Author Andrew Doherty
I confess that I’d never heard of Foscor before but what struck me when I’d listened to a few minutes of this album was the impeccable balance they create in their music. This impression was based on “Whirl of Dread”,… Continue Reading →
I’m not normally one for reaching to the sky in a fit of unlimited melancholic gloom, but I’ll try anything once. I imagined that the slow and melancholic (henceforth abbreviated to s and m) piano intro would lead to something,… Continue Reading →
I’ve come to realise that the world of Fen contains mystical atmospheres, a great deal of harshness and occasional melancholy in the moody, bleak and windswept landscapes. “The Malediction Fields” (2008) and “Dustwalker” (2012) are two of my favourite albums…. Continue Reading →
This is the third album from Russia’s doomy and heavily atmosphere orientated Septic Mind. This one, whose titles I’ve anglicised from their Cyrillic version, studies “the problems of insanity in modern society and apocalyptic expectations”. Deep and deathly tones resound… Continue Reading →
Booming voices and walls of sound abound in a pitch black atmosphere. This is the occult “bog of black and deathly fog” from Denmark’s Tongues. The four tracks of this EP darkly dredge the bottom of sludgy barrels. “Void Meditation”… Continue Reading →
This album, Grorr’s third, is in three parts about three different lives: The Fighter, The Worker, The Dreamer. It’s not as artificially conceptual as it may sound, or at least it didn’t seem so to me. In their previous album… Continue Reading →
This one had the potential to go either way. This self-professed anti-band from Finland have taken it upon themselves to “pay homage to the origins of monotonic umpa umpa” and draw analogies between the monotonous beat of techno and some… Continue Reading →
Four hefty slabs are presented to us. Yet at first it seemed they’re not as monolithic as the title of this album from the man from Santa Ana might suggest. Progressive black metal is a description I read. The sound… Continue Reading →
I really liked this band’s EP “Vilos” (2013). It was fresh, challenging, full of ideas and altogether a very good selection of technical progressive metal. The lads from Glasgow haven’t given us much to go on this time with this… Continue Reading →
It’s about time. Vesania entered my psyche with two distinctive symphonic style black metal albums “God the Lux” (2005) and “Distractive Killusions” (2007). Now after seven years, they’re back with “Deus ex Machina”. The titles are spartan: Halflight, Innocence, Disillusion,… Continue Reading →
The title gives the game away. This album is a work of “progressive, dark, avant-garde metal “based in all the horror, pain and grief which involves all love stories”. This is reinforced by a contrived conversation between a man and… Continue Reading →
“Recorded in the woods of Daknam”, we are told in the sleeve notes. I guess the grey and murky place in the cover picture is Daknam. The fuzzy ambient post rock haze which opens up this substantial work from this… Continue Reading →