Holókauston makes me think of Incantation first and foremost. Onward to Golgotha and Mortal Throne of Nazarene more than any of their other albums. Holókauston has that sort of cavernous feel to it; Sedimentum comes to mind also, as well as Writhing. Its murky atmosphere resembles a Louisiana backwater dripping with pitch-black malice. But there’s also a Black Metal undercurrent, which is why vocalist Naas Alcameth describes Holókauston as a “heretical black opera forged in adverse esoteric and eschatological tradition” and “a madman’s alchemical experiment”.

“Hellmouth” is the opener, and it’s bursting out harder than Cronos, with a runtime of 10:33. This shit rips open wide swaths of the earth with how heavy this is. An echoing bell tolls, and right away there’s that murky atmosphere, pounding, body-shaking heaviness beyond heaviness. It gets ethereal at the 6:06 minute mark, where it takes on this whole other level of extremity… an epic fucking opener if there ever was one.

“Obscurator” is next, and there are blasts right away, no time to recover from the “Hellmouth” you just got shoved through. You’re in the fucking belly of the beast, baby. This is also the shortest track on Holókauston, coming in at a respectable 8:25. Near the middle of the song, it gets almost somber, but not by much. There are still violent whirlwinds in this oppressive storm just waiting to see the light of day.

“Howling” is the Christ-obliterating 11:09-minute third track, and it’s a fucking whopper! Slow, dripping menace like a bloody nose. It drags itself across a moldy earth before it goes completely off the rails with subtle ambience for about 2 minutes before returning to the soul-crushing heaviness. Screams echo from behind an awesome wall of sound, and it elevates this song to unbelievably huge heights.

Last up is “Iniquity”, and it’s a killer, raging track. Moving like a pissed-off bison towards an idiot tourist, it literally runs you over. You’re being gored to death by the most vicious 2000-lb wild animal whose sole intent is to get your ass out of its fucking territory. It’s a brutal, unrelenting way to say goodbye, hasta la vista motherfucker!

This re-release probably sounds better than the original, that’s usually the goal in these situations, and so if you liked it back then, chances are you will again. For those who like Incantation and knuckle dragging, Neolithic heaviness. Go on, then!

After a brief intro, “Insufferable Shivers” erupts out of the cold shadows with blasts galore and Mike letting out a neat growl. The guitar work, as we all know, from Ron, will have razor wire riffs, and this is no exception. A plethora of time changes and Mike letting out some really long shrieky growls. The blasts are so furious, and I do not see any info on the drummer, and I would suspect this is a drum machine. The production of it is phenomenal. It’s to the point that with today’s triggering of real drummers in the studio, honestly, you can’t tell the difference here, folks.

“White Behemoths of Woe” is slap upon slap to your face. It begins ferociously with a monstrous blast that will wipe your head clean off your pathetic shoulders. This is a ruthless song and my favorite song on the album. The guitar soloing over the relentless blasting, in the middle of the song, is incredible. This song has a way of taking the listener through various body slams and suplexes and eventually ending you with the Cobra Clutch to rattle your body useless. This is definitely a favorite song for me in all of 2025.

“Avalanche Apocalypse” at over five and a half minutes, believe it or not, starts slow. I was like ‘thankfully, you rat bastids are allowing me to catch my breath’. The song picks up with a blast, then settles down to a slow black metal crawl with Mike screaming his lungs out. The harmonies at the 1.29 time stamp are excellent, as are the tempo shifts, which are abrupt and stop on a dime type of chaos. These rhythmic measures cascade throughout the song and kinda go along nicely with the cold as ice (pun intended) album cover. All their album covers all have a similar theme. Regardless, this is yet another terrific song with lots of punch the wall moments, as well as slower sections to sink your teeth into a bit more.

“Cryogenic Death” is straight from the chambers of ice caverns. Stop and start blasts in the beginning and various guitar sounds and harmonies over the riffs with solos, this song is yet another vicious foray into the disturbed mind of Mr. Vento’s as he conjures up quite an abundance of time shifts and razor-sharp riffing. From the 1.40 section on is just plain insanity with Mike showcasing his other vocal side. Well, he does highs on his other projects, but he is always bringing in the guttural death metal vocals as the main tone. Here is just black metal, and he’s impressive. Doing those types of vocals can be a bit harsher, on the body. One must harness the air in their diaphragm a bit more. I have experimented with this vocal style and have done only a little bit of it on recordings. It’s a tough vocal style, and Mike nails it on this album.

Abominable Astral Summoning is an excellent black metal album by Imperial Crystalline Entombment (I.C.E.). The music is cold, calculating, brutal, yet not devoid of melody at all. The music and vocals go perfectly with the album cover. When black metal erupted in the 90’s it was initially stark and cold. To me, that is what true black metal is: brutal and relentless. Then the scene got muddied with the sub and sub-sub genres of black metal (every genre now has multiple sub-categories, come to think of it). So it you’re itching for true black metal played with precision and skill with a sharp AF production, you’d better get this now before Belzebub comes a knocking.

Case and point; Anfauglir is another name for Carcharoth or ‘Red Maw’- the horrifying Giant Werewolf of the First Age and Akallabêth (their second album since 2008, after some time off) means ‘The Downfallen‘ in Adûnaic, the language of Tolkien’s Númenoreans. How many of you casually knew that? I fucking didn’t.

Either way get ready for some Tolkien deep cuts as Akallabêth is based on Tolkien’s less known books “The Silmarillion” and “Unfinished Tales“, and is set in the Second Age of Arda as it follows the rise and fall of Númenor, the island kingdom gifted to the race of men by the Valar, the gods of Middle-earth. A number of voice actors an guests lend their voices to tell the tale, giving it a truly epic scope.

OK, now how about the music?

Well, as you’d expect, its as epic and as grandiose as the subject matter, lurking somewhere between Summoning’s somber, Tolkien based plodding atmospherics and Aquilus’ more vast, classical music based epics. Now granted, it more urgent and bombastic than both especially when the duo does get a little more intense such as the finale of 20-minute opener “The Rise of Númenor”, but there are certainly strains of both in here.

The 4 sprawling songs cover over 70 minutes, so strap in. But like the hugely successful movies, there could be a little editing here and there. But for the most part the mix of mid paced, brooding marches, more urgent melodic black metal and triumphant Howard Shore-esque ethereal choirs and orchestration keep largely entertaining, even if there is some wading to do to get to the really good stuff, like getting through all the talking and walking from LOTR trilogy films to get to the battles of Helms Deep of Pelennor Fields.

For example, it takes second track “The Inevitable Truths of Time” five or so minutes to deliver a pretty astounding choral/orchestra laden blast beat that’s really impressive that only appears again 12 minutes later. The 22 -minute “Defying the Doom of Men” takes the opposite approach with the pretty killer bombastic opening few minutes, then meanders around for a while before it gets epic as fuck again around the 17 minute mark. The closer “The Downfall” even has a very “Sauron/The Great Eye” theme,  Shore-ish sound to the orchestration, and rousing moments at its halfway point, and at 11 minutes has a little less wasted time, being focused more in the epic music throughout.

