A Response to Satanic™ Complaints

Article by David Rosales.

Recent publications on Death Metal Underground have triggered yet another group of self-entitled Dark Gurus and Awoken Entities of the Left Hand Path™, when the unholy names of some of the popular idols of the Satanic™ niche market group were apparently besmirched by people who simply do not think that the music in question is very good.

The grounds for this opinion rested on the simple perception of music as a form of communication and the knowledge and experience of the way black metal (and underground metal in general) aesthetics work; these are open to any with a sense of logic and understanding and in no moment alludes to ad hominem authority per se, but rather the sense of balanced, sensible consideration of the material at hand, which is always debatable.

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Hare Sathanas

Article by David Rosales.

The dilapidated edifice of modern human spirituality renders standard methods to access the secrets and mysteries so ineffectual that the average man today sees in these terms only quaint poetry or simply nonsense. A dark age of ignorance and inverted values requires an inverted path — one in which we enter a veritable Dark Night of the Soul, one in which a Nietzschean Going Under leads us to transformation and realization through acts of courage and commitment — is perhaps the most appropriate.

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A Blaze in the Northern Sky Turns Twenty-Five

Darkthrone‘s second album, A Blaze in the Northern Sky, turns twenty-five today. For much of the mid 90s, Darkthrone constantly referred to A Blaze in the Northern Sky as their first album as it was the first commercially released record to adopt the quick and dirty “necro” production style and to have been part of the Norwegian black metal second wave initiated by Mayhem. However most of the individual musical inspirations were audible on their prior Soulside Journey album recorded at Sunlight Studio; the compositions on A Blaze in the Northern Sky were just much more sparse and droning due to different overall compositional goals reflecting the shift from progressive death metal riff mazes to minimalistic Hellhammerism.

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Master’s Hammer to Play Bjorgvin Black Mass 2017

Legendary Czech black metal originators Master’s Hammer are playing this years Bjorgvin Black Mass in Bjorgvin, Norway. This is Master’s Hammer’s first indoor live set in over a quarter century. The band is exclusively playing their early, metal material such as Ritual. Enslaved is also playing an exclusive Vikingligr Veldi anniversary show. Scandinavian black metal fans should check this out.

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Metal Festers Eternal

Right now, above the metal underground there is what was coined, I believe originally by Pogrom from Arghoslent, the “Funderground”. The funderground consists of independent labels, sometimes mainstream distributed, releasing thousands of albums each year full of rehashed material or rebranded three-chord hardcore with different superficial aesthetics to fuel a bar show audience’s drunken moshing or make hipsters feel smart for liking an indie rock release with a dirty production. One can see this divide in most of the popular “underground” web forums such as those of Nuclear War Now! and Full Moon Productions. The most popular “underground” “metal” releases of each year are all older metal rehashed into pop-rock structures or rebranded hardcore. This divide is similar to what is felt in mainstream Western culture with the leftist “elites”‘ constant Marxist virtue signaling and branding freethinkers with various epithets for refusing to chant the praises of socialism mandated by the vanguard party.

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Pale Existence Re-Releases “Dark Sanctuary” Demo (1994)

Experimental underground metal band Pale Existence has re-issued its 1994 demo cassette “Dark Sanctuary” in digital form. This allows a new generation to hear the music that borrowed from doom metal, early black metal, melodic death metal and abrasive deathgrind to create a vision of desolation and emptiness that mirrored the downfall of Western Civilization.

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Other Black Metal Recommendations


Article by David Rosales.

The following is a short list of black metal releases (with a commentary on each) that would general fall off the edge of the usual stylistic lines that Death Metal Underground follows when looking at genre releases. These are all exceptional and form part of what could, in hindsight, be described as the lone wolves of an established and matured black metal genre — generally unnoticed or passed by without receiving substantial attention among the waves of excess of the 21st century; treasures hidden in plain sight for those with a developed sense beyond mere form.

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Heresiarch Prepare Death Ordinance

New Zealand war metal band Heresiarch announced their upcoming record, Death Ordinance, on their Facebook page. The artwork is by Misanthropic-Art and the album will be released by Dark Descent Records later this year. Heresiarch’s prior releases, Hammer of Intransigence and Waelwulf, were noted as some of The Best Underground Metal Releases of 2011 and 2014 respectively.

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Sorcier des Glaces Ritual of the End & North Vinyl Reissues

Sorcier des Glaces announced on their Funbook page that their last two albums, Ritual of the End and North, are out now on vinyl LP from Obscure Abhorrence Productions. The albums were some of The Best Underground Metal of 2014 and 2016. They can be ordered from Obscure Abhorrence Productions on the label’s website.


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