing they ever produced.  Now there seems to be a kind of alienation that the fans felt, which would explain a collective of negative reviews on the internet.  This alienation likely stems from the further forays into standard heavy metal, ballads and prog metal.  As well, there's a new vocalist with a stronger melodic voice rather than the raspy thrash voice everyone who knows the band is familiar with.  Personally, I don't think this is much of a problem.  This new singer seems to fit the more dramatic side of the music that the band was going for.  On top of that, the majority of this music is actually pretty good, sometimes flat out banging.  These guys really pushed themselves in the creativity department, but never once make the album feel inconsistent or messy.  But be prepared for a very different kind of album, this more melodic, focused and versatile album just doesn't sound like the original Sabbat at all.  Having said that, they pushed that specific sound as far as it could go without breaking new territory, so an album like this was gonna happen eventually.

73

Afte having seen some pretty positive reviews for English ban Sabbat's debut album, I was quite disappointed with how monotone and one-track-minded it got overtime.  I was wondering if the fans were largely just attributed to genre fans as opposed to more explorative music buffs.  Now I may be a thrash fan, but I demand ART.  There's a noteworthy amount of that in this album, at least in comparison to the debut.  The Clerical Conspiracy, the track following the intro, boasts an almost blackened level of heaviness and production in the riffs.  Next even comes a soft folk track which lasts two minutes.  This is what I'm talking about when I want an album to be less monotone.  There's a little more creativity in the lyrics as well, on top of some prog metal aspects, which help justify this album's two eight-minute tracks, making them feel shorter than they really were, which in itself is a major strength since the band couldn't even justify the one eight-minute epic on their debut.  However, while the album is certainly wilder, most of it still sounds the same, though much more impressively so.  In fact, I couldn't even consider the last song before the one-minute outro, Mythistory, a proper send-off, because it sounded too much like other tracks, proggy aspects and all.  So this is obviously a good effort with some great moments, but while it's more creative, it carries a couple of the same basic flaws as the first.

81

After checking out English thrash band Sabbat's two early demos, I went straight into the debut.  I expected a fun but standard-sounding thrash band, as was the norm of the time, and for the most part.  But I honestly have to say that I'm not terribly impressed with this overall.  The writing quality, production quality and the overall atmosphere are a little better than the usual thrash debut album I came across for the thrash challenge on Metal Academy.  Destruction was generic and underproduced for several albums, for example.  This has PROPER production.  Not perfect, but proper and largely clear with only a faint hint of noise factor.  The album's overall vibe and essence is fun fodder for the thrash junkie.  The technicality isn't that extreme, and largely done before, but it showcases all the skills that the demos showed off but were unfortunately tarnished by demo quality audio, and almost completely drowned by the first.  The eight-minute epic, Horned Is the Hunter, pretty much drags through standard thrash behavior without any sense of branching out.  Eventually it got so samey, monotone and standard that I was losing interest.  I finished it, though.  Overall, this debut is decent but passable.

67

I knew within the first few moments of "12/23/93" that I was going to get along just fine with Poison the Well's debut record from 1999, The Opposite of December...A Season of Separation. It is exactly the kind of post-hardcore/emo infused metalcore that came out of the late 1990s with acts like Hopesfall and Skycamefalling that I really love. The rawness of these recording is really noticeable with how punchy a lot of the breakdowns are. Poison the Well have done excellent work with cutting out the fat that becomes commonplace in many a post-punk and post-hardcore band around the turn of the millennium. The vocals are relentless in their genuine anxiety and passion, almost as if the vocalist screams are about to break down into wails at any moment. But as a counterpoint, the catchiness of the guitar riffs alongside some of those repetitive vocal lines just pushes this record above the rest. It is a wonderful blend of metalcore intensity alongside post-hardcore's more progressive songwriting. 

Best Songs: A Wish For Wings That Work, Slice Paper Wrists, Nerdy, Mid Air Love Message, My Mirror No Longer Reflects

I have only really been interested in drone metal for about a decade now and only started exploring it in earnest two or three years ago, but it has become one of my favourite genres and a lot of my highest scores of recent times have gone to drone metal releases. I guess that because I am quite an anxious person by nature, I find the monolithic droning of this style of metal to be inherently calming. Bong are a new name to me, despite them having been around for close to twenty years now and hailing from these British Isles I call home. They are prolific releasers of material with nine studio albums, a plethora of splits and EPs and thirty-plus live albums.

