Trumpet of Amdusias

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]

  I know nothing about this band. I am happy in my ignorance. I have nothing to go on, no notion of what to expect. No accidentally read review coloring my perceptions. No terrible internet voices telling me what I should be listening to or for. Just an album. With a cool cover. This band is at least one Russian  with a picture of Karelia, and at least a 4 track recorder. They(?) also have a solid idea of what they are trying to accomplish. Not just creeping forest atmosphere, but some post-metal triumphantism, but in another non-standard key. Lower, more chugga chugga aggressive. Hints of the kind of thrum thrum thrum grooves that prog bands get into when they get out of their own way. Still sad boi noizes for sure, but not 100% sad boi pass me the razor and the vodka dsbm. More like "maybe I'll just sit on the train tracks all night and if I pass out and get run over oh well" sad boi noizes. I by VzoR

  TRVE KVLT BLEK METAL. Black Metal Without Adjectives. However you want to signal that a band or an album is orthodox, foundational, traditional, what have you - this is it. 100% blast beats, tremolo picking, and wraith-rasp shrieks. This is crudeness as an art form. Spectral Wound are now the keepers of the black flame. There is zero nostalgia here. This is true modern black metal, but also exactly what 90's black metal was.  I'm going to go ahead and predict that this will be my black metal AotY. It would take truly herculean effort to make better black metal than this. A Diabolic Thirst by SPECTRAL WOUND

NOTE: There are two bands called misotheist. This review is about the antifascist blackened thrash misotheist, not the Norwegian black metal misotheist .  "Irrationalism also depends on the cult of action for action's sake. Action being beautiful in itself, must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation. Therefore culture is suspect insofar as it is identified with critical attitudes. Distrust of the intellectual world has always been a symptom of Ur-Fascism, from Goering's alleged statement ('When I hear talk of culture I reach for my gun') to the frequent use of expressions such as 'degenerate intellectuals,' 'eggheads,' 'effete snobs,' 'universities are a nest of reds.' The official Fascist intellectuals were mainly engaged in attacking modern cultural and the liberal intelligentsia for having betrayed traditional values." - Umberto Eco, "Ur-Fascism" June 22

  AvantCore Anonymous is a recording project based in Asheville, North Carolina, organized and produced by local musician and producer TJ Burns . The objective, as disclosed on AvantCore’s Bandcamp page, is to provide a means “for Asheville musicians to anonymously recording extreme genres of music ranging from Death and Black Metal, grindcore, hardcore, blackened post-punk, and more”.  So far there is one release.  Welcome to Ass-Vile. Here's some death metal brootality. Skull pounding drums? check Bowel-shaking bass? check Vocals delivered by a rabid brown bear? check 80s cock rock level fretwork? check Infectious head banging grooves? check It's a name your own price release, so show your love and grab a copy. Violated Grave by Violated Grave

  ГНЁТ is Maxim Levin, and he is prolific. In the last 18 months he has released 7 EPs, 2 LPs, and 2 demo tapes. This is the second demo tape, and the most polished version of his particular take on modern atmospheric black metal. Alternating between creepy Troll -like plinking and dissonant guitar weirdness, tied together by the standard goblin-screech vocals, this is some absolute madness. I am looking forward to seeing what else he comes up with in 2021. Оковы плоти (2021) by ГНЁТ

  Well holy shit. No one saw this coming. Debut albums are often pretty good. Rarely are they AotY contenders. However, this album, translated as Of Carnal Torment and The Wandering of the Soul , certainly is. Is it a super group? Kind of. Except the Polish metal scene doesn't really work in the way you might expect. Many musicians are in overlapping projects of all sorts, so instead of a bunch of steady bands and an occasional supergroup, you have a spider web of permutations. The permutation here is Priest (the drummer from Odraza ), Wyrd (the touring bassist for Blaze of Perdition ), S. (the vocalist of Blaze of Perdition ), and newcomer Renz playing guitar. The result of this recipe is essentially the album everyone was upset that Blaze of Perdition didn't release last year. Melodic, riff-filled, unmistakably Eastern European. Add in a neckbreaking pace and a bunch of gang vocals, sprinkle liberally with samples and you get something furious, cavernous, melodic, melanchol

  I am a complete sucker for atmospheric sad boi noizes. Anyone who reads this blog knows that. Anything that conjures apocalyptic horror movie vibes, wandering alone in foggy forests, or being a little bit drunk in a dark house with the lights out is pretty much my drug. Needless to say that makes me a pretty die-hard fan of Quebec's Nordicwinter . They are a one-person act that is the very embodiment of atmoblack and dsbm. Unrelentingly grim, like some musical version of the WH40K lore, there is absolutely no subtlety, nuance, or riffs here. This is desolation, the sound. That is not everyone's cup of tea to be sure. But it is mine, and this is a pretty damn fine cup of sorrow. Drink up Sorrow by Nordicwinter

  Mesarthim are, to put it mildly, divisive. They upset trve kvlt purist by being spacey and synth driven. They upset dungeon synth goblins for being upbeat and danceable. The make synthwave aesthetes cringe by being too abrasive. They make a lot of old people think of terrible industrial dance videos under bridges... I personally think they're awesome. Like a black metal Depeche Mode or a late 1990s Industrial-Pop-Metal band that was actually good. This EP is a solid addition to my "Outerspace Fight Club Soundtrack" playlist. Vacuum Solution (E.P.) by Mesarthim

  Dance music for Forest Wankers? Well, It looks like I'll be buying this entire back catalog. Calling this post-metal is walking a fine line really. This is straight up Dead Can Dance worship filtered through a Russian atmospheric black metal lens.  Going a step further into the electronic part than Mesarthrim , Elderwind , or Lustre , to a place on the edge of both Trance and Dark Ambient, this is pretty intriguing stuff. Arcanist by Nebula Orionis

