There’s an old adage that states ‘never judge a book by its cover’, and that applies aptly in the case of the debut album from Columbia’s King. Based on the Dark Funeral reject cover art, song titles like “Non laughter – Zero Fucking Happiness” and “Kill the Posers Like Fucking Christians” as well as the […]

Empyreal Cycle is the second self-released effort from Slovenia’s Smargroth, a fantasy based (knights, dragons, wizards etc) melodic black metal band. And while they aren’t bringing anything really striking or new to the table, they perform their chosen style well enough to be checked out by fans of Dissection, Sargeist, Naglfar and other less extreme […]

Willowtip has scored yet another massive-sounding and terrifying band in Australia’s Beyond Terror Beyond Grace. If you want to know what they sound like, well, the name says it all. These guys have created a black/post-metal sound at once brutal and transcendent – full of terror, full of grace and yet beyond both. Nadir pulverizes you with […]

Remember that jaw-dropping moment in your childhood when you saw ex-Green Ranger Tommy Oliver coming back stronger than ever as the badass White Ranger in Season 2 of the Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers? Yeah, Sigh’s upcoming album certainly did an excellent job at evoking that long-forgotten feeling of inane joy. As always, the Japanese are […]

France’s Griffar started out as a pagan black metal band; their 2000 release Of Witches and Celts featured lengthy, highly melodic compositions and a buzzy, wall-of-sound approach. After a few aborted attempts to return over the last decade, they’ve finally reformed with an updated and more muscular sound. Griffar now sounds like late 90s melodic black […]

The Pacific Northwest gets a lot of USBM love – all those towering primeval forests, rugged coastlines and deep, billowing fog banks conjure the same fascination and mysticism as the old country (i.e. Norway). But what about the Great Northeast? There’s more up there than just Martha’s Vineyard, dropped r’s and lobster rolls. They’ve got […]

Viktor Scheer and András Nagy are the only holdovers from the last album. Viktor producing and András doing virtually everything else.Everything old is new again. Welcome back founding guitarists János Barbarics and Csaba Csejtei. János played on The Pagan Winter, Phantoms and Haunting, Csaba played on The Pagan Winter, Phantoms, Forsaken Symphony and Glory And […]

Moribund has always been notorious/iconic for having a roster of bands that sound as though they record their albums with faulty walkie-talkies. It really makes me wonder how these bands connect the amps to those walkie-talkies, and doesn’t doing this void the warranty for the walkie-talkies as well? What if they got trapped in their […]

Germany’s Klabautamann wowed me with their 2009 release Merkur, which featured a surprising Opeth-meets-Enslaved progressive black metal sound. I was particularly impressed by the soft, jazz/lounge-inspired interludes and the inventive compositions. The fact that the vocalist sounds like a dead ringer for Grutle was a bonus as well, so I slotted the album in at […]

As usual at this time of year, I get a few CDs for review that came out late the year before. Such is the case with Ahdistuksen Aihio Productions who sent me Ave Maria‘s Chapter I and this, the debut from Finland’s Saturnian Mist. And while Ave Maria left me unsettled but only slightly impressed, Gnostikoi […]

Here’s yet another addition to the growing collection of fine but quirky, experimental German black metal. This time in the form of duo ‘A’ (guitars/vocals) and ‘C’ (drums) and their Ave Maria debut, Chapter I. I don’t have a whole lot of reference points for this act, but it’s safe to say they definitely sound […]

Anyone has a Latin dictionary? Here is the impressive debut from Minnesota’s Atrum Inritus and as you can tell from the moniker, album title and track titles like “Aegrus Evert”, ” Sacramentum Exeuntium”, ” Tenebris Descendi” and “Ephemera”, there’s no doubt about what we are  dealing with here: Black metal. While all the above and […]

American black metal is like Japanese pasta—a non-indigenous dish that actually does justice to the original (and perhaps even surpasses!) from time to time. Hence, I’d expect nothing less from the eclectic Abigail Williams, who have really gone off the edge of the cliff this time round and switched to playing an ambient form of […]

Generally, when I’m looking at porn, (I’d Like to think) I’m a fairly typical male. It’s your typical porn stuff, nothing to gross or degrading. But once in  rare while I’ll be in the mood for some thing nasty; some German Bukkake or weird Japanese, submissive ball stomping fetish. Something that makes me cringe and […]

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, […]

Blut Aus Nord’s Memoria Vetusta II is one of my favorite black metal albums of all time – an odyssey both terrifying and graceful, with masterful compositions that flow as much as they rage. So when I heard that Blut Aus Nord’s next releases would be an epic trilogy, I was naturally very excited to […]

Black metal is a curious beast; it can be a very conservative sub-genre and at the same time, one of the most diverse types of music to be composed. Bands like Enslaved, Dimmu Borgir and Deathspell Omega have shed most of their black metal roots in favor of something different. Whereas, Darkthrone, Dark Funeral and […]

Taake needs no introduction based upon the three hundred potential friends Last.fm has lined up for me based on Taake in common. Noregs Vaapen features appearances from Nocturno Culto, Attila Csihar, and Demonaz. I’ll leave it to your explorations to find their contributions, for exploring this album is a task well taken up. The album […]

Released the same time as the killer debut from label mates Obsiquiae, the third album from Maine’s Falls of Rauros was a bit overshadowed, which is a shame as it adds yet another quality album to the genre of woodsy, misty, organic black metal or ‘grey’ metal as I like to call it. The cover […]

Thanks largely in part to Liturgy, there’s been somewhat of a backlash to USBM — mostly the post-rock, shoegaze -influenced kind. I mean even former darling Krallice has fallen victim to some of the criticism of the genre with their largely unheralded and unlauded 3rd album. So, are the genre’s oft worshiped apex band now open to […]

I honestly don’t know where to start here. I have vague recollections of Ebonylake from the late ’90s due to them being British and residing on Cacophonous Records, but never actually heard their sole 1999 release, On the Even of the Grimly Inventive. So when I got this CD from new French label–this is only […]

Now this one is definitely interesting. As someone who tends much more towards the death/extreme end of metal, I signed up for this one having no idea what to expect. Based on what I have read, this band falls under the post-black/folk/shoegaze brand of metal. Being unfamiliar with this genre I have no comparisons off […]

So, after a long eight year recording silence following the release of Tara, Absu have now released two albums in three years. The second of a planned trilogy dealing with the abyss, Abzu is as blisteringly sharp and nasty as you would expect, if not more so. Few albums rip and shred as hard as […]

Though hailing from Bavaria, Germany  it does not take a genius to figure out Imperious‘ influence; the band name, album named after a Roman general, and song titles like “Segestes’ Charge”, “The Battle Of The Teutoburg Forest” and “Three Legions March”. All it’s missing is a a quote or sample from the opening battle of […]