Back in that mid 1990s sweet spot – after the international explosion of black metal, but before liberal arts students had clocked its uniqueness – there is a wealth of solid albums for the traveller to discover. This is black metal that stayed true to the form first and foremost, but expanded on it in... Continue Reading →

Death metal, unlike its troubled cousin black metal, invariably benefits from sinking more tech into the recording process. This especially applies to the technical/progressive end of the spectrum. Those pesky drums are hard enough to capture at the best of times, let alone when they’re working their way through four different time signatures at once.... Continue Reading →

To compare both these artists to Type O Negative would be unfair. But that’s exactly what I’m going to do all the same. Pist.On often get named in the same sentence as Type O simply because they came from the same area, at the same time, and they went for a similar kind of gothed... Continue Reading →

Time for another look at some mid-90s treasures from our friends in the north. Swedish metal, much like the country itself, is frankly just a more class act than the UK. We have our moments, but the sheer volume of quality releases to rain down out of Scandinavia over the years is a force to... Continue Reading →

Well no one strained any brain cells naming these bands. Post doom? Post Sludge? Whatever was going on in the mid-2000s, we've certainly seen an appetite for it this last decade; a quirky supplement to the on-trend Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats school of doom. But what worth, if any, does the music itself hold?... Continue Reading →

Ok, so the title may be a bit of a cliché, but it actually has a double meaning; one that I am about to explain. See the music of Hate Forest and I Shalt Become bears all the hallmarks of bleak black metal, of empty spaces, but also the era these two albums were released... Continue Reading →

Condor: El Valle del Condor (2018) Bogotá's Condor have been on the radar as one to watch ever since their debut ‘Nadia’ dropped back in 2013. Since then they have released three more LPs of consistent quality, and a slow but sure musical evolution has taken shape; demonstrating a talent and an ambition to be... Continue Reading →

In the documentary ‘Until the Light Takes Us’, Fenriz asked himself ‘like…how the hell did it happen?’ Dunno mate. But maybe going over the same events yet again will help. *** Finally, black metal’s creation myth gets the big budget treatment. Forged in fire and blood, it’s a story that is retold to each new... Continue Reading →