Armchair rhetoric on extreme metal
Witch Wife in an Alien WorldOut 9th October on Cruz del Sur Music As the erstwhile darlings of the new wave of traditional lesser spotted heavy metal, this album is a bold move for Smoulder. Sure, aside from a clear pivot away from doom into faster classic metal stylings, the material is contiguous with previous... Continue Reading →
Hænesy: EsentiaOut 25th September on Purity Through Fire Five years ago this Hungarian outfit presented an interesting proposition with ‘Garabontzia’, a black metal album crafted almost entirely from clean, reverb drenched guitar lines, working their way through oddly cathartic melodic hooks and chord sequences rich in pathos. There was no denying its proximity to post... Continue Reading →
Critical Defiance: Rivers of BloodOut 25th September on Dying Victims Productions 2024 was the year Critical Defiance suddenly caught the attention of a broader international audience with ‘The Search Won’t Fall…’, a finely crafted treat of frenetic thrash fair alongside some well integrated oddball moments. The Chilean death and thrash metal scene has pulled well... Continue Reading →
Book report - Melancology: black metal theory and ecology Dominik Irtenkauf: [black metal theory] seems to be more about speculative interpretations of a musical sub-culture than developing a coherent system of theory. Is that perception correct? Nicola Masciandaro: Yes. I recently had the misfortune of stumbling onto a debate raging across Substack between continental and... Continue Reading →
DecayOut 25th September on Relapse Records Hellfest 2010 was a pretty special festival. John Garcia got 75% of the band back together as Brant Bjork and Nick Oliveri took the stage for a few numbers during his Kyuss classics set. Immortal, Asphyx, and Carcass were all in their post revival pomp, affording a younger generation... Continue Reading →
What does the metalhead do on their day off and why is it ambient? I listened to all the “black ambient” releases from the 90s to find out. Black metal ambient (Part I) In Part I we ranged through Central Europe, taking in the Austrian syndicate, on to the bonkers peripheries of France’s already bonkers Les... Continue Reading →
What does the metalhead do on their day off and why is it ambient? I listened to all the “black ambient” releases from the 90s to find out. If you were to press me on a pithy definition of metal, I would say it's music written through the organisation of riffs. This means it can... Continue Reading →
Atomic Aggressor: The Occult ForcesOut 28th August on Hells Headbangers With a history stretching back to the mid-80s, Atomic Aggressor are arguably one of the first to enter Chile’s death metal race along with Pentagram. But following their reformation in 2007 this is only their second album, which may partly explain why they haven't receive... Continue Reading →
Hulder: VerbolgenOut 7th August on Season of Mist/20 Buck Spin Arranging the history of black metal into waves is a method as arbitrary as it is useful. The first wave being a retrospective concept imposed on a small group of early extreme metal artists who operated at the peripheries of the underground, only loosely related... Continue Reading →
Sallow Moth: Hydrophilous BroodOut 24th July on Willowtip Records Surrealist brutal death metal redrafts elements of ‘Obscura’ and post 2000s Suffocation, but as with most contemporary avant-garde progressive extreme metal, it conflates stylistic incontinence with a density of ideas. Sure, for solid stretches of this album Sallow Moth work the Rubik’s Cube of tightly packed... Continue Reading →
