40 of the best - part 1 of 4 40: Fiat Nox: Demanifestation (Hymns of Destruction and Nothingness)Crawling Chaos Records Fits comfortably inside the modern penchant of modern extreme metal for oppressive aesthetics, favouring dissonance and density as ends in themselves. At the borders of death, black, and doom metal where listeners are permitted to... Continue Reading →

Frost CladA Hunter’s Delight Frost Clad embody so many of dungeon synth’s internal contradictions it’s actually rather difficult to keep track. ‘A Hunter’s Delight’ positions itself as a reverential dedication to the simple pleasures of the hunter gatherer, via self-consciously naïve cover art in the aesthetic of a children’s fairy story, and a small clutch... Continue Reading →

Crown of Ascension: Transmission ErrorsOut 25th November on Xenoglossy Black metal’s muse of desolate natural wilderness finds a ready kindred spirit in the cold indifference of the algorithm. Pervasive and unremitting, it is perhaps the most direct interaction most of have on day to day basis with the structural dictates of technology as it exists... Continue Reading →

SkyThala: Boreal DespairOut 18th November on I, Voidhanger Records Let’s be right about this, ‘Boreal Despair’, the debut full length from SkyThala, is a Weird album. The capitalisation is deliberate, because SkyThala’s quirks are entirely deliberate. This is a premeditated attempt to turn black metal conventions on their head, frustrating our expectations in the process.... Continue Reading →

The further listening series He knows the Moon, he knows the stars, and he knows the Milky Way The year was 1991, and pop culture was overheating within a brume of historic flux. British rave culture was bursting into the mainstream, sparking a media and political frenzy that made the US of the Satanic Panic... Continue Reading →

Amon Acid: CosmogonyOut 18th November on Helter Skelter Productions/Regain Records Amon Acid offer their latest album ‘Cosmogony’ as the continuity candidate for their by now signature style. A blend of swirling Hawkwind-esque space rock, weighty occultist stoner doom riffing, and ponderously psychedelic melodic licks are all intact across this lengthy release, but all are whipped... Continue Reading →

Ayyur: Hidden Rooms Sessions IOut 11th November on Xenoglossy ‘Hidden Rooms Sessions I’ is the first instalment of a new trilogy from this Tunisian outfit, consisting of obscurantist, atmospheric black metal of a decidedly drab aesthetic. But given the sheer quantity of artists and releases that fall under these banners the descriptors seem almost superfluous.... Continue Reading →

Galicia: PrecipiceOut 21st October on Hessian Firm An odd concoction greets the ear on Galicia’s debut album ‘Precipice’. Hailing from California, this outfit whip up a strangely hypnotic interplay between the informal violence of war metal and the melancholic melodic aspirations of Nordic black metal, employing elements of death and blackened thrash as mediators supervising... Continue Reading →