The orchestration of Lord Bauglir is top notch cinema score worthy though his programmed drums are clearly programmed sounding. And I was aware of some hawk-ish black metal vocals, the vocal never really affected the listening experience and seemed pretty back ground sounding.

The the extended editions of the LOTR franchise of films, there is a lot of world building and exposition here so also like the films, there is some absolutely magnificent stuff here- but it also can bog down into slightly boring territory here and there. Either way, Anfauglir has has the potential to be one of the premier Tolkien themed bands out there, they are already one of the deepest.

Boasting a very cold and depressing album cover ( “Eiger” is conceptually focused on the 3967-metre mountain of the same name in the Bernese Alps. Since 1935, at least 64 climbers have died attempting to conquer the Eiger’s sheer, ice-covered north face which has earned it the nickname of ‘Mordwand‘ (‘murder wall‘). The album specifically examines an attempt to climb the Mordwand in July 1936 which ended in tragedy, as four young mountaineers succumbed to treacherous conditions and disappeared, presumed caught in an avalanche.), Eiger is  8 songs in 55 minutes, which while still is Aara, conjures up some of their earlier, colder releases, namely their debut So fallen alle Tempel in 2019.

At over nine minutes, the opener, “Die das wilde Wetter fängt” is the longest song and rips along nicely with monstrous blasting and if you’re not a fan of the higher pitched black metal type of vocals, Aara will do nothing to change your mind on that.  For me I have grown accustomed to their sound and style so it fits.  The part at the 4.25 section thumps hard!!  Great rhythm section with this slower paced moment.  It is excellent and has a very strong and heavy feel to it, before some classic Aara atmospherics come in later on with the acoustics.  The thumping beats come in some more with some excellent drum work.  Those black metal melodies are a thing of beauty.  Harmonious, cold, yet emotive.

“Felsensang” has a nice brooding opening which is quite doomy as well.  There is a sadness played with these acoustic moments which are interspersed with the metal.  The light drumming begins to build up for the brutality that ensues as the song thrusts forward into a killer blast.  The vocals are harsh and match the music.  How do black metal singers, who go for those raspy highs, not throw out their voices???  Anyway, the song continues to blast forward with incredible guitar melodies and I love how the song abruptly slows down around the 2.40 mark, then speeds back up.  Aara knows how to do tempo shifts but makes them impactful.  Another one at the 3.17 mark, goes right into an atmospheric acoustic moment, right after the ferocious speeds prior.  This part has a classical flair and those damn guitar melodies right after…I mean Aara may write the best black metal guitar melodies out there folks!!  The moving and emotive riffs are impressive.  Towards the end of the song, with all the blasting metal madness to hear the acoustic guitar over the blast beat, it is a new one for me, and it fits rather nicely.

Turn down those headphones because “Der Wahnsinn dort im Abgrund” has no atmospheric build-up.  Goes straight for the gulliver with monstrous blasting, right out of the starting gates.  And I mean this moment goes on for a long time.  Over a minute, before there are some drum rolls and a classic galloping metal beat takes us back to a time of yore.  The double bass drums over this section are terrific.  This opening segment is one of the most intense Aara experiences, I might add.  The song slows down and ushers in atmospherics and then right back into the intensity.  The slower portion, towards the end with that main guitar riff, is excellent.  Heavy stuff.

Eiger is excellently produced and Aara are writing machines.  I do not think they play live/tour, so it gives them a chance to pretty much release an album every year.  However, there is no drop off in quality in writing, ability, song structure, or production.  The albums never seem rushed and that is a testament to a band focused on their musical style and as musicians.  Highly commendable.  This is yet another stellar release from Aara, one of the leaders in the current black metal scene!!

Nocturnal Arkonian Hordes was my introduction and I was blown away; there was blasting for days, sort of a True Black Dawn/Dark Funeral mixture. I was hooked instantly and wanted to hear more so I dug deep for their (then early albums, this was taking place in 2003).

Stella Pandora was (from the press release) recorded, mixed, and mastered at Heinrich House Studio in Spring 2024. Let me tell you it’s solid as hell, the band is on cosmic fire, bringing more of the ambiance to this album, countering against the soul-shredding Black Metal that surrounds it.

First track “Pandora” is a blaster straight away, there’s a little bit of ambiance creeping in before it explodes with Satanic precision. Scythe sharp riffs and blasting are reminiscent of Thunderbolt (Pol) and their Inhuman Ritual Massmurder album from 2004.

This being a six-track full-length it’s a bit easier to digest. Stella Pandora goes through more tempo shifts than a lunatic with a gun. “Altairia” is a good example of the ambiance creeping around before the blasts kick in full force. There’s a cool four-time rock beat that quickly starts to speed up with the double bass kicking in around the two-minute mark, cymbal crash and it’s off to the races. That massive production bringing the drums to the fore with battering ram accuracy, Arkona is pros by now at making sure that your eardrums get flayed again and again.

At 47:27 they utilize every second of the time to keep you ensnarled in their grasp. The crawling chaos of the “Necropolis” moves like a cart full of diseased corpses, it’s one of my favorite tracks because it’s got everything in it. Tempo changes for days and always present are those drums, creating the current of this stygian ocean where the mutants dwell. It is the macabre centerpiece to Stella Pandora.

“Elysium” brings the morose side of Black Metal into the mix of this malignant cauldron of hate and I love every demonic moment of it. It blasts near the middle of the song, but that doesn’t take away from the mournful feeling of the song as it stays present throughout.

There aren’t any short songs (short meaning under five minutes) on Stella Pandora. Each is pushing close to ten minutes and all of it is worth it. “Prometeus” is the shortest track, clocking in at 6:56, but that doesn’t mean they’re lollygagging. This is a full-force blaster from start to finish; rolls and fills compete with the razor-sharp guitar tone. It’s another favorite track, bringing a true feeling of the mythological Pandora’s Box opening and spewing the instruments of evil out into the pitiful population.

It sets the stage for “Aurora”, a 9:06-minute epic that is the perfect way to bring the chaos to a close. Beginning with furious blasting and a barrage of flesh-flaying riffs. It’s another Dark Funeral/Dissection mixture of sinister harmonies underscoring the miasma being created. It goes through some semi-emotional riffing near the end, before the blitzkrieg ends and with it Stella Pandora.

Drac – vocals & bass, Khorzon – guitars & orchestrations, Kaamos – guitars and Zaala – drums; have shown again the massive destructive power of Polish Black Metal. If you dig Dark Funeral, Thunderbolt (Pol), and Marduk; or if you’ve been following the band since their inception then you already know and should be lining up to get this.

Akhlys, get it, but at first, I did not…let me explain.  This Colorado act came onto the scene in 2009 with their debut album Supplication.  The entire 37-minute-long album is more of a dreamlike trance – there is no music.  It’s an entire 37 minutes of ambiance.  Now is this something I would listen to?  No.  Maybe the act did this as a way of testing the waters.  Test it they did with The Dreaming I in 2015, the true debut, if you will.  Shredding black metal with atmospherics, still, but this album took the scene by storm due to the evil brutality contained within.  The band followed it up in 2020 with the dark and disturbing Melinoë.  And these album covers went along perfectly with the viciousness.

