Trumpet of Amdusias

  Industrial sludge death doom funeral noise from Oakland. Maurice De Jong is the most prolific dude in music, I am certain. Gnaw Their Tongues , Cloak of Altering , De Magia Veterum , Dodenbezweerder are just a few of his projects. Apparently Rene Aquarius from Imperial Cult decided that he would challenge Maurice to a doom-off, and the loser would have to sweep up after the planet was destroyed. This is the sonic record of that planetary destruction. It is also one of the best doom records I've ever heard. Thankfully free of Sabbath worship and lazy rehashing of every boring stoner riff imaginable, this is actually a brand new thing. Suffocatingly vile and planetarily heavy, this is the answer to the unasked question "what would happen if Sunn 0))) were from New Orleans. Foul and Defiled by Coffin Lurker

  What happens when you lock the lead singer of a antifascist political punk band from the UK in the house for a year? Apparently she makes a Skyrim themed black metal album. A really really good Skyrim themed black metal album. Noctule is the new black metal solo project from Serena Cherry (Svalbard). During the UK national lock down in 2020, Serena decided to write an entire black metal album themed to the RPG computer game Skyrim. Each song is about different dungeons, story lines and weapons within the award-winning game. She notes: “I have always associated Skyrim with black metal. The snowy mountain settings, the morbid themes, the Norse mythology backbone – it just goes hand in hand for me.” Prior to her 10 year career as the front woman of Svalbard, Serena previously played in a black metal band and has been excited to get back to her musical roots. With hypnotic, interlocking tremolo guitar leads, pummeling blast beats and reverb drenched vocals; Noctule sees Serena

  I am something of a Maurice de Jong fan. As his Bandcamp interview puts it, he is " the creator of some of experimental metal’s most horrific soundscapes.". I own a shockingly large percentage of his 50+ albums, and while not all of them are my favorites, I honestly don't think I dislike any of them. That in itself is a feat. 2021 is shaping up to be the Year of Mories.Three albums released so far, and another expected within days. I am a happy camper. And this one is pretty phenomenal. Die Hard symphonic black metal, filtered through Mories' cavernous misanthropy. This is bombast, chaos, and weirdly "classic".  Cathchy riffs,  lively keyboards, and punchy drums, but never veering too far from dark evil atmospheres. This might go on to become one of the classic symphonic black metal albums. Forbidden Knowledge and Ancient Wisdom by Grand Celestial Nightmare

  I have always had a bit of a weird relationship to Krallice . They are a band I am supposed to like. After all, I pretty much make everyone I could find listen to every Schammasch , Imperial Triumphant , Ulcerate , and Zhrine album I could. I like bicycles and obnoxiously hoppy IPAs. I own and use beard wax. But for nine albums Krallice have always smelled (felt?) to me like a bunch of prog nerds wearing black metal as a costume to a frat party. I have just never clicked with their let's be weird so people will call us the weird guys shtick. Then the * gestures broadly in the direction of coronavirus * everything happened, and bands across the world had to find new ways to make music other than "hang out 24-7 and try to make things". It seems that forcing these nerds out of their own private guitar center idaho was a good move. The forced separation and out of studio time has resulted in a far less sterile album than previous outings. This is, instead, chock full of

  I've spent an embarrassing number of hours playing EVE Online in my life, and it has had a decided effect on my preferences in music. So, now I love space themed black metal. So I am always on the lookout for more "metal tunes to fly spaceships to". This is not straight up black metal though. This is, as is required in Australia from what I understand, death metal tinged industrial sounding black metal. I am reliably told that if bogan's cannot stomp around shirtless to it, you are not allowed to call it metal, so everything there has a caveman tinge to it. Which happily works out here, because the rise and fall between sci-fi soundtrack beeps and pummeling triggered drum stompabout is pretty well done, and provides the same kind of cathartic rollercoaster I usually get from blackgaze, but in a much more straight ahead package. The Stelliferous Conclusion by Numen Noctis

  This album answers an incredibly important question: What if Rick Deckard was a goth? A goth replicant that could pass the Voight-Kampff test easily. More importantly, it provides a stunning backdrop to the writing I am supposed to be doing, but keep avoiding. French composer James Kent has always been something of a polarizing figure. Much of his earlier work has been very HOTLINE MIAMI style synthwave. This is most definitely NOT THAT. Instead you a weird robot sex soundtrack - a post-punk mood piece cloaked in goth rock nihilism and sexual malevolence. Gritty, misanthropic, but still atmospheric and ambient, this is some nice stuff! Lustful Sacraments by PERTURBATOR

