Lord Wind is finally playing live next year!
3 CommentsTags: Ambient, ambient music, folk, lord wind, news, rob darken, Ukraine, upcoming shows
Wiking 1940 – Destruction of Dresden (2017)
Review by Lucius Vorenus.
Wiking 1940 is an act I would generously describe as some genuinely confused crap. Even adjusting for the fact that they have a session member named Lord Himmler, they’re still really effeminate.
19 CommentsTags: 2017, Ambient, black 'n roll, homoeroticism, Italy, national socialist black metal, noise, nsbm, poseurs, review, screamo, War Metal, wiking 1940
Roots of Evil: The Origins of Metal
With the fiftieth anniversary of metal music around the corner, forthcoming years will witness an increase of publications dealing with the history, legacy and defining characteristics of the genre. This could finally resolve the lack of consensus that still exists regarding the definition and origins of heavy metal.
25 CommentsTags: Ambient, article, black sabbath, cream, electronic, Genesis, hard rock, Heavy Metal, heavy metal history, heavy rock, metal history, origins of heavy metal, progressive electronic music, progressive rock, proto-metal, psychedelic rock, punk, tangerine dream, the stooges
Fashwave
During the tumultuous past few years, a new sub-genre appeared that combines elements of several existing genres. Fashwave is synthwave with a darkwave sensibility and occasional metal-inspired riffs that sound very much out of the canon of Beherit or Burzum, but simplified to fit within the more synthpop-oriented rhythms of fashwave.
37 CommentsTags: Ambient, article, cybernazi, darkwave, electronic music, electronica, fashwave, joseph retrostein, retro, synthpop, synthwave, vaporwave, xurious
Sadistic Metal Reviews: 3-24-2017
Will every single one of these bands eventually get AIDS? Let’s find out!
4 CommentsTags: AIDS, aksaya, Ambient, black 'n roll, Black Metal, comatose, conceived by hate, death 'n' roll, death metal, drone, emo, haxxan, hereza, inexorable, insanity cult, Lorn, morbid messiah, sadistic metal reviews, screamo, todesstoss, tome of the unreplenished, ur
Sanctuaire Readying Feu Sacré
French Canadian Viking-themed black metal/ambient band Sanctuaire announced on their Facebook page that they are in the final stages of mixing their upcoming record, Feu Sacré (Sacred Fire). Hopefully the band have continued improving their compositional skills which advanced from their oft pedestrian Helserkr demo collection to last year’s sometimes inspiring Le Sang sur l’Acier EP.
6 CommentsTags: Ambient, Black Metal, canada, Canadian Black Metal, quebec, Québécois, Sanctuaire, upcoming release
New Lord Wind Demo
Lord Wind quietly released a new demo late last year for free download on Bandcamp. The Graveland side project’s last album, Ales Stenar, was one of the best of 2012. Hopefully a new record will follow soon.
13 CommentsTags: Ambient, demo, dungeon synth, folk, lord wind, pagan, poland, rob darken
Autechre – elseq 1–5 (2016)
Article by Lance Viggiano.
Autechre‘s elseq 1-5 is a four hour anthology consisting of five individual EPs, each compiled together loosely upon conceptual coherence between the constituent tracks. elseq 1-5 is an exercise in release format rather than just content; the artists behind Autechre seek to utilize the immediacy of the digital age, releasing tracks “as they go” without traditional limitations imposed by the “album.” Granted of course this collection appeared as a hulking and impenetrable dump rather than a sequence. This point bears worth remembering as this overview proceeds as the temptation to view elseq 1-5 as a complete work, or works, is ingrained in popular habits.
24 CommentsTags: 2016, Ambient, anthology, Autechre, electronica, experimental, intelligent dance music, review
Marko Laiho – Ambient RH020151A (2016)
Death Metal Underground staffers Lance Viggiano and Corey M. reviewed Marko Laiho’s new ambient mix he created for Radio Helsinki.
Marko Laiho’s forays into electronic music can be described as anything but explorations of the myth of the machine. Though his aesthetic pallet draws from future invocations – anything we say of the future is always about the present – he blurs the line between the biological and mechanical unlike so much of the greater genre proper. For this mix, created for Radio Helsinki, the bohemian devil troubadour crafts an enveloping near-ambient journey using samples of original work and that of other artists as well. The success or failure of music in this mode is dependent entirely upon pacing over the course of an unbroken set which in this case does not falter. Broken into halves, the latter is more recessed while the former is more pronounced.
16 CommentsTags: Ambient, ambient music, beherit, Finland, Industrial, marko laiho, nuclear holocauto
Goatcraft – Yersinia Pestis (2016)
Article by Lance Viggiano.
Arpeggiated minor chord melancholy culled from or composed during belligerent improvisational tirades given body by a sluggish left hand approximating power chords to provide the work a lattice to the traditions of metal. Yersinia Pestis abstains from its predecessor’s thematic coherence – an accident of writing what were essentially cover songs of a famous painter – to make marked but mishandled improvements in its individual presentations through tuneful reprisals of established Goatcraft trademarks. The dependence upon staccato and arpeggio retain the artist’s characteristic stiffness in execution which blemishes through its brutishness.
25 CommentsTags: 2016, Ambient, ambient music, dungeon synth, goatcraft, gothic, keyboards, review, Yersinia Pestis
