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The 1994 debut album "The Principles of Evil Made Flesh" from super-popular English symphonic black metal phenomenon Cradle of Filth is an interesting one for me personally, mainly because it sits fairly obviously in a stylistic space that I generally steer well clear of yet it somehow managed to slip under my radar & make an impact on my life nonetheless. You see, I was already an obsessive tape trader at the time when it first arrived so I was aware of Cradle of Filth through their 1992/93 demo tapes "Orgiastic Pleasures Foul" & "Total Fucking Darkness", both which showcased a much stronger death metal component. Neither were very good though to be fair but when "The Principles of Evil Made Flesh" hit the shelves it presented itself in a shroud of romantic gothicism that left an eighteen-year old me salivating at the potential it held. The images of the band that were floating around only added to my fascination & I found myself parting with my hard-earned cash for the CD well before the masses had gotten onboard the raging, out-of-control Cradle of Filth train. The front cover was so beautiful with its gloriously curvy & gothic moniker that I also found myself purchasing a t-shirt that sported the cover artwork so I'd invested quite a bit in the band without really understanding what the music was gonna do for me. When I finally came to grips with the album as a piece of art though, it didn't really grab me as much as I'd hoped, despite being a generally enjoyable listen. Cradle of Filth would go on to become bigger & bigger with each successive release but, after 1996's "Dusk and Her Embrace" sophomore record, I would find myself moving further & further away from them from a creative perspective, even if I'd inevitably give many of their future releases a listen in order to satisfy the obsessive completist in me. I have to admit though, it's been decades since I last listened to "The Principles of Evil Made Flesh" now & I'm fairly interested to see how it's held up (or if it even does anything for me at all) in more modern times.

"The Principles of Evil Made Flesh" dropped at a time when the black metal scene was just about to explode onto the global stage following two years of immense drama & controversy in Norway. The more significant & commercialized overseas metal media (Kerrang, Metal Hammer, etc.) had now gotten wind of the events (not to mention the quality of the music) & were now splashing it across their magazine covers in an attempt to cash in on the mania so when Cradle of Filth popped up with the most theatrical sound & image the world had yet seen to the time it gave the media a brand new crossover hero that could draw in a lucrative new audience that would touch on places that the imposing Norwegian bands had not been capable of. The overly romantic vampiric images would become a major drawcard for young females & goths which, of course, would bring with it a procession of horny young dudes like me. Trust me... I'm not complaining at all because I had some wonderful times with some pretty hot goth chicks when Neuropath was just finding its feet in the Sydney metal scene & I doubt I would have had that opportunity if not for Cradle of Filth so thank you very much Cradle but I'm digressing a bit now so let's get start digging into the actual music now, shall we?

I remember heading into my first listen to "The Principles of Evil Made Flesh" with great eagerness given just how much the imagery appealed to my young obsession with old gothic novels but also recall being slightly disappointed on first listen. The album certainly didn't sound anything like Bathory, Burzum or Darkthrone. This was a much cleaner & more accessible sounding form of black metal than I was used to &, looking back on it now, you can see that it was highly influential in that regard with a plethora of other more commercially successful black metal acts following suit in the years to come. I wasn't so sure I was a fan of the idea personally but I'd just forked out on not only the CD but also a t-shirt so I needed to get my money's worth. I'd give the album a whole bunch of listens over the next few weeks & would find that there was more to it than I'd first thought with it eventually digging its vampiric teeth into me, admittedly not quite deep enough to see it becoming something that I'd feel the urge to return to regularly in the future.

It's interesting to listen to the album now with more educated & mature ears because it's enabled me to pick up on some things that I may not have previously. Firstly, "The Principles of Evil Made Flesh" is generally tagged as a melodic black metal release but I have to admit that I don't see it personally. There's not much in the way of guitar harmonies here with most of the riffs being structured in a more standard black metal configuration. The use of keyboards is significant but not enough to justify the symphonic black metal label that Cradle of Filth would become synonymous with over the years either. To my ears, Cradle of Filth's debut album is best positioned next to gothic black metal bands like Opera IX, Graveworm & Theatres des Vampires because the gothic elements are really very significant in the overall feel & aesthetic of the music & imagery. I was genuinely surprised by just how big a role My Dying Bride has played in the direction of the album too because there are a whole bunch of references to them here, particularly in the slower sections which are some of the stronger parts of the album in my opinion. The appearance of Anathema/The Blood Divine front man Darren White on a song or two was also welcome, particularly given my Anathema obsession at the time. Sure, we have a lot of standard black metal riffs on offer here but Cradle of Filth also stretch the boundaries of the genre a little further with some movements breaking out of the confines of the strict black metal model to explore more creative & atmospheric terrains with some of the most effective tracks on "The Principles of Evil Made Flesh" not even being metal at all. In fact, my favourite piece on the record is surprisingly one of the neoclassical darkwave tracks in "One Final Graven Kiss" while my other highlight is a short ambient work by the name of "In Secret Love We Drown" so there's more to this record than meets the eye.

There are a few things that bother me about "The Principles of Evil Made Flesh" however. Dani Filth's screechy vocals aren't the most appealing you'll find in black metal & I've never thought he was all that special to be honest. The keyboards of Benjamin Ryan (The Blood Divine) can cross over the border into cheesy territory on occasion too & do ruin a few of the riffs. The guitar solos of axemen Paul Allender & Paul Ryan (both of The Blood Divine) aren't very special & strangely sit way further back in the mix than they should too. In fact, the guitars in general should be a little further towards the front of the mix with the keyboards being much more prominent. The rhythm section of bassist Robin Graves & legendary drummer Nicholas Barker (Twilight of the Gods/Ancient/Atrocity/Brujeria/Dimmu Borgir/Lock Up/Old Man's Child/Sadistic Intent/Shining/Testament) are the real drawcards here though with Graves' basslines representing arguably the most rewarding component of the album for me personally. Barker's blast-beat sections are quite simple but are generally very effective in providing Cradle of Filth with their more brutal side.

The thirteen-song tracklisting is actually pretty consistent with only the final track "Summer Dying Fast" leaving me cold after several listens. None of the proper metal songs seem to me to be particularly classic though & it's this limitation as much as anything else that sees "The Principles of Evil Made Flesh" not making as indelible a mark on me as it did on many of my peers. As I previously mentioned, the highlight tracks tend to be the interludes for me personally with the better black metal songs never quite reaching the top rung. The best section of the album is undoubtedly the three-track run of "To Eve the Art of Witchcraft" into the doomy "Of Mist and Midnight Skies" into the gorgeous ambience of "In Secret Love We Drown". The rest of the metal songs tend to draw a "Yeah... not bad" response from me more than a "Fuck yeah!" to be honest.

So look, "The Principles of Evil Made Flesh" isn't a bad black metal release overall. There are certainly those kvlt elitists that will want to bring it down because of what it represents & I have to admit that I can see their point but it also brought something new & exciting to a scene that was no doubt taking itself a little too seriously at the time & it should be commended for that. The influence that it had as a gateway release for many people is nothing to scoff at either &, contrary to what many metalheads may think, we need those records in order to sustain our scene.

I can't believe that eighteen months have already passed since an ice skating Fenriz heralded the arrival of "Astral Fortress", but here we are and, in what is becoming quite the regular occurance, Darkthrone are back again with a new album, entitled "It Beckons Us All". It very much continues the direction of travel of their last few albums, even going back to 2016's "Arctic Thunder", when they started introducing a doominess into their crusty heavy metal sound. Along with Eternal Hails and Astral Fortress this now forms another unholy trilogy for the duo where this crusty trad doom sound has been fully realised into, what I like to call, necro-doom. Obviously nowhere near as influential or seminal as the original unholy trilogy, I think that it is significant that Darkthrone can still deliver the goods more than three decades on, having carved out a niche for themselves in the metal world, where they are pretty much unrivalled at what they do, never becoming dragged in by whatever is trending in the wider world of metal, consistently delivering quality material and with a knack for writing killer riffs which very few can aspire to.

After a few brief seconds of a 1950's sci-fi movie-style synth intro, opening track, Howling Primitive Colonies, kicks off with a marvellously infectious and memorable riff and sets the tone for the album as a whole, taking the early Nineties' trad doom sound of lesser known lights like Penance or Revelation and performing the equivalent of burying it for thirty years so it acquires a rotted, musty odour, by using black metal production techniques and Nocturno Culto's croaky, blackened vocal style that gives it all a real necro sheen. If you have heard any of their new albums since 2016, then you will have an idea what "It Beckons Us All" sounds like, but it is here where that crusty trad doom sound reaches it's peak with some of their most memorable riffs in years. That opener has three killer riffs as it switches from the brilliant introductory riff into a more sustainable and doomier, verse-carrying one which ultimately drops into an uptempo, gallop designed for maximum neck-wrenching action. Howling Primitive Colonies is a really strong opener and is one of the best tracks Darkthrone have written in this latest cycle of their existence, setting the album up in glorious style. Second track Eon 3 is obviously an extension of Astral Fortress' closer Eon 2, sharing themes with the earlier track and serving to tie the two albums even closer together.

The quality never dips either and, as much as I enjoyed Astral Fortress, I think It Beckons Us All... has seen this era of the band hit it's peak and may well be my favourite Darkthrone album since 1995's Panzerfaust. The riffs really are some of the best since the band's heyday of the early nineties and the production has cranked up that crunchy doom sound to a perfect pitch, sounding loads better than AF did. Black Dawn Affiliation, for example, sounds amazing, the crusty crunch of it's main riff providing a driving wall of sound upon which Nocturno Culto's vocals necrotic vocals inscribe the lyrics with Fenriz' drumwork perfectly placed within the mix to reinforce the track's momentum without stealing the thunder from the riffing. And those riffs just keep coming - "The Bird People of Nordland", the doomy "The Heavy Hand" and the longest track and closer, "The Lone Pines of the Lost Planet", all contain memorable and iconic riffs. Songwriting-wise, I think this is some of the tightest the duo have produced in some time, their occasional tendency to let things run away with them being kept under control in the main, allowing the tracks to flow really well and resolve themselves satisfactorily. Even the proggy twists and turns of "The Lone Pines of the Lost Planet" seem vital to the overall narrative and never come across as self-indulgent or padded.

For someone like myself who is already a massive Darkthrone fan, it's always an event and a joy when Fenriz and Nocturno have new material out, but this time around the duo have outdone themselves and totally exceeded my expectations. Two of my greatest musical loves are Darkthrone and doom metal, making It Beckons Us All... sheer nirvana and it will undoubtedly be sat very near the top of the tree when I start making my 2024 best albums list.

I am no expert when it comes to war metal. It's a style of music whose defining feature is not found within its instrumentation and performance, but rather the vocal themes. In that way, war metal has more in common with gothic and emo music than its similar North clan genre partners. Typically, I really enjoy these types of records, but I have reviewed a grand total of *checks notes* zero war metal albums before Antichrist Siege Machine's Vengeance of Eternal Fire. Not even Teitanblood has crossed my radar before this.

And according to other reviewers, Vengeance of Eternal Fire is not anywhere close to Teitanblood. This is much closer to the original War metal album experience. Short songs, unrelenting tremolo guitar and blast beats, and theme's of nihilism, death and the occult. You could be very well excused if you thought that Vengeance of Eternal Fire was a grindcore album.

Like with a lot of grindcore (which I also have not listened to very much of), the pure cacophony of the soundscape is very important and has the ability to rile up anybody's adrenaline. And Antichrist Siege Machine are fortunately able to do so with some decent production. The percussion is a little bit overwhelming, especially the snare drum, but overall, the blast beat formula is prominent, but not the focal point at any given time. 

The compositions, like with grindcore, are increasingly sporadic and unfiltered. The way in which songs can quickly swing between slow, almost doom riffs and percussion to ferocious black metal without so much as a warning is isolating. The record can barely finish what it has to say before carrying on to the next point of contention without ever giving listeners a definitive answer to the last statement/question. And with the album moving at such a frantic pace, none of the themes are allowed to really say anything. Either that or the sheer sound of the music is so overwhelming because everyone is shouting in your face at the same time demanding your attention. 