  From yesterday's black metal tinged post-rock to now some post-rock tinged black metal. Swedish D-Beat black metal mavens with a love of post rock flourishes, Dödsrit are exactly the type of hard to properly pin into one little genre box band I like. Described by the band as "an eulogy for the hell we call our home" this is proper end of the world slow burn crust punk fused with grief stricken atmo-black and just enough potentially uplifting post-rock influences to keep the razor from your wrists for just a bit longer. Mortal Coil by Dödsrit

  I am an unapologetic enjoyer of angsty emo screaming and post-rock shimmering wall of guitar noise. That is just another way to say that I like a lot of blackgaze albums. Like this one, for instance. Many many moons ago - in a different century no less - a surrealist band from the wilds of West Yorkshire released an inventively titled album full of inventively titled songs. On this album they played some avant garde, schizophrenic black metal. It struck a chord with a number of people, some of which would go on to form bands of their own. Three of those people would be some weirdos from the Netherlands who decided to make something wholly different from their inspiration. Nine albums of weird oddly tense blackgaze later, we get this. I can only describe it as " Smashing Pumpkins tour bus vandalized and burning in the parking lot of a Møl show" As The Morning Dawns We Close Our Eyes by An Autumn For Crippled Children

  Raw atmospheric black metal it it's sun soaked Mediterranean best. Wait... That's not right. Oh, but it is. For 20 years, Greece has been the home of Dødsferd since it's beginning as a one-man side project. Now, 10 albums, as many splits and EPs, and five comps, two new songs are available. Packaged with a re-release of the landmark album 'Diseased Remnants of a Dying World', what you have here is the pinnacle of what raw atmo-black can be. A full LP of this would easily be Album of the Year. I can still hope right? Skotos (Atmospheric Black Metal) by DØDSFERD (Greece)

  P O R T A L R E L E A S E D T W O R E C O R D S T O D A Y That's how my day began. Several versions of that message. And friends, the hype is real. Unhinged ambient black metal sludge gloomcloud is back on the menu boys. Avow by itself is a massive adventure into murky disquiet, but played (As intended) sync'd up with companion piece Hagbulbia, it becomes infintely more sinister. Press play below and enjoy the madness Avow by PORTAL Hagbulbia by PORTAL

  I find it very difficult to listen to most music I talk about here while I work. I am way too involved in paying atrention to the music to get any actual writing done. Enter Cryo Chamber Records. Essentially a collection of the best in dark ambient music, they are where I turn for help actually concentrating and getting work done. I think of them as my "lo-fi beats for studying" alternative. They have a YouTube channel full of work-day length mixes in a variety of sub-genres of dark ambient music, and through them I have discovered a whole world of interesting soundscapes, that help me turn my office into a creepy tower in the fog. Which brings us to these Serbian weirdos. "Chants of Liberation" is a set of three gothic litanies to liberate the spirit of Man from the temptation of sin and a crooked path of Heresy. The robed priests from the upper sky-dome of the grand Cathedral are uttering the chants of Salvation to cleanse the ones who stray. The metallic s

  I love this. The weird edge between atmospheric black metal and ambient "world music" style silliness. It probably has something to do with the inordinate amount of time I spent on drugs in new age bookshops in the early 1990s but that's not really the point... Whatever the reason, I have a soft spot for the ethereal, 4AD tinged sound of this album. It meshes really well with the most straight ahead atmo-black parts, and I really get a kick out of it conjuring a picture in my head of Lisa Gerrard in a black metal band. Imagine my surprise when I discovered the VAST back catalog this dude has. Three dozen albums released in a very compressed amount of time. I'll be busy plowing through this for a bit. Nature Lover by Dead Wasteland