Here we are in 2024 and House of the Black Geminus is upon us  I appreciate the band still actually reaching back to that ambient debut album, but to have the title track, at close to six minutes, smack dab in the middle of the album and it’s all the trancelike ambiance, for me, really disrupts the album flow.  Personally I would have left this off the album.  However, that is the only gaffe, on what makes up a monstrously well-played and evil album.

“The Mask of Night-Speaking” starts off the album and at close to 12 minutes long is the longest on the album.  Anytime a band begins with such a long song they’re taking a leap of faith that this start to the album will grab the listener’s attention.  The music starts early on with a terrific guitar tone as well as creepy keyboards which call to mind the classic horror movie Suspiria.  The instrumentation, alongside some massive double bass action, slowly and slowly builds to epic proportions.  The way this opening sequence is played I think would actually go over well in a live setting with the crowd anticipation.  Lower those headphones!!!!!!!!!!!  At the four-minute mark, the music erupts and I mean ERUPTS, into a monstrous blast beat with the vicious vocals coming forth.  The song gets back into the mid-paced part with those keyboards, this time with the vocals over this section.  Truly incredible and then into more vicious mid-paced goings-ons and the keyboards really make a prominent mark.  The blast beats are stop on a dime sort of blasting, terrific as the guitars and keys over the blasts create an ethereal evilness throughout.  More tempo shifts with some deeper layered vocals coming through and this seems to be the orchestration from the pits of hell.

“Maze of Phobetor” is up next and blasts right out of the starting gates.  The blasting and style reminds me of early Morbid Angel off their Altars of Madness album, for some reason.  The mid-paced tremendously heavy guitar riffing comes in and the atmosphere contained during this section is pure madness.  Now I get the drums are triggered, however, they do sound terrific and although powerful, never overtake the rest of the music or vocals.  This is a supremely amazingly mixed album.  The blasts that ignite again, with the guitars and keys never get lost in the shuffle.  There seem to be some distorted vocal effects and I do enjoy the varying vocals tones a lot!!!  The distorted vocal moments, when added to the insane brutal velocity, at times, can be a bit much.  It can be overload, at times coming across as unbridled, yet controlled chaos.  This band will test your senses in a variety of ways.

“Eye of the Daemon – Daemon I” ends the album with terrific keys and guitar riffing.  The drumming is monstrous.  The bass guitar is there, in the background, though.  That I will say, gets buried at times, in the mix.  This track gets things going very fast early on and close to the mid-way point the song slows for a brief moment.  The isolated guitar is excellent until the crushing mid-paced moments erupt and roll right over your pathetic bones.  The blast over the 4-minute section has terrific guitar melodies throughout.  The song is ferocious then, teeters to the end by incorporating those ambient moments, which work well, in the shorter confines of the song.

House of the Black Geminus punishes from the beginning to the mid-way point when the title track’s ambiance takes over, then after 6 minutes is back to the fury.  Maybe this 6 minutes is more of a breather for us all since this album is relentless.  Fun fact, some of you may not know 2/3 of Akhlys are also in Aoratos, out of Colorado. Their ferocious 2019 debut, Gods Without Name, is in need of a follow-up, soon!  If you enjoy your black metal well-played, ferocious and most of all memorable, you really need to check out Akhlys.  They are one of the best out there!

The band has evolved from the pure tech death of the debut into a murky, dissonant, almost black death band (they are on Debemor Morti – a mostly black metal label) with more and more of a Sulphur Aeon meets Deathspell Omega aura that was highlighted on 2020’s Stare Into Death and Be Still.

And that sound continues with album number 7, with maybe even more of a writhing Deathspell Omega discordant tone. The 57-minute album, as with the last few albums, sees the band effortlessly deliver rangy, nauseating riffs upon riffs, littered with murky, twisty blasts and miasmal, droning ambiance here and there (though maybe lessened a little since Stare Into Death?).

Although lacking the immediacy of the last album’s opener “The Lifeless Advance”, the album does have a flow that seems to ebb and peak as the album gets further into the abyss with the third song “Further Opening the Wounds”, where the album starts to really get under your skin.

After that standout track, the album really sinks in, with “Transfiguration In and Out of Worlds” shifting wickedly from atonal blast beats, heaving lurches, and disorientating ambiance with slimy, serpentine ease. “To See Death Just Once” continues the excellence with shrill malevolence and more filthy, spiraling lopes that belie a sense of malevolent melody buried in the mire.

The almost 10-minute “Undying as an Apparation” somehow makes acoustic ambient injections creepy as fuck before the utterly monstrous title track ends the album with a truly terrifying crescendo of crumbling riffs including a nifty little ‘groove’ for lack of a better word, about a 3rd of the way in.

Another elite album from Ulcerate that again sees them truly locked into their sound and show no signs of slowing down seven albums in. I believe the kids use the word “unfuckwithable”?

The mix of completely over-the-top, busy, shredding, shrill, classically inspired melodies and triumphant medieval atmospheres come across like fellow French act Véhémence or similarly chaotically melodic Passéisme on crack, but I understand how the super busy melodies can be a bit much, especially when cramming so many into tone song are rarely settling into anything.

Nous sommes d’Hier (‘We Are Yesterday’) delivers much of the above, but Ardraos seems to have settled in a bit and allows some of the magnificent, and I mean truly magnificent, rousing melodic riffs some room to breathe and be absorbed by the listener. Albeit super shrill layered and busy, there are just moments where he actually delivers the riffs for more than a bar or two, and it’s glorious. Throw in what appears to be a slightly more increased presence of Gregorian/choral moments inspired by classical composers Charpentier and Cherubini, that elevate those moments into spectacular realms.

Brilliant opener “D.S.F.R” starts the 7-song album (though the last song is a cover of “Le Bal des Laze” by French 60s/70s musician Michel Polnareff ) sets the tone immediately, and about three minutes in you get the first classical/choral moments amid the frantic melodies and it’s fucking glorious. despite its subtle restraint- orchestral bombast this is not, but a more reserved cathedral-like austerity.

But even with those brilliant moments, it’s still Ardraos’s utterly frantic riffing that steals the show with an early Krallice, Liturgy sense of shrill, layered, medieval-inspired tremolos that are mind-bogglingly epic at times. The trumpet blasts that start the title track, transition into one of these many many riffs, and do it without the choral arrangements. As does the almost 10-minute “Pays d’Allen” with its introductory medieval acoustic frolic and haughty, jaunting, urgent main riff and harmonically vicious “Céron”.

That said, when Ardraos does deliver one of them, they are fucking spectacular. Such as “Sermon sur le trépassement”, (where Blut Aus Nord‘s Vindsval helps out), with a truly regal, austere atmosphere back the melodic chaos.  Then there is my personal favorite “Derniers Sacrements” with a few choral chord progressions and injections to just die for, and really show how top notch a composer Ardraos is himself.

Nous sommes d’Hier was well worth the 4 year wait, and improves on Hic Regnant Borbonii Manes in every facet from the riffs to the choral compositions, which, as I spoke to, are borderline elite level.  And as a result, it should be lauded as one of 2023’s very best black metal records.

Triade III: Nyx is their fifth album and in their short existence since 2018 they have also released 2 ep’s along with these full-length albums.  The majority of their output has been released during the pandemic and this album is the third and last of the album trilogy based on a gothic novel “Melmoth the Wanderer” by Charles Maturin.  The band creates many emotive melodies and Aara are getting better and better with each album and have come a long way since their 2019 debut: So fallen alle Tempel.