And I kind of get it: it's war metal. "It isn't supposed to be super in depth or philosophical. It's about fucking war! War is bad, it leaves nothing but death and destruction in its wake. What more needs to be said?" A valid point, but I kind of expect, even for as meat and potatoes of an album as Vengeance of Eternal Fire may be, that it has a little bit more to say than "Unga-Bunga caveman beat Oogle-Boogle caveman with stick."

Best Songs: Sisera, Prey Upon Them, Scalding Enmity

Antichrist Siege Machine are relative newcomers to the war metal scene, their debut EP hitting the stands in 2017, but they have taken the genre by the scruff of the neck and laid down some pretty brutal stuff in the seven years since. With latest album, Vengeance of Eternal Fire, ASM have really hit their groove with a release that delivers an all-out aural battery without the muddy production values that robbed so many of their predecessor's releases of any clarity. Yes, I know that muddy, chaotic sound was part of the appeal of early war metal releases from the Blasphemies of this world and I love that archetypal sound too, but here, thirty-five years on from those earliest canoniacal war metal classics, the genre has moved on from that and the best modern war metal acts don't need to hide behind poor production because they have the chops to produce brutal and blasphemous sounds whilst allowing the listener to actually hear everything they are doing.

Of course the basis of war metal is an unholy alliance of death and black metal, with varying proportions of each within the mix. ASM tend towards the more death metal end of the war metal spectrum, dropping occasionally into quite "groovy" slower death metal riffing, just enough to break things up and provide a little variety, but not so much that it distracts from the overarching blitzkrieg that comprises the vast majority of Vengeance of Eternal Fire and shouldn't be seen as any kind of treasonous act against war metal orthodoxy. The drums sit fairly prominently in the mix, so the blastbeats are given plenty of focus, almost as much as the blistering riffs. Interestingly drummer Scott "S.B." Bartley is also the vocalist, so it must be quite a feat when playing live for him to sing whilst launching salvo after salvo of blastbeats. His vocals actually seem to sit lower in the mix than his drumming, thus giving them a distant, buried feel, despite their bellicose viciousness. The high production values allow the listener to distinguish the riffs far easier than on old-school war metal releases and to appreciate the finer details which may have been lost in the past.

I must say, as much as I love OSWM, I do like the fact that a band like ASM employ a cleaner production style, which does make appreciation of the nuances of war metal much easier - and I say this with no ironic intent because it is obvious that, despite the inherent (almost) continuous blasting and breakneck riffing, that these guys really have great command of their instruments and their overall sound is tight, aggressive and technically solid. At the end of the day, they write killer riffs, have a powerful delivery and are extremely capable of capturing the witheringly blasphemous intent of true war metal. For me this is the band's best release to date and call me heretic if you must, but I think this is capable of standing against the very best that war metal has to offer. To (mis)quote the intro to the Fallout 4 video game "war metal... war metal never changes". Except when it does!

Lured into a 2024 release by the impressive On the Sight of Dusk on this month's The North playlst, I have spent a week or so with A Pale Crown playing at least once a day.  Strong with Satyricon vibes and grimly resplendent in the stronger Judas Iscariot and Taake sound also, Narbeleth draw on solid influences from more than one corner of the black metal universe.  Originating from a country with no established scene (go on tell me there's a big black metal underground scene in Cuba), this duo have clearly allowed their isolation to nurture their reflections on the very foundations of the genre itself and their clearly well-practised artform is about as authentic as it gets as a result.

I find this album to carry a very organic style to it.  Nothing here sounds forced; to the point, in fact, where it all sounds like it just comes so darn naturally to Dakkar and Vindok.  At six albums in to their career, you could argue that they fucking well should know what they are doing by now.  Fact is, they create this rich and luscious tapestry without sounding like they are even breaking sweat in doing so.  Far from being just a melodic bm album, this record is an album that knows how to embrace melody without doing so at the expense of darkness.  Harnessing a maturity in their songwriting, Narbeleth add depth without looking to experimental techniques or sound.  Instead they present variety to pace and tempo perfectly and I think this makes the album sound more melodic than it actually is.

Acoustics just seep into tracks, their strings sounding huge and almost comforting.  Riffs dance and jaunt through tracks supported by some very simplistic, yet incredibly effective drums.  This feels like a very controlled and measured performance by a band very much in tune with the history of the genre at large.  It sits in a space somewhere above pure worship but stands clear in its lack of intention to uproot any boundaries either.  Any fan of black metal can appreciate what Narbeleth have done here.  More please.

1991's "Worship Him" debut album was a relatively big record for Ben & I back in the early 1990's. I was already a fan of the First Wave of Black Metal when I first discovered Switzerland's Samael & their first full-length possessed some of the best traits from a number of those bands which saw me being heavily attracted to their fairly simple yet deeply atmospheric take on early black metal; their measured & doomy sense of control being in direct contrast to the death metal explosion that I was right up to my eyeballs in at the time. We'd pick up 1992's follow-up album "Blood Ritual" on CD & would give it a very similar treatment & with a fairly similar result from what I recall too. I didn't regard either record as being classics for the genre at the time but felt that they were essential early black metal release nonetheless. I always got the feeling that they sported a timeless quality & that element is still very much in effect with this week's revisit.

"Blood Ritual" isn't as different from "Worship Him" as some reviewers tend to make out. It certainly contains a cleaner, heavier production job that has obviously been inspired by felllow Swiss extreme metal legends Celtic Frost with the thick layers of rhythm guitar being a clear highlight of the record. The slow-to-mid paced tempos of "Worship Him" have only been dialed back a little further with the doomy vibe of the slower material off the debut having been accentuated here. If anything the riff structures are even less typical of the modern-day black metal sound too with thrash & doom metal tools being utilized within the context of a black metal atmosphere. Guitarist Vorphalack's grim Quorthon-inspired vocals always end to tie Samael to the black metal genre too, along with the darker feel & simpler riff structures. This is black metal at its most primitive, only with a production that goes very much against the traditional lo-fi grain that black metal was built on but one that definitely suits Samael's character traits. Celtic Frost are the clear source of inspiration here & (as with "Worship Him") I can't help but wonder as to just how much of an influence the early Samael releases had on Darkthrone's transition into black metal, particularly records like "Panzerfaust". The early works of Greece's Rotting Christ & Varathron also come to mind due to the similarities in style & tempo.

The tracklisting on "Blood Ritual" is very top-heavy with the vast majority of the stronger material residing on the A side. There's a short lull in the middle of the album with the faster title track (a re-recorded track from their 1988 "Macabre Operatta" demo tape) & short interlude "Since the Creation..." failing to hit the mark before things return to more enjoyable territories for the remainder of the record. The most notable inclusion is the incredible "After the Sepulture" which was clearly Samael's finest moment to the time & is still one of my all-time favourites amongst the earlier black metal acts. It represents Samael's first genuine classic & is probably the differentiator between where the two albums stand for me personally. Other highlights include "Poison Infiltration", "Bestial Devotion", the solid opener "Beyond the Nothingness" & the lengthy "Macabre Operatta" (another re-recording from the demo of the same name").

"Blood Ritual" is another high-quality effort from a black metal band that had been around a lot longer than most at the time & showed a clear understanding of the key elements that make the genre so great. There's not a lot between Samael's first two full-lengths but I tend to find "Blood Ritual" just edging out its older sibling overall, buoyed by the impact of the wonderful "After the Sepulture" while "Worship Him" lacked such a transcendent highlight track. 1994 would see Samael topping both records with their career-defining "Ceremony of Opposites" third album but "Blood Ritual" is probably still my second favourite Samael record of the ones I've heard & it should be essential listening for anyone wanting to gain a comprehensive understanding of where the black metal genre came from.

Although I've just recently sworn off black metal (again), I don't mind revisiting an album by a band that started off as black metal but then became the Swiss leaders of industrial/symphonic metal. I actually like Blood Ritual slightly more than a couple of Samael's industrial metal albums that I reviewed. There's simpler yet more effective production than their debut Worship Him. While their debut has constantly switched back and forth from fast to slow, Blood Ritual focuses on the slower pace more.

The sound is actually pretty clean! Their savage filth from the debut has mostly been cleared out. The music isn't played for shock value, instead opting for simple catchiness in the riffing. They still have their dark side though, appropriately timed in places.

It's interesting how the intro is titled "Epilogue". Unnecessary but nicely leads to the first song. "Beyond the Nothingness" kicks off the simple riffing that you can headbang to repeatedly from start to finish. Then we have "Poison Infiltration" which is a bit weak but has good atmosphere. "After the Sepulture" follows as the best song here and perhaps their black metal era. A remake exists but I prefer the crushing original more. With evil slow riffing and vicious vocals by Vorph, it's a destructive highlight.

"Macabre Operetta" is an interesting song. Dark acoustic and keyboards fade in before bringing in more of the slow guitar riffing. Having originated from the demo of the same name, it brings more life to the vocals, especially in the cleaner production. The title track is also from that demo and has the tight speed of their debut album. If you're here for the fast drums and guitars, congratulations, you found it! Then there's another interlude, "Since the Creation". It leads to "With the Gleam of the Torches", another favorite track of mine here. A catchy intro melody leads to another slow banger of a riff. The cool riffing goes up and down without much sweat.

"Total Consecration" only consists of synthesized piano with varied effects. Though there is a vocal section with lyrics referring to the eponymous blood ritual ready to commence. It then leads to "Bestial Devotion". That song and "Until the Chaos" have nice flow with each other, but they aren't really the best way to end this album. It's still worth listening to for the sake of completion.

Blood Ritual brings evil darkness to a more subtle direction. Their black metal sound here is so slow/mid-paced that I can almost consider it black-doom. Soft ambient keyboards and heavy fist-pumping riffs can make an excellent match. This offering is for black metal fans who can listen to albums like this in its entirety!

Favorites: "Beyond the Nothingness", "After the Sepulture", "Macabre Operetta", "Blood Ritual", "With the Gleam of the Torches"

Whilst listening to Blood Ritual, it struck me how early in black metal's second wave 1992 actually was. Contemporary releases to this were debut albums from Burzum and Immortal and Darkthrone's first dive into black metal iciness, A Blaze in the Northern Sky. Surprisingly, though, Blood Ritual sounds far more like modern Darkthrone than it does their unholy trinity, with a lot of slower tempo riffing that feels more doomy than black metal, a path Fenriz and Nocturno Culto have been exploring with vigour over their last two or three releases, so in a way I guess black metal has finally come full circle.

Anyway, that aside, Samael were obviously influenced by their legendary countrymen, Celtic Frost, with the opening riff of Bestial Devotion sounding like it was ripped directly from the grooves of To Mega Therion. Most of the quicker-paced riffing here sounds quite thrashy and certainly has more in common with Tom G. Warrior than the tremolo riffing being touted at the time by their cutting edge norwegian black metal contemporaries. Add to this the beefier production and it is apparent that Samael aren't going to propogate the same kind of frosty atmosphere as the scandinavians, making the album more blunt force trauma than icy stilleto wound.

Of course that doesn't mean this is a bad album, in fact it most definitely is not. The extended attention I have afforded it over the last couple of days has seen me strengthening my impression of it, to the point where I believe it sits very comfortably between Worship... and Ceremony... and has an appeal all of it's own. Blood Ritual inhabits the space where the old becomes the new and feels a bit like Possessed's Seven Churches in that it inhabits a point of transformation that is more extreme than it's influences, but not quite extreme enough to attain the next level.

Performance-wise it is a step up from Worship Them with the less raw production also allowing for greater clarity, enabling the band members to shine. There are some cool riffs and most of the songs exhibit a degree of progression throughout their runtimes and although I wouldn't label any of the tracks as out and out classics, the likes of the standout track, After the Sepulture, along with Blood Ritual, Beyond the Nothingness and Bestial Devotion are plenty memorable and possess all the wallop I like in my metal listening.

When asked in a 2019 interview about Fenriz describing Worship Him as “the first Norwegian black metal album”, Vorphalack from Samael replied, “We were not exactly satisfied with the sound of the album, we wanted to have something fatter and heavier. We actually reached what we were looking for when we released Blood Ritual but yeah that album sounds different.” It is hard to disagree with Vorphalack, Blood Ritual is gifted (or cursed depending on your preference) with a much beefier production than anything that came before from the Swiss group. As much as I enjoy a raw black metal album from time to time, I think that sometimes a bit of clarity is needed to really let a band’s sound shine. Whilst I will not attest to be being all that familiar with Blood Ritual until this past week, whilst listening as a standalone bm record I found that instantly I could take away positives from the experience.

