Jul 022016
 

Grave Desecrator-Slaughtbbath split

 

For those of us here in the U.S., today is the beginning of a long weekend in which we celebrate the nation’s independence from another country, which recently declared its own “independence” from Europe and now can’t seem to figure out what to do next. But since we have a couple of presidential candidates here in this country that most people don’t like, I guess we’re having some trouble figuring out what to do next, too.

I nearly decided to take the day off from blogging, not because I’m feeling very “patriotic” but because I’m feeling really lazy. I decided instead to make a feeble compromise with myself: I have a ton of new music I think is worth hearing, but I’m just going to spread a lot of it out for your perusal without any commentary. I feel kind of shitty for doing that, not because you really need my commentary but because I think I owe it to the bands to explain why I think the music is worth hearing. But I guess this is better than doing nothing at all.

Tomorrow we’ll be bringing you an EP premiere and something else, probably another Shades of Black post and/or the first “That’s Metal!” post in months. Unless I continue to indulge my feelings of laziness. Continue reading »

Feb 282016
 

Svarttjern-Dødsskrik

 

I guess I went overboard with this collection of new metal in a blackened vein. Believe it or not, even though eight bands are featured in this round-up, I made a lot of hard choices, leaving behind many other new releases I also heard over the last week that I thought were good. But eight is still a lot for a single post. Hope you won’t be deterred by its length from giving everything here a listen.

I organized these songs with a quartet of full-throttle assaults at the start, followed by a trio of more ritualistic, strange and/or atmospheric selections, and concluding with one final head-crusher.

SVARTTJERN

Norway’s Svarttjern signed with Soulseller Records for the release of their fourth album Dødsskrik, which our friend eiterorm tell us is Norwegian for “Scream of Death”. The song I have for you is the first advance track from the album, “All Hail Satan”. Continue reading »