Author Reverend Darkstanley
Anyone who’s ever spent several hours in the belly of a cross-channel ferry buried in some cramped sleeping quarters just a little too close to the giant ship’s engine should know what ‘drone’ music sounds like. Indeed, to the uninitiated… Continue Reading →
It’s been more than three years since Lorn made its mark with Subconscious Metamorphosis – appropriately enough its first outing on that most fitting of labels for avant-garde black metal I, Voidhanger. The band had hinted during its previous full-length,… Continue Reading →
Ever wondered what it might sound like to be catching up on your old Simon & Garfunkel/ Stone Roses / Mercury Rev records, having a warm breeze blowing in your face, while sitting on a carousel going slightly too fast?… Continue Reading →
Maybe it’s Finland’s precarious position in the geopolitical landscape; maybe it’s the extreme latitude and near perpetual gloom at certain times of the year; or maybe it’s just the weather. Whatever it might be, there’s something that propels Finnish black… Continue Reading →
Horn’s back catalogue is now fairly extensive and has repeatedly shown more than a passing interest in keeping out of step with the rest of the folk black metal brigade. This time round he’s shifted yet again. Whereas previous albums… Continue Reading →
Árstíðir Lífsins brewed just as I like it: two 20 minute episodes of their saga-spinning craft delivered with the conviction and attention to detail you might fairly expect from a band whose work is genre-defining in a field of one…. Continue Reading →
Fides Inversa threw a few people with the change of pace between their first and second albums even though both were finely distilled black metal class. The debut was an unhinged white knuckle ride that felt like an unholy marriage… Continue Reading →
Crimson Moon’s main man Scorpios Androctonus comes with impressive pedigree from associations with bands such as Melechesh, Demoncy and Ancient, where he’s recently picked up bass guitar duties, and, the most appropriate and illustrative link, to Acherontas. Not only did… Continue Reading →
If you’ve been following Guns N’ Roses for the past three decades, like journalist Mick Wall has, the idea of getting it all between the pages of a single tome must have been both thrilling and agonising in equal measure…. Continue Reading →
It was only last year that Murg crawled out of the forests with its refreshing debut Varg & Björn, full of oppressive black metal with a flint sharp edge. In a world where it’s increasingly hard for black metal bands… Continue Reading →
Many bands have tried to propel themselves into the vast potential of post-black metal soundscapes. Many have failed – in fact most don’t even break free of the tried and tested formulas, which are now getting more than a little… Continue Reading →
Anyone for a bit of seasonal black metal? I’m not talking Mortiis dressed in a red Santa hat wrapping boxes of untold horror with human skin. I’m referring to something altogether more high-minded: exquisite arboreal landscapes of frost and snow;… Continue Reading →