A slower, more measured take on black metal that takes reference from Celtic Frost clearly, Blood Ritual is accessible without sacrificing the mandatory underground vibe that one would expect from such a record. The dense gloom that permeates the album is a chilling yet welcoming cloak in which to shroud yourself as a listener. There are smatterings of latter day Satyricon in this album (bearing in mind we were in 1992 when this was released) and although the comparison is relevant, I would suggest that the Swiss’ effort is less clinical and sterile then say Diabolical Now era Satyricon.

The simpler approach reaps its rewards for me, allowing strong structures such as After the Sepulture to grow well over its four-and-a-half-minute duration. As such, Blood Ritual has a sense that Samael are using the space better to construct an album as opposed to charging blindly through at a more traditional bm pace. Not that there is any denial of such intensity here. Indeed, the title track is a solid bm romp that blends this more traditional pacing with the clearer production values nicely. However, I could not see tracks such as Macabre Operetta (or the less impressive With the Gleam of Torches) at over six minutes faring so well on a shorter and more rabid tempo-based release.

My two main criticisms are that the album is firstly too long (even the two interlude/intro tracks don’t necessitate such a lengthy track list) and lacks much in the way of variety overall. The latter criticism holds less weight given that this is also one of the key strengths of the album. I think this is probably the best evidence that the Celtic Frost and Bathory influences got worn perhaps too visibly on the band’s sleeves. That having been said there is a level of intelligent (albeit a few notches above basic) songwriting here that needs to be acknowledged. There is still something enchanting about the primitive riffing of Bestial Devotion, that whilst is never groundbreaking, it is still presented so honestly that it is hard to ignore. That is probably how I would sum up Blood Ritual altogether as well.

I finally got through the previous albums of the Hoplites catalog, all so I can get to the one black metal album of 2024 that RYM seems to absolutely love.  I've been watching the 2024 charts for a while but haven't gotten around to this album yet.  I was focusing on other genres for a while and needed some more albums of different genres in my top 1000 albums.  See, the reason for that is because I was afraid of having too much metal there, and that this album might make it considering how much everyone loves it.  Since I have room for it now, I'm gonna give it a shot.

Instead of the three-to-seven minute energetic busts that we got on the last three albums, Hoplites surprises us with an evershifting avant-garde mess that's not only the most extreme album he's done so far, but is one of his most shifting and intriguing, going from one place to another at rapid pace without breaking the flow.  This is perfect for him since previous efforts have been very repetitive.  Our opening track has some saxophone at the beginning and end providing an extra backdrop for the insanity, for example.  No matter what's going on, the album is constantly going for over-composed insanity on epic scales.

Unfortunately, even though the songs do a lot, the emotional tone and end result of each song is ONCE AGAIN exactly the same.  You'd think with Hoplites' love of molding genres he'd have grown past that by now.  A five-star artist should be able to do multiple kinds of emotional cores if he's going to work with multiple sounds.  It's like the guy only really likes one type of song.  There's a lot of imagination in this album and that ONE THING gets in the way.  Sure, there are a couple of jazzy moments, and we can pretty much say that track 5 is a metalcore song, which is a little different, so there's that.

So despite that one flaw still being present, it's safe to say that Hoplites has made another improvement, and is now steering into Frank Zappa levels of experimental absurdity with overpowering effect.  This is music for those who love extreme music and for those who love extremities in general.  It's no wonder this is one of the highest rated metal albums of 2023.  This is imagination that almost breaks new ground for metal. 

By this point, Chinese black metal act Liu Zhenyang, or Hoplites, has tried a lot of different sounds with the same emotional core at the front of them.  Blackened death and dissonant death were the first two, having been featured on his first album as Hoplites, and on the second album he went with a punkier and thrashier atmosphere to bring out the energy and attitude from his powerful and noisy sound.  This third album, Antitimoroumeni, brings out the most of his experimentation and delivers a fully-fleshed Hoplites sound that keeps surprising you.

It must be noted that these songs can be very repetitive, relying on a repeating beat of a few notes with slight variations in the background much like an EDM album.  But the progression that appears in the foreground takes some drastic and sometimes instant turns that flow very well by both staying true to the vibe and fucking your head with is drastic measures and shifts.  Within these repetitive songs are a number of influences across the metal spectrum that have been dying to go together for ages: black, thrash, prog, core, avant-garde and death.  Even though it has a completely different sound that my ideal extreme album, the collective is exactly the kind of extreme album I would make.  This is the kind of album where batshit insanity like Schattousa goes perfectly with simpler punkish rampages like He tes ubreos aggelos, which are paired next to each other.  I would even go as far as to say that among these good and great tracks, Anti Theon is a work of sheer brilliance.

Hoplites really upped his game again with this release.  It has all the insanity of a good Deathspell Omega album but with a great genre range, despite the repetitiveness that plagues some of the tracks.  But I can see why Hoplites is making a name for himself on RYM (sadly the same is not true on Metalstorm or Metallum): he's one of the more inventive black metal acts we currently have.  This third studio album is a real testament to his abilities and a redefining album for his future.

Liu Zhenyang takes a new turn with this third project under the name Hoplites, having steered away from the death metal aspects of his previous two efforts and has now gone into crossover territory.  On this album, we have some distinct and powerful levels of blackcore that comntinue to use Zhenyang's excellent sense of crystal-clear production bringing out the best of noisy guitars.  You can hear everything perfectly in this extremely clean and never too-polished production, no matter what rapid pace the beat takes.  There is a punkish feel about it as elements of tech thrash, crossover thrash, metalcore and mathcore find their way in different places.  This sometimes makes certain songs feel shorter than they really are.  I was amazed that the fifth track was four minutes when it felt like two and a half minutes.  Unfortunately, there isn't a lot of variation that can be found in the emotional tone of the album, which was also a problem for the previous album, so while these songs are cool and have strong merits, don't expect the imagination that acts like Burzum and Emperor have achieved.  Still, I'm glad we have a black metal album willing to steer into thrashier and corier territory.  Strangely enough, the thrash aspects do more for the aggression than the dissonant death did on the debut album.  This gives songs like Hektropa a power that overtakes the senses.  So overall, thanks to an improved tone and aggression, this album is a fair improvement over the first album.

Two years after the release of an underwhelming extended play, Liu Zhenyang as Hoplites produces the first studio album under that name, and shows a dramatic improvement that pretty much cements him as an inventive and worthwhile black death artist.  In the short 37 minutes are a bunch of interesting compositions that fit a perfect balance between black and death, and making some room for experimentation with the tempos and structures, oftentimes being quite intriguing.  The one thing about the album that's mastered is the atmosphere.  There's an excellent level of brutality and aggression that any aspiring extreme metal artist needs to get right, proving that Zhenyang was fully aware of the mistakes of the EP.  It's exceptionally noisy and crystal clear at the same time.  My problem with the album is that despite all it's trying to achieve, all of the songs pretty much have the same tone of guitars and emotional core, meaning that the songs aren't as varied as the diversified genre-tagging would have you believe.  Otherwise, this is a fun 38 minutes and it makes me eager to see how much more Hoplites will improve.

So Hoplites, also known as Liu Zhenyang, is supposed to be a modern legend in the black metal and death metal worlds, right?  Well, not every legend starts out that way.  Ignoring his other aliases, this early Hoplites EP doesn't do his legend any favors.  My battle plan for attacking his discography was to go from start to finish, ending it with the 2024 album RYM loves.  This, however, is nothing but the most generic kind of black death you can find.  The audio quality is very poor, damaging the overall brutality of an otherwise brutal sound to the point that it loses its kick, and each of these songs pretty much sound exactly the same now matter how different the track times get.  OK, there are some decent compositions and fairly proggy moments, but I've heard all of those before.  Really, this isn't an album you should check out unless you're a fan of the Hoplites studio albums and you're curious.

Summoning's Stronghold is one of the very first atmo-black metal albums I had ever heard, and I think it was my first symphonic black album.  At the time I was absolutely astounded with what I has heard for the first time, altough now I give Emperor the lead in symphonic black metal, and black metal in general.  Stronghold had been near the top of my black metals list for a long time because it's a perfect album for nerds who want to be serious metalheads.  You really can't mock Stronghold for any fantasy cheese since it's such a serious and atmospheric album.

Stronghold builds itself on many of the best compositions that the band had thought of up to that point.  It was their fourth album, and their previous two already proved that they had merit and a good niche market that appealed to both metalheads and dungeon synth fans, continuing Emperor's schtick with an LOTR theme.  But this the the album where they fully fleshed it out and made the most of their atmospheric and melodic capabilities.  Sure, the album doesn't boast the kind of variety that got so many to love Burzum's Filosofem (a problem they would remedy on the next album, Let Mortal Heroes Sing Your Fame), but this album is all about strong, perfect and sometimes frightening atmospheres.  The ghosts of the elves are wailing in a low requiem mass as the synths and blackened guitars join forces with a slow pace backed up by a clever drummer who adds his own epic layer to each song.  I guess if I had to pick a favorite song from this album, it would be "Where Hope and Daylight Die."

This is one of the best LOTR albums you're going to find.  The same epica and adventure is told through a powerful black atmosphere that will suck you directly into Middle-Earth, even if you're the type of metalhead that can't stand cheese.  Summoning might not be as innovative in symphonic black as Emperor, but they're essential to the genre largely for this album, and I agree with its cult status.

Synthesizers in metal used to be an unholy taboo among fans of unholy music, a never do in a world where you do things that aren't supposed to be done.  As far as metalheads went, synths in metal made Ed and Al's human transmutation forgivable.  That all changed when Emperor said "well fuck you" to the metalheads who scremed about this taboo.  Because of them, synths in music are a kep component to black metal diversity and has spawned its own non-metal genre that's very popular among metalheads: dungeon synth.  Mortiis left Emperor to focus on his electronica, and thanks to that we now have bands molding the two together, and one of the most important bands in this scene is one of the most LOTR-influenced bands on Earth: Summoning.

Summoning made a name for themselves with their second-through-fourth albums, which the latter of these three, Stronghold, being their most beloved.  But they pretty much did the same thing until Let Mortal Heroes Sing Your Fame came along.  This is an album that relies less on the atmo-black-metal ambiance and more on the fantasy vibes that dungeon synth exudes, essentially being a dungeon synth album in its own right, as opposed to allowing these synths to be a simple atmospheric backdrop like on previous Summoning albums.  This allows the album to take pride in the switch between pure dungeon synth, folksy fantasy, heavy black metal and lighter atmo-black.  There's a progression here that the other albums didn't have, almost comparable to the early works of Moody Blues in how often the shifts came.  And thankfully, the LOTR themes and presences are not only lived up to, but connect all of these genres together.  Although, the actual compositions themselves are not always at peak performance.  The songs are all good, but there's only occasional brilliance here, leaving the vibes and diversity to try and make up for the fluctuation in melodic quality.

If you're a metalhead looking to get into dungeon synth, or vise-versa, I can't think of a better album to start with than Let Mortal Heroes Sing Your Fame.  This is a pure fantasy album that takes itself seriously while giving into fantasy cheese.

Well, this is a bit of a strange one, I must say. Mare tranquillitatis is an album of synth-heavy cosmic black metal, so your first question I would imagine is "So what is so unusual about that?" The strangeness comes from both the sound of the synths, which is of a vintage, 1970's type, typically employed by the likes of Hawkwind on their late Seventies and early Eighties albums and the prominence of said synths in the mix. In fact, for significant portions of the album, the black metal component seems to be acting in support of the synths rather than vice-versa. Yet, somehow the band make this work far better than I would have expected, even though I found it to be a little distracting at times.