Nadja is a duo of multi-instrumentalist Aidan Baker and bassist Leah Buckareff—active since 2005—and making music which can be described as ambient doom, dreamsludge, or metalgaze. Nadja’s signature sound combines the atmospheric textures of shoegaze and ambient/electronic music with the heaviness, density, and volume of metal, noise, and industrial. Think Cocteau Twins meets Sunn 0))) . For the new album, Luminous Rot, the duo retain their overblown/ambient sound, and explore shorter and more tightly structured songs reflecting their interests not only in metal, but post-punk, cold-wave, shoegaze, and industrial. Thematically, the album explores ideas of 'first contact' and the difficulties of recognising alien intelligence. This was in part inspired by reading such writers as Stanislaw Lem and Cixin Lui, as well as Margaret Wertheim's "A Field Guide To Hyperbolic Space," about mathematician Daina Taimina's work with crochet to illustrate h

  I think one of the weirdest things about black metal is how, contrary to almost all other genres of music, it is a primarily rural phenomenon. Sure, it had a few moments of centralization in urban settings, and yes, bands like Odraza in Poland are playing a very urban version of the genre (and making a whole scene out of it), but for the most part, it is still a very rural musical movement. Black metal comes from lonely places, poor places, still-connected-to-their-environment places. It is built, in large part, out of a duality of fondness and hatred of the bleak landscape. Which brings us to the Canadian prairies. To Saskatchewan. A place of endless prairies suddenly turned into enormous shield mountains. A place of wild lakes, roadless wilderness, and bitter winters. And the place of Angrboða , and their demo, which I am confident in saying is the best demo tape I've heard this year. I wouldn't be surprised if it was the best demo I hear all year. Please give these folks

Violet Cold is an experimental AI simulated music project from 40°22’37.7″N 49°50’51.6″E. It is also one of the weirdest, coolest musical things I know of. Across something like 50 albums in the last eight years, Emin Guliyev has forged his own sonic world. Build out of whatever strikes his fancy, from ambient, noise, house, drum and bass, jazz, classical, folk, shoegaze, sludge, crust, powerviolence, post-rock, post-black metal and depressive black metal, Violet Cold is a towering rebuke to every supposedly "prog" band out there. This my friend, is how you prog. This is how you avant-garde. This man has trained computers to write better metal than the sum total of all Guitar Center part-time employees combined. Best described as "Militantly Anti-Fascist Astral Black Metal Dream Pop" this album takes yet another step into the musical (and political) future I hope we one day all inhabit. I am particularly impressed with the "Daft Punk as a post-metal band&q

  The third album by German underground honorary pacific northwest cascadian band Abkher is upon us, and it is really cool. They continue the Darkthrone influenced Graupel worship of their earlier albums. But now a serious cascadian vibe emerges, riding the cymbals into a low end heavy bass-driven maelstrom. There is this thing that I now think of as defining in the Cascadian black metal sound - where the cymbals stand in for the rider's whip and the kick drum and bass guitar mimic the gallop of the horse - the drummers "gallop" but expanded to two instruments and from a fill to the actual core of the song. Maybe I'm not explaining it well, I'm not a musician. But, this album is a really great example of how to turn that combo into a sound. A creepy, moody, yet intensely driving sound. In Blut by ABKEHR

  I love the pathological hatred of self-promotion that defines a lot of underground black metal, but it sure does make it hard to write about new bands some times. I know absolutely nothing about this band other than that they are from Dublin Ireland, and they  play the sort of goblin vocal, snare heavy ritual occult black metal I like to listen to in those rare moments where I have the house to myself. Three main songs, with two shorter interludes, identified by roman numerals and nothing else. The interludes are piano and acoustic guitar bits that add a deeper dimension to what might otherwise be too much onslaught of 90mph diabolism. I personally am pretty into this as an End of Year List candidate. Definitely one of the best albums I've heard in May. Valais by Valais

  The holy prophet of forest wankers has spoken. Come close and hear his wise words. Or, don't. Last year Steve Von Till released No Wilderness Deep Enough (see the Best Non-Metal Album by a Metal Person award in my previous best of the year post), a guitar-less exploration of what music is when it tries to become a part of nature. On that album Von Till sang, chanted, and spoke, poetry over his modern compositions, performed on peinao, cello, mellotron, and synths. Now that album exists sans vocals. With bonus french horn and enlarged strings section. Nature music,. freed from intrusive humanness. Dig it. A Deep Voiceless Wilderness by Steve Von Till