The band does write rather long songs and just like the previous albums, you will get a limited amount of songs, but they are packed with TONS of extraordinary black metal sounds, harmonies, and melodies and drenched in emotive atmosphere.

6 songs in 41 minutes, “Heimgesucht” opens the album and is the longest track at eight-and-a-half minutes.  Opening with some acoustic atmosphere, the song gets right into the blasting with some excellent guitar harmonies and guitar solos simultaneously over the blasting and the double bass is pummeling over the mid-paced moments.  Vocals do not come into the picture until two-and-a-half minutes have passed.  If you’re not a fan of the higher, shrieking black metal vocals then these gents may turn you off.  For me, these vocal tones fit the music.  Although the band is emotive and creates a lot of atmosphere-at times there is a stark coldness to their sounds, which makes the higher-register vocals blend in quite well.  There are plenty of screams over the blasts, or to signal a blast beat and the harmonies on this song are simply breathtaking.  And the band is heavy as well.  The rhythm guitar played under the harmonies are strikingly heavy.  Around the 5 minute mark the song gets into some mid-paced heaviness and I swear that double bass sound will tear your body in half in 0.0 seconds.  Terrific way to open the album.

You cannot even catch your breath when the holy shit moments happens immediately with the second song – “Emphase der Seelenpein”.  No slow build-up, no atmospheric intro – just straight into the blast beat which is tight AF.  After about a minute of high velocity black metal, the song slows down and the atmosphere comes in with more guitar harmonies and vocal shrieks from a hellacious cavernous blackhole.  The harmonies, over the blast beats, are incredibly catchy and the song brings forth some acoustic elements too.  Check out some of the drum rolls too – they are on point, well-placed and tight. Very snappy and sharp. The blast part returns and there is so much going on with the blasting, harmonies and tempo shifts.

Aara loves erupting out of the starting gates a lot on this album and  “Des Wanderers Traum” is no exception as the blast starts out of the starting gates.  This moment sounds a bit too samey to “Emphase der Seelenpein”, but alas they mix it up with some mid-paced rumbling heaviness with a lot of atmospheres, early on, around the two-minute mark.  The song gets back to the blasting, soon thereafter.  “Edo et Edam” ends the album, and the song ends very atmospherically and calmly, and serenely.  The band ends the album very strongly, just as they opened the album – strong.  This last song incorporates more tempo shifts and blasts and they slow it down a bit too.  This song needs to be in their live setlist, for sure.

Aara’s Triade III: Nyx is a damn killer black metal album.  Make no mistake the band uses a lot of melody and harmony, but is fairly brutal with the high-octane blasting that is going on all over the place.  I will say, I would like to hear some slower passages work themselves into the songs and stay longer than they do.  It’s like Aara are saying ok, enough of that time to rip into a blast again. And I am not even suggesting it’s done all the time, however when the band gets into those slower, atmospheric moments, they break up the chaos that surrounds other parts of the songs, but they do not stick around long enough.

Other than that the production is great, the use of keyboards adds a lot of depth to the overall sound.  The album cover seems to evoke a path going somewhere dark and potentially evil, but the beacon of light, from the lamppost, maybe says otherwise. It also ties into the band’s second album, from 2020 En Ergô Einai, not part of this trilogy, but the building light sconces tie into this a bit, imo.  All in all, Aara play some of the best atmospheric and emotive black metal out there and this is killer.

And whereas the the two projects above have their very clear influences with The Mist From the Mountains having a clear Borknagar, Ulve and, Satyricon vibe and I Am The Night leaning hard into early Emperor, Pestilent Hex has a little more obscure and unexpected, but equally clear influence the minute you press play and hear the opening symphonic/piano based throng of “Chapter I : “The Ashen Abhorrence”:

Obtained Enslavement.

If you don’t believe me, go to the last few minutes of the aforementioned title track or the 4 or so minute mark of the second track  “Chapter II : “Nature of the Spirit”. I’ll wait.

Those familiar with the underrated Norwegian symphonic black metal band and particularly their 1998 magnum opus, Soulblight, will immediately hear it (those not familiar with it, go seek it out now if you like 90s symphonic black metal- it’s an unheralded gem).

In all 5 lengthy songs (6-9 minutes) and one two minute interlude, the focus on darker classical atmospheres and a more piano based orchestration is a dead giveaway amid the searing melodicism and symphonic backdrop that all add to the the overall sound that also encompasses plenty of the classic symphonic second wave 90s greats. In particular in the likes of  “Chapter III : “Mephistophelean Liaison” and “Chapter VI: Banishment” has some early Dimmu Borgir, (Stormblast, Enthrone Darkness Triumphant). And of course, strains of early Emperor throughout in the more virulently, classical inspired orchestration and tempo changes as heard in “Chapter V: Old Hag”.

But it’s clear these guys wanted to honor Obtained Enslavement and their sound, and they succeeded brilliantly and have added a third magnificent album from a Finnish symphonic black metal supergroup in 2022.

Until now.

New Zealand’s Ulcerate are no stranger to my or other year end lists through out the course of their 6 album career. From 2007s pure, clinical tech debut  Of Fracture and Failure , to the band’s more atonal, dissonant shift in arguable peaks Everything is Fire, and Destroyers of All, to Vermis and the band’s last effort, 2016s Shrines of Paralysis,  the band has constantly been at the very apex of death metal and that’s likely to stay the same with this absolutely suffocating 7th effort.

The twisty, murky discordance that’s still part Immolation and part Deathspell Omega, has been sharpened and honed into a lethal combination of churning nausea and controlled, indescribable supine, clinical otherworldly harmonies that somehow seem melodic within the devastation. Look no further than opener “The Lifeless Advance”, a truly breathtaking album opener that left me muttering under my breath.

The following 7 tracks have a high standard to follow , but “Exhale the Ash” certainly tries with a more fervent pace and delivery and the title track then slows things down a bit for an eight minute descend into calamitous murkiness, that’s so fucking in control of its own chaos its frightening.

As with past releases, there’s is a bit of a lumbering post metal (namely Neurosis) ambiance and temper to the album’s slower moments (i.e “There is No Horizon”, “Visceral Ends”, “Dissolved Orders”) , but it’s rendered with such an majestic heaving heft, it blends in perfectly with the crumbling devastation.

Ulcerate are so fucking locked in on this album it’s unfair. Take mid album standout, “Inversion” , with a mountainous opening riff so sickeningly perfect,  Ross Dolan, Robert Vigna, AND Steve Von Til would nod in respect. Or the fucking sexy, menacing little sway in “Drawn into the Void”. All of it with a perfect mix /master that’s heaving but precise, rendering the riffs with ample heft and clarity.

I was needing a death metal album to get me excited about the genre again in 2020, and Stare Into Death And be Still is that album. It’s such a monstrous slab of undulating perfection, it makes me whisper to myself how good it is when its playing. No doubt you will do the same.

