Trumpet of Amdusias

  Not a new release, don't get so excited. As far as I know, there won't be another RÛR release after IV in 2018, but we can always hope. This was a standout album for me in 2017, and the fact that it is still in regular rotation here at the Forest Wanker Compound is proof that at the very least I know what I like when I hear it, I guess. This is the atmo-black soundtrack to late Summer rainstorms. Still a bit warm but the clouds are heavier now, and black around the edges. The rain too cold to be anything but a malicious reminder of how little nature cares if you live or die. Lightning cracks across the western skies, a lone bird flies in front of the approaching torrent. Time to bolt the door and wait for it to pass. RÛR by RÛR

  Post-black metal? Blackened post-metal? How do I jam "atmospheric" in there? The hairs must be split and the genre guardians appeased! Either way, it's three tracks of comfortably kvlt occult satanic-panic black metal from this two-piece from the home of railway museums and solid league one football. I like it. It's dense and atmospheric, and gloomy and depressing like a nice blanket on a rainy day. It is however pretty typical of the post-black genre and will not be winning any awards for innovation. Not that it has to. It is a nice textured album that fits the bill and does exactly what it says on the tin. Tangled Divinations by 𝕷𝖚𝖓𝖌𝖙𝖔𝖚𝖈𝖍𝖊𝖗

  Nihilistic misanthropy, spiked with violent anti-religious sentiment. Now we are back in my wheelhouse! Greece is something of a hotbed of mean metal bands, and none are quite as surgically brutal as Human Serpent.Six years into their sonic walk through hell, we get this, their fourth full-length album. 100% fiery spiteful black metal, there is also a keen sense of melody at work here. This is not your standard blastbeats howling into the void, but a coordinated attempt to actually suffocate you solely via your speakers. They started out the gate in 2014 hellbent on destruction, and every album has upped the ante. You can imagine them listening to a finished album and going 'nope, not apocalyptic enough. Let's start over'. Maybe they said that after this album was finished too, but for now it's the meanest evilest thing going. Heirlooms Eternal by Human Serpent

  To say that I am not a fan of lyric-heavy, singer-led music would be a slight understatement. It is also true that I have a real soft spot for Cascadian black-metal or whatever we are calling Portlandia Metal these days. This album though, is sitting uncomfortably close to the indie-rock end of the melodic black metal spectrum for me personally. Bouncy, almost happy, guitar leads and riffs reminiscent of power metal or, dare I say it, glam rock abound. Clean tones, theatrical solos, and a weird post-punk tone almost had me throwing this out the window by the end of the first track. Fortunately, they get angry enough soon enough, and the rest of the album is pretty damn solid. Yeah, the MAIDEN solos continue throughout, but not so obnoxiously. One thing for certain, this band is no Mgła clone, so you can put your memes away now. Djinn by UADA

  Kintsukuroi (金繕い) are back with a full length album.  When I last talked about them , they had released a single I was pretty smitten with. Now, mere months later, we have a new full-length to dig into. They introduce the album this way: "A burning pyre made of yellowing post cards and forgotten memories, standing beside it while witnessing how negative emotions dissipated as the wind swept the ashes away --- the ultimate indulging of loneliness in the black box you created for yourself. A poetry of depressive romance: this is how one would describe the music of Kinsukuroi. Based in Italy, Solitude Project used to be a solid dbm project. The duo changed their name into Kinsukuroi (金繕い/Golden Repair) in 2020 and have released an ep consisted of two songs that best exemplified their own musical aesthetic of post black metal's melancholy nature. In collaboration with Pest Productions, Kinsukuroi will release this ep and gave it a new title: Ode to Loneliness and So...

Remember when you were a teenager, and you loved evil sounding metal because it made you feel like a bad motherfucker in a bad motherfucker world? This is that. Mean as fuck music for mean as fuck people. NYC’s Gravesend arise with ill intent like a foul emanation from the aging sewage filled rot slowly winding its way beneath the city’s vast concrete walls and pavement pathways. A New York of discarded needles, noxious fumes, scavenging rats, broken bottles and cracked minds. An aural manifesto of urban blight and disgust, “Methods Of Human Disposal” works like a lone killer stalking the streets, internally seething with rage, preparing to cast off the last remnants of restraint. Bear witness to savage Black / Death Metal with a hellish Grindcore fixation, searing warped speeds, and the slowly swelling carnage of a derailed subway pile up. Like the centuries old cemetery that bears its name, the fetid stench of death and decay permeates Gravesend and the predatory wrat...