The black metal component is reasonable enough, if not exactly earth-shattering, with a decent quota of fiery blasting and the vocals possessing the requisite distant-sounding banshee shrieks which we all expect as a minimum from our atmospheric black metal. But then, where your usual atmo-black album fills out the atmosphere with an additional layer using often quite reedy and thin-sounding synths, Etoile Filante go a whole other way and dollop on the retro-sounding synths in a way that often pushes them as the focus of the tracks. What I personally found especially distracting by this though, is how the synths often brought to mind other songs and set my attention wandering away from the matter at hand. For example, there is a point midway through the opener where the synths sound just like parts of the Queen soundtrack for the Flash Gordon movie and, similarly during the next track, Fragments de Poseidonis - d'après Atlantide de Clark Ashton Smith, they felt identical to the mid-section of Hawkwind's Damnation Alley from their 1977 Quark, Strangeness and Charm album, all of which pulled me out of the current listening experience. Of course, I accept that this is a personal problem and most likely won't be experienced by other listeners and the issue doesn't really arise outside of the first two tracks. Either way, the resultant album has an atmosphere I have not encountered too often in a black metal context. I find most cosmic black metal seeks to convey the frigid coldness of interstellar space and the awe-inspiring effect of sources of unbelievable energy such as stars and black holes within this frozen environment, whereas Etoile Filante seem to be taking a warmer, more human-centric view as expressed by the synth-work, which more evokes man-made environments such as starships or orbitals. The final couple of tracks, "Naufragés de l'océan d'onyx" and "Le vent des éternels" strike a much better balance between synths and black metal and, for me, are the best two tracks on the album and this is the main reason I leave the album in a positive frame of mind, I suspect.

I'm not saying it is by any means, but my main worry with Mare tranquillitatis is that, in the crowded black metal world, the untypical synthwork is a "gimmick" to enable it to stand out from the slew of black metal releases destined to hit our shelves and streaming platforms in 2024. It's certainly got me talking about it for one anyway. I hope this isn't the case and the guys are all-in with this from a purely artisitic viewpoint because even though it sometimes doesn't work entirely, it is still an interesting listen throughout.

Evilfeast is a solo project of Polish multi-instrumentalist Jakub Grzywacz, who goes by the pseudonym of GrimSpirit. The project has been going since 1996, when it was then known as Darkfeast (changing name in '98) so he has some credibility as a relatively early adopter of the atmospheric black metal creed and not just some random bandwagon-jumper. So, I thought I hadn't listened to Evilfeast before and when it was pointed out that indeed I had, I still had no great recollection of the event. Not exactly a ringing endorsement I think you will agree. However, it says more about my insatiable appetite for listening to more and more unfamiliar metal albums and a resulting lack of retention of any but the most excellent (or utterly terrible), than it does about the quality of the release in question. This is because Elegies of the Stellar Wind is, in fact, a pretty decent slab of black metal with a pronounced symphonic element influenced by none less than the mighty Emperor, I would suggest. Although the keyboards are fundamental to the album's sound, it still feels like it sits more within the sphere of atmospheric rather than symphonic black metal because, although the synth sound can be traced back to Ihsahn & co, it isn't as bombastic as the Black Wizards, but rather it feels like it is heralding the majesty of the natural world rather than the machinations and achievements of powerful men.

The black metal component is generally of the uptempo, quite savage-sounding, thinly-produced type that harks back to a previous black metal age and doesn't contain the lushness of more recent atmospheric black metal efforts, but that feels no less effective for it. I must admit I like it's quite raw black metal stylings, whilst the keyboards are incorporated effectively and even though they have a significant presence they still work well in tandem with the riffing. It never really attains the hypnotic transcendence that the absolute top-tier atmospheric black metal releases achieve and, in truth, it probably feels a little more down-to-earth as a result, but whilst these ham-fisted attempts at describing Evilfeast's sound make it feel like it won't work, it absolutely does, it's just that it's not exactly what you would necessarily expect.

Cabinet, also known as Sxuperion since 2014 and member of Oreamnos since 2023, is garnering favor among underground metal fans as one of the most unsettling metal musicians of all time due to a perfectly healthy sense of texture.  His album Claustrophobic Dysentery is my current pick for the best war metal album of all time for its masterful use of noise and ambient as frightening textural instruments while the black and death metal guitars reached extremities unheard of before.  I wasn't going to listen to a lot of metal albums for a while sine I want to get some more albums of other genres in my top 1000, but for Cabinet I will maliciously and gleefully break that rule like a Kitkat bar.

On "Masticated Inurnment of Dysphagiactic Soils," We start with an oddly dissonant death take on black noise which intentionally varies in production quality going from too noisy to proper to totally atmospheric, and we see the shifts just like this through the entire album.  it's like a fucking Neurosis track.  This is the typical genre-shifting behavior I expect from Cabinet, but they're clearly more focused on the black noise atmosphere taking a stronger, fuzzier charge than what was seen on previous albums.  The four minutes here masterfully shift from one place to another, while its noise also creates an industrial atmosphere that gives it an almost science fiction approach.  The way I see it, this has to be classified as an avant-garde metal album, as its experimentation is heavy and unrelenting.  Just listen to track 9, Worms Squirming Into Your Occiput / Turning To Mush, and tell me this does not qualify as an experimental album.

For the best example, the title track shows no hesitation in delivering weird and wild collections of black noise and dark ambient teaming together to create unsettling Blut Aus Nord style atmospheres.  This is the slowest track so far, and definitely the most disturbing, as there is less of a mechanic feel to it and is more traditional in the vein of general extreme metal.  This welcome addition to both the diversity and flow of this ever so unpredictable with a singular strong persence throughout really displays Cabinet's unwavering willingness to fuck around and just creep you out to the point of vomiting.

Some of these songs, however, are pure experiments in texture.  While these two minute songs will be packed with shifts from one general sound to another, these songs still feel too short in the end, especially since four of these songs take up the entire middle section.  This is a similar criticism I give to several songs on Low by David freakin' Bowie.  Although, the progression of these songs was nice, and almost akin to the variety of the so-called "melody" that took up much of side B of Abbey Road.  The nature recordings at the end of track 7 were especially welcome.  Even within the two minute songs, we never know what robotic or ghostly sirens will overtake any noisy, industrial guitar rhythms or when the next tidal wave of pure black noise will assault us.  However, it should be said that, while "Worms Squirming Into Your Occiput / Turning To Mush" is a fine example of this experimentation, its second half is too long and a little unwelcome.

Well, I'm once again very happy with the direction Cabinet took.  I've been eagerly awaiting another Cabinet ever since I discovered them, and I was hoping this would end up just as experimental as ever.  This is a finer example of what trying to be creative with an otherwise lacking genre can do.  Bestial black metal needs more bands like Cabinet, and along with Claustrophobic Dysentery, this is proof.  Even though this album has some flaws stemming from lengths, this is a weird and unique black metal album and one that I highly recommend.

I've been a follower of Obsidian Tongue for a decade or so now and am a big fan of their epic atmospheric black metal. The band is made up of multi-instrumentalist Brian Hayter and Raymond Capizzo who is drummer with Falls of Rauros and is Austin Lunn's live drummer with Panopticon. The Stone Heart is a three-track, twenty-minute EP and is their first release since 2020's Volume III.

The band play lush atmospheric black metal that utilises both cleans and harsh, blackened vocals. There has been a post-metal aspect of build-up and release creeping into their sound since their more straightforward early couple of albums and this works exceedingly well as a songwriting decision with more textural variation within tracks. Nowhere is this better illustrated than on the EP's main event, the almost nine-minute second track, Winter Child, which has become an instant favourite.

The title track opener begins in a gothic-like, almost gentle post-punk style with clean vocals before bursting into full-on black metal blast-a-thon with Hayter reverting to the ragged, full-throated shrieks he delivers so well. The sound is filled out with the addition of fairly subtle keyboard work that is well-placed without ever threatening to overwhelm or drag the track into symphonic cheesiness. The aforementioned Winter Child begins in similar vein to the title track, except that the clean-sung opening section has more of a viking metal feel to it and extends for half the track length. However when the duo drop the hammer on this one at midpoint it really cooks and sweeps away all before it in a wave of black metal fury. It possesses the kind of scope of a mid-era Enslaved track, although the duo still have a bit of a way to go to emulate the Norwegian Kings! The EP closes out with a nice enough, if somewhat superfluous, three-minute instrumental piece which would probably sound really good worked into a full song.

Here's hoping that The Stone Heart is merely a place-keeper and that a full-length in similar vein is in the offing without us having to wait another four years.

Aureole is a solo project of Markov Soroka, whose work I have enjoyed under a couple of his other projects, the funeral doom of Drown and the black and death metal of Tchornobog, but his output as Aureole has always left me a bit cold. This is mainly down to the excessive (for me) ambient content of the project's work, except on his split with Mare Cognitum, where he turned in a decent couple of tracks of icy atmo-black to outshine Jacob Buczarski on that one, which is no mean feat it must be said.

Well, he appears to have doubled down on the ambience with Alunarian Bellmaster, to the degree where what we have here is essentially an ambient album with very little actual black metal. There is some BM present, but it is so toned-down and steeped in ambience that it is barely detectible, at least to my tinnitus-ridden ears. I suppose I should state the obvious at this point and declare that I am not a huge fan of ambient music, it quite frankly bores me most of the time and if I need the kind of fix that ambient gives then I tend to turn to drone or funeral doom. I have sat through the album's hour-long runtime once and quite frankly, that's enough for me. It's not that I hate it by any means, it doesn't really register on a deep enough level for such a strong emotion, but I can live without it most easily.

I have been quite the fan of the Napoleonic Era-obsessed, Québécois black metal project since their debut album finally saw the light of day in 2019 after inexplicably spending almost a decade sat on the shelf. The band itself is comprised of three musicians, Crucifixus, Fanalis and Vinculum each of whose role within the band isn't disclosed, but all three are multi-instrumentalists and veterans of a dizzying number of other projects, so I doubt each has tightly defined roles within the band.

Satan Soldier of Fortune continues in the same vein as the debut, with the band laying down raw-sounding black metal riffs that still come across as remarkably melodic despite this rawness. The riffs are then overlaid with reedy-sounding synths, which are well-used as they don't swamp the riffing, despite being given equal standing to the guitar work in the mix. Production-wise this has a much more treble-y sound than the debut, which makes the riffs stand out better and gives the synths a thinner sound, thus making the whole feel just that little bit rawer than the debut. The vocals are suitably earnest and raggedly harsh, sounding heartfelt and shying away from the forced theatricality that can sometimes get a grip of black metal vocalists. The drumming is functional in the main with some decent blasting and feels perfectly placed within the mix to ensure it's presence is felt without it ever becoming over-dominant. In fact, the mixing is extremely well-handled and all the components are given suitable prominence so that the whole benefits rather than any single aspect sticking out.

It would appear that Departure Chandelier have hit on a formula for producing melodic black metal that may appeal to a wider audience, whilst still retaining the raw savagery for which the genre was known in it's earliest days. Personally, I think this is a step up from the debut, the improvement in songwriting has produced tracks that remain in the memory despite their base rawness, resulting in an album that should appeal to the most kvlt of black metal fans without alienating the more melodically-inclined.

4/5

Polish one-man black act Evilfeast & I first crossed paths back in 2009 when I gave lone contributor GrimSpirit's 2008 third full-length "Lost Horizons of Wisdom" a few listens & really enjoyed it too. This experience would not only see me experimenting with some of Evilfeast's other releases & finding them all to be worth hearing but it would also see me asking myself the obvious question: What exactly IS an "evilfeast"? Is it the food that's evil or the patrons at said feast? If not the food or the techniques used to eat said food then I'd have to question the relevance of calling it an evilfeast actually but anyway... moving right along... I come into "Elegies of the Stellar Wind" (GrimSpirit's fifth album under the Evilfeast moniker) with some experience with both this work & most of his other releases although I've never gotten around to rating or reviewing any of them which seems to be a common theme these days given my self-imposed rules around how & what I review.

Now, I'm gonna be open about the mistake I made coming into this revisit of "Elegies of the Stellar Wind"; an album that a remembered quite enjoying. You see, I chucked it on straight after my third straight listen to our Rollins Band feature release "The End of Silence" which is a much heavier & more intense record. Evilfeast's effort seemed to sound a little lacklustre in comparison to be honest & I started to think that I might have over-stated the level of appeal the album had offered me in the past. The intentionally lo-fi production job certainly contributed to that with the guitars sounding far too distant during the sections where they're isolated in the mix & the vocals sitting too far back in the mix for the most part too which I'm guessing was intentional. The pretty regular use of symphonics saw me recoiling a bit as well as I've never been the biggest fan of the more keyboard-driven black metal model but a couple more listens saw "Elegies of the Stellar Wind" opening up a bit & I ended up finding myself getting a fair bit of enjoyment out of most of it.

