Armchair rhetoric on extreme metal
Ialdabaoth: G.O.A.T. / S.C.O.P.E.Out 13th March on All Is Threat Lo-fi, frantic black metal pulling from the futurist undercurrent of the genre, here reimagined as a random, feral entity, defined by illogical fits of violence, laboured interludes of despair, and uncanny structuralism. Despite the demo quality production – something utterly incapable of containing the flamboyant... Continue Reading →
(There are only four) Metal subgenres don’t exist. I think we’ve imagined them all. I’ve run the numbers, and by my count there’s only ever been four. “How could we have been so wrong about this?” you ask. I don’t know, but I’m going to expend considerable effort wildly speculating regardless. I curse my spare... Continue Reading →
Poems of SpellcraftOut 24th October on Chaos Records The debut album from this German entity draws on a thread of UK black metal (such as it is) most infamously expressed by Cradle of Filth and Hecate Enthroned, later by Old Corpse Road and A Forest of Stars. Histrionic, gothic, and unconcerned with what the listener... Continue Reading →
Atavistic Passage: Demonstration TwoOut 9th October on MoH Creations Ritualistic dark ambient collides with raw black metal, creating a sense of occasion through simple melodic refrains reduced to drone form, onto which are added basic harmonic development. This gives the music a feeling of opening out, of creating space from a place of restriction, an... Continue Reading →
Pestilential HymnsOut 20th October on Memento Mori Thaumatrugy upgrade themselves from the competent but commonplace chasmic death/doom of the debut into a more holistic statement of extreme metal. Reinvigorating the increasingly murky territory between black and death metal with a clarity that can only come from a rigorous riff discipline. The demo phase of Swedish... Continue Reading →
Victimarum: Seitsemän soihdun valossaOut 11th October on Signal Rex This brighter iteration of melodic black metal manages to achieve a sense of activism and storytelling in a way that pushes back against the empty anthemism rampant in the genre since its 90s heyday. But despite the album starting strong, Victimarum are unable to sustain their... Continue Reading →
LoreOut 3rd October on Eleventh Key I often use the term “world building” when writing about music. It’s probably worth clarifying what I mean here. History may remember early 21st Century music not in terms of artistry, but granular developments in technological. Developments that may have seemed small and incremental in isolation, but at the... Continue Reading →
MercatorOut 12th September on Redefining Darkness Records Heruvim locate the carefree bounce of Pestilence circa ‘Spheres’ within the dark chasmic setting of modern death metal, flattening off progressive nuance in favour of creating something more accessible from the raw material. Demilichian chromaticism is recruited as binding material, linking the progressive allusions with the nihilism of... Continue Reading →
Please read the following scenario carefully. A discussion will follow. Scenario One: Andrew Lee is an American of Chinese descent. He has a death metal band called Ripped to Shreds. Ripped to Shreds were booked to play a gig with a much older death metal band called Master, who were in the middle of a... Continue Reading →
Gruwelijk OnthaalOut 18th September on Folter Records It’s been ten years since Kaeck’s debut ‘Stormkult’. Where that album consolidated an austere reading of early second wave black metal into an aggressive, tight, yet atmospheric celebration of the genre, subsequent releases have – at least aesthetically – dramatically deviated from this foundation. 2021’s ‘Het zwarte dictaat’... Continue Reading →
Hate Meditations 