Armchair rhetoric on extreme metal
Ceremonial Worship: Between Sleep and DeathOut 31st July on Eternal Death Undergoing something of an orchestral refit since their previous offering โSeven Gateways to Eternal Misanthropyโ, the promo blurb accompanying this Greekโs outfitโs latest offering makes a lot of theirโฆGreekness. And whilst they certainly do channel the intangible arcane sensation inherent to early Greek black... Continue Reading →
I miss stuff. Stuff used to be everywhere. I watched The Lost Boys recently. It occurred to me that stuff clutters every shot of 80s films, trinkets, knickknacks, gumph, it clogs up the screen to the point of distraction when compared to the barren surfaces of modern television. All my life Iโve been told that... Continue Reading →
แฝฯฮบฮฟฯ แผฮบฮปฮตฮบฯแฟถฮฝOut 30th April on Zombi Danz Records After five years of silence, Greeceโs Caedes Cruenta return with an unprecedented document dump of material, spanning an hour and a half in length, a runtime only permissible after the extended period of silence they have subjected us to since the celebrated โOf Ritual Necrophagia and Mysterious... Continue Reading →
Unmother: State Dependent MemoryOut 20th February on Fiadh Productions Although not entirely terrible, Unmother suffer from the garden variety shortcomings of much RABM, in that the music appears distracted and disjointed precisely because it is being forced to serve competing agendas. In the case of Unmother, itโs a simple checklist: from London, hardcore punk background,... Continue Reading →
Supuration: Sultry ObsessionOut 27th November on La Caverna records (originally released in 1990) By 1993, Supuration had developed a unique voice within death metal, bridging the richly textured gloom of the Nordic style with the brighter prog permutations developing on the other side of Atlantic, adding their own distinctive goth sensibility to the mix. With... Continue Reading →
Beithioch: A Cold Eye on Life and DeathOut 14th November, self-released After the barbaric primitivism of the โBeowulfโ EP back in 2023, this latest single sees Beithioch reach for a richer, expressive panorama of blackened doom metal reminiscent of The Ruins of Beverast amongst others. The flow is somewhat episodic, a ten minute plus piece... Continue Reading →
Words by Jason Kiss Only Death is Real โOnly Death is Realโ is one of the most endearing slogans of the extreme metalunderground. The phrase was first brought into metal lexicon by Hellhammer, later reformed as Celtic Frost, in the track โMessiahโ on their 1983 demo Satanic Rites. Since then, it has become a sacred... Continue Reading →
Eldur: Rituals of Death and NecromancyOut 25th August on ATMF Combines the purposeful militarism of simplistic Swedish black metal with a mystical eccentricity borrowed from modern occultist metal. Whilst balancing these two competing forces occasionally pays off, Eldur lean into basic thrash or melodeath riffing to plug the gaps, thus rendering what could be quite... Continue Reading →
All Powers of DarknessOut 22nd August on Hells Headbangers Medieval Demon, erstwhile outliers of the classic Greek scene, continue their eccentric second life with a run of occultist horror metal pitched plumb on the border between the sublime and the ridiculous. Where 2022โs โBlack Covenโ was an articulation of shamelessly confident traditional gothic horror tropes... Continue Reading →
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 →