  So I went down a rabbit hole after discovering Lesath , and found his alter ego Raat . While still very much in the same vein, Raat moves in a more melancholic direction. Very atmospheric, and often bordering on dsbm, this is a dark, moody slab of discontent. Strummed acoustic bits, weird atmospherics, sneaky odes to nature embedded into everything... This is definitely my sort of firest wankery Raison D'être by Raat

  This is something different. I don't often see atmo-black albums from India. Definite shades of Mesarthrim here, but not in a derivative way. This is intense, highly emotive and personal music, but not in a sad boi noizes kind of way. Instead in a moody, grand, profoundly weird way. Spanning multiple genres, but tied together by vocals that play like another instrument (my favorite kind), this is quite a journey of an album. Heavenless by Lesath

  Once upon a time, in a land far far away, there was a one-man band called Afsky . This man/band was good at what they did, and spawned a need to play live. And so Afsky became, for part of the time anyway, a more-than-one-man band. One of those people was inspired to start their own project. And so a new one-man band was born. Udånde is that band. This is not your standard "alone in my bedroom howling into the void" dsbm lofi wankery, nor is it your standard three tracks of 20 minutes apiece of minor chord progressions inspired by "a fungus growing on the dead bark of a century old holm oak in the forest outside the now abandoned village my grandfather died in" kind of thing. This is actually good. Go listen to it. life of a purist by UDÅNDE

  And so we come to the end of what has been ROSK week here. We've looked at solo albums from three members of the band, so it's only fair we take a look at ROSK itself. That is a little bit difficult, because what began as a pretty straight-forward Solstafír -worshiping blackgaze project morphed between albums into a really interesting neofolk project, which is the album we have here. Acoustic blackgaze is maybe a better way to describe this than neofolk. This dark, acoustic album tells a story of dealing with old age, loss of the loved one and humiliating solitude. This is certainly in the sad boi noizes category of Forest Wanker discs, and will not appeal to everyone, but I find it to be a really haunting album. remnants by ROSK

  So, it has been ROSK week here at the Forest Wanker compound. We've looked at albums from two of the members of the band/collective; Krzysztof Traczyk and Mateusz Szymański . Today we are taking a look at the alter ego of Mateusz Sworakowski; Ennoven .  Back in 2014, ROSK did not exist yet. But the blueprint for it did. M. Sworakowski was already making the post-atmo-emo-black that would come to define the early sound of ROSK. This is, to me, a classic album of what would become overhyped as blackgaze in the years to follow. Expansive, shimmering walls of sound, anticipatory buildup, triumphant releases. It's all there, and on this album, it is all done very very well. Redemption by Ennoven   Oh, and he has teased a new album coming sometime soonish. No Warmth by Ennoven

  Yesterday we talked about Krzysztof Traczyk from ROSK . Today we are going to talk about another member of ROSK, Mateusz Szymański. Czary (Polish for "spells") is his second album; a follow-up to 2017s self-titled EP. I am a big fan of Norse mythology. Not in a white nationalist gym-viking way. In a "whole bunch of untrustworthy gender-bending shapeshifting drunks are sort of in control of the universe and accidentally made their own destruction out of sex and lies" kind of way. That makes me a sucker for pretty much any album about Norse mythology that is more intelligent than "WE VIKINGS WE SMASH". Fortunately, this exploration of the Germanic myth cycle is not just intelligent, but inventive as well. This is some really deeply felt ambient dark folk. highly recommended both for close listening and for pushing out other sounds so you can concentrate on writing about whatever nerdy thing it is you write about. czary by krzywdy

  Christopher Sawyer is Krzysztof Traczyk of ROSK , who you will be hearing more about soon. This is his debut solo album, an ambitious piece of melancholy. To quote his own description of the album: This is my piano-based electronic debut album, which I'd been writing on and off throughout 2019 and the beginning of 2020.  It's a melancholic, ruthless account of unveiling, admitting and facing the difficult truths. Or it's about eight hours of getting wasted.   Up to you. Indeed, it is up to us to decide.  Eight Hours of Heavy Drinking by Christopher Sawyer

