Zora: Scream Your Hate
Out 28th February on Great Dane Records (originally released in 2016)
Direct, linear death metal benefits the form by stripping away any unnecessary fat, leaving a precision timed device of aggressive, energetic percussive noise. The format may be simple, but the playing is precise, with pin sharp rhythms forcing what are at times surprisingly commercial riffs into rigid units of efficient violence. The album behaves like an ancestor of Gothenburg in intent if not in spirit, meaning that the sugar coated melodies that the style is known for are largely absent, leaving instead the physicality of groove, playful and accessible cadential phrasing, and a meatier production job usually associated with populist death metal. Despite these references to a more generalised style of contemporary death metal, Zora work in deathgrind riffs alongside a latent traditional hardcore underpinning, all delivered with enough parsimony to avoid being misunderstood. Mechanistic, rewardingly simple yet intelligently executed, a surprisingly refreshing rebrand of an old template, made slightly more remarkable given that the album is nearly a decade old.
Nekyros: Nyxian Path
Out 7th March on Northern Silence Productions
Post Gorgoroth melodies meet the tight hardcore contouring of Weigedood, resulting in something that unfortunately lacks the momentum of either. Individual runs are pleasing enough, with basic galloping riffs retaining a sense of forward motion, undergirding generic but well placed harmonic currents that bridge the gap between swelling darkness and high adventure, something that black metal at large is still latently partial to. The music is elongated at the molecular level, with individual lead refrains being surprisingly well thought out as they extend out over numerous bars whilst retaining an intuitive cohesion and accessibility. However, the driving flow of the album, including the vocal phrasing, seems to be borrowed from post hardcore in its informal approach to structure and transition. Track two ‘The Entrance Pt. I’ bucks this trend somewhat in its folk metal reinterpretation of funeral doom, before exploding into a mid-paced barrage of trancelike forward motion. But the overly emotive vocals, the lack of direction at the macro level, and a loose approach to the elements binding each idea together mar what is otherwise immersive and intelligently written black metal.
Mylingen: Svartsyn
Out 7th March, self-released
Bland and inoffensive concoction of light melodic black metal on the border of pop metal. The dreamy, atmospheric twaddle of modern progressive and post metal hangs over this release like a rash, reaching for a tonal language comforting to a modern audience whilst retaining a degree of ethereal menace, thus allowing the listener to experience a simulation of darkness or horror without ever having to engage with music that actually addresses these topics at face value. All is neutered, the rougher edges shaved off for the sake of delivering a sickly sweet facsimile of heaviness in every sense of the word. Despite the occasional nod to extreme metal, the distorted vocals, and attempts to drape the music in a sense of gloom, one can’t help but be reminded of Dream Theater. All the musicality, talent, and no doubt good intentions end in music substantively more complex than any of the actual ideas it is able to convey, its adventurousness a superficial affectation, cloaking music that gestures toward the profound whilst having no conception of how to convert its raw data into anything approximating this.
Cercle du Chêne: Récits d’Automne et de Chasse
Out 21st March on Antiq
Essentially a collection of ideas circling the neofolk/dungeon synth/fantasy ambient territory with a doom metal album attached to it. In this regard it is not entirely unsuccessful, managing to blend a sense of theatre and occasion with artistic restraint, avoiding the common pitfall of modern folk adjacent extreme metal in its over cluttering to. Choral chants accompany aggressive mid-range distorted vocals, folk instrumentation takes on the lead role – in a manner akin to Summoning – with guitars fleshing out the background texture and adding muscle. Drums adopt a militaristic pacing, thus lending everything a sense of structure and purpose. There is a focus here that benefits the music greatly, allowing ideas to air out. Themes are clearly communicated to the listener, with tracks following a simple, linear, yet imaginative narrative thread. In this sense it benefits from a coating of minimalism despite the orchestration and rich timbral range deployed across this album. Ideas are basic but well developed, with each lead refrain being met with satisfying developmental iterations, thus complicating the picture, granting the music substance and gravity despite the pleasing austerity of the overall package.
Nightwalker: The Eternal Flame of Death
Out 21st March on Amor Fati
Simplistic and sloppy black metal, inoffensive in execution and content. Open strumming, light dissonance, mid-paced blast-beast and funereal marches, all par for the course but pleasing in their basic but logical execution. Nightwalker find a way to inject tension by simply dropping the tempo and allowing single sustained notes to ring out as an after echo of each riff. Something only resolved by the addition of developmental material. Restrained but aggressive vocals with light but roomy reverb add an undertone of menace, the effect being one of depressive darkness as opposed to naturalistic wonder. Structurally and thematically sound, perhaps only held back by the generic nature of each individual idea. Whilst space is made for at least the possibility that something might happen here – sloppy drum fills, an organic flow from riff to riff – the reality of the final product lacks a lasting sense of purpose beyond a competent restatement of black metal’s compositional norms.
Rothadás: Töviskert… a kísértés örök érzete… lidércharang
Out 21st March on Me Saco Un Ojo/Pulversied
Death/doom formed of riffs so basic one could admire the audacity alone were it not for the tedium of having to endure them. One could forgive such shameless simplicity were it not for the fact that it amounts to very little at the macro level. There is no lasting gestalt or flow to these tracks that would indicate any conscious thought beneath the austere presentation. Attempts to complicate the picture are equally unwelcome, usually taking the form of euphoric rock arpeggios transposed into minor keys to disguise their trivialities. One can sense hints of a more considered, sequenced industrialism a-la Desecresy at certain intervals. But such moments are so dispersed amongst endless bars of chugging, rudimentary doom riffing that serve little purpose other than to exist that it’s hardly worth considering this album on that basis alone.
Hate Meditations 
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