The fault lines between black and death metal have always been a curious place. In one sense artists operating in this realm do exactly what they say on the tin; marrying the soaring melodrama of black metal with the disjointed staccato aggression of death metal. But taking a broader, historical view, it shines a light on... Continue Reading →

Paysage d'Hiver: Im Wald (2020) After a lengthy silence, bar a couple of split EPs, pillars of raw European black metal Paysage d’Hiver return with ‘Im Wald’, which sees this artist graduate beyond the realms of obscure, half-finished demos into the world of full-length albums, with all the production values that entails. Emphasis on ‘length’... Continue Reading →

Polemicist: Zarathustrian Impressions (2019) After Satan and Lovecraft, and of course Tolkien, my boy Nietzsche is probably the most influential figure at work in that complex and ill-defined milieu that is the Philosophy of Metal. But as with any theme frequently delved into by the multitude, there is a stark contrast between surface level and... Continue Reading →

It’s the early 2000s, and the mainstream face of metal has gone through one of the weirdest decades of its existence. The birth of groove metal, the rise of alt rock, the decline of apocalyptic self-assurance that characterised the 1980s; all took their toll on metal of all forms to varying degrees throughout the 90s.... Continue Reading →

Dawn of a Dark Age: La Tavola Osca (2020) ‘La Tavola Osca’ is the *checks notes* sixth studio album since 2014 from the Italian black metal solo project known Dawn of a Dark Age. Previous releases were a tribute to the six elements, each album consisting of six songs, and the first four albums being... Continue Reading →

More notes from the b-tier, this time from two artists that – aside from some early flukes that would endure the test of time – were entirely unremarkable when compared to the crop of acts from the early to mid-1990s. But what is remarkable about these two artists in particular is the lasting popularity they went on... Continue Reading →

Black Funeral: Scourge of Lamashtu (2020) Black Funeral continue their quest to shed their idiosyncratic, atmospheric tendencies for the sake of furthering melodicism within raw black metal with the release of their latest album ‘Scourge of Lamashtu’. There is an undeniable surrealist quality at the heart of this album, which finds expression through the keyboards... Continue Reading →

Sadistic Drive: Anthropophagy (2020) After the ambitious demo ‘Street Cannibal Gluttony’, Finnish surrealist gore revellers Sadistic Drive have added a little water to the dense wiring of their morbid death metal, left the thing to air out some, and returned with a relatively spacious full length by the name of ‘Anthropophagy’. I say this is... Continue Reading →

This might seem an odd pairing at first glance, but it could be pretty instructive when looking at the cross pollination of punk and metal throughout the 1980s. The Misfits’ lurch into hardcore punk from their patented doo-wop emulation would prove to be a formative moment for many extreme metal artists to come. Equally, Cro-Mags... Continue Reading →

A while ago I found myself watching this interview, in which Proscriptor McGovern describes some of the lyrical themes on Absu's self-titled album released back 2009: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bukOwH07_h4 Proscriptor is clearly passionate about the material, and this shows in the music of Absu. But this interview serves to illustrate out point pretty well. In it, he... Continue Reading →