Armchair rhetoric on extreme metal
Sacrilege InfernusOut 25th July, self-released Access to culture has never been easier. Deciding what to access and spend time with near impossible. People idolise the traditional underground for its asceticism. The implied discipline required to enter an obscure channel of culture. The music itself a challenge of dense, alien sounds born of a hermetically sealed... Continue Reading →
Lord of NightmareOut 25th July on Hessian Firm (originally released in 2006) Endless Dismal Moan, the brainchild of one Chaos 9, who sadly took their own life in 2008, was an enigmatic Japanese black metal entity that typified or even perfected the dark, urbanist turn the genre took in the early 21st Century. Hessian Firm’s... Continue Reading →
Décryptal: SimulacreOut 11th July on Me Saco Un Ojo/Rotted Life Attempts to forge links between the old and the new in death metal via a survey of muscular old school traditions through the crushing swing of the Earache crowd to darker 2010s caverncore. In this endeavour it retains a refreshing focus and coherence, marking it... Continue Reading →
Mortalha Negra: NecromanteOut 18th June on Helldprod Records Essentially a thrash metal rendering of ‘Under a Funeral Moon’. Excitable yet austere, riffs reach through the old school filter, reinjecting archaic speed metal elements into an unambiguously black metal setting. The latter elements of which are deployed as developmental material. This in turn injects the music... Continue Reading →
Grog: Sphere of AtrocitiesOut 13th June on Helldprod A collection of generic brutal and semi technical death metal furniture, delivered with the random freneticism of grindcore. Swirling between ideas, Grog are just as liable to hack up the momentum with abandon as they are to repeat themes and riffs in order to hammer them home.... Continue Reading →
Ahamkara: The Harrow of the LostOut 25th April on Bindrune Recordings Blends the vast sweeping atmospheres of Wodensthrone and the idiosyncratic polyphony of Obsequie into a vapid mulch of emo black metal. Trivial harmonic material decorates a slue of anthemic riffs rendered with a black metal aesthetic for an audience incapable of confronting the music's... Continue Reading →
Voodus: Emanating SparksOut 28th February on Shadow Records/Regain Records Modestly melodic Swedish black metal that ups the game as far as their own standards are concerned. The overall packaging is still thoroughly domesticated, renting a generous helping of ideas from ‘The Somberlain’ whilst flattening off its longform ambition in favour of crowd pleasing speed thrills,... Continue Reading →
The purpose of an interview is what it does The recent discussion between Decibel’s Albert Mudrian and longtime YouTube reviewer Anthony Fantano looks benign enough, but what does it do? Unsurprisingly, Fantano’s line of questioning ventriloquises the polarised interests of the modern fanbase, which tends to oscillate between an obsession with death metal’s origins and... Continue Reading →
Scheusal: UrwahnOut 3rd March on Purity Through Fire Supplements the playfully abrasive punk of Ildjarn with a tragedian melodic signature. In this sense there is an oddly modernist swagger to the presentation, a mechanical order speaking more of concrete and machinery than organicism. This is something only emphasised by the predictable precision of the simple... Continue Reading →
Many Things Afflict Us, Few Things Console UsOut 20th September on Cold Spring Records Khost have the unfortunate burden of being a metal adjacent industrial outfit from Birmingham, meaning their output will forever be benchmarked against Godflesh. Whilst there are similarities, Khost go far beyond Broadrick (at least in the guise of Godflesh) in pushing... Continue Reading →
Hate Meditations 