Evilfeast's sound is often compared with the more prominent one-man atmosheric black metal acts but I feel that an artist like Burzum offered a much darker & colder package than the one we get here. The keyboards are used in a trancier fashion & the tempos are often pushed into faster territory which gives Evilfeast a lighter feel, even though the influence of the early Emperor releases is obvious at times. In fact, the use of the "atmospheric black metal" tag is actually a little questionable with a lot of this material as some of it would fit a touch better under the symphonic black metal or conventional black metal tags but I think it's the production & general aesthetic that keeps people reaching for the atmospheric variety when describing the album. I wouldn't say that Evilfeast are offering anything terribly fresh or original here though & artists like Sweden's Bekëth Nexëhmü, Switzerland's Paysage d'Hiver & Greece's Nocternity are probably a pretty good gauge of what you should expect.

I think my struggles with my initial revisit of "Elegies of the Stellar Wind" were definitely contributed to by the decision to kick the tracklisting off with the piece that offers me the least in the way of appeal with twelve-minute opener "The Second Baptism... Shores in Fire & Ice" ending up being a bit of a struggle. That kinda set me into a negative mindset from the start & it wasn't until I restarted the album from a different starting point on my drive home from work that I found that I could reset my expectations & really dig into the sounds on offer. I still can't say that I genuinely love anything that Evilfeast have to offer here but the vast majority of it is pretty enjoyable. It's just that there's always one or two elements of each of the six lengthy pieces that sees my smile turning upside down & my issues with the production & the use of simplistic drum programming probably don't help either. Unsurprisingly, it's the darker & more brutal moments that work best for me & they usually come without the bombastic keyboard which helps too.

If I draw back on my past experiences with Evilfeast I'd have to suggest that "Elegies of the Stellar Wind" is one of his better records although it doesn't really sit in my personal black metal wheel-house. Thankfully I managed to accept that fairly early on which enabled me to simply try to enjoy the ride which has worked pretty well for the most part. I definitely needed a couple of listens to get into Evilfeast's sound though so if you experience similar struggles upon your first spin then I'd urge you to have a bit of faith that things will slip into place with repeat listens. I'd also recommend that you draw upon the alternate meaning for the word "stellar" when reading the album title (e.g. "a stellar cast had been assembled") because it makes for a few chuckles if you're not one of those kvlt elitist black metal types. 

France's Necrowretch are a four-piece centred around guitarist, vocalist and founding member Vlad and, despite them being around for over fifteen years now, I have never crossed paths with before. Swords of Dajjal is their fifth full-length with the title referring to an evil entity from Islamic tradition. Musically Necrowretch play a muscular form of black metal that contains a significant quantity of death metal DNA which gives it a more solid, denser sound than you would necessarily expect, whilst remaining emphatically within the black metal realm.

Drumming duties are handled by Nicolas Ferrero, ex-member of Fhoi Myore and Brutal Avengers, under the pseudonym N. Destroyer and he turns in an admirably controlled, yet powerful performance which is pushed to the fore at times and thunders like the rumblings of the very heavens themselves. The riffs are fast and frenetic in the main, but the band are also able to throttle it back and drop into a more doomy sound that feels more ominous than any amount of out and out blasting. There is some decent lead work, handled by guitarist Wenceslas Carrieu (as W. Cadaver), although it is submerged in the mix to a degree and doesn't necessarily cut like it could as a result. Vlad's vocals are of the ragged, savage, shrieking variety that so well define the archetypal black metal singer and are spot on.

I think that ultimately appreciation of Swords of Dajjal will come down to how the listener views the mixing of the album, with the drums most definitely having a more dominant presence than is usual and their booming and thundering presence may be too overwhelming for some, although I confess they are one of the reasons that I like this so much. The flipside of this is that, for some the lead guitar may be too overwhelmed and buried under this all-consuming battery and although the riffs are perfectly audible the solos are swamped. As I said, I quite like this thundering style and am well on board with how this has turned out with it being a visceral-sounding and energetic blast of black metal indulgence.

1991's debut album "Ritual" represented my entry point into the world of Czech black metallers Master's Hammer back in the day, an experience that would see me experimenting with most of the remainder of their back-catalogue at one point or another with the exception of their 1995 electronic/experimental third album "Šlágry" which I've never found the courage to investigate. The band's second & third demo tapes were pretty decent as well as their 1992 sophomore album "Jilemnický okultista" but the remainder of the Master's Hammer discography is largely underwhelming with only 2012's "Vracejte konve na místo" seeing me leaving with a positive outlook. It's really this first-up full-length that will forever be the centrepiece of Master's Hammer's legacy though & I'd suggest that it's influence can be easily picked up on many of the early Second Wave of Black Metal releases.

"Ritual" is a funny record for me as I can easily hear its importance in the evolution of the modern black metal sound but there's quite often one element or another that holds me back from fully committing. The riffs are a lot thrashier than most early 90's black metal bands would opt for which was perhaps more of a reflection of Master's Hammer's First Wave credentials than anything else while the primitive blast-beats give "Ritual" a fair whack of old-school street credibility. There's a quirkiness to their sound though that I find hard to put my finger on with the vocals of front man Franta Štorm often taking an unusual yet captivating route, despite the clear influence from Bathory's Quorthon. In fact, the Bathory influence is clear throughout "Ritual" with all eras of that classic artist appearing in one shape or form, the most significant of which being the wonderfully epic closer & album highlight "Útok" which reeks of Bathory's Viking metal period.

The tracklisting is relatively consistent with only the weak "Géniové..." failing to hit the mark but I'd suggest that there aren't enough genuine highlights for me to be considering my higher scores with only the high-quality instrumental title-track & the very solid "Černá svatozář" competing with the closer for highlight status. I do quite enjoy the opening intro piece "Intro (King of the Bohemian Forest)" though & feel that it sets the mood for the album quite well. The rest of the record is nothing more than mildly enjoyable though & doesn't justify the sort of praise you'll see from some parties. I genuinely feel that there's an element of getting carried away from a purely timeline-driven perspective with some reviewers as there's no doubt that "Ritual" was slightly ahead of its time. I find that I can hear their influence the most prominently with Norwegian Second Wave legends Enslaved & would be very surprised if there wasn't a link there. For me personally though, I can't quite position Master's Hammer's debut in as positive a light as I do the debut album from fellow late-First Wavers Samael whose "Worship Him" album from the same year left a noticeably deeper mark on my youth. Perhaps Master's Hammer are just a little too quirky for my taste but I do still enjoy "Ritual" without it ever really commanding that I give it regular revisits. Those with a taste for late First Wave artists like Root, Tormentor & Mortuary Drape may get more out of it than I do though & I'd still recommend that any black metal nut worthy of their bullet belt should at least have an understanding of "Ritual", if only for the sake of completism.

Darkspace is a vehicle for the impressive mind of Tobias Möckl, aka Wroth, aka Wintherr, the man behind Paysage d'Hiver and one of, if not the, premier exponent of frigid, frost-bitten atmospheric black metal, whether it be via the narrative journey of Paysage d'Hiver's Traveller through blizzard-riven forests or Darkspace's exploration of the icy voids of interstellar space.

It has been a decade since Darkspace last released any new material, while Wroth concentrated on Paysage d'Hiver, writing and recording the project's masterpiece Im Wald and then it's follow-up, Geister. Now that he has reached some sort of resolution with P d'H, he has been able to focus on Darkspace and this latest work, Dark Space -II. I think the minus 2 nomenclature is significant and places this latest piece before the very earliest Darkspace releases in the project's overall aesthetic timeline. This makes absolute sense, as it builds on elements from the early days, with Dark -1.0 from the first EP seemingly the base upon which the new album's sole track, Dark -2.-2 is built, the earlier work's ideas being expounded upon, resulting in an expansive forty-seven minutes reworking of it's icy ambience.

The track begins with an emotionless female voice intoning scientific or philosophical theses over ambient keys, which continues throughout the entirety of the piece, but comes to the fore as an introduction and during an interval between the piece's two major "acts". After a few minutes, this ambient introduction is joined by programmed drums and a chugging, chunky, industrialised guitar riff that is reminiscent of the one used on the track Dark 1.2 from the 2003 debut full-length and which here sounds similar to the riff of Rammstein's Links 1-2-3-4. This industrial-sounding riff and the monotone way the spoken words are delivered sees Wroth exploring a different kind of coldness here, with reference to emotional frigidity in addition to his usual dissection of merely physical iciness, illustrating perfectly how the two can be equally debilitating. Eventually his own desperate shrieks and subdued black metal riffing join the fray, although they are deliberately buried down in the mix so as to merely add a further layer to the already-established ambient texture rather than taking centre stage and leading the way.

Around twenty minutes in, the riff subsides and we are treated to an interval of sorts with the spoken word outpourings of our female companion on this interstellar trip once more moving to centre stage. A portentious piano theme then takes up the reins, joined by droning guitar chords and a deeper, gruffer vocal that is once more buried such that it acts more as a textural addition than any kind of narrative device. This second act does see some slow progression and does feature some slight building of atmosphere, right up to the piece's ultimate release which sees the return of the opening act's chugging industrialised riff for the finale and sees it ending in probably it's most "metal-sounding" section.

The overall effect of Dark Space -II's subjugation of the black metal elements in favour of the more ambient and textural, sees the band using the toolbox of black and industrial metal to produce what is essentially a drone metal album which has more in common with early Earth or Nadja than any resemblance to more traditional atmospheric black metal. Now I'm not sure how this will be received by the usual fans of Darkspace, although Wroth has dabbled in this more textural style before, but for myself as a lover of quality atmospheric drone metal, I can see many analogies between that style and what Darkspace have delivered here with Dark Space -II and I found it to be a rivetting experience with a refreshing approach to drone metal.

Ah, Cuba, the home of the world's finest cigars, Twentieth century revolutionaries and the first, although in all probability not the last, potential flashpoint to nuclear armageddon. It is also the original home of Dakkar, the man behind black metal project Narbeleth, although he now calls Galicia in Spain home. It may just be my ignorance showing here, but I never heard of much of a metal scene in Cuba, yet it makes perfect sense for a band like Narbeleth, black metal being pretty much an outsider's style of metal, I would imagine Dakkar being very much an outsider in the Caribbean place of his birth.

Musically, Narbeleth are very much an old-school black metal act, with recognisable and memorable tremolo riffing in the style of luminaries such as Immortal and Satyricon, with a cover of the latter's "The King of the Shadowthrone" even closing out the album. The production isn't as raw as we would have expected from the band's influencers thirty years ago, but the modern production values don't rob the music of any of it's icy aggression and is such that it enables all the constituent parts to be heard clearly. Dakkar has a real ear for a frosty-sounding riff, with his true talent coming in knowing exactly when to throttle back the tempo and when to put his foot down, as it were. This transition between full-on blasting and a more mid-paced tempo provides a lot of the impetus and dynamism in his songwriting and is wielded exceedingly deftly. He also possesses one of those frost-rimed voices that has you imagining visible clouds of icy breath issuing from his lips as he shrieks his occult-heavy lyrics into the night sky.

I would also be remiss of me not to mention the second band member, Vindok, and his supporting role on drums, which he fulfills perfectly, providing a precise battery which injects added impetus to the faster sections and adds depth to the slower tempo parts. Nothing showy, but well-judged and effective black metal skinsmanship. All things considered, I found this to be an immensely enjoyable trip back to the 1990's black metal heyday, with a bit of a modern twist in the higher production values, but that manages to remain authentic-sounding and illustrating perfectly that you don't need to have grown up in the frozen forests of Scandinavia to be able to produce trve black metal frostiness.