  File this under "Things I Missed in 2020" I suppose. I have a real soft spot for goth rock, especially the just shy of dance-able, head nodding tracks that made Feeling Gloomy the nicest place to be sad in London in 2005. This is exactly that. Straight ahead 1980's-worship goth music. Not a hint of dungeon synth or neo- anything here. This is old school gloom, and clove cigarettes, and fishnet stocking gloves. You miserable bastards know exactly what I mean, or you're likely reading the wrong music blog. Bauhaus still holds pride of place as the band I've driven the furthest to see, and 4AD is still the only record label I still blind buy literally everything from. So put on your best androgynous frock coat, straighten your cravat, brush your velvet trousers, and enjoy this very dramatic trip down sonic memory lane. Exordiri by Damghar

  The 2010s were not exactly the most fertile era for atmospheric and / or raw black metal. The forces of lo-fi raw black metal were losing ground daily to the revisionist forces of crisp hi-fi death metal type production, complete with programmed drums and glossy, plastic-toy sonic packaging. Exactly one band ( Windir ) was able to build something still emotionally interesting out of that, and everything else is essentially of interest only to the completionist collector. Having been birthed in that era, Vallendusk was definitely in the proggy, folky, post-rock-y, super clean production camp.  Fortunately, they have since seen the error of their ways and leaned a hell of a lot harder into the grand, sweeping melodies of atmo-black, while keeping the sparkingly clean guitar tones and emotional crescendos of the proggy blackgaze thing they were on the cusp of with earlier work. So, if you'd like to be a black metal fan but the production of raw bm puts you off, here is a good place

  Any day with a new album from Panopticon is a good day. A day with a new Panopticon album dedicated to John Prine is exceptional. This is an immense (1 hour plus) slab of very doom-laden atmospheric black metal, full of the vastly expanded musical instrument collection of A Lunn. Featuring Guitar, Drums, Bass (4, 8 and 12 string), Keys, Lap Steel, Pedal Steel, Banjo, Square Neck Resonator, Acoustic Guitar and Bass, and Mandolin, not to mention two guest(?) musicians playing cello and violin. This is orchestral in size, if not in arrangement. Lunn separated his music into two distinct halves on his previous album, The Scars of Man on the Once Nameless Wilderness. The scalding metal offerings and bluegrass-inspired americana here are reassembled, and better integrated than ever before. Adding more ambient and post-rock passages and tropes, along with spoken word samples, makes for a much more interesting album. ...And Again Into The Light by Panopticon

  Let's start with the band's name. Combining the word ‘Dor' (the yearning for something; the lack of something) with the term for spirit ‘Duh' – according to the musicians, this amalgamation represents the struggle to express those meaningful values that make us human by uniting the soul and the spirit.  Not content to have put Romania on the heavy metal map as the creative engine of Negura Bunget ,  Edmond "Hupogrammos" Karban and Sol Faur aka Cristian Popescu set off to redefine metal-ish music entirely. Given the difficulty people (myself included) seem to have in pinning this album down to a single (or a couple) genre, I think they might have succeeded. Dark folk, black metal, folk metal, psych rock, prog pop - everything goes into this stew. This, to me, has heavy heavy vibes of PELICAN or RED SPAROWES , but transported back in time to the early 1960s, where they, not Pink Floyd , record Piper at the Gates of Dawn . Which is of course, the best roc

  I've recently written about the other project of Jaketeme Odo, Osso & Madeira . He has become one of the most important voices in opposition to the fake-populist kleptocracy of Jair "I wish I was a Chicago economist" Bolsonaro. On this album he lays out his thesis: In 2021 Brazil is going through one of the worst moments in its history. A racist, authoritarian and hygienist government has abandoned the population and now it is us for us. This album is a way to help families abandoned by the genocide who runs the country. Part of the amount collected in this album, will be donated to institutions that have been doing a wonderful and humanitarian work to help families that have nothing to eat and also people on the streets in a situation of vulnerability. I thank all of you who always support me and in this album in particular, I thank Pablo and Sangre de Muerdago for existing, making my days better and also for the authorization for me to cover Soterrado

  I sometimes indulge in collapse of civilization apocalyptic fantasies. Not the lone hero saving himself and his family from the chaos around them kind. Not the picking up the pieces and gloating about how much better prepared I am kind. No, I am not into the rough and tumble two-fisted hero fantasy. I am way more into the getting drunk on the roof of a building and laughing as we all get what's coming to us for being a festering disease on the planet kind of fantasy. The I hope I go last so I can smell the pointless stench all of human "accomplishment" has been reduced to kind of fantasy. Misanthropic? Yeah, guilty as charged. Anyway, this is the soundtrack to those fantasies. This is the album that plays at the end of the world. It plays so loud the bridges crack and windows crumble. Those unlucky to still be alive suffer heart attacks from the sheer sonic force of the bass. Hopelessly ruined, we all melt under the immense pressure waves emanating from this unholy soni

