This year’s Hellfest saw our nostalgia complex reach near fever pitch. In a symbolic act as perfect as it is chilling, the festival erected a towering statue of Lemmy, within which is enshrined a portion of his ashes. If once such blatant attempts by the past to annex the present were openly ridiculed – Dio’s... Continue Reading →

Serpent Ascending: Hyperborean FolkloreOut 17th June on I, Voidhanger Records Stalwart Finnish death metal evolutionist Jarno Nurmi revitalises his post Desecresy project Serpent Ascending for album number two. Where ‘Aṇaṅku’ was a twisting, multi-faceted but ultimately smothering work of nocturnal claustrophobia, ‘Hyperborean Folklore’ seeks to bring us into the light. From the very first riff... Continue Reading →

#49 - Sleepwalker Pt. II: Sleepwalker from A Transylvanian Funeral/Temple of Abraxas returns to talk about his next video game soundtrack, the one for Project Warlock II. We further discuss his music and ideology beyond mere formalities; to get to the gist of why he happens to be one of the best USBM artists. Shelley... Continue Reading →

One reading of Nocturnus’s ‘The Key’ would have us believe that it is nothing more than a signifier of death metal’s early inroads into progressive music, perhaps a little more noteworthy than other releases of the time for the foregrounded keyboards. An alternative reading paints it as a sloppy miasma of repackaged Slayer and Kreator... Continue Reading →

Koldkrypt: Holocauste GlobalOut 10th June on Hessian Firm France’s Koldkrypt would have us believe that this is a work of utter misanthropy, an act of giving up on humanity as a project that will ever redeem itself from the crimes it has rendered on the earth and on itself. But the album itself is replete... Continue Reading →

To identify the truly distinguishing features of black metal one must ask where it situates the listener. Specifically, the fact that they are expected to temporarily divorce themselves from their immediate surroundings – both physical and social/cultural – and embrace a larger, more impersonal conception of reality. This severance from individualism is a step even death... Continue Reading →

Sacrilegious Crown: Forbidden Vestiges of VenerationOut 3rd June on Xenoglossy Productions Somewhere between the ritualistic and ambient strains of black metal, funeral doom, and DSBM – although don’t let that last tag put you off – sits the latest EP from Italy’s Sacrilegious Crown. Whilst comparisons to Elysian Blaze are somewhat inevitable, Sacrilegious Crown offer... Continue Reading →

Sadistic Drive: Perpetual TortureOut 27th May on Headsplit Records Finland’s Sadistic Drive march into the difficult second album with newfound confidence and bombast, but this does not hide the fact that something has been lost along the way. The Autopsy-on-meth mind-fuckery of their debut EP ‘Street Cannibal Gluttony’ made them one of the more promising... Continue Reading →

#48 - Bruckner Discussion, Part II: The time is now to speak more about Anton Bruckner! More specifically, the Bruckner Red Book by William Carragan. In addition to covering the Red Book, we delve into some other subjects such as Wagner's influence on Bruckner, which composers Bruckner influenced, tempo approaches to the symphonies, etc. Joining... Continue Reading →

Towards a definition of listener responsibility in an era of mass participation In a recent essay entitled ‘Making Burzum a Contested Space’, I attempted to plot a possible route out of the current political impasse within black metal, specifically in regards to our relationship to dangerous art. The argument was predicated on the not so... Continue Reading →