  78 bands. 22 countries. 8+hrs of music International post-metal / black metal / sludge etc compilation. All money made from the sale of this compilation is going to Refuge - a charity that helps women and children who have experienced domestic abuse. ( refuge.org.uk ) It is a pay-what-you-want compilation so think of it as a donation to the charity while receiving some excellent music in return. Also it's really really, good.   Refuge: Part II by Ripcord Records

  If black metal had, in an alternate reality, been invented in a Memphis trap house instead of an icy Nordic forest, Ghostmane would be Quorthon.  In a world that made sense and had taste, Marilyn Manson and nu-metal would never have existed, being subsumed entirely into the roiling chaos that is Ghostmane's mythology.  This album, like all of his work, is an acquired, uncompromising taste. Openly antagonistic to success, stardom, and genre, this is Three 6 Mafia meets NIN at the bottom of a blender. and then on the closer "Falling Down" you get a whole new thing. A stripped down voice-and-guitar echo of hurt and loneliness. ANTI-ICON by Ghostemane

  An Ocean of Light play some interesting music at the intersection of dsbm and trip-hop ish shoegaze. There is some definite hard rock guitar wankery found here, but it is mostly drowned out by the sheets and swirls of atmosphere, so I'll allow it. But only just. It definitely teeters on the edge of being basic . Besides that though, it's a fast paced whirl through some difficult emotions and uncomfortable spaces. Recorded in the home of each of the members due to the Covid-19 pandemic during the months of April and September, 2020. Ultimately enjoyable, and worth repeated spins, but unlikely to end up on my Best Of list for the year. Vestigios De Melancolía by An Ocean Of Light

Just exactly how many experimental electronic artists do you know of that are deeply invested in Aymara feminist history, Latino history, LGBT rights, and ontological arguments against Christian faith that can wring an entire album of material out of the process of buying a house in Richmond, Virginia. Yeah. One. I know what dies on that cross, and sure as hell nothing was raised. No sisters waiting at the grave, only maggots come in three days Andean crunk black metal-ish, this is a unique, and really really fun record. (ecorded 2012-2014 in Roanoke/Richmond, Virginia & Chuquiago Marka (La Paz), Bolivia)   American Drift LP (Extended Edition) [2015] by Elysia Crampton Chuquimia

  Chugga chugga chugga hate.  Chugga chugga chugga death.  Chugga chugga chugga murder. This is a real ride of an album. Heavy, dark, unrelentingly grim.  "Hell is something you carry around with you, not somewhere you go." - N. Gaiman "And starward drifts the stricken world, lone in unalterable gloom, dead, with a universe for tomb, dark, and to vaster darkness whirled." (G. Sterling) Man, Abstracter REALLY needs to put out a new album. I really want to know what the follow-up to this masterpiece would be. Cinereous Incarnate by Abstracter

  Proof that even the most KVLT of Norwegians are tired of paint-by-numbers black metal gatekeeping, Misotheist are back with a three track album of wonderfully off-kilter black metal to remind you that you can never go back, only forwards. Like Kannustaa yesterday this is proper black metal, with all the boxes ticked and all the kvlt approved forms filled out. But like Kannustaa, this is not mere kvlt-worship. This is new black metal for a new age. To be honest, this is most likely going to end up as my personal black metal AoTY. It would take a really impressive feat to top this. For the Glory of your Redeemer by Misotheist

  This is a pretty unique, and pretty great, take on raw black metal. Instead of changing the whole genre, they inject some much needed humanity and heartbreak into the now-tired tropes of black metal. This is not maudlin sad boi noizes however. This is furious war-like black metal that just happens to have gotten it's heart broken earlier today. The penultimate track 'A Plea For Solitude' is probably the one that comes closest to being straight out dsbm sad boi noizes, and even it is a ferocious cauldron of black metal fury. Kannustaa by Kannustaa