Now with this being my first shot at a critical review of one of their albums, I kept asking myself “what is it about their sound that (to sound like a Hallmark card for second) just reaches down deep into my soul in a way that no other metal band has ever done?”  And after pondering that question for a while and going through the album multiple times, I settled on the fact that it’s their guitar tone.  Guitarist Michael Hoggard has managed to hit on a sound that I have found to be totally unique; no small feat in the metal (or any other) world.  It’s got a hauntingly dissonant tone to it that sets them apart from anyone I personally have ever heard.  I’ve always felt that the sign of a truly great band is the fact that if you put someone’s entire music collection on shuffle and asked them to pick when X band’s song comes on, you would be able to pinpoint it.  I could do that with Ulcerate in a millisecond.

Stare Into Death and Be Still picks up right where Vermis and Shrines of Paralysis left off:  long songs (the shortest one is 7 minutes), the aforementioned guitar tone, the haunting death-growl of Paul Kelland that is neither under or over-used (which would be easy in songs of such length), and the absolutely other-worldly drumming of Jamie Saint Merat.  I am a (very average) drummer myself, but trying to dissect what that guy is doing or what time signature he’s in is like trying to decide who Taylor Swift is going to dump and sing about in her next Billboard #1 song.  This has been the same lineup for the past 4 albums (they were a 5 piece for their first one, Of Fracture and Failure), and it’s apparent that that familiarity has bred some astounding albums.

If I had to make one small criticism, it’s the fact that the songs can sometimes seem to run together, partially due to the fact that they do have only one guitarist.  But that’s being nitpicky, and in the case of this particular band it’s also what adds a sense of cohesiveness for an album that clocks in at just under an hour.  The production is organic yet true to the sound and vibe that’s truly put them in the top tier of metal bands in the entire world.  I only hope they don’t take some strange ass Opeth-ian turn into prog weirdness, and produce about 15 more albums like this one.  I’d buy every single one. 

Of course, you will only enjoy this as much as me if you really like the shriller melodic black metal stylings of say Vallendusk, Woods of Desolation, Sühnopfer, Vindland, Vvilderness, Ghost Bath and more recently,  fellow Swiss duo Fluisteraars, Bâ’a and Glaciation and one time label mates (Naturmacht) Marrasmieli. Super layered,melodic, crisp, some times despondent black metal delivered in a mostly 8/8 pace with distant hawkish shrieks and some sparsely church-y choirs all come together for a enthralling if painfully short 33 minute treatise on atmospheric black metal perfection.

The 5 songs (between 5 and 9 minutes long), mostly get right to it other than a couple of short intros, and all deliver swirling, shimmering tremolo picked harmonies at largely breakneck speed, with just a few slower majestic segues here and there. The production appears to have beefed up from the rather thin debut, making for a more bombastic overall sound, and the hymnal choirs, though not used a whole bunch do add some regal austerity to the proceedings as heard on “Telôs”.

But every track is a simply killer, completely mesmerizing delivery of the style. I mean opener “Arkanum” has killer melodies galore throughout , sprightly 5 minute mark of “Stein Auf Stein” is simply gorgeous, “Aargesang (Aare II)” is furiously harmonic, “Entelechie” is more controlled and closer “Telôs” uses the choirs (which seemed more utilized on the debut and which I wish were used more) to great effect, with a super peppy late song jaunt to boot, adding to an  already phenomenal song.

While Marrasmieli’s  Between Land and Sky is a shoo in for my year end list, En Ergô Einai will certainly be in the conversation as the year draws to a close.

So I was intrigued to hear that with their newest release, Hallucinogen, Blut Aus Nord would be shifting direction yet again to explore new and uncharted sonic realms. Psychedelia has long been a favorite muse of stoner rock and progressive metal alike, but aside from innovators like Enslaved, Nachtmystium, Oranssi Pazuzu, and Cult of Fire, not many black metal bands have embraced that sound. But that’s where Blut Aus Nord wants to take you: inward. 

At first blush, this album could have just been called Memoria Vetusta IV. Like the previous two installements, it’s a cosmic torrent of melody and astral atmosphere, more melancholy than malevolent. Sighing choirs – a favorite element in every ‘industrial’ Blut Aus Nord album since the 777 cycle – have now been added to the mix, creating a strain of dreamy gloom. Vocals are scattered – the occasional rasp for texture – but otherwise, the songs are largely instrumental. One of the expectations of psychedelic or progressive rock/metal is that the songs explore, wander, and shift form as they progress. These are more concise and focused on the whole, though some passages fracture into soft and wandering ambiance, or crystallize into shimmering tones above syncopated drumming. So yeah, it ticks the box. Yet despite all that, I can’t say I was transported at any time. It’s all very listenable, but it lacks the sweeping beauty of MVII or the cataclysmic majesty of genre contemporary Mare Cognitum.  

But yes, as promised, there is something new here. Something fresh. Something, well, unexpected.

It happens three-quarters into the first track, “Nomos Nebuleam.” A solo twists and writhes through the song, rising up above the churn… but it’s not the kind of cold and ringing tone you might expect. After all, even MVII had solos. But this is different. It sounds like… heavy metal.

That wah-wah soloing, along with the swaggering ‘rawk’ riffs that crop up throughout the album, just seem so… off with everything else you’ve heard from the band to date – or from black metal in general. I’m all for genre-blending – in fact I love to hear new sounds and ideas in any established genre – but the juxtaposition of chuggy riffs and bent-note soloing with atmospheric black metal just feels ill-conceived and capricious. It works in black n’ roll, and it even worked in this year’s thrashy, excellent heavy/black Abbath solo album. But I dunno, it throws me off.

Now, not every track brings in those ’80s nods – and the ones that don’t, like the relentless “Anthomos” or the kaleidoscopic “Hallucinalia,” are more successful. So there’s a lot to like here. And if the songs had brought in a much more varied and surprising palette of elements, creating an unpredictable experience of shifting moods and hypnotic patterns – you know, like a psychedelic trip – then perhaps this scattering of heavy metal swagger would blend right in. But when those moments rear their mulleted heads,  I just have to grit my teeth and push through. 

So yeah, not a bad trip… but also not one I’m going to take as often as I’d hoped.

This is a style of melodic black metal thats got some medieval, church-y hues, (ie Gregorian chants), which are horribly underused,  but when I say melodic black metal, I mean Dissection meets Forteresse’s Themes Pour La Rebellion meets Liturgy’s Aesthethica on crack, hyper speed, beehive hooked to a speak, sounds like there are 5 guitars playing at once melodic. At times, it comes across as exhausting,, overly layered busy chaos but at other times, its a magnificent, triumphant, rousing soaring delivery of feverishly melodic, black metal thats truly brilliant.

The disparity is about half and half, with the better, more memorable melodies in the title track and the album’s latter third (there are only 9 lengthy songs), starting with “Je vivroie liement”. That’s not to say the first 6 tracks are chopped liver, but certainly, the last 3 tracks stuck with me more and made the album for me. After a brief intro, the first song “Pénitences et sorcelages”, gets to it right away letting you know what the next 50 of so minutes will be like. If you can stomach that, the rest of the album will be OK for you as the title track starts with a super shrill melodic promising melody line, and that’s the heart of the matter, there is sooooo much going on, that there’s no time to enjoy a riff or the pretty much constant solos, as it does not last long before its washed away in a torrent of more shrill, frenetic riffs. Case and point, 2nd track “Pénitences et Sorcelages”, at about 6:06, has this gorgeous shimmering melody, but it only lasts a few seconds, then poof it’s gone, it’s teasing as all get out.