 I've talked a bit about Raat before . So I was happy to see another album from the Byron quoting Indian depresso-metal maven. Like Raison D'être before it this is a moody, gazey, almost dsbm album that is definitely tip toe-ing closer and closer to Sadness territory. Apocalyptic vocals and drums hold tension against dreamy guitars and synths. Shoe-gaze in the extreme for most of the album, this is definitely good driving around alone in the rain music. Sylvan by Raat

  Can we skip the Japanese tales of vengeful female ghosts bit and concentrate on the rest of this for just a minute? Check out the Lamp of Murmuur style album cover.Check out this weird 1980's era angry ass logo that should be on a Christian Hosoi deck. Now dig that this project is from Nashville fucking Tennessee. You know, the pedal drunk cart for every overweight bachelorette party in the whole fucking fat ass South by gawd.You know, the Grand ol Opry and Confederate fucking every-damned-thing Trashvile TN. I guess that would spur me to turn my raging hate boner into musical expression before I walked into the near QuickTrip with a shotgun and started randomly improving the gene pool too... I probably would not be nearly as successful musically as this outfit is. This is prime do-not-give-a-fuck-how-you-pasty-euro-losers-do-it USBM. This is 100% furious Southern fried black metal. More of this please. Onryō: Vengeful Spirits In The Eastern Night by Saidan

  It is not often that I wish an album was longer. But at less than 30 minutes,this blast of hateful Icelandic kvlt metal is WAY too short. This is potentially the best Icelandic metal album this year. Taking their vocal cues from both Svartidauði and Misþyrming, this is another example of powerful Icelandic singers pummeling the instruments under their almost chanted lyrics. I am definitely looking forward to more from these folks, and I hope a full length is on the way soon. Dönsum Í Logans Ljóma by Forsmán

  Valravne plays "aggressive depressive misanthropic black metal" and is based in Asheville, NC. A year ago they released a nasty little slab of dsbm that, true to form, sounded like it was recorded with a fisher price microphone. They have since seen the errors of their trve kvlt ways and re-recorded and re-mixed the album, along with new material, into something actually pretty awesome. A bizarre mix of Ted Bundy, The Divine David Hoyle, and screeching anti-fascist lyrics, I can't help but love this. You will too. Some Kind of Vampire - Remastered by Valravne

  I grew up watching spaghetti western movies with my uncle during the Summer. It was always wild to me how something so uniquely American could be just up and moved to Spain with Italian directors and cast, and be loved by Americans as something authentic and real. I also know plenty of various Nordic euro-chauvinists who still maintain that there is no such thing as trve American black metal, it being totally a Norwegian invention right? Somehow those two things do not come together to make an awesome album of Nordic black metal stalwarts using the tropes of American western aesthetics to make a cowboy album about the north west of Norway. Instead you just get this. Which is kind of like if Yngwie Malmsteen formed Pantera in his mom's basement in a Bergen suburb. You can listen to it if you want. Wild North West by Vreid

  Do you enjoy music, or do you like to be unnerved by music? If it's the second, this is gonna be high on your Album of the Year chart, I can already tell. Hallucinatory, occasionally psychotic, shimmeringly off-kilter. This is a legitimately deranged piece of musical illness. I like it. A lot. You should like it to. We all like it down here. Met onoprechte deelneming by Kwade Droes

  Glory to the Emperor. We have a new Chapter joining us in the eternal fight against heresy. No longer will these Xenos run rampant across the face of the Empire of Mankind, spreading their foul prog- and tech- metal heresy. Exterminatus! There really isn't enough WH40K themed metal. Given that the band that got me into the genre was Bolt Thrower , I am always on the lookout for more non-cheesy Warhammer themed metal. Hail of Bullets has been carrying the flag for a bit, but have failed to rally the troops. After a very long wait, there is a worthy challenger. Aschenvater are here with the German translation of the Drop Site Massacre on Istvaan V ( Landungsfeldmassaker ) to delight the faithful of the Legions and strike righteous fear into the heretics and warp-demons of foul debased death metal. More chugga for the chugga throne!   Landungsfeldmassaker by Aschenvater

