Necropolis #54 - Judas Goat: Jason Hans joins from the Texan blackened thrash band Judas Goat. Their debut album, 'Incantations of the Black Mass', was just released this past Halloween and is a tribute to the first wave of black metal. In addition to being a great vocalist, Jason Hans is also the prominent underground... Continue Reading →
Beats and yelling from: Crown of Ascension, Orphique, Neptunian Maximalism
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 →
Beats and yelling from: SkyThala, Ofdrykkja, Förgjord
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 →
On Biosphere’s broadcasts to the periphery
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 →
Beats and yelling from: Amon Acid, Kamra, Judas Goat
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 →
Beats and yelling from: Ayyur, Zvylpwkua, Hordous
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 →
Beats and yelling from: Galicia, Forlesen, Vévaki
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 →
Hobsbawm on retromania
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 →
Beats and yelling from: Tsalal, Psionic Madness, Bran
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 →
Criticism as an act of creation
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 →
Hate Meditations 