Dark Blasphemer - Winter of Darkness (2025)^{Release ID: 61521}

Argentine black metal has got to be one of my more niche geographical listening habits. But with the likes of Brazil and Chile now regularly appearing in my listening explorations, it seems natural that other parts of South America start to cross my radar. Dark Blasphemer seem to be a long-standing outfit having formed way back in 2011 and here releasing album number three some seven years after their last album, Suicidal Catharsis.

All three albums to date have been released independently, but based on Winter of Darkness, they could easily find themselves a record label if they so wished. This is grim black metal of a suitably depressive nature but has a lot more to it than just a tape machine on record and some instruments being murdered in the same room. There might only be three of them in the band with one of them doing both guitar and drums for this record, but the sound overall is strong. All the instruments standout in the mix nicely enough, with even the bass twanging in now and again from behind the scathing riffs.

Although most definitely rooted in black metal, Winter of Darkness possesses some death metal elements for variation here and there. Those galloping dm riffs on ‘Lord of Misery’, show the band stretching their legs early in the record. Whilst the picked tremolos of ‘Legal Fiction’ is pure Burzum worship, complete with the chants for good measure. Overall, there is nothing here to note that this is not a record released by a band from Norway and the authenticity to the sound of the album is testimony to the band members experience to date. I sense there’s a lot of years in the band and that maturity comes across well in the music.

It would be remiss of me to indicate this would place high in my year end list in five months’ time. However, I must acknowledge the genuine black metal article when I hear it, and Winter of Darkness ticks all the boxes for being a veritable feast of the dark arts. Not too showy but also devoid of shabbiness at the same time, there is hopefully a lot more to come from Dark Blasphemer. For now, I can be satiated well enough by this though.