But when Ardraos does lock onto something for more than a seconds, it’s spectacular, and often breathtaking. For example the title track has a couple of moments that simply gorgeous (ie the short lived little acoustic overlay) , and he sticks with it for more than a few bars, and its exquisite. Then the aforementioned 9 minute “Je vivroie liement”, with the Gregorian break and dramatic transition after is simply gripping. Following that, the seethingly dramatic “Dilaceratio Corporis” and 10 minute closer  “L’Hoirie de mes Ancestres” with more underutilized acoustics and chants, and has the album’s most poignant melodies round the album out, and you will either collapse with over stimulated glee, or shrug your shoulders and wander what all the fuss is about. I for one stand in the former group and will be cheeking out Sühnopfer’s back catalog and patiently waiting for the next album.

Infestus isn’t your typical affair, and Thrypsis is a hard album to pigeonhole into one style. The extremity of the band is clearly deathly blackened, yet melancholic and somberly depressive, akin to the Shining or even Bethlehem. Though Infestus places much more emphasis and progression in its lugubrious manifestations, evoking the likes of Paradise Lost, Swallow the Sun, Eyes of Fire, and sometimes a bit of Mastodon. In fact, I would say that Thrypsis sounds like Eyes of Fire reborn and regrouped with a more than stellar, black metal aesthetic (which is as awesome as it sounds). Every song is an accomplished victory, the music being more of a journey than opposed to a beatdown. These are riffs, rhythms, and leads that you feel in your gut, your bones, and even in your void riddled soul. Suffice to say, Infestus mastermind and multi- instrumentalist, Andras, knows how to tap into the gamut of human emotion within his material.

I’m not sure what it exactly is, but something about Thrypsis just draws me in like few albums have this past year, and I love it. I love that its somberness, its sadness, its melancholy, hits me in an enduring and genuine fashion and that it all balances out with a raging extremity that is unwavering and realistic, even candid in its presentation. It is albums such as Thrypsis that are able to transverse the gap between merely being a great listen, to becoming something truly meaningful and even therapeutic. I can’t even do justice to the album’s individual tracks by casually referencing them in a recommendation. No, these are tracks best consumed and devoured free of any forehand journalistic rhetoric (though I will go as far as to say that “Seed of Agony” is probably my favorite individual song of the year). This is introspective metal that deserves to be heard and judged solely on the listener’s own taste and merit.

Admittedly, I should have turned this review in and ultimately, got it to you, the reader, many weeks ago, but for some reason I just couldn’t seem to express how I felt about Thrypsis without gushing extensively about each track (and I’m already too much of a long-winded individual, in case you couldn’t tell). This album hit me in a most perfect way and after many listens I questioned if my perception was really on the mark or just overzealous excitement from simply having a new Infestus album to experience. I decided to sit on this album a bit and I moved on to other bands/reviews. Coming back to Thrypsis and fully delving myself into the album once more confirmed one thing. That I should always trust my gut, at least in metal affairs. Thrypsis is indeed one of very few albums of 2018 that hooked me like I was a hungry fish. Hopefully, and I don’t see why not, you will get reeled into this album and band as much as I did.

Deus Salvatis Meæ (“God of My Salvation”) is from the ‘ugly’ half of Blut Aus Nord’s oeuvre. (Actually, if you’re keeping score it’s probably Vindsval’s dominant expression by now.) You’ll find none of the alien, astral beauty of the Memoria Vetusta series here or the sepulchral, inverted grace of the 777 trilogy. This is more in line with the boiler-room industrial aesthetic of The Work Which Transforms God, MORT, or last year’s Codex Obscura Nomina split with Ævangelist, though it drops that last album’s beats in favor of sludgy, doomy crawls and frenzied blastbeat mayhem.

That’s not to say it’s a more of a doom or black metal album, though. Melodies, when they do emerge, are simple and repeating, and each song’s structure sounds like it’s about to collapse into decay. It’s best to just absorb the whole experience as one continuous, plague-infected fever dream, though there are moments that stand out. “Apostasis” sounds like backwards-masked Slayer played at half-speed, while “Revelatio” lurches back and forth between several distinct and cogent (well, relatively speaking) segments. The rest of the album yowls, slithers, pulses, and screams by like some Lovecraftian incantation. Ambience warbles, melts, and re-knits its flesh, keening strings and Arabic chants rise out of the gloom, and the vocals are a corroded gargle. Sounds lovely, right? 

As a work of sonic necromancy, Deus Salvatis Meæ is impressive, creative, and thoroughly deranged. Your mileage may vary if you prefer your compositions less… unraveled, but if this is your sort of thing, then perhaps your mental state is more ready to accept its gifts.

With the Poisonous Path, Behexen have created a unrelenting monster of an album with a sound compromising a bit of Dark Funeral, Charon and Watain and making themselves to be spoken in the same words as them when considering this album for 2016 year end lists or just for their own personal faves. I will admit I have not had an opportunity to hear the last album Nightside Emanations, so going into this album from my last basis of judgement My Soul for His Glory, I can hear the further progression contained in this disc, the darkness and atmosphere is almost tangible and lures you in with its emanations.The album sets the tone immediately with the 1st song and title track, much like the image on the cover, it beckons you in, with its sound, the message it conveys of darkness and evil, which waits to corrupt you. Listen for that tolling bell at about the 5:30 mark, what a great addition. You get a sense of those early albums but like mentioned, this beast is dark, punishing, not razor wire, necro black metal but louder, fuller, just listen to the tone of the drums how loud they come across in the mix, guitars and bass create a wall of sound that just slams into you. “Tyrant of the Luminous”, gives you that wall of sound, simple and repetitive but can you fault that for the punishment that it bestows upon you? The song ends with Torog using almost spoken word chant / sermon in his voicing. Its interesting to note that the band did give indications of this musical approach in as far back as Rituale Satanum and its title track with its more slower plodding nature.

“Chalice of the Abyssal Water” & “Cave of the Dark Dream” both bring about the Dark Funeral vibe, with their more quickened pacing. A fault, maybe to call upon this album, is that everything is mixed loud and sort of evenly, so songs can be a bit noisy and when played together ,hence some of the songs may get a bit lost in the miasma and at 10 songs, this is not too much of an issue. One word, or words I have mentioned here continually in this review is dark, unrelenting, monstrous and if you need one song to hammer that home, it’s the album finale, “Rakkauddesta Saatanaan”. Such a great way to end the album and shows such great restraint and confidence with the band to show you don’t need unrelenting speed to damage you but this can batter you just the same. I feel Behexen got a winner here with their continued progression and delving deeper into their own brand of darkness.

There is a hypnotic quality to The Dreaming I starting off with the opener appropriately entitled “Breath and Levitation” which starts off with a shrieking pulse and starts you off into an ambient buildup for the first two and a half minutes of the song before the instrumentation kicks off.  The verse riff is a mixture of arpeggios and with some absolutely gross vocal work.