Shrine ov Absurd is the solo project of Cuban musician J. His album, originally released last year, has been picked up by Godz ov War and released. This is one intense album. Thundering bass and maniac drum lines back up some seriously fire riffs. The howling vocals complete a rather distressing package of nihilistic rage. This is pummeling, almost punishing. But in a good way. A passionate way. I really like one-person bands because the vision and focus are usually more clear and honest than in a group. This will become one of the albums I point to as perfect examples of that. Monotony by SHRINE OV ABSURD

  Even here at the Forest Wanker Temple of Sad Boi Noizes , we enjoy some straight ahead musical aggression from time to time. Riivaus is the solo endeavor of Hoath Daemnator , who under different pseudonyms is also a member of Sacrificium Carmen , Wömit Angel , and Nôidva (among other groups). Hoath ‘s unhinged screeching may take some getting-used-to. It's an unrelenting ice-pick to the eardrums. But the riffs. Blazing riffs. Maniacally flickering leads, rocking out like feral punks. Anthemic heavy metal black metal but not black 'n' roll? Sign me the fuck up. Hehkumaton by RIIVAUS

  Jaketeme Odo from Pessimista goes solo to do some anti-fascist  atmo-black.  Tinged with dungeon synth and sometimes melting into straight up 4am dark ambient synth creepiness, this is a bleak album. To isolation, personal losses, hatred for those at the top of the pyramid ... From inside the cave of loneliness, the echoes of wails and fury form shock waves that advance over their heads and open the earth beneath their feet. I just decompose in a dark corner, while I observe the peace of society in the face of aggression. Domesticated, you live peacefully in line at the slaughterhouse. Here inside the cave, I can smell the rotting of his creation and his fears. Unfortunately, it seems to be too late for a reaction to take place on the dominating hand. Maybe this is all just a hallucination, maybe I'm next in line at the slaughterhouse. Maybe I am also blind and I created a parallel reality that I call a cave so that I can feel safe. Our approaching death. 

  What could possibly go wrong with naming your metal band exactly the same thing as another metal band ? Nothing I suppose, as long as you establish a beachhead of sorts - on social media, or at the Encyclopedia Metallum, or somewhere. But, if you just slip a record out into the world and silently slip back into the dark, you might have a bit of trouble. I hope not, because this is a really cool record. From the drone intro to the icy wilderness of the second and third tracks, this is a fine piece of atmo-black bleakness. MOONLESS - Elusive Dimensions by Moonless

Founded in 1997 in the Swiss region of Bern, black metal solo-project PAYSAGE D'HIVER remained a strictly underground phenomenon at first. Mastermind Wintherr unleashed a steady stream of 10 full-length so-called "demos" and 4 split-EPs that earned him an excellent reputation and large following When the Swiss came "out of hiding" with "Im Wald" ("In the Forest") in 2020, his regular debut album even entered the German charts underscoring the organically achieved status. Each full-length release, including the so-called "demos" and regular albums, constitutes a chapter of a continuing story, which PAYSAGE D'HIVER narrate about a protagonist called "Der Wanderer", who roams an otherworld realm. In "Geister", the Wanderer has a lucid dream in which he meets beings from another dimension, which is in fact our world. To him, we terrestrials appear as the ghosts. Our only means of contacting the Wand

  Music has informed my opinions on many subjects over the years. One of those opinions is that cross-pollination and cultural borrowing and mixing is not only a good thing, it is the only thing that matters in this world. Seeing something interesting from one place get mixed with something interesting from another place and turned into a new, third, thing - that's just really cool. And no, I'm not just talking about music anymore. But I am talking about it because of Cult of Occult 's new EP Ruin . Imagine 1980's Finnish doom meets 1990's sludge metal not in Louisiana, but in Lyon, France. Or perhaps you'd prefer to imagine Buzz Osborne and Krist Novoselic being inspired to start bands not by seeing Black Flag , but by seeing Bethlehem . Ruin by Cult Of Occult