 "This work is dedicated to Rumi and Andrei Tarkovsky. It is inspired by the poem "Buy Me From My Words" by Rumi taken from the collection "Love Is A Stranger" and the movie "Stalker" directed by Andrei Tarkovsky." Believe it or not, that descriptive invocation is the least weird thing about this album.  Discordant, unsettling, apocalyptic. Like the sound of a free-jazz band featuring guest vocals from R2-D2. This is absolutely a love it or hate it kind of experience, and to be completely honest, I am not sure where I land. Either way, you should give it a listen. The End Of The World...Finally by Samuel Goff & Mariam Rezaei

  I find myself disappointed by almost all "traditional" doom metal, stoner metal, etc.. There is only so much lazy Sabbath worship one man can withstand. There are just way too many bands taking Sabbath more seriously then they themselves do . ÂGE ⱡ TOTAL however, rise above the tired tropes of the lazy masses to deliver Stoner-Doom-Psych-Metal that is actually listenable for those of us who have not inhaled all the purple smoke in the world. In doing so, they join the elite pantheon of Forest Wanker approved stoner metal bands, taking their rightful place alongside Sleep , Bongripper , Bell Witch , and Boris . ÂGE ⱡ TOTAL by ÂGE ⱡ TOTAL

  Somewhere deep in a cavern the size of a continent a single guitar howls a buzzsaw of anguish. Discordant high-hats reverberate off the slick wet walls. Deep below, lava roils ceaselessly, making every step perilous. Welcome back to the void. Hallucinations of destruction and decay abound here. This is not nice music for nice people. This is not-nice music for not-nice people. Is this nerdy prog metal? Math-Death? What exactly is going on here? Dunno, but it's got a shit ton of atmosphere, so who cares! Vacuum γ-Noise Transition by DSKNT

  Twin brothers from Siberia, making amazing atmospheric black metal, unabashedly pagan, unrelentingly modern. Like all three prior albums, I am convinced that you could strip out all the traditional instruments and still have a blisteringly good black metal album. Likewise, you could strip out the black metal instrumentation and still have a great dark folk album. But the two together is what makes Grima what it is. Esoteric nature worship made with electricity and digitally shot around the world in an instant. Atmospheric black metal is a genre full of tropes and cliches, and very few stand-out bands. I am happy to say that Grima continue to be one of those leading lights in the forest. Rotten Garden by Grima

  Look at that album cover. Just look at it. How could I not buy that album? Right? Without knowing a single thing about it, that cover says "Forest Wanker, you're going to like what's in here". What is in there defies all classification. Indonesian dark folk on homemade instruments channeled through droning Japanoise laptop worship and a firm grasp of the history of musique concrète . This is one of the nicest, loveliest, most sinister, ritual sacrifice soundtracks I've ever heard. Utterly unique, and more than a little bit spooky. Sujud by Senyawa

  It seems that icy northern forests are back in fashion. Skeletal wolves lurk hungry amongst the withered trees. A frozen hand protrudes from the permafrost. Albums with covers weirdly reminiscent of early 00's alt-rock slide into your DMs. Once again, I find myself willing to forgive the questionable chanted clean vocals that are the only distraction on an otherwise stellar album. The Ruins of Beverast know only one thing - atmosphere. That is amply on display here ,and the fact that the atmosphere they've chosen is a throwback to GRIMKVLT 90's black metal is 100% okay by me. This is a stellar album, and I predict it will end up on a lot of AoTY lists. The Thule Grimoires by The Ruins Of Beverast

  Folky doom that sounds like a creepy forest in a B-movie.  Psychedelic neo-classical music for bog witches. Free-jazz interpretation of Tacitus' Germania . Ancient Baltic pagan earth-cult myth cycle about destroying yourself accidentally through drowning your slaves in the water you should be using to put out your burning house. All this and more are yours for the taking on this, the weirdest doom album I've heard in a long while. Death Cult by Völur

  Lukas Feigelfeld has made three short and one feature-length films. I have enjoyed them all, and finally, with Hagazussa, he is getting a little recognition with the general movie-going public. The synopsis for his new film is "Paranoia & Superstition in 15th Century Europe." The dark legend of the young woman Albrun and her struggle to preserve her own sanity, and tries to explore the fine line between ancient magic, faith and madness at a time when pagan beliefs in witches and nature spirits spread fear and terror in the minds of the rural population. MMMD make heavy, low frequency drone focused on texture and atmosphere. Making them the perfect band to make the OST.  Enjoy the creepy!   Hagazussa by MMMD