PANZERFAUST – THE SUNS OF PERDITION, CHAPTER III: THE ASTRAL DRAIN

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Jul 192022
 

(Andy Synn presents some thoughts on the new album from Canada’s Panzerfaust, which premiered in full here today.)

There comes a time, in every band’s career (ok, not every band’s career) where they produce an album which seems purposefully designed to piss off large sections of their fanbase.

Sometimes it’s because that album is a ridiculous misfire that would have been better off released under a different name entirely (or, even better, not at all).

Other times it’s a misunderstood masterpiece whose true value will only be appreciated in the years to come.

The Astral Drain is destined to become one of these albums.

But which will it be?

Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (WEEKDAY EDITION): PANZERFAUST, GAEREA, TOMBS, DARKREVERIE, MO’YNOQ, HETROERTZEN, SPECTRUM MORTIS, HERBSTLETHARGIE

 SHADES OF BLACK  No Responses »
Jul 122022
 

 

In the dozen years of this site’s existence we’ve had fewer than a dozen days (including weekends and holidays) when we posted nothing new. Yesterday was one of those. I’ll spare you the excuses, which were numerous, but I still felt guilty about it. So I’m trying to make up for that void today.

In gazing upon my long list of songs I wanted to recommend, it occurred to me that most of them were variations of black and blackened metal, so I decided to focus on those and leave other genre variants for another day.

There’s a lot here, all of them tracks from forthcoming releases, and so I’ve truncated the introductions and mostly omitted the usual artwork. I begin with bigger names and then drift into more obscure ones. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: PANZERFAUST, THE WAKEDEAD GATHERING, NORDJEVEL, BLACK ROYAL, GODTHRYMM, TRIUMVIR FOUL, ENDROT, TELESTERION, ZORYA

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Jun 112022
 


Panzerfaust – photo by Samantha Carcasole

I got an unreasonably early start on the day. On the plus side, that gave me the time to pull together the following large roundup of new discoveries before too much daylight burned. All these songs and videos came out since the first of June.

Fair warning: I have equally exorbitant plans for tomorrow’s SHADES OF BLACK column.

PANZERFAUST (Canada)

When I saw Panzerfaust at this year’s Maryland Deathfest I wrote this on my FB page: “A wizard of a drummer seated in a garden of cymbals and using all of them; a man-mountain of a frontman who by his mere presence enhances the frightfulness of the music; a pair of axe-slingers who play their instruments near-upright; the creation of an aura of ritual but with visceral thrusts: an amalgam of hallucination and hammering. Well, I’ve missed a lot of sets at MDF but the one by Panzerfaust tonight is the best of the bunch so far and it isn’t close.” Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: HOODED MENACE, PANZERFAUST, LYKHAEON, FILTH IS ETERNAL, NEFARIYM, PAIN

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
May 202021
 

 

I managed to grab a few hours of listening time yesterday before they evanesced. I barely scratched the surface of my gargantuan list of things to check out, but it didn’t take long before I found the songs and videos I’ve compiled here, which collectively made a gripping impact. I book-ended the collection with some bigger names and stuffed the interior with some names that need to be bigger.

HOODED MENACE (Finland)

Hooded Menace have a new album named The Tritonus Bell headed for release in August. Guitarist Lasse Pyykkö commented that the first advance track, “Blood Ornaments“, “comes with some of our most intriguing ingredients yet”. He continued: “There’s a contrast between death/doom misery and head-bangable heavy metal riffs like never heard before in Hooded Menace‘s music, making ‘Blood Ornaments‘ my favourite track from the album”. Continue reading »

PANZERFAUST: “THE SUNS OF PERDITION – CHAPTER II: RENDER UNTO EDEN”

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Aug 192020
 

 

(We present Andy Synn‘s lavish review of the new album by Toronto-based Panzerfaust, which will be released by Eisenwald on August 28th.)

It’s been well-documented, several times now, just how much I love Panzerfaust’s 2019 album, War, Horrid War (part one of the still-unfolding “Suns of Perdition” saga).

Not only was it the album which signalled the band’s effective rebirth – transforming them from relative unknowns into “ones to watch” – but it also snagged them a coveted slot at the 2020 edition of Maryland Deathfest, where they were one of my most anticipated bands of the entire festival.

