Abyssum creator Rex Ebvleb disperses his current thinking through a series of side projects under the name El Nigromante (the Necromancer), and the latest of these has popped up (better than “dropped,” I think) as a project named Desolation with a new demo, “Demo 5: Ultimo Viaje.”
No CommentsTags: Abyssum, Black Metal, el nigromante, Rex Ebvleb, ritual ambient
As much as we want to think otherwise, our reception, enjoyment and evaluation of music is not strictly dependent on the pure act of listening. A truism perhaps, but still something that is worth reflecting on from time to time. Especially for collectors of cult metal vinyl – the modern-day personification of the emperor’s new clothes syndrome (or should we say old clothes?). If you invest a disproportionate amount of time, effort and money in reading about and eventually acquiring a record – as collectors of obscure metal tend to do – your judgement is likely to get clouded to the point where it’s hard to assess the quality of the work in question. And this includes both positive and negative judgements. Case in point: the hype surrounding the Icelandic proto-black metal band Flames of Hell and their sole full-length album Fire and Steel (1987).
2 CommentsTags: Black Metal, fire and steel, flames of hell, Heavy Metal
New World Black Metal (NWBM) standouts Profanatica just dropped a new track, “Washed In The Blood Of The Lord,” from their forthcoming album Rotting Incarnation of God, due to be released October 11, 2019, on Season of Mist records.
No CommentsTags: Black Metal, havohej, profanatica
Although it might disappoint some readers, it’s probably advisable to begin this review by stating that this is not a lost recording by a well-known Polish musician. However, the music does fall somewhere within the black metal sphere. Darken is a three-track EP released by guitar-virtuoso Toby Knapp, presumably conceived as an attempt at writing and performing music in the language of mid-to-late-1990s melodic black metal. Joining the multi-instrumentalist on vocals and as lyrical contributor is a certain Necrotriton, while drums are obviously computer-generated.
No CommentsTags: Black Metal, darken, melodic black metal, shred
Blazing war/black metal operators Sammath opened pre-order for Across the Rhine is only death, the sixth album from the black metal fusionist Dutch/German band. This includes a wooden box version of the album which incorporates artifacts from WW2 and a Sammath logo patch with a copy of the digipak album.
5 CommentsTags: Black Metal, hammerheart, sammath
Trench Warfare finally grace the world with their first full length. Building from the potential of their demo and split, the band finally manage to fuse their War metal with elements of Black and Death metal into creating a highly enjoyable listen that carries a few more subtleties than its aesthetic quality would allow one to assume.
1 CommentTags: Black Metal, death metal, hatred prayer, trench warfare, War Metal
Controversial war/black metal hybrid Sammath homebrewed a video for the first track from Across the Rhine is only death, “Ferocious Mortar Fire,” demonstrating the visual aesthetics of a form of ruthlessly inhuman music that sees the evil in humanity as a product of our stupidity, not religious symbolism.
13 CommentsTags: Black Metal, sammath, War Metal
In the past, metal journalism used to function mainly as a filtering device; weeding out the bad so that the good stuff would rise to the top. Nowadays, it’s more likely the other way around. We’re now searching for potential in a seemingly endless flow of “interesting” or pleasant-sounding junk. This task often requires time and patience, because those rare and far between releases will often sound similar to their lesser peers on a surface level. One illuminating example would be the Pennsylvanian epic death/black metal act Polemicist and their debut album Zarathustrian Impressions. Their music may not appear spectacular on casual listen, but repeated and concentrated exposure reveal unexpected qualities.
32 CommentsTags: Black Metal, death metal, friedrich nietzsche, polemicist, zarathrustrian impressions
Sammath returns to the days of its second and third album with a shredding assault that emphasizes tight, technical riffing that keeps to a simple theme and develops it with precision strumming integrated with exacting percussion. This takes the war metal idea into the technical death metal realm while preserving the black metal sense of melody and epic architectures to unite these alienated and reductive riffs.
11 CommentsTags: Black Metal, death metal, sammath, War Metal
The Swedish orthodox black metal brand rose because people needed a label for music adorned in the style of Dissection, yet composed in shorter riffs and cyclic songs like war metal, with a strong cover story of Satanism to help obscure its anti-social and Darwinist positions.
4 CommentsTags: Black Metal, orthodox black metal, swedes are degenerates, ultra silvam
