Armchair rhetoric on extreme metal
Perdition’s Mire: Into a Dark HeartlandOut 13th December on Headkick Music At one point these impotent guitar lines were probably reasonable black metal riffs. Onto this framework is draped a tedious exercise in self-therapy. Because this band’s focus is on individualised inner struggle they have nothing useful to say beyond meaningless gestures on why life... Continue Reading →
Thunraz: Incineration DayOut 22nd November, self-released Sterile, mechanical, jagged death metal meets an undercurrent of dark gothic atmosphere on the latest album from this Estonian entity. There is a clear intent to blend the abstracted violence of death metal with a more grounded, artificial aesthetic. Despite the clear industrial current running throughout 'Incineration Day', one... Continue Reading →
The Skorian // The GreyleerOut 29th November on Profound Lore Records The existence of Mefitis within extreme metal is in many ways metatextual. They imbibe its raw materials only to churn it up into a cocktail of inuendo, subversion, duality of meaning that would go largely unnoticed by anyone not intimate with the legacy they... Continue Reading →
Iniquitous Savagery: Edifice of VicissitudesOut 22nd November on Willowtip Records The clutter of brutal death metal covers a tendency toward a simple binary of slam breakdowns and tremolo melodic blasts. But predictable is another word for reliable. Despite the somewhat limited phrasing, each theme is framed by tangents and ornamentation interesting enough to elevate this... Continue Reading →
Auriferous Flame: The Insurrectionists and the CaretakersOut 8th November on True Cult Records/Stellar Auditorium Productions “The album explores the theme of revolution and delves deep into the complexities of resistance and change, offering listeners an intense and thought provoking experience.” Given the eagerness to share the complex subject matter that inspired this album, one might... Continue Reading →
Musicians are organic entities subject to the laws of nature. Bands are abstract concepts theoretically capable of immortality. Musicians get old. Retire. Die. Bands often endure in Trigger's Broom form, limping on, replacing discarded limbs. Until we are forced to ask: what even is a band? In the case of Cradle of Filth, Asphyx, or... Continue Reading →
The World Down ThereOut 2nd November, self-released Croatia’s Petrale return for another skirmish of suffocating, eerie, dissonant black metal. This latter descriptor is liable to evoke images of cold, clinical, sterile music replete with jagged edges, tempo change incontinence, and aspirations toward headier subject matter. None of which is completely absent from the world of... Continue Reading →
Bridges to nowhere October opens the gateway to winter. Darkness makes inroads into our lives. The vestigial traces of summer ebb away by the end of the tenth month. Declining temperatures herald the arrival of November’s high autumn. This particular October has also brought with it a glimmer of the Northern Lights to my... Continue Reading →
Carmina Belli ApocalypsisOut 28th October on Black Mass Prayers Armed with a dark medievalist paint job, a murky atmospheric gloom, and a dynamic compositional package, this pleasing Italian oddity attempts a synthesis between early Satyricon and the suffocating malevolence of Demoncy. At times the results are about as unfocused as one might expect. Valadier have... Continue Reading →
Onslaught Kommand: MalignancyOut 18th October on Godz of War Productions Essentially a goregrind band with a blackened edge, Onslaught Kommand justify their rather limited existence by combining a playful package of classic grind riffs with an oppressively dark atmosphere, eschewing the cutesy play of goregrind at large. Riffs circle around the usual cocktail of early... Continue Reading →
Hate Meditations 