It's been a while since I revisited the debut album from notorious one-man Californian black metal artist Odz Manouk but this feature release has been beautifully timed to come off the back of the very positive experience I had with Yagian's long-awaited 2023 sophomore album "Bosoragazan (Բոսորագազան)" which was one that went pretty close to dragging classic status outta me. "Odz Manouk" is generally considered to be a classic release for the genre in itself & it's certainly very solid but I'm not sure I'd go that far, despite it possessing some admirable qualities. An exceptionally cold & lo-fi production job is the cassette's main calling card & boy is it effective, giving the atmosphere an extra couple of layers of menace & spite. Yagian's vocals are the other highlight as he really nails that evil, tortured & abrasive style perfectly, particulary on the classic opener "A Mymex Omen" which is frankly one of the greatest examples of the genre you'll find. Unfortunately, Odz Manouk can't manage to repeat the dose across the other five songs included with the quality levels showing a bit of unwanted variety as the tracklisting progresses. The very popular "The Indisciplinarian" doesn't do a lot for me in all honesty & is the only genuine weak point in my opinion while closer "The Roaming" is merely acceptable. The other three tracks are all high-quality examples of their type though which makes "Odz Manouk" an essential listen for fans of the US black metal scene. The one element that I think could have been improved is the use of a fairly cheap sounding drum machine which is pretty obvious at times. I don't recall noticing it on "Bosoragazan (Բոսորագազան)" which I consider to be the better record overall. Still... there's a lot to like about Yagian's debut full-length & I've really enjoyed this return visit.

Inquisition have a distinctive sound, that's for sure, which is principally defined by Dagon's unique vocal style. His is less the role of traditional vocalist and more of narrator. With his virtually spoken-word, croaking approach he comes across like some twisted hobgoblin, perched atop a mossy boulder and expounding his cosmic satanic philosophies to any passing ear. Obviously this aspect of the duo's sound is as divisive as it is unique, although as I have become more familiar with it, it has become more of a welcome departure from the norm and less a source of irritation. In fact, on the couple of brief occasions when he resorts to clean vocals, Dagon's voice sounds even more weird and quirky than when delivering his usual croaks (Secrets from the Wizard Forest of Forbidden Knowledge, for example).

There isn't any real noticeable departure from their earlier material here, along with the vocals the duo have retained the lo-fi aesthetics and the swarming, buzzing guitar tone of their earlier work, along with the cosmic, satanist themes that they have explored throughout their nine full-length releases. The duo introduce some synth-driven overlays onto a couple of the tracks which I don't think particularly bring much worthwhile, sounding misplaced and robbing a track like "Memories Within an Empty Castle in Ruins" of it's momentum in my opinion.

I suppose Inquisition could be accused of repeatedly ploughing the same blackened furrow, thus making each subsequent release less and less relevant, but I think that their sound is sufficiently singular as to justify their approach, seeing as very few acts sound similar. It isn't like they are endlessly regurgitating tropes copied from someone else's work, but it is more a case of sticking with a unique-sounding formula and using it to explore the themes they find personally interesting. I suspect I would have enjoyed this more without the synths, but I was still swept along by it's distinctive, blasphemous atmosphere and it's memorable riffs, such as that on "Infinity is the Aeon of Satan", which even, dare I say it, bordered on the "catchy". If you are already familiar with the Colombians then I don't hear much that could change your mind about them, if you don't like them now then this won't convert you and vice-versa. For me, I would say to them "Lay off the synths" then all would be AOK.

Malist is a solo project of Moscow's Ovfrost (Nick Kholodov) and isn't a project that I have followed too closely, but I did enjoy his 2020 album, To Mantle the Rising Sun, which was a well-done and enjoyable slice of melodic black metal. I have missed the two intervening albums, but here we are now with his latest, Of Scorched Earth. Whilst he is still ploughing the fertile melodic black metal furrow, there seems to be a greater influence from atmo-black that gives the tracks a more sweeping, grandiose quality. One trope in particular Ovfrost employs on multiple occasions here, is a calm, quieter core to tracks, with acoustic guitar strumming and a keyboard overlay, be it organ or piano, that acts as the still eye of the storm that contrasts with the heavy riffing and generally more frantic pace of the tracks either side of the still spot.

The songwriting indulges a fair bit of melodicism for a black metal album, yet I think it still retains enough of black metal's intensity and inherent savagery to satisfy all but the most demanding of BM kvltists. I suppose there are those who will bemoan it's clean production, pauses in intensity and melodic phrases, but there are more than enough passages where he lets himself off the leash, letting rip some frantic, black metal battery. For what it's worth, I would score this down a bit from the earlier To Mantle the Rising Sun, but it is nevertheless an interesting enough expression of melodic and atmospheric black metal, that has it's roots planted firmly here in the modern day and not back in the savagery of the 1990s.

If the prospect of an entirely instrumental atmospheric black metal fills you with as much dread as it did me then you could be forgiven for giving up on this review and heading away to look for something else to tickle your atmo-black requirements. Fact is though, I nearly missed a real treat. As recommendations from internet acquaintances go, Óreiða has been a neat find. There’s an undeniable charm to the Paysage d’Hiver-like passages that inhibit these five songs.

One-man black metal outfits are not rare. In a playing field that has long been overcrowded, Óreiða’s unique selling point is the entirely instrumental approach to their sound. Without the familiar cold and harsh vocal style associated with most atmospheric black metal there is arguably little room for hiding if your instrumentation skills are not up to the mark. Thankfully, the atmospherics and instrumentation fill this void with a deftness that at times makes them sound like they are choral vocals. Deploying a dungeon synth style over those big riffs works well. The sense of the music constantly pushing into the negative space, injecting a dank sense of melody is tangible throughout The Eternal.

Residing on the legendary Debemur Morti Productions for this his third record, Þórir G. Jónsson sounds at home on a label roster that includes so many other atmospheric black metal aficionados. The desperation in the whining drone that accompanies the opening two minutes of The River is a delirium inducing sound that you would normally associate with most BAN releases. Serving the dual purpose of unsettling wane and focal background point at the same time, I also found the instrumentation to be sounding perfectly balanced around it, giving a sense of completeness to the track. It was obvious to me by track two just how little I was missing the vocals.

The production job is well-delivered without being too polished. Retaining the thinnest levels of murkiness aids the authenticity factor of the sound with the lush atmospherics and powerful sound of the guitars set against the maelstrom of percussion doing more than enough to give the listener that fully rounded experience. Each track’s title appears to be done a real justice by the sound. The dizzying guitars of The Apex are testimony to this point. It is The Eternal’s ability to tell a story without the use of lyrics to frame it that is one of the most impressive feats that the album achieves. On paper I should be bored to tears but instead I am utterly enchanted.

Probably the purest Melodic Black Metal album ever recorded. Every song is nonstop melodic tremolo riffing over unrelentingly blast beats. Despite the incredible quality of this album, it has almost no experimentation, no outside influences, and very little variety. But that makes it such an iconic triumph of the genre. Anyone want to hear the best and purest example of Meloblack, you slap this baby on.

Right from the album art, there is a certain beauty to this. That perfect shot of a dark sunset encapsulates the catchy, poignant lead guitar melodies that dominate the otherwise morose and oppressive atmosphere. One after another, songs lay down memorable riffs, and the whole thing is filled with great lyrics as well. The near-constant blast beating does get to be a bit much at times, but the drumming performance is so great I can’t really complain.

Two songs definitely steal the show a bit, those being the opener and closer. Both have some of the best lead guitar riffs of all time, and a wonderfully somber atmosphere that is dually triumphant and powerful. Perfect way to open and close the album. This one is a shining star.

Thrash was in a sorry state in the late 90’s. Most of the old guard had fizzled out or changed genres, and it had absolutely no place in the mainstream world. It was up to the underground, then, to keep it alive, and most of those bands did so by mixing it with more extreme styles of music.

Desaster were one of many bands going for a Blackened Thrash style, going back to the roots of the genres by worshipping the infernal overlord and reigning hellfire upon the world. By ’98, nothing on this album was particularly new or inventive, but it was done well, and that’s what matters. Songs traded places between aggressive Thrash beats and Blackened chords, leads and blast beats. The production, the style, the lyrics, they all sounded very 80’s, and for Thrash fans, there’s no better era to be. However, the music itself, especially the guitar playing and vocal approach, leaned far more towards the Black Metal style. In fact, so much so that I don’t think I could truly call this a Thrash album at all; it sounds much more like Thrash-influenced Black Metal (or plainly said, first wave Black Metal).

The band is at their best going full speed aggressive assault and focusing on darker riffs. When they slow down into more Blackened Heavy Metal territory, or play at a goofier, medieval sound, the material doesn’t work as well.

Hellfire’s Dominion wasn’t enough to revitalize either genre, nor did it add anything new to the mix. However, the album is great fun and full of competent songwriting, playing, and of course, riffs. I do find it a bit overrated, though.

I’m just gonna come out and say it: it sounds too goofy. The flute and folky medieval instruments are playing melodies that sound akin to a festival or something. The atmosphere that’s built here is disjointed, as the heavier and darker, blackened aspects of the music do not agree with the more jovial folky stuff. It’s epic and uplifting sure, but not in a cool way. Vocals and instrumental ability are good, I’m just not always a fan of the melodies crated here.

However, this is almost entirely averted on the closing track, instrumental Baldurs Todd. More energetic double bass drumming drives an atmospheric soundscape that actually succeeds in conveying a serious, powerful atmosphere. It has all the power of a 90’s boss battle theme, but does unfortunately stray into silly territory a few times.

The album is fine, but again, the atmosphere just doesn’t work here, and for a style reliant on atmosphere, that’s a big flaw.

Hauntologist are a post-black metal duo from Kraków comprising Mgła drummer, Darkside, and multi-instrumentalist, The Fall (Michał Stępień), Mgła bassist and backing vocalist for live performances. Hollow is the duo's debut full-length and seems to have been met with mixed reactions, a lot which seems to be based upon people's attitude towards Mgła and how much this does or doesn't sound like them. I don't mind Mgła at all, but I have only heard Exercises in Futility which I enjoyed, but not as much as many others did I suspect and so I'm going to buck the trend and take Hollow on it's own merit, not by it's comparison to another project.

I found this to be pretty interesting and hugely entertaining to boot, which may not be enough for some who need their world to be turned upside down by every release, but is more than enough for me. I often find post-metally BM to be a bit of a bore, to be honest, and went into this with a little bit of trepidation, but it kept me rapt pretty much throughout with some nice twists and turns, the three-quarters of an hour runtime seeming much shorter, which is always a good sign. Fast, intense passages of blasting atmospheric black metal are complemented by contemplative and melancholy airs that temper the furiousness of the black metal sections with more reflective atmospheres. There is a certain harshness to the production, coupled with The Fall's ascerbic vocals and icy-sounding tremolo guitar lines that gives the overall aesthetic an inherent frostiness. Darkside's drumming is top knotch throughout whether it's his withering blastbeats or skillful fills that are to the forefront at any one time. The faster sections aren't just composed of layers of indistinguishable tremolo riffing either, but rather The Fall focusses on producing cool and memorable riffs rather than just continuously swamping us with "atmosphere". Elsewhere there are the folky acoustic guitar and clean vocals of the title track and the gothic, post-punk vibe of Gardermoen but these sit well within the overall structure of the album and aren't at all distracting or obtrusive, giving the album a freshness of perspective. The album closes out with a gently self-reflective spoken word piece that leaves the listener slightly wrong-footed and provoking them to reconsider what they have heard during the previous three-quarters of an hour.

Overall this is a fine album of modern atmospheric black metal that draws on the tropes of post-metal and introduces influence from other, non-metal genres whilst still acknowledging the power of the riff in metal. It isn't very challenging to listen to and is, in fact, very easy on the ears, but I don't view that as an issue personally. The length is just about right and keeps things focussed with no tendency towards self-indulgence that may have blighted a lengthier runtime.

Avant-garde music is not a style that I actively seek out. I want to like it, but more often than not I find myself trapped in a endless display of loud noises for their own sake. I have experimented in the past and there are of course exceptions, but music written for its own sake it not really something that resonates well with me.

I discovered Hoplites [Ὁπλίτης] due to a featured release recommendation last year and found myself very perplexed by the outcome. Trothisomeni (Τρωθησομένη) is an album that combined elements of black metal, death metal, technical thrash and brutal metalcore/mathcore. It came together in a full formed mess that somehow still had foundations that could have made it work if the songwriting was not so herky-jerky in its execution. Well, much like with King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, Ὁπλίτης work at an uncomfortably fast pace. Τρωθησομένη was the first of three albums this solo act released last year and 2024 has another release not even two (2) full weeks into the year.

And yet, Paramainomeni (Παραμαινομένη) is somehow the best version of Ὁπλίτης that I've heard. This time Ὁπλίτης are only presenting six (6) new tracks to engage with, but this time we can see some huge girth. The longest record in the discography so far contains three (3) tracks that exceed ten minutes in length. While the remainder hover between six-and-a-half and nine minutes. And I could tell before listening that my bias towards avant-garde music and Ὁπλίτης as a whole was peaking out. But as I listened to Παραμαινομένη I found myself enjoying it quite a bit. With these extended runtimes, the songs on this album have a bit more of a minimalistic flare to them, so individual ideas are given time to marinate and resonate with the listener, presenting a strange sense of familiarity and comfort. This is until the next drastic change of style takes place and the cycle repeats itself. But the reason they work so much better here than anywhere else has to do with the connectivity of these phrases together to form a whole.

It is not perfect mind you; the metalcore/mathcore influence that persists throughout the albums runtime is quite insufferable given the thick chunk of the bass drum and guitar chugging. It becomes extremely unsettling when they take on djent inspiration on "Ἡ τῶν λυσσημάτων ἄγγελος". And, as I previously mentioned, the production can be quite lousy at times. The compositions may be solid, but the guitar timbre is mechanical and overstated. The dissonance of the scraping and saxophone solos feels like a executive choice to alienate this style of music from the general public, and my estimation is that it will work.

Which is a shame because when it comes to how I wish more avant-garde acts would create harmonic dissonance, Παραμαινομένη is the way I would have imagined it. It might be a longer album than most familiar with Ὁπλίτης will be comfortable with, but it shows that they have what it takes to make gripping music, regardless of style. 

Best Songs: Μῆνιν ἄειδε, θεὰ παραμαινομένη ἐμοῦ..., Παραδειγματιζομένη μουσική, Συμμιαινόμεναι Διονύσῳ Ἐλευθέριῳ

Following my review of their full length from 2016 I realised that I had not taken time to review the actual release that first got me familiar with Danish black metal outfit Gespenst.  Clocking in at a concise thirty minutes and thirty seven seconds, Den sidste færd follows on from the debut album of five years previous with an EP of five multi-paced tracks that capture the ability of the duo to respect the need for menace as well as attack in their sound.  As such, this EP fills a hole that may not have warranted filling with a full album of some eight or more tracks.  Den sidste færd says what the band needs to say very nicely thank you very much and shows improvement without straying away from the conventional elements of black metal.

Opening track Dødsfærd uses its build intelligently to fill the space it is afforded with a dark and threatening atmosphere before it takes off in a more rampant trajectory, eventually morphing into a very complete sounding experience over the ten minute plus run time.  The grim, death rasp of vocalist Galskab combines well with the guitars and keys of Genfærd, ensuring that promise of ethereal atmosphere from those keys and synths is never truly recognised beyond the choking and cloying mist of those ghastly vocals.  Guest drummer Mads' performance is pushed far back in the mix here yet he still generates enough steam to let his sticks be heard through the wall of impenetrable guitar or through even the more denser atmospheric moments.

The cold and crawling start to Portal showcases how these guys can immerse themselves into the deepest realms of nothingness and still manage to somehow manifest a growing sense of decay in even the most sparse of surroundings.  The track has an almost enchanting level of grimness to it as it draws out an anguished yet enthralling soundscape on what is the second of the two longer tracks on the release.  The remainder of the EP seems to focus on shorter tracks which work just as well and offer a nice respite from the more predictable traits of releases where bands go for all long or all short tracks.  There's clever use of bass on here also with the gulping sound of Rejse being of particular note.  Although not necessarily genre-splitting nor being the most experimental of black metal acts, Gespenst are able to tread a well-journeyed path with a sense of accomplishment, combining atmospheric and more riffing elements well along the way.  Ambient album closer Intethed cleanses the palate nicely bringing a subtle end to an otherwise interesting listen.

Sardonic Witchery is a solo project of Portugal's King Demogorgon (Ricardo Mota) who used to be one half of black metal duo Infernal Kingdom. After a, frankly awful, intro, King drops the hammer on some reasonable blasting black metal with riffs that sometimes fly close enough to traditional metal that they almost come over as black 'n' roll. He has quite an acerbically harsh, roaring style of singing that comes across more as angry than evil at least until Merciless Warrior of Steel when he just sounds hokey as he tries to pull off some kind of Tom G Warrior-like "death grunts".

The production of the album is good, with the bass lines being nicely presented and boosting the riffs well, although the snares are pushed forward and get a little bit annoying after a while. There's not really a whole lot more to say, this is a decent enough piece of black metal that is best when it's blasting hardest, but which is also prone to fly close to black 'n' roll grooviness with trad metal influence shining through and some inherent cheesiness. As such it treads familiar ground, albeit mostly with professional aplomb. There aren't really enough stand-out moments that will keep you wanting to respin this, with the duo of Barbaric Bastards of Mass Destruction and Horizon's End being the section that meritted most attention from me and had me wishing the quality of those two tracks was reproduced throughout the album's almost forty minutes rather than being confined to a mere ten. So, ultimately I guess, it will end up on the pile of releases of the year marked "solid if somewhat unremarkable black metal" - and I am sure it won't be the last.

I perhaps don't enjoy "666 International" quite as much as I did when Ben first brought my attention to it fifteen years ago. I'd describe it as being an avant-garde industrial black metal release that combines the industrial black metal sound of Thorns with the avant-garde metal of Ved Buens Ende.... & throws in a little Aborym for good measure. It's certainly a very interesting record that perennially keeps you on your toes but it's also a flawed one in many ways. You see, there are just so many ideas floating around but not all of them work from a compositional sense with the outcome sounding noticeably pieced together from widely disparate parts. It also sounds to me like an intentional attempt to sound weird rather than a natural creative evolution. The black metal components are unsurprisingly my favourite sections while a couple of the piano interludes representing the weaker moments. The vocals of Thorns/Zyklon-B front man Aldrahn are certainly pretty psychotic but he also overdoes it a little bit at times & comes off like a raving madman. The production is a little inconsistent with the guitar sound being pretty thin & the electronic drums sitting further back in the mix than I would normally like with an industrial metal release. I do really enjoy the gothic rock influences though & would have liked Dødheimsgard to have explored those a little further. My favourite tracks are opener "Shiva-Interfere", the blackened "Sonar Bliss", the lovely piano interlude "Magic" & the gothic rock hidden track but none reach classic status which leaves me with a middling score overall &, even while I generally find myself enjoying the album, I can also see why I haven't felt the need to return to "666 International" or explore Dødheimsgard's subsequent material over the last decade or so.

Árstíðir Lifsins have become one of my favourite pagan black metal bands over the last few years, mainly due to the quality of their two Saga á tveim tungum (Story in Two Languages) albums and their ability to craft sweeping nordic epics that stir the blood and lift the soul. Their latest release, Hermalausaz, supposedly an EP, consists of two lengthy tracks, Ýrr and Þistill, with a total runtime of over forty minutes, which once again illustrates the Icelanders' ability to compose saga-like epics as befits their own cultural heritage. The lyrics are written in Old Norse poetic form, as were the sagas of old and are, as is revealed on the EP's Bandcamp page, "inspired by the runic inscription of the western Norwegian Eggja rune stone", which is a rune-carved grave-covering from around 650-700 CE, the runes upon which tell the tale of a shipwreck caused by a mighty sea-creature and the journey of the lost to the land of the dead.

The instrumentation is first and foremost powerful and epic-sounding black metal, with quite a thick bottom end over which the tremolo riffing can sweep and soar and featuring a variety of vocal styles from throaty, shrieking howls to harmonised, baritone nordic chants. The pummelling double kick drums and punishing blastbeats of Árni Bergur Zoëga's drumming propel the tracks along with an intense fury borne of raw, old-school black metal. However, interspersed within this sweeping, metallic maelstrom are folk-inspired, mournful-sounding acoustic sections, that are mercifully bereft of the inherent cheesiness often associated with folk metal, but rather serve as tonal contrasts, representing the rising and falling of the narrative threads within the tales and allowing moments of respite from the black metal intensity. Other times a slower, melodic theme will take over, often with a piano or keyboard accompaniment, to introduce a different narrative thread and further variety within these epics' tonal pallette.

I see Árstíðir Lifsins very much as the torch-bearers for a narrative style of black metal championed by Enslaved on their early releases such as Vikingligr veldi's "Lifandi lif undir hamri" and Eld's "793 (Slaget om Lindisfarne)", although those were more stripped-back than Hermalausaz' powerful-sounding production, there is still a direct line of epic-storytelling running from one to the other. With only three members and only two being instrumentalists, the music Árstíðir Lifsins' put out is testament to the technical proficiency and adaptability of the band members, sounding like a veritable horde of norse heroes on a musical rampage through some poorly-defended coastal enclave. A massively underappreciated band with a glorious and epic vision of what they are about and the music they want to produce, I hope they ultimately get the praise they deserve.

First off, I have to say that this is an enjoyable slab of metal but, in truth, it isn't really any more than that and I'm not sure I can get onboard with all the hype that has been behind this release. I think people are playing up the black metal content because, beyond the shrieking vocal style I don't think there is too much by way of black metal here. What it is is high-octane speed, thrash and good old heavy metal with a shit-ton of energy and vibrancy that exploits an assosciation with black metal by utilising black metal vocals, allowing an out-of-fashion musical style some relevancy within the modern metal scene.

Obviously James McBain, the sole muso behind Hellripper, is one hell of a talented guy and he can write riffs and hooks seemingly effortlessly as he glorifies fist-pumping metal hedonism, to which end his soloing is energetic and over-the-top. He certainly can't be accused of being boring or lacking ideas, but maybe therein lies the rub. It feels ocasionally like a pick'n'mix metal comp of Eighties worshipping retro-metal bands where every track works really well in isolation, but when consumed all together it becomes a bit too much. The only truly consistent factor is James' shrieking black metal vocals which do work very well in most instances.

Like I said at the start this is enjoyable stuff and I feel like a bit of a curmudgeon for saying it, but I really can't feel it enough to get me reaching for those higher scores. Maybe it just doesn't chime 100% with what I look for in my metal listening nowadays but it can't be ignored and has rightly has earned much praise for it's creator.

Taake mainman Hoest is an interesting and somewhat underappreciated contributor to the history of Norwegian black metal. Beginning the band in Bergen as Thule in 1993 he has been around that infamous scene since it's earliest days. Whilst undoubtedly taking his cues from those raw, primal black metal beginnings, he has always been an artist who treads his own path. He has never shied away from longer tracks, having several clocking in around ten mibutes, but here he goes all-in with the album's 42 minutes being taken up by just four tracks, with opener "Denne forblaaste ruin av en bro" and following track, "Utarmede gruver" running into each other and coming off as one long twenty-minute-plus epic.

The album is jam-packed with tremolo-picked riffs that are generally quite catchy and melodic, yet Takke's skill is in not making it sound at all like a melodic black metal album and believe me when I say that this is jam-packed with riffs then you had better believe it, the tracks switch from riff to riff like a hyperactive toddler in a Coca-Cola factory. Despite his riffs incorporating influences from everything from trad metal to post-punk, he still imbues them with enough true black metal rawness to leave no one in any doubt that this is indeed a norwegian black metal album. That aesthetic is more than ably reinforced by Hoest's searing, screeching vocals, that provide that quintessentially authentic nordic black metal vocal experience and leave you in no doubt as to what type of album you are listening to.

The opening diptych is followed by the album's shortest track, Gid sprakk vi, which is the most obviously black metal of the tracks here, it's icy blasting reaching reaching for us through the years from the time of Darkthrone's unholy trilogy and producing a shiver down the spine of real black metal afficianados. That blast of nostalgia is followed by the closer and the album's longest single track, Et uhyre av en kniv. This has a progressive feeling to it with an overarchingly melancholic atmosphere, sounding to me a bit like something you may have heard from Ihsahn early in his solo career.