  Hailing from Santiago, Chile, Ermita play a very weird, but compelling mix of doom metal and ambient goth rock. It is unusual for me to not have a comparison to make with a band, but this has me stumped. This is a highly idiosyncratic band, and every time I think I have them pinned down, I'm thrown for a loop. But, if you like doomy goth rock, sad boi noizes, and have a generalized unhealthy obsession with crushed black velvet, red candles, and cloved cigarettes, this is an album you should give a listen to. Finis Gloriae by ERMITA

  Channeling the eternal punk spirit, Wrekan gleefully describe themselves as "Primitive black metal. No talent - no masters."  So I seem to be on a trve kvlt raw black metal throwback kick recently. Here's another entry in that column. Following a demo and an EP last year, one-person Swedish melodic black project Wrekan are now on the scene with a full-length release. A really good release, at that. Self-described as “ sometimes ventures into more atmospheric black metal territory, but nevertheless delivers some raw frustration and anger. ”   I dig this. It's muddy and raw and grimy. Gevurah by Wrekan

  "Une balle dans le pied" is the lacerating new EP from THROANE, the unsettling sonic incarnation of lauded multi-disciplinary artist Dehn Sora. This latest work finds THROANE engaged in a particularly violent form of void surgery, as the diseased tissue of nightmarish Black Metal, wall-of-sound Doom, Industrial, Noise and Dark Ambient is ripped, reformed and reanimated into a lightless chimera of savage beauty. In Sora’s own words: “THROANE is a project based on instinct. ‘Une balle dans le pied’ translates as ‘A bullet in the foot’, a French expression symbolizing the act of sabotaging oneself. Two tracks, forming one, exploring the language of rhythm and forming a bridge for future full-lengths. As with each release, this composition is the fruit of a short time, an accumulation leading to the need for explosion.” Cover artwork depicts Sora's sister, in echo of previous releases featuring close individuals and the personally symbolic: “Working as a

  Harsh Raw Black Metal meets melodic black metal in an alley to smoke meth and start a bar fight with one of their ex-fiance's new boyfriends. Fans of Lamp of Murmuur will find a lot to like on this album. Finnish black metal in execution, this is a nice kaleidoscope of glistening guitars and crashing cymbals, ambient and eerie atmospherics, raw, icy vocals. Think Taake , Windir and Forteresse . Blistering speed, but not just speed. Precision hate. Akt II: Fall by Narzissus

  Spain, despite being my adopted home, does not score highly on my musical destinations list. There is (particularly outside Euskal Herria) a serious lack of metal bands that are not retreading now 50 year old tropes. To me, that makes Perennial Isolation all the more interesting. Depressive atmo-black is a rare commodity  in Spain, so to find an example as good as this is a real treat for me. I really am blown away to have a solid contender for my atmo-black AotY from Spain. I don't even know what else to say about it. Excellent dual guitar work over effortless blast-beat double kick drum work. Growls, chants, soaring orchestral bits. Emotive ethereal passages interspersed with crushing riffs a post or even tech-metal band would be proud of. Just wow. Portraits by Perennial Isolation

 The other day I talked about Forest Shrine , the dungeon forest synth side project of A.Virdeus. This is his main project, dedicated to exploring fantasy versions of what his home region of Värend in Småland, Sweden would have been like in various alternative timelines.  Now, let's be clear, this is ALSO dungeon synth. It is more informed by black metal aesthetics and tropes, but it is still squarely in the dungeon synth genre. (I find myself listening to a lot more of this genre now that I am tied to a desk. Thanks covid for making all my outdoor hobbies potentially deadly to my ancient neighbors) Urheimat by Werendia

  Once upon a time, on the shores of Lake Lagoda, outside Saint Petersburg, there were three friends. These three friends played instrumental post-black metal. They played it well. They sort of invented a genre - where French blackgaze and instrumental post-metal met, and created a celestial cacophony. They called themselves Trna . Across three albums they created some very serious and ethereal post-metal (which I should probably talk about here at some point). But, somewhere along the way two of the three decided to explore less salubrious topics, and formed a side project for this more morose, depressing music. That side project is Olhava . This is their second album. It is magnificent. I'm not going to try to sell you on it. Just listen. With a cameo fom Austin Lunn of Panopticon on track 3, this is quite the album. Multi-instrumentalist Andrey Novozhilov and drummer Timur Yusupov describe their new journey with words of thoughtful contemplation: “When winter is just starting

  Okay, so Dungeon Synth is a weird weird weird genre. It revolves around black metal musicians making Enya tribute albums, essentially. Taking black metal's primitive, ethereal and, often medieval aesthetics and applying them to ambient soundscapes is the name of the game. Classic dungeon synth releases focus largely on recreating medieval musical styles and textures with synthesizers. More modern dungeon synth branches out a bit, into more traditional black metal preoccupations like forests, hating monotheists, and wearing leather. However the genre's original ethos of foreboding eeriness remains an important foundation.   A. Virdeus is the person behind Forest Shrine, a much more ambient and dungeon synth offshoot of his Werendia project. Whereas Werendia (which will appear here promptly) is an atmospheric or ambient black metal project, full of snarling vocals and guitar work, Forest Shrine is pure synth madness. Forest flavored synth madness of course. Forest Shrine b

  This is an atmo-black / dark ambient one man band from the Republic of Karelia in the Russian Federation. A three track EP is what we have so far, and it is a really rather nice one. There have been some very strong albums this year blending atmospheric black metal with funeral doom and folk music. This is a very strong contender in that arena. Short, but intense, this EP leaves me looking for more soon, and diving into the back catalog, of which fortunately there are multiple albums. Остов by Рожь