Dying civilizations operate from one principle alone: keep the pivot of power functional so that everyone stays together and the civilization does not follow inertia and simply disintegrate. This is both their diagnosis and therapy.
31 CommentsGrieve – Funeral (2021)
Black metal established a template, with the original bands knowing that they were the last gasp of sanity before the egomania of humanism took over, but some have carried on. Grieve knowingly works with variations of the template but makes a compelling, carefully-crafted release.
1 CommentTags: Black Metal, grieve
Funeral Mist – Deiform (2021)
In the past, the DLA/DMU refused to review utter garbage, which is generally the right decision except when that garbage is the default for the subgenre chosen by market inertia. In other words, when it is what most people see under the $subgenre label at stores.
3 CommentsTags: Black Metal, funeral mist
Solitvdo – Hegemonikon (2021)
During the middle to late 1990s, metal fell into panic because it was clear that the genre needed to become progressive without falling into the usual mishmash of jazz, lite rock, and protest music that has made progressive rock a cursed entry since the 1970s.
1 CommentTags: Black Metal, solitvdo
Eucharist Releases New Video “Shadows”
Technical black metal band Eucharist, famed for A Velvet Creation back in the founding of the genre, has released a video of a new song for 2021:
3 CommentsTags: Black Metal, eucharist
Dauþuz – Vom schwarzen Schmied (2021)
For underground metal to inherit itself, it must become what it is, which is a complex transition between modern decay and a scientific pagan folk music that brings out the natural order in a transcendental beauty of light paired with darkness, and to do that, it must go inward and unleash the complexity of its conflicts.
4 CommentsTags: Black Metal, dauþuz
Katavasia – Invoking the Spirit of Doom (2021)
The problem with black metal is that it tried to evolve, not realizing that it was the ultimate evolution and had to go within, making more complex melodies and keeping its droning ambient mood-shifting textural structure. Katavasia attempts to return to black metal with heavy metal roots like Varathron, from which it borrowed personnel.
3 CommentsTags: Black Metal, katavasia
Interview with Jan Kruitwagen of Kaeck (2021)
Already gaining a lead on all other contenders for the most compelling underground metal album of the year, Kaeck has on Het Zwarte Dictaat made the masterpiece of violent rhythm riffs and melodies that much of the underground wishes it could, combining black metal and war metal with doom metal and death metal to create a constantly changing mood within a fluid style. Fortunately, guitarist/composer Jan Kruitwagen had a few moments to give us his take on the band and state of the metal genre.
2 CommentsTags: Black Metal, jan kruitwagen, kaeck, War Metal
Goblin TV interviews Sarcófago member Incubus
For those who follow the legends of early proto-black metal, the name Sarcófago conjures up a vision of the ultimate boundary: barely in time, barely musical, and yet intensely creative and focused, this band open the door to a new world.
2 CommentsTags: Black Metal, sarcofago
Lycopolis – Viper Land (2021)
Coming at black metal from the same chaotic rendering that propelled both later French and Polish scenes, Lycopolis make muddy, distorted sound sing with lengthy riffs enwrapped in cascades of feathery but harshly distorted vocals, and from this world they create a ritual.
No CommentsTags: Black Metal, lycopolis
