Armchair rhetoric on extreme metal
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 →
Somehow, in the field of culture as elsewhere, the results of bourgeois society and historical progress, long conceived as a co-ordinated forward march of the human mind, were different from what had been expected. The first great liberal historian of German literature, Gervinus, had argued before 1848 that the (liberal and national) ordering of German... Continue Reading →
Tsalal: AgnosthesiaOut 13th October, self-released Akin to witnessing the emergence of black metal from the primordial soup of noise itself, the new demo from blackened drone project Tsalal undulates between the most basic of raw black metal structures, into disjointed noise, minimalist industrial, and dark ambient. Melodic qualities in the traditionalist black metal sense do... Continue Reading →
The other day I came across this musician’s take on what the purpose of music criticism is. The basic premise being that music criticism is an entirely distinct craft from the creation of music itself. Despite the requirement for intimate knowledge of what they are critiquing, talent for punchy writing, and regular engagement in their... Continue Reading →
It’s not hard to see why Greek extreme metal is currently undergoing a renaissance. Whether it be latter day Varathron or Medieval Demon, Katavasia, Caedes Cruenta, Synteleia, the rich melodicism and unabashed melodrama of this style has spread well beyond the borders of Greece itself, growing into a significant pillar of modern metal. The cross... Continue Reading →
Hate Meditations 