“Consummation”, third song is my favorite on this album. At sixteen minutes long it’s the longest song on the record.  “Consummation” probably has my favorite guitar part on the record at around 3:45. Very well constructed harmonies transitioning into a majestic void of consciousness turns to a grim ending. I like that this record is not overdriven by guitar parts but the way that they are arranged keeps the whole album very linear.

“The Dreaming Eye”, the fourth song on The Dreaming I reminds me very much of Limbonic Art’s Moon Over Scorpio record. The guitar sound and riff structure have a very similar space like feel.  The Dreaming I definitely has the feeling of an album that you should sit down and make time for as a whole most of the song on this album around ten minutes long.

The Dreaming I is definitely worth the listen and like other similar black metal side projects makes for an entertaining listen in that it presents some different elements that you might not necessarily get from their main projects. The ambient parts on The Dreaming I reminds me also of Cold Meat Industries artists like MZ.412 in the sense that there are combination of two specific elements going on to form the album.

I could compare a record like Summoning Dol Goldur to this in that it feels like Naas Alcameth is trying to create a record that takes you to type of environment. Summoning in a way with the Tolkien influence do a similar thing.  To wrap up my point on this  The Dreaming I is an entertaining black metal record with cool ambient parts.  It has very broad longer song arrangements and really does require some time to focus on the material.   Akhlys’ The Dreaming I is a well-arranged album that is worth giving a listen.

After the avant-garde, esoteric and industrial-tinged explorations of the 777 series and the deconstructed, corrosive murk of the Liber albums, it’s good to hear Vindsval work in this style again. Like its predecessor, Memoria Vetusta III is astral and atmospheric, gorgeous and dissonant all at once. Unlike other composers, Vindsval doesn’t employ darkness and light as two separate units to be balanced across each song’s structure; instead, he seems to work with melody and dissonance simultaneously for a captivating and unsettling effect.

https://soundcloud.com/debemurmorti/blut-aus-nord-paien

The compositional style here is endlessly shifting and mutative, ranging far from the standard structures of rock-influenced metal. And yet there’s also an amazing sense of control and cohesion at work, as Vindsval orchestrates a blizzard of fantastic riffs, seraphic chanting, trollish croaks, and furious drumming (credited to ‘Thorns’; no mention of W.D. Feld, unless it’s a pseudonym) into passages that blend one into the next with a constant and roiling fluidity. These long songs are more like classical movements, flowing and discursive, each one based around its own motif or theme.

Despite this expansive sound, I’m reluctant to tag this as merely ‘progressive’ black metal (in the same way we’d classify similar work in the rock, death metal or sludge genres), and it’s also too structured and precise to fall in with the oft-meandering Cascadian sound of recent years. It is not quite like the symphonic grandeur of Emperor or the reverent hum of Drudkh or the unearthly, alien howl of Deathspell Omega, and yet it captures the majesty and magic of all three; a rare sui generis in a genre that’s been deconstructed, adorned, and reinterpreted over and over by various camps around the world.

Beyond that description, it would be futile to detail these songs (or perhaps, a betrayal of the personal, Romantic nature of the experience), just as I couldn’t tell you exactly what it’s like to stare into a fire.

Necrolord was an inspired and perfect choice for the cover art. It’s the sepia-toned antithesis to the lurid obsidian-and-purple fantasy of In the Nightside Eclipse. There’s also a nod to fantasy here with the wooden sylph in the foreground, but I was struck more by the pastoral tranquility of the entire composition. As the melodies overlapped and succeeded each other in rapid profusion, I imagined a centuries-speed time-lapse of roots delving down into the earth. Roots split and shot out ever-thickening tendrils, each one crushing rocks and cleaving the soil. They searched down into the dark, even as the branches above yearned heavenward towards the light. Close your eyes as you listen and see where the album takes you.

The face-shredding cosmic horror of 2013’s Omen Ex Simulacra was a huge advancement over De Masticatione Mortuorum in Tumulis from just one year prior. This third full-length doesn’t take such an expansive leap, as it utilizes the same dark palette of avant-garde black, death, doom, ambient, and industrial sounds, but it’s arranged a little more purposefully. Writhes in the Murk quite literally does just that as it throbs and pulsates with biomechanical malevolence in a stew of defeated flesh. If you’re not already familiar with the unique niche (more like a cavern) that Ævangelist has carved out, try to imagine the heaviest chunks of Morbid Angel boiling in a mix of Blut Aus Nord’s What Once Was… Liber trilogy and Red Harvest’s Cold Dark Matter, sprinkle in some saxophone, screams of human torture, and the intro music from The Shining, and you might be able to prepare yourself just slightly for what’s about to violate your earholes.

However, there are some more humane elements to lure you in this time. The occasional appearance of haunting clean vocals and spoken female voices from beneath the rubble serve as a warning, but the hulking grooves in tracks like “Præternigma” and “Harken to the Flesh” will get your head nodding in compliance. “Disquiet” even offers a hypnotic respite of electro beats over ambient sounds and the closing title track surprisingly starts off with some acoustic guitars that give way to a heavy, trance-inducing rhythm unlike anything they’ve done before. Yet, an unsettling atmosphere pervades all and bursts of skin-peeling speed still abound, so don’t get the impression that any part of this is remotely easy listening.

Your enjoyment of Writhes in the Murk is going to depend on your propensity for aural masochism. If you can endure the sonic extremity, there are many sophisticated levels to explore. If given enough time, it feels like you could uncover secrets of the universe. Just be sure to mind the wormhole.

Dissonant guitars churn and whir, inhuman vocals roar and shriek, and unpredictable mechanized drums tumble and blast while deeply dark ambient echoes beneath to form profoundly terrifying, amorphous soundscapes that sound more like something SETI might detect from some malicious intelligence than anything made by humans. This isn’t something you just casually listen to. It’s an album that consumes you from beginning to end, dragging you disoriented and gasping for air through a wormhole to an unimaginable, alien dimension. You won’t remember much when it’s over, but you know you just experienced something extraordinary that has embedded itself in your brain like a trauma you have to keep revisiting to fully understand.

It’s nearly impossible to differentiate one merciless track from the next, but on this astral plane, things like memorable riffs and songwriting don’t matter. Much like Blut Aus Nord‘s underrated MoRT masterpiece, this is an album of mystifying moments and palpable atmosphere that you absorb as a whole, transfixed by the ever-shifting forms of cosmic horror. Instead of including standout tracks of a more industrial and doom-like nature as on their debut, those influences are now spread more evenly throughout the maelstrom’s many layers, which the production thankfully allows to be heard without sounding remotely polished. Some fragments in the storm are more arresting like the absolutely horrific screams of “Mirror of Eden,” while others are more subtle like the sax in “Seclusion” that took me several listens to notice. Somehow both are equally unsettling.

This is your darkest nightmare in audio form. If you don’t have nightmares, this will give them to you. If Incantation’s Onward to Golgotha and Godflesh’s Streetcleaner could somehow be overlapped, mastered onto a black hole accretion disc, and then blasted through its polar jets, it would probably sound like this. That’s the best way I can think of to sum it up. It’s really something you need to hear for yourself to see if you have a taste for it. Just be careful about letting any of your non-metalhead friends and family hear it. They may seriously question your sanity more than ever before.

