It’s taken a couple of weeks to articulate the sour taste left after reading another article from The Guardian on metal’s onward push to diversify. I certainly don’t bear any of the bands featured in this article any ill will, or their fans for that matter. Despite the important message behind these artists’ work, their... Continue Reading →

Article by Jason, aka Lonegoat from the Necroclassical project Goatcraft and the host of the Necropolis podcast Music is the only form of art which is expressed in time more than in space. In Kant’s philosophy, time and space are a priori, meaning that these fundamental aspects of reality are grounded in intuition. Our understanding of... Continue Reading →

Deathvoid: Semaphore (4th June 2021) “Rawness” is a relative quality. This is known. So when I say the latest demo from the Italian/Swiss trio known as Deathvoid is “raw black metal”, I am left deeply unsatisfied with the descriptor. ‘Semaphore’ not only operates on the borders between black metal and noise, it is a noise... Continue Reading →

Why a farewell to Norway? I write this piece with nothing but my usual good will to Norwegian black metal. But there’s a sense in which the hegemony of Norway as the central creation myth of black metal is beginning to slip with each new generation of fans. The allure of the scene, replete with... Continue Reading →

Anatomia: Corporeal Torment (2021) Veteran Japanese death/doomsters Anatomia return with their latest LP ‘Corporeal Torment’, and what a treat it is. If previous efforts from this outfit were a compellingly creepy blend of Autopsy and diSEMBOWELMENT, this album sees them flirt with drone. The underlying formula may still be intact, but Anatomia seem intent on... Continue Reading →

Given my unhinged tirade of last month of thought it pertinent to check back in on this whimsical little dungeon synth project. And sure enough, after less than a month I am two albums behind on Garden Gnome’s output. Notice the variations on a theme with the album titles, ‘True Gnomewegian Dungeon Synth’, and now... Continue Reading →

30 Immolated ; 16 Returned: The Burial of the Dead - Excerpts from Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring (2021) It’s seems oddly fitting that avant-garde metal has led us to Stravinsky. Taken one way, 30 Immolated ; 16 Returned’s latest EP ‘The Burial of the Dead - Excerpts from Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring’ is... Continue Reading →

Josh Homme of Kyuss and Queens of the Stone Age notoriety famously rejected the stoner rock label. Rife with subtext that this is music exclusively by and for stoners, to be enjoyed whilst high. But it seems the more you resist, the stickier the tagline becomes. Kyuss are now considered one of the archetypal stoner... Continue Reading →

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Dickensian cliches aside, the 1990s were perhaps the most forward looking and adventurous years for metal. Sure, we could analyse this decade as the regicide of death metal and thrash at the hands of alt metal (and later nu metal), we could analyse... Continue Reading →

Cleavercult: Promo (2021) 2021 sees the release of two new promo tracks from Greek death metal outfit Cleavercult. Despite the invocations to a gore aesthetic in the band’s moniker and logo, the tracks themselves stick to a traditional sense of melody which – combined with the fluid and imaginative approach to rhythmic interchanges – grants... Continue Reading →