Finland’s Sarastus (Finnish for ‘Dawning’) was formed in 2014 and has 2 full-length albums since then. I grabbed the promo for Agony Eternal as I have been on a back metal/melodic black metal kick of late, and the promo dropped terms like ‘anthemic hooks are at the forefront’, ‘melodies spiral with nightsky fervor’, and ‘too […]

I love raw as fuck Black Metal. Whether it’s one person or four, if it sounds like it was recorded on a Tascam four-track in someone’s basement studio, I’m all fucking there. I’ve covered some raw bands here before: Avmakt, Ad Infinem Omnia, and Horna, to name three, and Embers of Ouroboros are now firmly […]

A debut full-length a day keeps the depression away. Today I’m going to talk about Lenax and their brand spanking first album Infection. A great debut album makes a statement, a stern fist to the face of a genre established years ago, while also attempting to cement the band in the annals of Black Metal’s […]

Sargeist is one of the foundations of the Finnish Black Metal scene, a deadly force of Satanic wrath. They, along with Horna (Shatraug is associated with both Cult entities) and the unholy Behexen, form this Black Metal pyramid, a diabolical trinity if you will. Flame Within Flame is their sixth full-length following 2018’s Unbound, and […]

I’ve been trying to review this album for weeks now. Things kept getting in my way, however, and so now I’m able to sit down and put thoughts to page about this album that stands before me. I’m talking about French/Japanese depressive black metal duo, Enterré Vivant, and their heart-wrenching third album Azukï, from enigmatic […]

Battlespells, the second album from this Finnish duo, named after a Vlad Tepes song, was one of the more authentic 90s styled black metal albums of recent memory, up there with releases from Northwind Wolves, Mist From the Mountains, Pestilent Hex, and I Am The Night over the last few years. And even with a […]

I’ll admit to knowing next to nothing about Indonesia. I know that it’s beautiful (I’ve seen pictures and I love their action movies, so I’m sort of an expert) but I’m not here to talk about traveling, I’m here to talk about the proud and savage Jakarta natives, Tombstone. Coming in hot as a meteor […]

Once upon a time, I thought of Melodic Death Metal as the Michael Bolton of the Metal community. It’s pretty, at times brutal as fuck; but ultimately one cancels out the other and it either sucks ass or kicks it. This is not the case with Greece’s Nightfall. I wasn’t expecting what I got from […]

Coming out of the French Alps on black sleds of vengeance is Aldaaron, waving a banner dripping blood and blasting album number five,e Par-delà les cimes (Above and Beyond the Summits). After the marvelous Majestic Heights, Melancholic Depths back in 2023, they (presumably) started working on Par-delà les cimes. The result is a bombastic triumph […]

I’m sure everyone reading this remembers the scene from the first Faces of Death where the ‘blood cult’ eats the dead body, right? Okay, so keep that image in your head and then go listen to Profanatica’s new album Wreathed in Dead Angels. Maybe playing the two together will result in some sort of evil […]

Black metal is about the atmosphere it creates. There’s even a sub-genre dubbed atmospheric black metal. It’s very difficult to do well, and for some reason, it’s immediately apparent when a band isn’t serious about it or isn’t “kvlt.” You just can’t replicate what was going on in Norway in the early 90s, and it’s […]

You’d be forgiven (by me anyway) for thinking that Imperial Triumphant were a Nile ubër concept band based on their masks. You’d be wrong as the day is long, because they certainly are not doing anything remotely Egyptian, especially on Goldstar. During my time with it I got these images from the movie Metropolis, and […]

Wrath of Logarius was first named Martyr Logarius.  It’s some video game character from a game called Bloodborne.  The band started in 2021, released the Necrotic Assimilation ep in 2023, and then changed the name to Wrath of Logarius.  The band logo is still the same style, however. This California based band plays a pretty […]

I don’t need to tell you all the ways that the isolation and uncertainty of the pandemic left marks on the world that, to this day, we’re still recovering from. In a lot of ways, I think most of us are still coming to grips with what we learned about ourselves and the people surrounding […]

What would the world have looked like if Black Metal hadn’t been created? Would everything be puppies and roses? Doubtful. Black Metal brought balance to the world of music and right now the world needs Black Metal more than ever; a voice of resistance and a boot to the chest of the moral majority, and […]

Mantar of course means half man/half centaur. Don’t try to add it up, just trust me. Your guess is as good as mine which member of the duo represents each part, but they’ve been slitting throats with their blackened sludge/punk metal hybrid for over a decade. Since their official debut, Death by Burning in 2014, […]

A few months back, I ran into Mark Kloeppel, one of the guitarists for Misery Index, and Missouri act Cast The Stone, Ive ‘known’ him and fellow Cast The Stone member Derek Engemann from various shows I’ve attended in St Loius over the years. We got to talking about Scour, the black metal band he […]

It’s usually a good sign when an album contains a church bell tolling in the distance: “For Whom the Bell Tolls” by Metallica and “Warriors of Modern Death” By Emperor and of course Iron Maiden’s “Hallowed Be Thy Name”. That’s just three that come to mind and yeah, there’s so many others but I’m here […]

2024 was a stellar year for German black metal. Albums from Asarhaddon, Opus Irae, Chaos Invocation, Kanonenfieber, Suffering Souls, Dauþuz, Far Beyond,  Stiriah and Servant were all damn fine releases. But at the tail end of 2024, Mavorim released an album that I never really got to spend too much time with before the year ended, and it’s […]

In this frozen wasteland, I bring a tale of a Black Metal horde hailing from Portugal and bringing the 90s spirit of Black Metal all the way from Norway. It creates a tapestry of hopelessness that matches the world climate; be it politics or the actual weather changing in catastrophic ways. Enter Irae. Formed in […]

Scotland is fucking beautiful. The Highlands are an amazing sight to behold, rolling, green, and absolutely vast. It’s a place that draws music from the people who in turn pull the rhythm from the very dirt itself. I’ve visited there and was stunned by the beauty. The lochs, especially Loch Ness are awe-inspiring. KILDONAN is the […]

The year of the EP was 2024. Without a doubt I think I covered more Eps last year than any other in recent memories; granted that my brain is Swiss fucking cheese but whatever. Eps ruled! Abschwörzunge has unleashed hell with its incredibly bleak outlook on humanity in sonic form with Whorl. It’s a dirty, […]

There are crazy bands and then there are bands that throw logic out the window with the fucking baby. They twist sounds out of their instruments that sound like screaming robots one minute and then erupt into mindgasms that show the limits of electronics shattered one note at a time. Enough hysterical talk aside, Furze […]

The last time I ran across German black metal act Chaos Invocation, I wasn’t particularly kind to them. I reviewed their 2009 Debut, In Bloodline with the Snake, and hailed it ‘predictable, generic’ and with an utterly forgettable first half. Oof. What a dick. So why did I grab the promo for the band’s 5th […]

I love fall. I’m a very fall, winter, and spring type of guy (I’m available, all you single Metal Girls) my love comes in the form of quality avant-garde, extraordinarily heavy in so many killer Eastern European extreme metal ways… Kroda, Depresy, Blaze of Perdition. The other day I added one of the most insane […]