Mana-Yood-Sushai is the four-piece's third album, released in 2012, and is a sublime mix of drone metal and psychedelia that gives it a heavy eastern, mystical flavour, a sound I really love to hear brought into the sphere of metal. The album consists of only two tracks with the 27 minutes of the first track, Dreams of Mana-Yood-Sushai, being the one that really hooked me in. One of the members of Bong is sitar player, Benjamin Freeth, and his jangling strings combine perfectly with the droning chords of guitarist Mike Vest on Dreams... that seems to conjures up vistas of setting suns over mystical eastern temples that I found to be an inordinately meditative and restful piece. The track also features bassist/vocalist Dave Terry with some really nice throat singing that further enhances the eastern flavour with it's ritualistic chanting style favoured by eastern mystics.

Second track, Trees, Grass and Stone, is just shy of twenty minutes in length and is an instrumental, making it a bit more jam-like than the opener with the percussion of drummer Mike Smith driving the track and taking a more prominent role. It is also a heavier-sounding track than Dreams... the droning chords carrying increased weight and settling over the listener like a heavy blanket. As is true of an awful lot of drone metal, it is most effective when listened to at higher volumes, at the point when the experience can become almost physical and it's simple structure can fully infiltrate the listener's senses and become a transcendental sensation.

So once more a new drone metal discovery has me reaching for my higher scores and takes it's place in my list of metal favourites.

One can't deny that there's a punk factor in thrash, as much as some purist metalheads might want to.  Voivod, however, celebrated that fact by pumping it up.  In some ways this is practically a crossover thrash album, and a major step forward for metal inventiveness.  Maybe this is largely neglected because the album is so complex?  Either way, this is the personality the band has chosen, and it actually helps a lot.  Now their technical abilities are quite impressive, but it's the inclusion of the punk factor that keeps the album from degenerating into guitar wankery.  While a little samey, the crossover aspects allow the band to display an incredibly unique personality for the time, and just allows the band to have a lot of fun.  Hell, the singer Denis Belanger knows it, and boasts his hardcore punk style vocals proudly and loudly.  And that's not all: they found a way to include the sci-fi experience here, the whole mechanical, cyberpunk, anti-dystopia vibes both lyrically and musically.  As well, the punk factor gives it quite a bit of replay value as well.  Now personally, I'd say the sameyness keeps this from a total five stars.  But if you said this was your favorite thrash album, I most certainly would never, ever, blame you.

92

In comparison to KAT's debut album Metal and Hell, as well as their very slightly better live album 38 Minutes of Life, there are a number of notable improvements.  While we still get some general bursts of tropes, such as the entire midsection of dziewczyna w cierniowej koronie, we see a number of more intriguing compositional chocies, such as the first and third acts of that same song.  Tempos range out more, allowing the band to try to be artists.  The band will even jump to some wonderfully weird, abrupt and unexpected surprises that never break the vibes.  It also helps a lot that the voice of the singer, Roman Kostrzewski, has improved in a number of ways.  He has a good high-pitched growl, a decent low growl and a decent actual singing voice.  The practice he must've gone through, it's actually a bit inspiring.  As well, the production is no longer the quality of a better demo or a cheap live album.  This is totally clear on every level.  BUt there is ONE downside to the stlyistic changes: the black metal aspects are severely neglected.  Thnakfully, the album manages to keep a strong artistic flow, so I'm still quite satisfied with the direction they took.

91.5

There really isn't much I wanna say about this debut album except that it's pretty basic.  Everything about this debut album is a product of its time.  The production and melodic quality sound a bit like this one hair metal band that went nowhere: Nitro, which my stepfather told me about, considering them one of the worst bands ever.  This album might have some genre appeal for metalheads because the sound is so nostalgic, but it's too easy to compare this fuzzy 150 BPM-central thrash album to so many better albums of its type.  I would even go as far as to say those two crappy Nitro albums have a couple better guitar solos in them.  Our singer isn't that great, either.  He sounds like a bad, noisy knockoff of the singer from Metal Church.  They pull off some decent tricks throughout the album, but overall this early speed metal release is too generic for my tastes.  In fact, it can be so generic that I was even getting tired of it about halfway through.