The debut from France’s Maïeutiste had the misfortune of coming out right around the same time as the debut Aether, from labelmates Deluge, so it got completely overlooked as that album ended up being in my top 3 for 2015. But a track from the album, “…in the Mirror…”, showed up recently while shuffling songs, and it really […]

 del·uge ˈdelyo͞o(d)ZH/ noun 1.a severe flood. synonyms:  flood, torrent, spate. “homes were swept away by the deluge” verb 1. inundate with a great quantity of something. “he has been deluged with offers of work” synonyms:  inundate, overwhelm, overrun, flood, swamp, snow under, engulf, bombard. “we have been deluged with calls” Hailing from France, the debut from Deluge is cut from the […]

From the same label and country that brought us the excellent The Great Old Ones, comes a similarly black/shoe gaze/crust  project with a dash of cascadian ambiance and ambition that shows great promise the the rather lengthy 2, twenty or so minute tracks that comprise this impressive debut album. Sliding comfortably in amid the likes […]

France’s The Great Old Ones took the black metal world by storm back in 2012, with their critically acclaimed debut, Al-Azif back in 2012. A full two years later, the band has released the follow up, continuing the Lovecraftian/Chthulu mythos based form of shimmering post black metal, and appear to be ready to pick up […]

Here is one of those 2013 releases that I slept on until now. From the label that brought the likes of The Great Old Ones, Ebonylake, Pensées Nocturnes comes some really interesting avant garde French black metal that is well…various shades of black. There is A LOT going on here. The band is, if anything, […]

If there was a musical equivalent to vaudeville (late 19th century variety entertainment) it would be represented in the form of the fourth album from Pensées Nocturnes, Nom d’une Pipe! Like the theatrical genre of years past, this album cobbles together classical, swing, bal-musette, reggae, and jazz in a bleak, disturbing black metal skin. The […]

Regarde Les Hommes Tomber add a few wrinkles to the blackened sludge milieu with their self titled debut. Mining similar influences as country mates Celeste, they combine the wiry riffing of black metal with atmospheric sludge and a big dose of hardcore to create an album that doesn’t sit neatly within any of the aforementioned […]

Cthulhu mythos and Lovecraftian fiction have long been a part of metal, but in my experience it’s generally been in the realms of cavernous doom or gnarly, undulating death metal and typically a more nasty, disturbing musical representation of the subject matter. But here come France’s The Great Old Ones, and in typically elite French […]

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 […]