The Imperial Reign of Emperor

by Brock Dorsey on January 26, 2018

The most technically and musically gifted band of the Norwegian black metal scene, the legendary Emperor are also the most well known outside of the documentary-level engagement that plagues most who know of Burzum and Mayhem.  Formed in the small rural town of Telemark Norway as a side project to a soon-forgotten death metal band, the group overcame the imprisonment of 75% of it’s lineup to deliver the most grandiose album of early 90s black metal.  Though Emperor’s career was far from perfect, it made a profound impact on the young genre and ultimately proved it’s limitless developmental possibility.
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NIGHTMARE: LORDS OF CHAOS MOVIE COMPLETED, PREMIERED AT SUNDANCE

by Brock Dorsey on January 26, 2018


It’s actually happening.  After decades of “will they” speculation, directors picking up and dropping the project, rumors of Twilight actors playing Varg Vikernes, and a boycott by virtually every member of the original scene the Rory Culkin led bastardization of Norway’s finest Lords of Chaos premiered at Sundance this week.  In the ultimate defeat, death, and burial of Norweigian black metal- a movement opposed to everything commercial, financial, and mainstream- we will soon see a polished Hollywood narrative of this beloved movement pollution theaters across the globe.

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Susperia- The Lyricist

by Nicholas Vahdias on January 23, 2018

Susperia claim to be a Norwegian black metal that now plays melodic thrash metal.  Most of the members of this band have been involved with some fairly big projects as session players.  As a band they have spent the last 18 years playing some fairly standard commercial metal in the hope of actually breaking out in the way of Dimmu Borgir and Nightwish. But as either metal or a pop album, The Lyricist fails miserably.
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Bring Back The Apocalyptic Raids

by Hereweald Cola Algar on January 22, 2018

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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Ancient – “Eerily Howling Winds” (1993)

by Johan Pettersson on January 19, 2018

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)

by Hereweald Cola Algar on January 18, 2018

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)

by Johan Pettersson on January 17, 2018

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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Graveland Announces 2018 Tour, Releases Video For Re-Recorded “Thurisaz”

by Brett Stevens on January 16, 2018

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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Watain – Trident Wolf Eclipse (2018)

by Brock Dorsey on January 15, 2018

Grammy-award wining artist Watain has shamelessly assumed the mantle of “most embarrassing band masquerading as black metal” previously shared by Dimmu Borgir and Cradle of Filth. Where the downfall of those two bands was an overdose of gothic and groove influences, Watain has managed to outdo both in both parody and bastardization of black metal with their previous album’s venture into country musical territory.  With a career built on celebrity guest spots from more capable underground metal musicians, necrophiliac 1st era Bathory Worship mixed with a second rate attempt to mimic Dissection’s concluding album, and a ridiculously cartoonist theatrical performance worthy of a Broadway musical, Watain’s legacy has been secured to forever be “the band that bent over farthest to inherit the phallus of commercialization the deepest” and has effectively decimated any hope of legitimacy the sub genre might have had in the post-90s.  With a brash new attestation in the form of Trident Wolf Apocalypse the truth could not possibly be more clear to any listener with knowledge of black and death metal: Watain are the biggest joke in all of black metal history.

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