Ringare: Thrall of Winter’s Majesty (2021) Somewhere between the ghostly shadow-music of Lustre, the out and out assault of static that is Paysage d’Hiver, and the excessive meanderings of Midnight Odyssey, lies Pennsylvania's Ringare. There is also – rather inevitably for contemporary atmospheric black metal – a distinctively Summoning groove to some of the percussion... Continue Reading →

By the mid-2000s, all the major branches of metal's family tree were drooping, weighted with creative fatigue. As the newest offshoot to establish itself, extreme metal was very much under the gaze of the mainstream. Albums were becoming larger, both in length but also texturally, with layers of complexity and orchestration being applied in ways... Continue Reading →

Ischemic: Ischemic (2021) 2021 is as good a year as any for a statement of personal intent. A time to take stock and declare our presence to the world. This is the subtext I’m reading into Ischemic’s self-titled second LP in any case. The fact that it’s self-titled implies a clarity of purpose, a degree... Continue Reading →

N + Ehnahre: Jacob (2021) Bostonian experimentalists Ehnahre are joined by German drone guitarist Hellmut Neidhardt (aka N) for their latest album ‘Jacob’. It’s a lengthy hodgepodge of post hardcore, drone, ambient, and garden variety experimental offcuts. The result is another keyless foray into the limits of tone, essentially picking up where early Swans left... Continue Reading →

Boiling any music down to its rawest ingredients is a near constant compulsion found nested within fully fleshed out genres. There will always be artists that exist in defiance of a genre’s aspirations toward coffeehouse talking point status. Work enough jazz, enough esotericism and self-referential nods to the favoured music theory of the day, and... Continue Reading →

Cisza: Ritual of the Wind (2021) The new single from the Polish outfit known as Cisza sees another tight blend of energetic black metal set against a subtle backdrop of post rock. ‘Ritual of the Wind’ carries forward the best elements of their debut EP ‘If It Is True What the Prophets Write’ (2017) and... Continue Reading →

After the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, movements within metal tended to follow the same lifecycle of gestation, consolidation, and renaissance. After this creative and artistic peak genres would invariably meet a fork in the road. One path was to court major label attention, who would in turn dictate the terms of the metal’s... Continue Reading →

Kodu: Unusta kõik (2021) Unusta kõik – the debut album from the Estonian black metallers known as Kodu – is one of those albums that adopts a specific philosophy of composition, and uses this to frame the music writing process. Said philosophy is at its most explicit on the closing track ‘Laotus’. A muffled and... Continue Reading →

Olde: Pilgrimage (2021) The dirty little not-so-secret of stoner doom is that it’s an atmospheric genre at heart. This does not preclude the possibility of chunky riffs by any means, but part of the appeal is the immersive experience, a broad brushstroke of themes and moods as opposed to the forensic riff tessellation and melodic... Continue Reading →