  In 1886, workers gathered in Chicago to protest in support of limiting working hours to 8 per day instead of the usual 12-14. A bomb was planted by capitalists, which exploded and began a panic that was later smeared as a riot. The police, as American police always do, began shooting. They killed eleven people, and in doing so, kick started the modern labor movement. Every May 1st we pay homage to these martyrs of labor by downing tools for a day, to honor their sacrifice and to flex the muscle of the only class that has ever built anything. Today is for reminding the capitalist class and their boot-licking sycophants that they need us, but we have never needed them. What better way to kick off that day than with some French anarchist black metal cut up artists making an album about work and it's uselessness to modern people? This album is anarchic in all meanings of the word. "We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make e

Rage of Devils is a one-person queer, anti-fascist, experimental black metal project hailing from Kentucky. Imagined as a rebuke to the bigotry and injustice swirling around the States, the aesthetic is one in which the Devil has come, to punish the wicked. Fusing the tropes of second wave black metal to the now more vital electronica and witch house genres by using the glue of dungeon synth is a pretty rad idea.  And for the most part, it is successful, without being the sort of over the top wall of noise you might expect from gluing bombastic to bombastic. There is a lot of a sound that I can only describe as Southern Hate Metal that I instantly recognize. Shades of both Joe Buck and ANTiSEEN , with a heavy helping of Darkthrone and Khold . Life of Horror by Rage of Devils

  Spectral Lore has always operated outside of the black metal "mainstream", forcefully rejecting its troubled racist homophobic history while digging deep into it's musical aesthetic. Spectral Lore is Ayloss, a singular Greek titan of weird metal. He has at least two other projects I know about; a creepy dungeon synth thing and a melodic blackened death metal project. This working outside the norm means some things that should be obvious just aren't. This is not exactly easy listening for either black metal purists or post- or prog- fans. Are there weird time signatures? Yes. Are there jazz-like trills on weird riffs? Yes. Are there hooks? No. What exactly is going on here? Why have I not thrown this record away? Why do I keep listening to it again and again? Ετερόφωτος by Spectral Lore

  On my eternal quest to rid metal of bad lyrics, lyrics at all, vocalists, singers, and all manner of unnecessary "singing", I sometimes have to accept help from unlikely quarters. In this instance that help comes from a kitchen cabinet under a sink in Burnsville, MN. Therein resides a INSINKERATOR BADGER 5-84A garbage disposal. That garbage disposal just released a new album, and it's better than 95% of all death metal ever released. It is also 99% better than all death metal vocals in the history of the world. DEATH METAL AS GOD INTENDED IT SOUNDS LIKE GARBAGE LITERALLY DISPOSAL IS ALL ABOUT DUMB FUCKING IDEAS. TAKE SOME DUMB FUCKING HM-2 RIFFS AND THROW AN ACTUAL GARBAGE DISPOSAL OVER THE TOP FOR VOCALS AND YOU'VE GOT YOURSELF A RECIPE FOR SUCCESS. YOU'LL FEEL YOUR BRAIN GETTING SMOOTHER AND YOUR KNUCKLES CHAFING AS YOU LISTEN TO THIS. EAT YOUR HEART OUT, GOREGRIND    DISPOSAL by DISPOSAL

  Balmog hail from the rainy northwest of Spain, in Galicia, just outside of Vigo. They play pummeling blackened death metal. They have a new EP out in advance of next month's LP EVE.  This EP also has two covers, "Cripta" by Machetazo and "Esa Extraña Sonrisa" by Spanish postpunk cult band Parálisis Permanente . I don't get excited about too many Spanish bands, as the NWoBHM spirit infects most things Iberian metal, but this is a solid band with a pretty decent history of good blackened death, so I am actually looking forward to the release. Enjoy! Desacougo EP. by Balmog

  Okay, atmospheric black metal is definitely the genre in which my critical faculties are the most relaxed and generous. It's my favorite genre, my connection to it is primarily emotional not technical, and I have listened to a lot a lot a lot of it. That said, I will admit that from an objective point of view this is probably only a middling to "ehh pretty good" album. But I really dig it. It has the right combination of #grimdark goblin scream vocals, tremolo picking, blast beats, and slow dungeon synth passages where the breakdown would be if it sucked.  Little bits of spoken word samples here and there, occasional clean playing, and lyrics in a language I cannot speak complete the package. Like a slightly drunk walk through a wet misty forest. Memento Mori by Frozen Wreath

