Anaal Nathrakh - Endarkenment

Anaal Nathrakh are known for a couple of things. Blisteringly misanthropic blackened deathgrind, and lyrics that have me reaching for my dictionary. I am happy to report (perhaps later than the rest of the metal world) that nothing has changed on Endarkenment.

This is, to be honest, the perfect soundtrack to my 2020, and maybe yours too. Nihilistic fury at the idiocy and brutal scorn for all of human weakness just seem to be so on message for the first plague year.

From the first riff and angry scream of "Endarkenment" you know you are in for a real treat here. In their spit-in-your-face way, the band take on every terrible internet know-it-all, every political finger-pointing idiot, every "but muh freedumbs" sociopathic loser without a thought for anyone or anything outside their own tiny pointless existence; and they start the album by taking them down, hard:

Take what small comfort there may be left
Seize what you love and damn all the rest
Panem, circenses, credulous descent
A Gadarene charge into endarkenment

There is no slowing down after that blistering opening either. All 41 minutes of this album is all gas no brakes. The apocalyptic pulpit pounding does not let up for a single second. They reach into their industrial music bag of tricks to build melodies behind the razors and buzzsaws of their grinding foreground, and it pays off in spades.

The noble search over, no answers to find
We retreat to dust, ignoble, sublime
Nothing to reach for, the death of the mind
Fuck all salvation, the truth is a lie

Comments

Agriculture - Agriculture

a While calling themselves ''ecstatic" black metal, Agriculture traipses along the line between atmo-black and blackgaze pretty adroitly. I am not as head over heels as some of the metal press I have been reading about them (like Rolling Stone for instance), but I think they have a good thing going here. They remind me of Vattnet Viskar sort of, and I am going to withhold judgement until I can see them live to really decide. That said, this is an album that has been in heavy rotation at my house since its release. Agriculture by Agriculture

葬尸湖 (Zuriaake) - 孤雁 (Gu Yan)

The thing I continue to love about this album, now five years after it came out, is how unabashedly Chinese it is. For me, there is nothing quite so nice as taking something from somewhere else and adapting it to your particular circumstance, whether it be food, music, or whatever else. The world is filled with terrible Nordic imitators, so I am always really stoked to see bands who lean in hard to their local scene / culture / roots. This is probably one of the albums that really sent me down that path, and I will always be indebted to Zuriaake for that. Gu Yan is an epic, sprawling, even cinematic, album, and should appeal to fans of bands like Wolves in the Throne Room and Primordial . Musically, there are serious elements of Summoning here, but most of this album is utterly unique to Zuriaake and the atmosphere they build is entirely their own. Traditional instruments back up the backbone of the sound, not as a gimmick, but as the bedrock on which the whole edifice rests. ...

Dødsferd - Skotos

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)

Trumpet of Amdusias

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