Tocsin exhibits several fundamental and compelling changes in the band’s sound. As on Ausserwelt, the raw sludge aggression of the first album is almost completely gone. Ausserwelt also featured more doom-oriented riffs as opposed to its predecessor, which was all sludge. The change is a subtle one, but important, and it continues on Tocsin to the point that the sludge influence is very much in the background when it’s even present at all. The riffs are thick, monolithic, and dark. The dirty, overdriven production suggests what physical damage these sounds might inflict on whatever space they’re played in, with less consideration given to the ability to distinguish between each instrument, note, or drum hit. The reverb-soaked drums contribute to a more doomy feel by the suggestion of cavernous space. The distortion, in addition to what I think is a first-time-ever use of blast beats, blackens things up as well.

Song-for-song, Tocsin does not start off on the most compelling note. The first two tracks, while passable, seem to be more exercises in repetition and don’t come off as particularly emotional or atmospheric. Opener “Tocsin” sets the stage well with its slow pace and heavy riffs, but at almost 14 minutes it outstays its welcome, the length and repetition doing more harm than good. However, the third track, “Désolation,” beginning with melancholy horns, builds with stunning emotional resonance through its first half. Then the guitars strike a sinister, fuzzed-out pedal tone, other guitars chiming in as it builds and slows to a final, crushing death knell–very desolate indeed. The subsequent tracks are equally strong. Post-rock builds resembling Godspeed You! Black Emperor shimmer with cold, bleak tremolo guitars. Krautrock-inspired drumming and eastern-sounding melodies contribute an occult vibe to the last two songs. The climax of the final track “Alamüt” wreaks a similar havoc to Cult of Luna’s burliest moments, and the release is absolutely cathartic, ending the album on a devastating note. The guitars, again in melodic minor, rise and fall, spiraling around each other, and the album dies in quiet distortion.

There is an array of new sounds on this album, and taken as a whole, its impact is considerable. Year of No Light’s bleakest work to date is a crusty, blackened slab of sludge-doom that shows a group of seasoned musicians experimenting successfully with new, blacker sounds and ideas.

The October Falls albums that preceded The Plague of a Coming Age had a similar tone and formula to them. Lehto has basically, two or three melodic guitar lines he likes to cull from and for a good stretch, was able to contort them in a way that didn’t reek of repetitiveness. It worked on 2008’s magnificent The Womb of Primordial Nature, as well as 2010’s not-as-good-but-still-worthy A Collapse of Faith, but he’s run out of steam with Plague. Clearly, we should have detected a theme (or a darkness coming, to reference Katatonia) on A Collapse of Faith…

Nevertheless, Plague differs from its predecessors by way of shorter song constructs. Not that it matters, however, for the listener is sucked into the vortex of one never-ending song. Joutsen comes to the rescue on “Boiling Heart of the North” and the title track, which not by coincidence, are the album’s strongest jams. His ethereal, gentle, yet manly roar (must be the dreads) serve as hummable detours from the morose and chilling atmospheric/epic black metal Lehto has on display.

Brazenly Finnish, yet nowhere near as climatic as recent efforts from Moonsorrow, The Plague of a Coming Age is the first stumble in the October Falls pantheon. It could be these ears have warmed a little too much to Lehto’s melodies, although it’s very possible the same could happen to the unsuspecting listener who were drawn in by the “atmospheric,” “epic,” and “Finnish” tags. That’s usually a formula for success. Not here, not this time.

Cosmosophy is made up of five final Epitomes, numbered XIV through XVIII, for a 45 minute running time. Like the previous two chapters, this is not metal of the cathartic or aggressive variety. It’s mood music for the dark; a film score for nightmares and starscapes. Each track here still maintains the same deliberate pace that’s kept time for the entire 777 cycle – one long, flowing and somewhat monotonous trudge. This simplistic rhythm creates a steady framework for bright, gleaming and coldly alien melodies that writhe and twist in the air like a metallic aurora borealis. Much of the album plays out in this mid-range, droning landscape, with few truly quiet moments (the delicate, mystical dirge at the start of XVI) or harsh and discordant clatter (the final minutes of that same track).

Epitomes XIV and XVI also feature Vindsval switching from his usual rasps to a new clean vocal style that sounds both hymnal and haunted. In Epitome XVII, his vocals become even more plaintive, and as they float atop a plodding beat and rain-soaked keys, he sounds like The Cure’s Robert Smith, and the music a blackened cut from their seminal goth mopefest Disintegration. It’s this track that shows how far and how boldly Blut Aus Nord has ranged from the early black metal blizzard of Ultima Thulee or Fathers of the Icy Ages.

The new vocal approach in the largely industrial-ambient Epitome XV, however, is nothing less than annoying. It’s a sneering spoken word, all in French, and where spoken word in other native languages like Finnish or Norwegian (or even English, for that matter) manage to sound rough or or savage or even sublime, French doesn’t carry that same menace, at least not for me. Luckily, the soaring and tortured arias of guitar and choral voices in the track’s second half elevate it back to the majestic level achieved by the opener. Cosmosophy closes out with a more jagged (yet still mid-paced) industrial stomp like something from The Work Which Transforms God. It’s a fitting outro for the entire trilogy, but brings nothing new aside from the coda: a formless void penetrated by a single whistling tone. It’s a speck of light being devoured by blackness, an epiphany fading and forgotten, and a quiet end for the entire 18-segment cycle.

Ultimately, I am left impressed by Cosmosophy, though not utterly transported. Taken as a whole, there is a satisfying arc and evolution across all of 777, though given the overall homogeneity of mood and pacing, I still wonder whether the ideas developed during this entire cycle couldn’t have been compressed into one album, or a double release at most. And yes, we got three Blut Aus Nord releases in the time that it takes other bands to release just one, so I suppose I shouldn’t complain. 777’s most significant accomplishment is that it’s pushed the band far beyond what could be called metal in any kind of traditional sense. Although the roots here are obviously in black and doom metal, 777 sounds more like a collection of hymnals or a film score.

If we look back on Blut Aus Nord’s discography five years hence, will this trilogy be an important turning point that helped to broaden, stretch and diversify Vindsval’s overall aesthetic? Or was the trilogy just an interesting, albeit indulgent experiment (that still, despite its breadth, is still collectively not as satisfying as Memoria Vetusta II, with its more fluid, astral and dynamic compositions)? Perhaps 777 will become something like Trent Reznor/NIN’s Ghosts I-IV, a double album packed with short, choppy instrumentals from both halves of his sonic palette – the tinkly and soothing vs the discordant and bruising. In the grand scheme of Reznor’s career, the Ghosts release is somewhat of a novelty – a vehicle for experimentation freed from the constraints of typical album structure or even songwriting. Yet Ghosts was most successful in laying the template and clearing the path for Reznor’s Oscar-winning score for The Social Network, or his haunting work on David Fincher’s version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo after that. I think that Vinsdval, given his dual palette of the celestial and the corrosive, could easily pair up with some of Europe’s shock and horror auteurs like Pascal Laugier (Martyrs, The Tall Man), Alexandre Bustillo (Inside, Livid), Tom Six (The Human Centipede) or Lars Von Trier (Antichrist, Melancholia). Music of this nightmarish richness deserves such visual accompaniment.