  What happens when a xHxCx punk band form Germany gets really into doom metal? They put out a trilogy of albums of high energy melodic hard core that sounds way heavier than any -core metal band I can think of. Rituals III , the final installment in the trilogy, opens up with the punk as fuck "Sunday" before moving on into the DOOM that permeates the rest of the album. I particularly like how this album starts off aggressive and overwhelming and slowly calms down towards a calm, gloomy, experimental-ish ending. Rituals III by KAVRILA

  Describing themselves as Hateful, grinding, felonious, street level fast hardcore from the gutters of Houston, TX , Active Shooter stand out from a million other similar bands for their obvious Wattie worship and their self-tagging as "blackened powerviolence". Shades of Anal Cunt here with a 10 song LP coming in at a whopping 8:07. Get blasted fool. I'm not gonna write a review longer than the album. Life Stands Still by Active Shooter

  Polski metal mocny, polski metal zły, polski metal niszczy! Poland has pretty much always had one of the most innovative, strongest, angriest metal scenes. I have almost always liked the albums that have made their way to me from that scene. This album is certainly no exception to that trend. Explosive, powerfully produced, emotionally battering, and with the wildest fucking lyrics I've ever read. Netflix, ogolona cipka. Tonę w wiadrze. Pełna i wściekła. Rosnę i rozlewam. Wszędzie brudzę się. Krzyczę, nikt nie sprząta. Netflix, a shaved pussy. I'm drowning in a bucket. Full and furious. I grow and spill. I get dirty everywhere. I'm screaming, nobody is cleaning. As someone who generally dislikes metal lyrics, singers, vocals, etc.. I am just over the moon about the violent dadaist filth poetry here. Bonus disgust for the crying baby / microwave sound sample. Listen, and be filth, worm Dom Człowieka by SZNUR

  2013 was a weird year. The US Government gave up on holding anyone accountable for the 2008 financial crash and the home loan scandal, Americans shrugged their shoulders at rampant drone strikes on civilians, Republicans tried to rig an election in a major city and suffered no consequences, right wing terrorist attacks reached a level where they joined mass shootings, extrajudicial police killings of marginalized people, and endless foreign war as mere background noise to the American experience, and the whole country kind of woke up to the fact that running an entire political party on HOPE sorts of ends up with a NO WE CAN'T feeling. Somehow, I don't remember exactly how, an album by a Canadian band called Anti-Freeze crossed my path. Lo-Fi, harsh, raw, angry as fuck. A perfect soundtrack to the collapse many could smell on the air but wasn't quite on top of us yet. A second and third album followed, chronicling the continuing slide of America from idiotic HOPE to simm

The last two years have seen my favorite hammered dulcimer black metal weirdos release two albums. Ecosystem in 2019 and the previously reviewed Photosynthesis in 2020. This release is, to quote the band themselves: The initial demos from the "Eco/Photo" sessions (that's from albums "Ecosystem" and "Photosynthesis.") Made in Spring-Summer of 2018. Re-distorted and lightly worked on by Tony Thomas in Spring of 2020. Decidedly less metal than the previous album, this is prime tree worship druids in bla ck leather jacket Botanist. Eco/Photo demos by Botanist

  Full of Hell are back with a live album, recorded from their live stream on October 29th, 2020 at Underground Arts in Philadelphia, PA. I am a big fan of all things Merzbow adjacent, and the 2014 album Full of Hell & Merzbow is the first time I really paid attention to this band. Since then they've released a split with NAILS ,  two albums with THE BODY and been signed to Relapse Records. Straightedge, vegan, antifascist, fond of gym shorts and #1 razor guards. Folks, I think we've found where the Youth Crew powerviolence refugees went... Regardless, this album is a record of a band at the height of their power. Auditory Trauma: Full of Hell Isolation Sessions by Full of Hell

  Absolute Polish mayhem here. Not MAYHEM worship or anything. Sonic mayhem. I haven't been this excito-repulsed by an album since I first heard The Destroyer in 1996. I am honestly still not sure I like this album. Even though I can pick out most of the old school industrial and gabber samples used I am still more than a little disturbed by what is being done with them. For example Track 4: Post Futuristic Act of Cosmogenesis is built out of both NON and Deadly Buda samples, but married to some garden variety alt metal chugga. Artur Ostrowski and Przemysław Trzaskowski have definitely made something unique here. Industrial metal drum and bass digital hardcore djent math rock lsd fever dream bad trip music right here. [split] by [4672]