Bring Back The Apocalyptic Raids

Hellhammer is the ultimate symbol of what black metal should be about: a free exploration of dark phrasal music at the hands of a twisted mind.  Typically it was not only the chromatic movements between sections which defined the music of Hellhammer but the linking between them, whose effect was great because individual sections were in fact proper tonal areas.  It was their sensible juxtaposition, which gave the music its unique flavor.  Furthermore, the maniac howling of Tom G. Warrior added the final touches of a music that was to set the example for an enactment that resembled an entrancing ritual more than it did a simple, mundane hedonism and biker metal, which had been the rule until that point.

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Another Take on Ritual Chamber – Obscurations (2016)

I have no way of knowing if anyone will read this letter. It joins the others which have been hidden in the knot-hole of the ancient tree on top of the mountain that locals simply call “the big one,” to which I make a daily pilgrimage. My life has become oriented around what I can only describe as a portal to the future.

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The Haarslev PB30/60 As Big As The Ritz

Dennis Emmental hated being late because it revealed to everyone how little he wanted to be there. Slipping past the creaky back door, he took his place in the line at OptiFood. Orders came from the digital kiosk at the drive-thru and Dennis had twenty-four seconds to assemble the ingredients for the OptiMeal:

  • Chinese: steak|chicken|fish, Szechuan sauce, noodles, lettuce, pepper, peanuts, onion
  • Mexican: beef|chicken, cheese 1, Picante sauce, lettuce, pepper, Guacamole sauce, sour cream
  • Italian: beef|chicken, Diable sauce, noodles, pepper, lettuce, onion, cheese 2
  • Thai: beef|chicken, cheese 1, noodles, Picante sauce, Szechuan sauce, pepper, onion
  • Murican: beef|chicken, cheese 2, Diable sauce, bread 11, Gaucamole sauce, cheese 1, lettuce
  • European: steak|chicken|fish, lettuce, pepper, sour cream, cheese 2, onion, bread 11

He and his cohorts were dumping ingredients in the short, stout, beaker-shaped commemorative plastic buckets used to serve the twenty-four ounce meals. The store was open twenty-four hours a day, and had a thirty-eight percent turnover rate at a six month interval. The owners were unconcerned; they had reached the point where it took a million bucks just to think about suing them, and everyone knew that most of their employees were retards and flakes and so just laughed off their complaints.

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Ancient – “Eerily Howling Winds” (1993)

As previously pointed out by the editor of this site, metal demo recordings does not exist as crass commercial propositions with the sole purpose of advertising the market viability of the artist, but function — at least ideally — as independent works produced and distributed without further infringement from the recording industry. In spite of eventual shortcomings resulting from lack of budget, experience, and time, demo-level recordings remain a breath of fresh air because they oftentimes capture bands at a nascent and untempered creative stage.

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Mayhem – Wolf’s Lair Abyss (1997)

Wolf’s Lair Abyss was the first new proposition by the remaining Mayhem line up after De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas, and all the personal drama and loss that it signified.  Needless to say, the pressure upon the band on the musical level- especially of music as a dark art, as Euronymous would have it- was quite high.  Expectations after an Immortal album of far and wide reach were not at all encouraging.  The remainder of the band had to find a way in which they could work from the solid basis of the past towards a unique development that did not come off as an insult or a betrayal to all that had been accomplished.  The solution found by the band here was almost perfect, but it ultimately was only a transition whose eventual development would show if the full potential for growth would be adeptly exploited.  Still, there is much to be said about the unique identity of this brief but memorable foray into chaos.

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Black Funeral – Ankou and the Death Fire (2016)

Counting among the longest running US black metal institutions to date, Black Funeral has given birth to a motley collection of musical works over the last twenty-five years, spanning regional adaptions of Northern European black metal, over dark ambient and archaic/industrial drones, through the Les Legions Noires-styled raw melodic approach of later years.

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YouTube Censorship Begins Targeting Musicians

It’s here!  YouTube’s rapidly accelerating censorship committee has finally begun targeting musicians with their Orwellian “hate speech” laws.  Pandering to the advertisers that have quietly bought the operations of Silicon Valley tech companies and the souls of all Silicon Valley employees, YouTube has begun a fascist campaign of censoring any videos that may cause trouble for any company that may accidentally place an ad on it.  So far this has primarily targeted vloggers for (conservative) wrongthink- videos portraying horrifically offensive hatred such as statistics, scientific research, or biological facts.  Yet strangely, the first band in the greater sphere of heavy music that YouTube has gone after is a modern nu-metal/rap rock band who, in all honesty, looks pretty leftist….
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Graveland Announces 2018 Tour, Releases Video For Re-Recorded “Thurisaz”

Ethereal second-wave black metal band Graveland will be touring across Europe in 2018, continuing a series of selected dates in Germany, Poland, and Ukraine. At these shows, the band will be playing songs from its compilation of re-recorded Graveland songs with the classic feel but without the “old days” bad production, 1050 Years of Pagan Cult, which is available through Heritage Records.

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Power Trip – Nightmare Logic (2017)

Every year we are treated to an endless amount of ridiculous lists.  It seems that any individual with the ability to express their opinions is obligated to share their Top 10 or top 20 metal releases that more often than not echo the same three websites.  The bands that enter such lists tend to come in two varieties: veterans rehashing the same ideas in a more streamlined fashion and those who trick their audience via the use of gimmicks and presenting a familiar product with slightly different aesthetics as the next big thing.  In these last two years, speed metal has conquered the number 1 spot of most of these lists.  Last year Vektor’s Terminal Redux ruled the metal lists by far with it’s melody derived from Voivod and the phrasings from Destruction’s Eternal Devastation all held together in long sloppily composed epics… ultimately resulting in an above average album but a strong move for the funderground.  This year, Texans Power Trip succeed in winning the “funderground 2017 award” with their second album Nightmare Logic.  The Speed metal revival movement has finally found its idols to guide it’s path of remaining in the past and offering the most faithful reproduction of late 80s speed/thrash.

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