The term ‘cinematic’ gets thrown around a lot these days, as many black, death, and progressive metal acts have become more comfortable with orchestration as a way to add color, texture, or simply grandeur to their sound. It’s not as simple as that, though – you simply can’t layer some heavy Gothic chords atop and […]
Black metal has become a gigantic and multi-faceted genre in the past 30 (!) years, and each sub-style offers its own emotional and aesthetic experiences. Raw, orthodox, war, symphonic, folk, progressive, depressive, Cascadian, shoegaze, post, industrial, ambient, death/black, black n’ roll – the list goes on. Despite the differences in style, what I look for, […]
In last year’s review of 777: The Desantification, I noted the evolution of transcendental melody and ethereal majesty from the uglier, first part of the trilogy to the second chapter, and wondered if that arc would continue into 777: Cosmosophy. Over the past year, Blut Aus Nord (just Vindsval now) has continued to develop and […]