Mar 172015
 

 

I got enough of a break from my day job over the last two days that I was able to listen to some new music, and I’ve collected some of what I heard in this post. I knew the previous work of some of these bands and therefore wasn’t surprised by the quality. Other songs came as complete surprises — and very nice ones.

DISARMONIA MUNDI

I had lost track of this Italian duo. The last time we wrote about them was two and a half years ago. Of course, that was around the last time they released any music, and their last album was 2009’s The Isolation Game. Thanks to Andy Synn, I made the happy discovery yesterday that they have a new album coming out in June on Coroner Records named Cold Inferno. There’s a big head on the cover. Continue reading »

Jul 092010
 

Sadly, we now come to the end of our 3-part post on Metal From North Africa, though we will revisit the subject in the future. To close this out, we’re back to Egypt, where we started, and a band called Odious.

Odious has been around since 1998, and as best we can tell, they were one of the first Egyptian extreme metal bands to release a professional album — 2007’s Mirror of Vibrations. Before that, they self-released and distributed a demo EP called Summoned by Night, which led to their signing in 2005 by a Greek label called Sleaszy Rider Records and the release of that 2007 album.

Of all the music we’ve reviewed in this survey, it’s probably the most challenging to hear, but it may be the most interesting. It’s the most uncompromisingly faithful to traditional black metal, but also the music that most heavily incorporates not only oriental music but also traditional instruments.  (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »