Armchair rhetoric on extreme metal
MournholdOut 15th May on True Cult Records Following a promising debut that stitched a foggy haze of thrash and melodic death metal with a thread of black metal, Tyrannus push this loose alliance to breaking point and gamble it all on the second album. Approaching โMournholdโ is akin to taking the first few sips of... Continue Reading →
Mรถhrkvlth: Gwenojennoรน An Ankounac'hOut 5th May on Antiq Sickly sweet post hardcore rendered in black metal form. Every riff geared toward emotional catharsis, achieving nothing as a result given the fact that no room is left for conflict, tension, strife, contrast. The total lack of patience demonstrable in the melodic signature of modern black metal... Continue Reading →
Permit me to perform a magic trick. Having not listened to a note of Darkthrone's latest album, behold, as I begin typing a review: โanother fearless, authentic, and infectiously fun tour through classic 70s and 80s metal, track X leans more into the classic doom direction of the last three albums whilst track Y takes... Continue Reading →
Lรบgubres Devaneios De Abismos E SombrasOut 5th May on Haloran Records Portugalโs Grievance have long been a holdout of authentic second wave black metal most obviously cut from the cloth of โ but never limited to โ early Burzum. Here we see them pivot in a more depressive direction, but one digested through an idiosyncratic... Continue Reading →
แฝฯฮบฮฟฯ แผฮบฮปฮตฮบฯแฟถฮฝOut 30th April on Zombi Danz Records After five years of silence, Greeceโs Caedes Cruenta return with an unprecedented document dump of material, spanning an hour and a half in length, a runtime only permissible after the extended period of silence they have subjected us to since the celebrated โOf Ritual Necrophagia and Mysterious... Continue Reading →
The First GeometryOut 26th April, self-released Somewhere between the arcane mysticism of formative Greek black metal and the barbaric militarism of early Graveland sits this self-released debut. Richly textured keyboard lines dominate the landscape, leaving the guitars to flesh out a more visceral physicality, with ponderous, mid-paced drums furnishing all with a threateningly understated momentum.... Continue Reading →
Darkthrone just released a new album, so Shelley and Jason thought they would get together with some beers and not talk about it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ly9tz651OAU
Words by Jason Kiss Jacques Ranciรจreโs notion of the โdistribution of the sensibleโ offers a productive theory for probing the black metal phenomenon. Ranciรจre defines the distribution of the sensible as โthe system of self-evident facts of sense perception that simultaneously discloses the existence of something in common and the delimitations that define the respective... Continue Reading →
Kirjad sรตgedate kรผlastOut 25th April on Antiq Five years since their debut and a very different beast has wriggled free of the Kรตdu moniker. Where โUnusta kรตikโ unfolded a jagged, dissonant array of plodding black metal, at once surreal and haunting despite the cold, mechanistic approach, the long awaited follow up broadens the aesthetic spectrum... Continue Reading →
Werwolf: Satanic TerrorOut 24th April on Dominance of Darkness As a bare bones mixture of early Graveland and Celtic Frost via โUnder a Funeral Moonโ offcuts one could do worse than inspecting this debut from Germanyโs Werwolf. Through its very primitivism it projects strength and confidence, and from there a captivating spirit that almost compensates... Continue Reading →
Hate Meditations 