Canada’s Hypnotic Dirge Records is best known for its crippling doom metal but a few recent forays into atmospheric/depressive/black metal such as Kassad, None, Kval, Mavradoxa  and such haven’t been quite as successful in my humble opinion, but a here is a glorious, rending return to from from Canada’s own aptly named “prairie doom” act Altars […]

Hailing from Rochester, NY, duo Mavradoxa  play a form of atmospheric black metal that would be right at home on Bindrune Recordings. It’s a woodsy, Agalloch rooted form of black metal akin to the likes of  Falls of Rauros, Alda, Wodensthrone and such. However, it does not mean its as good as those bands. While Mavradoxa […]

Spain is known for a lot of things; its history, its culture, its cuisine and even to some extent it has a respectable death and black metal scene. But I’m not sure sunny Spain is the country people thing of when it comes to despondent, depressive doom/death metal. Well, once again Canada’s Hypnotic Dirge (arguably […]

Translated as ‘loss’, France’s Verlies is a new three piece act, and Les Domaines Du Hommes was self released back in 2014, but the re-release has been picked up fittingly by Hypnotic Dirge Records. So the combination o the band name, country of origin and the label should clue you in as yo what to expect here. Yes, […]

Hailing from Quebec, this duo take their name from Siberia’s most desolate, northernmost city, and of course it’s home to a ….metal foundry. And while you’d expect doom considering the moniker and label, this isn’t the huge, lumbering, funeral doom, Evoken/Ahab sort of crawl the name and label imbue, as it’s much more varied. These […]

A few years ago North Carolina’s Daylight Dies were the darling of the US death doom scene, picking up the mantle of the likes of Morgion and invoking the Finnish greats like Rapture and such. But 4 only albums in 10 years saw the band sort of fall from the genre’s pinnacle. But you know a band has left a positive legacy when a band starts to mimic you and your sound to a tee. And that’s what fellow North Carolinians Atten Ash have done.

It does not take genius to figure out that Atten Ash founder James Greene is a fan of Daylight Dies. He and the band hail from the same state (North Carolina), play a form of emotive, melancholy death/doom metal, and to top things off, he recruited current Daylight Dies guitarist Barre Gambling to play guitars and […]

Canada’s Hypnotic Dirge Records is really carving a niche out in the style of the label’s namesake, and their three early 2014 releases from Epitimia, In My Shiver and Russia’s one man project Windbruch are no exception. No Stars, Only Full Dark is the second album from sole member Illuzii Optice, who performs all of […]

Phew. This is ambitious. 2 Cds, almost 2 hours of ambient black metal contained in a very well packaged (Hypnotic Dirge’s best packaging to date) double gatefold digipack. Nicely done indeed, now if only the music was as striking. Despite being around for 5 years and having three other full-length albums under their belt, this […]

The second best  release from Hypnotic Dirge’s recent offerings, you’d expect this to be a German crazy, industrial, off kilter black metal release based on that moniker and such. However, the band while in fact German, and is somewhat ambitious, they share more with the progressive, avant garde black metal movement of the mid 90’s, […]

After a little bit of a misstep with the Netra release, Hypnotic Dirge is back on track with a handful of very solid releases (Odradek Room, Galaktik Cancer Squad, Lycanthia, Frigoris), the best of which is the second album from Massachusetts atmospheric black metal act Obsidian Tongue, and for those of you who are fans […]

This is the third full-length from St Petersburg’s Epitimia, a band listed as ambient black metal on the Metal Archives. I haven’t heard their previous releases, so I have to assume that’s correct, but on Faces of Insanity, their sound is more like a mix of the lush, melodic death/doom of Swedish and Finnish acts […]

So if Ov Hollowness‘s Drawn to Descend was my favorite of recent Hypnotic Dirge Records’ and Ekove Efrits’ Conceptual Horizon was my least favorite, Pandemic Transgression from Canada’s one man black metal maven Vultyrous, is my middle release. As with any good one man black metal project, there’s boons and pitfalls. The pitfall here is […]

Here’s an interesting release from the label behind the recent and solid Ov Hollowness CD, Hypnotic Dirge Records, so you can expect something…well… hypnotic and dirge-y. And in the case of Ekove Efrits, it’s a one man black metal act from Iran, helmed by Count De Efrit. I use the term black metal very loosely here, […]

So we have a one man band called Ov Hollowness from Canada, on a label called Hypnotic Dirge Records, with long songs and titles like “Desolate”, “Winds Forlorn”, and “Drone”. I’ll give you one guess as to what style of music this is. Emocore. Just kidding. The best (in my opinion of course) of Hypnotic […]