Sadly, as we’re all too aware, this year’s MDF was cancelled/postponed, so it looks like I’ll have to wait a little longer to experience the explosive power of the band’s live show, but, in the meantime at least, I can content myself with the knowledge that not only is Render Unto Eden (arguably) even better than its predecessor but also one of the most outstanding albums, Black Metal or otherwise, of the year. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 2): PANZERFAUST, KALL, LUNE, GLEMSEL, ETERNAL BLOODSHED

 SHADES OF BLACK  5 Responses »
Jul 262020
 

 

For Part 1 of today’s column I picked a handful of individual songs and videos that were loaded with head-moving hooks, but still preserved a feeling of sinister menace. In this part I’ve gone in a different direction… though I’ve gone back in the other direction with the last selection. I’ve started with an advance track from a forthcoming album, and then focused on four complete releases, though a shortage of time has driven me to provide mere sketches instead of more thorough-going reviews.

PANZERFAUST

To begin, I’ve chosen “The Snare of the Fowler“, the second single from the new album by this stand-out Canadian band. Grim are the lyrics, ending with the statement: “There is no redemption arc in the records of eternal truths. Just an endless sequence of cross-currents to the terminus of all paradises lost”. But who with eyes to see could possibly deny that bitter arc, or the sentiments expressed in a preceding lyrical passage: Continue reading »

OVERFLOWING STREAMS (PART 2): MASS WORSHIP, KHEMMIS, NITE, ORANSSI PAZUZU, ORPHANS OF DOOM, PANZERFAUST, REVULSION, SECRETS OF THE MOON, SICARIUS, TEMPLE OF VOID, WEREWOLVES

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Mar 142020
 

 

Many of us here in the U.S., as elsewhere, are essentially stuck at home. We’re supposed to stay away from our fellow human beings, and there’s not much to do away from home anyway. Fortunately, the virus hasn’t infected the internet so I can still eject new songs and videos at your head, which I’ve been doing at great volume today — a dozen of them in Part 1 of this post (here), and almost another dozen in this one. I mean, what the hell else do you have to do?

Once again, everything is organized in alphabetical order by band name, picking up from the items in Part 1, and I’ve again truncated my usual commentary.

MASS WORSHIP (Sweden)

Get seduced by the dual-guitar intro, stay for the jackhammering of your neck and the vocal scorching of your face… a bitter and battering experience. Continue reading »

PANZERFAUST: “THE SUNS OF PERDITION – CHAPTER I: WAR, HORRID WAR”

 Album Reviews  8 Responses »
Jun 032019
 

 

(This is Andy Synn‘s review of the new album by Panzerfaust from Toronto, Ontario, which will be released on June 14th by Eisenwald.)

So Summer is officially here. The sun is shining, the days have grown longer, and even the nights are balmy and mild.

But, of course, if sunshine and good times aren’t your thing then the music world still offers more than enough sonic darkness to satisfy your cravings for all things bleak and blackened… which, in this particular case, includes the phenomenal fourth album from Canadian extremists Panzerfaust. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: PANZERFAUST — “THE DAY AFTER TRINITY”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Apr 192019
 

 

The Toronto-based black metal band Panzerfaust are about to embark on a very ambitious project. With their fourth album, The Suns of Perdition I: War, Horrid War, they will begin a planned tetralogy of full-length releases devoted to some of history’s most awful events. This first chapter in that monumental effort, which will be released by Eisenwald on June 14th, takes as its subject matter many terrible occurrences of the past century, creating a synthesis that mirrors a vision of the future described by George Orwell as “a boot stamping on a human face forever”.

Today we bring you the first advance track from …War, Horrid War, a song of punishing physical power and brain-mangling intensity, yet one that proves to be as spellbinding as it is titanically ravaging. The band describe the inspiration for the song’s name, “The Day After Trinity“, in these words: Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: CONVULSING, SAURON, ÚIR, TRISTE TERRE, PANZERFAUST, XALPEN, ÆÐRA

 Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHADES OF BLACK  13 Responses »
Nov 272016
 

convulsing-errata

 

I spent time yesterday pawing through a lot of recent releases and advance tracks by black metal bands. After some self-struggle, I picked a group of songs to feature in this post. And then late in the afternoon I got additional recommendations from various sources, and that tossed all my plans up into the air. When the dust settled, I revised my picks to include these:

CONVULSING

Convulsing was one of the recommendations that took me by surprise (thank you to starkweather and DaNasher). This is a one-man band from Sydney, Australia, whose new album Errata was released just yesterday. It caught the ears of certain listeners because the man behind Convulsing, Brendan Sloan, is also a member of Dumbsaint, who have a following. And word has been spreading. When you hear the album, I think you’ll be convinced that word will continue to spread, and damned fast and far, too. Continue reading »

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