If you have the balls to say “chilling-yet-breathtaking ruminations harken to the golden days of melodic, nature-inspired black metal, back during the mid ’90s. Names invoked include old Borknagar, Kvist, Arckanum, Old Man’s Child, Norway’s Gehenna, and even earliest Dimmu Borgir” in your promotional materials, you had better fucking back it up, and luckily the […]

Huronian is an Italian band playing melodic blackened death metal. They released an ep in 2020 and those three songs make their way onto this debut album As Cold as a Stranger Sunset. 9 songs in 41 minutes.  After a brief intro “Portals to the Unspeakable” blasts through the speakers with a great riff and […]

“Our stories won’t be written with ink and mirth. But carved in flesh and the soul of the earth. The whispers of the wind will cease to be. All we hear is the wailing of the oceans plea” – “The Archive”. Arkivet (Archive) is the third album from stellar, fast-rising new Swedish melodic black metal […]

Some day we’ll be able to look back at the pandemic and fully realize some of the good things that came out of it. For one – it was a fantastic reminder that, in general, people are fucking gross, and their personal hygiene is not to be trusted. Ever. Remember in the beginning of it […]

Someone really wants to be on The Artisan Era. I mean, look at that logo, cover and the music fits the label perfectly being a shreddy melodic form of polished, surgical, blackened, technical death metal that’s in line with the likes of Inferi and such. At that someone is Ric Galvez, who plays all the […]

Some three years have elapsed since we last heard from rising Italian crew Shores of Null. Following a confident, hook-laden debut in 2014’s Quiescence, the band’s 2017 follow-up, Black Drapes for Tomorrow, while solid, struggled to capitalise on their impressive first act. Nevertheless, Shores of Null possess an intriguing sound, a brooding mix of melancholic […]

When it comes to Inexorum, I purchased Lore of the Lakes without hearing a single note, simply based off the description and the high praise of critics. While I did enjoy the album, I was kept from thoroughly enjoying it for one reason: electronic drums. In a lot of instances, they’re fine, barely noticeable, and […]

There must be a huge Finnish or Scandinavian poplace or cultural influence in Canada right? Other wise  why is there such a surprisingly  large amount of solid Finnish sounding epic/folk/viking bands there? Blackguard/Profugus Mortis, Crimson Shadows, Vesperia/Bolero, Battlesoul. Will of the Ancients, Nordheim, Valfreya just to name a few. Well, add Vancouver’s Atavistia to that […]

To this day, I still absolutely love Naglfar’s first two albums and Vittra and Diabolical remain two of my very favorite 90s melodic black metal albums. And while 2003 Sheol was a worthy follow up, with the departure of vocalist Jens Ryden, the band fell into a bit of a rut with subsequent albums  Pariah, […]

Last year, I reviewed the fourth album, Emptiness Fills the Void, (Non Serviam Records) from this Swiss melodic black metal band, And was rather impressed with band’s tight, modern take on classic Scandinavian (Dissection, Naglfar, Catamenia, Dawn etc) melodic black metal from the 90s. So when I heard Non Serviam Records was reissuing the band’s […]

In my review of Falls of Rauros‘ last record, Vigilance Perennial, I stated: 1) I was listening to something special, and 2) how can that top that album (which was my number 3 album of 2017)?. Well, despite switching from perfectly suited label in Bindrune to lesser known but also solid Gilead Media, they have […]

Sühnopfer (German for ‘Atonement’) is a French, one man black metal project featuring Ardraos, who has been around a while and has surfaced in a number of well known and lesser known French bands like Peste Noire, Aorlhac, Veratyr, Endymion, Antrum Mortis and others. This project, while productive with 2 full lengths and various demos […]

Last year I went through a pretty hardcore phase of melodic black metal where I was listening to classic like Dissection, Catamenia, Vinterland, and Sacramentum, as well as newer bands like Thormesis, Vindland, Wormwood and Störtregn. Somehow though, I completely overlooked Sweden’s Istapp (“icicle”) and their 2010 album, Blekinge and 2015 album, Frostbitten. But that has […]

The fourth album from Germany’s Thormesis, Freier Wille – Freier Geist, was my first exposure to this band, but that album was on and off my year end list for 2015, though it ultimately didn’t make the cut. The follow up, 2017s Trümmerfarben, didn’t strike me as positively for some reason and I didn’t even review […]

I’ve always been pretty knowledgeable when it comes to heavy/extreme metal and all its facets. All through my life, my fellow metalhead friends have referred to me as a metal encyclopedia. Like many die-hard metalheads, my affiliation with the genre has always been one from a “love and collect” aspect as opposed to merely a […]

It has been more than a thousand years since the minstrels, troubadours, and minnesingers of the Middle Ages strummed their lutes and cooed their poetry to eager and usually royal ears. Obsequiae, if they could travel back to those days, would have lulled the lords and ladies of court into wondrous reverie with a gentle opener […]

An oubliette, from the French word ‘oublier’ – to forget – is a dungeon. A particularly horrible and lonely sort of dungeon, little more than a hole in the ground. In you go, curled and cramped, and then a lid or stone is slid across the opening, trapping you in blackness while your body succumbs to pain, hunger, […]

Naglfar’s second album, Diabolical, is still one of the most successful ‘cold’ purchases I’ve ever made. And by cold, I don’t mean frosty black metal, although that obviously applies. No, in this case, I mean that I’d never heard the band before, and bought the album on a whim. This was back in 1999, the […]