(Andy Synn follows the migratory patterns of the majestic Oryx as they prepare to release their new album)
To witness a band go from “good” to “great” – as Oryx did with 2021’s Lamenting a Dead World – is one of the great pleasures for a music writer/reviewer.
But being there to see them go from not just “great” to truly “world-class” is an even rarer phenomenon.
Which is why you should all keep an ear out for the band’s newest – and best – album next week.
(written by Islander)
On the basis of their debut EP and two following albums, we’ve come to expect great things from the Galician band Lóstregos, but I’ve still been left stunned by their new album Nai, and especially by the song from that album which we’re premiering today. The band’s name is the Galician word for lightning, and they’ve really earned it.
“Melodic Black Metal” and “Pagan Black Metal” are the genre labels most commonly affixed to the band’s music, with the “Pagan” label a recognition of their inspirations in Galician folklore. The Dusktone label, which will release the new album on October 25th, has provided this description for the new album:
“Nai is defined by the band as a singular point of balance between light and darkness. It’s an introspective and conceptual journey across the primordial elements led by the endless coil, without forgetting about the main focus of the band on Galician Folklore.”
And yet those genre labels, while valid as far as they go, just scrape the surface of what’s revealed by Nai, as you’re bout to find out for yourselves through today’s song premiere. Continue reading »
(Following up on his review and premiere of a well-received new album by the Danish death metal band Thorium last month, our contributor Zoltar has conducted an in-depth interview with the band’s mainman Michael H. Andersen, which we present below.)
There are several kind of super-groups. These days, anything is possible, thanks to technology. You can be a nobody yet still grab a bunch of veterans who don’t even need to live in the same country, let alone the same continent, and convince them to record their parts on their own before assembling everything on your own, putting a nice attention-catching tag on your album ‘featuring members of blab la bla’ et voilà!
Thorium have never played that game though. Yes, when they first seemingly came out of nowhere, storming the gates in the spring of 2000 with their debut Ocean Of Blasphemy, the line-up felt pretty impressive, with Iniquity’s Jesper Frost Jensen, Withering Surface’s Allan Tvedebrink and Michael H. Andersen, and Taetre’s Jonas Lindblood. Yet while most were expecting this one quite good love-letter to classic death metal to be a one-off, Thorium have proven to be a far more long-term affair with five more albums, including the-just released The Bastard.
And while through the years the line-up has seen various people come and go, ultimately it is Andersen, who initiated the whole project in the first place, who still takes the final decision. Eager to keep the wheel turning, he vowed to try out an unusual method to give birth to The Bastard, first premiered on this very website on September 18th, and agreed to give us the details about the present and the future of Thorium. Continue reading »
Fair warning: the song and video we’re about to present includes singing. The music also includes head-butting punch, bone-grinding heft, and explosive screaming. The song, after all, is called “Hello Hell“. And it turns out the singing is one of the strong points of the music instead of something you have to grit your teeth (the ones the song doesn’t bust out) and endure.
“Hello Hell” is the title song to the forthcoming second album from Boston-based “dissonant noise-punks” Miracle Blood, following up their 2022 debut LP Melter. As the band rightly say, they decided to get a lot meaner, heavier, and noisier on the new album, and the title song proves the point. Continue reading »
Res Ipsa Loquitur: the Latin phrase which means “The thing speaks for itself.” The Idaho band Possessive (a collaboration among members of bands such as Hummingbird of Death, Tempestarii, and Lunar Temple) chose that phrase as the name of their new album because they wanted their genre-splicing musical havoc to speak for itself.
In light of that, it’s tempting to simply provide you the stream of the album track we’re premiering today, without comment. But we want to speak for the song, and Possessive have also provided some comments about what they’ve done, fleshing out the significance of the album’s name, and we want to share that too. So let’s begin there: Continue reading »
(Today we present Comrade Aleks‘ interview of Evgeny Semenov, founder and principal of the Russian funeral doom band Intaglio (whose latest album we premiered and reviewed here) and a founder and owner of Solitude Productions. The interview focuses on both of those subjects, and more.)
Intaglio is one of very first funeral doom bands founded in Russia. They and Comatose Vigil released debut albums in 2005, and only Вой / Voy could challenge their birthright, but its demo recorded in 1991 wasn’t officially published until 2012.
Although Intaglio’s self-titled first album was almost unnoticed in the world underground, it was also one of the releases by Solitude Productions, the Russian doom-oriented label which has gained its reputation with years of fair and selfless work in the name of Doom. By accident, Evgeny Semenov, one of Intaglio’s founders, who performs guitars, bass, and programming, also is one of Solitude’s owners.
As everything about funeral doom is damn slow, here we are to discuss with Evgeny the band’s latest album II, released in 2021. Continue reading »
(written by Islander)
I found enough time enough to pull together another mid-week roundup of new songs and videos. I picked all of these on Monday and started scribbling about them then, hoping to post this collection sooner than today. In the meantime, a lot of other new things have caught my attention, but those will have to wait ’til Saturday.
The first two of the songs and videos below are heart-pounders and neck-wreckers of different kinds, and then the music begins to twist and turn in increasingly bizarre directions. By sheer coincidence, none of the bands is from the U.S. By design, I again threw a curveball at you with the final selection. Continue reading »
(written by Islander)
The song you’re about to hear from the Romanian band Cursed Cemetery is a mysterious and often deeply disturbing trek of nearly 11 minutes. At times it creates chilling spells, at others it shakes the ground and fractures the rafters. It builds searing crescendos of pain and soundscapes of vast catastrophe. From start to finish, even when viscerally muscular in its power, it sounds thoroughly unearthly, like a nightmare, or a guided tour through terrors of an underworld (or a ravaged inner world) made real.
The song, named “Yanja“, is one of four long tracks on the band’s new album Magma Transmigration, which will be released by the Dusktone label later this month. It’s accompanied by a video whose harrowing and hallucinatory imagery suits the music extremely well, enhancing the riveting but disturbing impacts of the audio experience. Continue reading »
(Andy Synn presents three more prime cuts of British beef for you to gorge yourselves on)
What’s that? Another “Best of British”? The second in as many weeks?
That’s right, and I’ve even got my next one in the works already (though that won’t be until next month).
And, hey, you might even see some more music from yours truly out before then as well, which will hopefully also add to this year’s bumper crop of killer British bands.
Until then, however, let’s see what the new album from Heriot, Lowen, and Sugar Horse (all out now) have to offer, shall we?
(written by Islander)
The German black metal band Birkental started as a one-man project by bass player Raug after a band break-up during the covid pandemic around the end of 2021. He wanted to create a project to experiment with bass-only black metal.
The drummer Zlam joined the project after about a year of its existence, and from then on Birkental has been a two-man project with Raug writing the songs, playing bass, and performing vocals and Zlam playing drums and keyboard. After about another year, they finished a debut album named Peccatum Mortiferum, which will be released on December 13th by Void Wanderer Productions.
Today we’re premiering the first advance track from the album, an intriguing song named “Superbia” that furiously assaults with visceral power but also proves to be both gloom-ridden and eerily otherworldly. Continue reading »