Tag black metal
Always a bit of a sucker for symphonic black metal, I was pleased to have the opportunity to sample this album from Finland’s Vargrav, the project of V-Khaoz, the former drummer of the atmospheric black metal band Kalmankantaja. This “act… Continue Reading →
Black metal has its innovators and then it has individuals like Jute Gyte’s Adam Kalmbach and Ayloss from Spectral Lore. Kalmbach is nothing short of prolific with 27 full-length albums since 2006, perhaps not that unusual in the black metal… Continue Reading →
Pulling this CD out of its wrapping I remembered the band name and that this deathly black troop from France had struck me as slightly bonkers on last album ‘Vesanie’ in 2014. At the time they had been in the… Continue Reading →
Yhdarl’s claim to fame is their ability to crush “all music boundaries between suicidal, depressive, doom, noise and drone black metal”. With a link to Cult of Erinyes and a host of other bands, “Loss” is the Franco-Belgian duo’s eighth… Continue Reading →
It’s always kind of odd when the first time you hear of a band it comes with a PR sheet that informs you that it’s their final album. Well such is the case with black metal one man band Panphage… Continue Reading →
Polish quintet Thaw offer up 5 slabs of experimental Blackened noise with “Grains” the follow up to 2014’s “Earth Ground”. If you can imagine the sonic equivalent to the polar ice caps melting – a wall of freezing death oozing from a… Continue Reading →
The death throes of one shitty year of existence have barely stopped twitching and another one is just about ready to be shat into existence. Same hopelessness, misery, discontent and feelings of negativity and it seems almost perfect that greeting… Continue Reading →
Black metal maniacs Watain should need no introduction having been at the forefront of the extreme music underground for several years, gaining notoriety for their abrasive live shows as well as their vitriolic studio outpourings. It is hard to believe… Continue Reading →
Ofdrykkja has come a long way since its first release, the beguiling (if that’s the right word for a self-confessed depressive suicidal black metal band) and harrowing A Life Worth Losing in 2014. Back then things were strictly lo-fi but… Continue Reading →
Gunning for longest album title of the year contender with a late entry comes The Clearing Path with, er, well, let’s just call it ‘Watershed’. (Ok, I realise that this is black metal and the consumption of an entire Thesaurus… Continue Reading →
Somewhere around five years ago I reviewed the debut album by this Irish band, and was very taken with its blend of Viking aggression and melody, even if ‘Invictus’ is probably the best song Amon Amarth never wrote. Then silence…. Continue Reading →
With ‘Pimeyteen Ja Kuolemaan’, roughly translated as ‘Into Darkness and death’, you are launched straight into a grand, orchestral intro from these Finns, and they set down their intentions from the offset. The opening track, ‘Kutsu’, is an instrumental which… Continue Reading →