In summation I would say that Hoest has pulled off quite the trick here, releasing an album that is atmospheric, melodic and progressive, but that wears the monochromatic clothes of blistering and raw true norwegian black metal, leaving the listener with a decidedly original experience. I don't suppose this will receive too much attention but it really should as I think it is a wonderously creative slice of modern black metal that appeals to me far more than the preponderance of unlistenable dissonant and avant-garde black metal that everyone seems to be championing nowadays.

December 2023 Feature of the month for The North. Happy it was, because this is great black metal. It's listed under War Metal, and I have still yet to truly understand what that means. This is the perfect music to sleep too for me, now hear me out here. Not sure how many people need white noise or similar to sleep, but this is definitely the white noise of metal or black metal if you will. The beats are pretty consistent throughout while many albums have moments of dipping in BPM or multiple time signatures or overtly catchy riffs that keep my mind racing in thought. Also helps that I don't understand the vocals at all, I am not the best at understanding lyrics in songs but I can tend to words screamed or growled here and there especially on multiple listen throughs. I'm not sure if they are in English, but if so I might be able to figure out something here and there but this album is so easy to turn my brain off and relax too. I doubt what that's what they were going for, but it truly allows me to just turn off and meditate to. There is something calming behind the dark black metal guitars and drumming. This never gets boring either, while I did easily wind down to this I also could tell some interesting riffs and melodies made it even easier to fall back into. I don't want to give it a full 5 star until I live with this album longer but after my initial reactions it's only because of how I did lose attention so much so to this album and I do wonder on multiple relistens will it still have the same affect or if it's not one that can be listened to on repeat but a great one to put on once in a while. 

Look, I've enjoyed Panopticon for a long time now. Austin Lunn is a master songwriter when it comes to combining folk/americana with the ethereal sounds of atmospheric black metal, while purposefully giving them a hard left political tilt, almost as a gigantic middle finger to the political right who run rampant in the black metal spheres, especially in regards to Nazi Socialist black metal.

So I was happy to see a new Panopticon album come across my review desk this year. I was very happy with the last album ...And Again Into The Light and could not wait to hear what was coming next. But I felt confused and even a little isolated from The Rime of Memory. This record was, to be completely honest, an absolute bore at times to get through. The record has just six (6) songs, but each has a runtime that comfortably exceeds ten minutes. And if you know anything about atmospheric black metal, it likes to take its time. And Panopticon are taking their time here; an excruciatingly long amount of time. The Rime of Memory is an album that takes influence from drone metal by having a stylistic idea that goes underdeveloped for nearly ten minutes on the opening track. It takes the opening track almost half of its runtime before you even hear the sound of an electric guitar.

This is not a bad thing on its own; I like when bands take their time and let their songs naturally grow and I like how Austin makes the listener wait for that huge black metal release of sound. But Panopticon have proven before that this style of songwriting works a lot better when the compositions have something to say. Panopticon know how to say a lot in a short amount of time, but here, it seems like they are contempt with saying very little and then meandering the rest of the way.

My first thought after finishing The Rime of Memory and discovering this revelation was; "how is this any different than Fen's 2017 album Winter?" And since I don't need an excuse to listen to that record again, I went back and realized that the songwriting on that record was a lot more dense; songs flowed in and out of motifs and ideas regularly, and when Fen were meandering on a single motif for an extended period of time, they kept them interesting through dynamic swelling, harmonic variety and a great concept. The Rime of Memory has only one of those three.

The thing is, Panopticon have done the environmentalist theme before, so hearing it done again, under less precise circumstances is troubling. This will be one of those records that will be adored by the critics, but on a personal level, I have next to no use for it. It still has the charm of a Panopticon record sonically and conceptually, but from a populist perspective, this falls flat in many different ways.

Probably one of my all-time favourite acts, Blut Aus Nord have multiple works that I rate highly. My recent revisit to the 777 trilogy of records really cemented my belief that there are very few other artists out there able to mix multiple elements and genres with such aptitude and still tell such a stark and apocalyptic tale at the same time. Only the mighty The Work Which Transforms God probably sits above that trilogy and Disharmonium: Nahab is one of the first modern releases in a while that reminds me of that record from all the way back in 2003.

However, the true talent that any good BAN record has is its ability to fill any room that it is playing in. Disharmonium: Nahab does this brilliantly. There is always a multitude of things going on with any track on here. Haunting and melancholic melodies carve slow cuts out of the very atmosphere around the listener whilst dense atmospherics constantly plunge you into some further incalculable fathom to try and orientate yourself with. The dizzying urgency that opens The Black Vortex soon settles into some undulating and pulsing construct that lurches with some unexpected grace. Yet that opening chaos is never truly lost in the track overall, it merely gets dialed into the structure and tempered a little by the pace of the track overall.

BAN also know how to arrange an album as well. The three Hideous Dream Opus’ prove this with their creepy presence being spaced perfectly to enhance instead of hindering the albums progress. That journey is tumultuous and constantly mines the bowels of terror itself to create a dramatic and thoroughly entertaining release. Every track has its own sense of identity and character. Each one is meticulously put together to achieve maximum horrific effect, making no effort to hide the nefarious intent that lies at the heart of this release.

Disharmonium: Nahab is BAN’s finest record for some time and one that reminds me of the band in their heyday around TWWTG and MoRT back in the early noughties. It ditches the overly melodic strains of their last Disharmonium album and instead focuses on intensity and listener immersion. Full marks.

Ben & I got onboard with Samael pretty early on in their recording career & always had their 1990's releases floating around our bedrooms as youngsters. 1994's classic "Ceremony of Opposites" album was the biggest player but I've always felt that their earlier works are far too often overlooked, particularly their 1991 debut album "Worship Him" which was recorded as early as March 1990 but presents a sound that is not too dissimilar to the one the Norwegians used to change the metal world a couple of years later. In fact, I'd be very surprised if a young Fenriz was not all over "Worship Him" as Samael had already presented most of the concepts we'd fall in love with on Darkthrone's "A Blaze In The Northern Sky" here, although they're admittedly not executed quite as well as the more classic second wave releases.

"Worship Him" sees Samael combining the influences of "In The Sign Of The Black Mark"-era Bathory with the first couple of Celtic Frost records for a highly compelling result that is the very epitome of early black metal. The riff structures are intentionally kept very simple with the tempos largely sitting in the slow-to-mid range which allows Samael to maximize the impact of some pretty catchy song-writing. The tracklisting is very consistent with no weak tracks included while the lengthier, doomier tracks like the title track & "Into The Pentagram" showcase Samael's early sound best. The short "Rite of Cthulhu", neoclassical darkwave piece "Last Benediction" & closing instrumental "The Dark" are also very solid inclusions but there aren't really any total classics here which is no doubt why we're don't see Samael being spoken of in similar terms to the Darkthrone's or Burzum's. There's more than enough depth & atmosphere to make "Worship Him" an essential purchase for early black metal fans though in my opinion. It reminds me a fair bit of the early Greek bands (see Rotting Christ, Varathron) in its uncomplicated, uncluttered approach actually & I love the grim vocals of guitarist Vorphalack. "Worship Him" comes highly recommended from this old extreme metalhead.

If I look at the success of Oranssi Pazuzu or even Jute Gyte in the avant-garde black metal stakes it is easy to understand the challenges of emulating that level of complexity without sacrificing the conventionl bm sound altogether.  No matter how much post-metal side salad gets served alongside the more esoteric and scathing core elements of the dishes in this marketplace, it remains very niche and difficult to break into.  Thantifaxath prove me theory really well with this their second full length.  Being a full nine years after their debut, Hive Mind Narcosis certainly sounds like it is the product of a vast selection if ideas.  Exploring the avant-garde and progressive elements as far as they can, Thantifaxath defintiely stretch themselves musically over these seven songs.

The guitars weave a diving and dizzying tapestry of knotted and tightly interwoven threads that you inevitably lose sight of as the more abrasive and aggressive textures of the rest of the instrumentation invade the space around them.  The time-changes and off-kilter rhythm keep you on your toes for sure and this is all done at a frenetic, near rabid pace for the most part.  The vocals are suitably throaty and monstrous, retaining that bm grimness perfectly throughout.  From the opening horror of Solar Witch through to the disorientating Mind of the Sun, Thantifaxath offer  real end-to-end experience of their musical repetoire.  Shrouded in mystery (no known line-up has ever been confirmed), Hive Mind Narcosis carves a very unique space for itself.

In all honesty though, after some five or six listens, I just cannot get under the skin of the record.  No matter how minimalist I make my surroundings (darked room, headphones on even), I just do not feel I can crack the surface of this album.  This maybe because it sets its stall out very early on, giving no build into its mesmerising nature, opting instead to immerse the listener immediately into its deviously cold depths.  Or it could be that it is just too damn intelligent for my little brain to comprehend, but however I listen to it I just cannot connect entirely with the release even though I acknowledge the brilliance that lies therein.  Even with my most well-honed BAN, Oranssi Pazuzu and Jute Gyte listening skills packed in my kitbag, I still cannot tap into any rich vein for me to suckle at.  One for a redux-review in later months I suspect.

I want to rate this higher, but the long run time and the mediocre to bad songs don't outweigh the interesting bits. I want to say that I was disappointed to only find a low quality version on youtube to listen to this but after a bit it seemed like that it probably wasn't meant for HD quality sound, but what black metal is. I did listen to this on youtube and tried following the song titles and time stamps but that was a pain so i gave up.  There was some very innovative bits even with a bit of a lullaby in one of the songs and the tones of "God Sent No Sign", industrial bits of Procession of Pawns. The atmosphere is very well done and immersive, if not just a bit too long at times. The really good songs go on just a bit too long.  Then the shorter songs on this feel either a bit too short or just straight up unnecessary filler. Most atmospheric black metal albums don't sound like this and usually have a theme, whether it has a cold wintery vibe, space, or something else this does feel a bit disjointed but that doesn't change how well the songs are written. 

This was the featured release for The Horde for November 2023. I am not a part of the horde, but I am of clan The North which this is supposedly a part of.  It just sounds like noise. It's generic death metal riffs and noise. I like my metal chaotic, but I just hear tv static put in a metal box. This isn't for me, and from the looks of it seems fairly low rated for even metal academy, but maybe somebody enjoys this. There is talent here underlying it all to even be able to make this project, but there needs to be a bit more direction. 

New Zealand one-man black metal project that themes Celtic history within their songs, Olde Throne were a winner for me before I even ventured into their debut full-length. Thankfully An Gorta Mór matches up to my high expectations of both historic and mythological intrigue as well as ticking all the boxes in the atmospheric black metal stakes also. The album title translates as “The Great Hunger” (or “The Famine” more commonly referred to outside of Ireland as the “Irish Potato Famine”) which was a tragic period of Irish history in the mid-eighteen hundreds that saw over 1 million people starve to death or die from disease over seven years and hundreds of thousands of people emigrate overseas to get away from the starvation and rampant disease of the time.

Olde Throne then, choose a suitably grim and macabre medium in black metal in which to tell this story and the music is appropriately harsh and abrasive to underline the horrific suffering of the time. Equally, the atmospherics emphasize the futility of the situation as whole families literally wasted away whilst staring into a fathomless void of hopelessness and despair. These atmospheres are dense and possess a catastrophic depth to them that is embalmed perfectly by the ghastly vocals and relentless urgency of the riffs. Moments like the melodic guitar work on Connla’s Fate, stay with you long after the album has finished and as such An Gorta Mór is successful for making this representation of such abject misery such a memorable experience.

The temptation would be to expect multiple intro/outro/interlude tracks, yet An Gorta Mór uses a straightforward approach to the song structures, simply letting the harsh impact of the subject matter drive the emotion of the album. Rarely have I heard such an expressive and complete black metal track as A Dying Land, a track that simply plays out the desolation of the events in a stunning tremolo and spoken word/chant combination alongside some more familiar ghastly vocals. The intensity of this track alone is worth the visit to the album.

It is hard to find much in the way of criticism as my only real challenge with the album has been that it requires many visits to truly get the impact of the record. However, I do not often go in search of atmospheric black metal to gratify any need for immediacy of connection. The album most definitely rewards these repeated visits and is an album that will personally stick with me for some time to come.