Sep 292021
 

 

Imagine yourself as a character in a waking dream, finding yourself transported centuries into the past and venturing into a French cabaret populated by aristocratic Satanists and those practicing medieval witchcraft, with vampires roaming in their midst, draining blood from crystal goblets instead of wine. Imagining such a scene, an unreal dreamscape of ancient elegance and palpable danger, is one way of preparing yourself for the music to be found on the new second album by the Brazilian “supergroup” Le Chant Noir.

That album, La Société Satanique Des Poètes Morts, is set for release by Personal Records on October 22nd. As the press materials faithfully describe it, the songs “thread together the darkest fibers of archaic black metal, doom metal, and even dark metal, arriving at a sort of avant-garde symphonic black metal that’s simultaneously an authentic throwback and refreshingly modern”.

The album is indeed an out-of-the-ordinary experience, a kind of macabre musical theater that proves to be genuinely transportive. Even the one song we’re premiering today has that effect. Its name is “Les Métamorphoses Du Vampire“. Continue reading »

Sep 282021
 

 

This is one of those times when we feel compelled to offer some words of warning. Before you listen to the song we’re about to premiere, you’d be best advised to lash yourself to something solid, don a crash helmet, and have some supplemental oxygen handy. The name of the song is “The World Eater“, and it does indeed sound like it’s doing its best to devour the world.

The band responsible for this breathtaking musical mayhem is Versus, a part-Swiss, part-French group formed in 2013 around Geneva. They introduce themselves this way: Continue reading »

Sep 282021
 

 

After a trio of short releases, the ravishing French death metal band Venefixion have at last prepared a debut full-length that’s set for an imminent October 1 release by Iron Bonehead Productions. Curiously entitled A Sigh From Below, the only sighs it’s likely to produce are breaths of wonder at how explosive and exhilarating the music is.

With the exception of an ominous and eerie intro track in which distorted voices roar and howl through an increasingly cacophonous maelstrom, and an otherworldly, chiming and swirling instrumental interlude (“Subterranean Deathspell”) that creates an atmosphere of gloomy gothic horror, what stands out first and foremost about the album is the feeling of brazen and blazing haughtiness that the music generates — as well as the band’s formidable talent for melding sensations of grim defiance, violent ecstasy, and sinister supernatural downfall. Continue reading »

Sep 272021
 

 

The magnificent cover art for Skverna Liniya‘s debut album В венке из воска (In A Garland Of Wax) portrays a scene that’s both classically elegant and desolate. It reveals grand architectural achievements that have become relics, looming beneath daunting grey skies, surrounding a cobble-stoned plaza virtually empty of life and a mysterious garland resting in a liquid pool. It’s a haunting vision, and an intriguing one. And it turns out to beautifully suit the music on the album.

This Russian band’s full-length advent (which will be co-released by Casus Belli Musica and Beverina Productions) summons adjectives like “atmospheric” and “progressive”, because it’s so powerful in creating moods and so fascinating in its dazzling instrumental and stylistic diversity (which include ingredients of doom and post-metal). As a preview of how the music will affect listeners, we share the conceptions that inspired it, as disclosed in the press materials: Continue reading »

Sep 272021
 

 

The German band Fiat Nox have already established a prominent place for themselves in the fire-and-ice realms of black metal through the strength of a debut demo (2016’s Light the Torches), and a debut album (The Archive of Nightmares, released in June of this year). Wasting no time, Fiat Nox have now readied a new EP for release by Personal Records on October 1st, and it further elevates the place of Fiat Nox as a band capable of creating marvelously dynamic and multi-faceted music that gets the blood racing with its muscular, hard-charging aggression but also creates wholly enthralling atmosphere through its emotionally powerful melodies.

We’ve previously lavished praise upon the EP, and now have the opportunity to present a stream of it in its entirety. Its entirely fitting title is In Contemptuous Defiance. Continue reading »

Sep 242021
 

 

Odds are, when you see references to black thrash it’s likely to be written “ripping black thrash”. But that’s the point, isn’t it? To get your heart pumping and your head moving, and to do it in a way that feels dangerously untamed, vicious, and yes, eviscerating. The music of Destructo is definitely all that, and it’s intoxicating too, the kind of experience that makes you go wild in your head.

The band’s name itself is reflective of their musical attitude. Further clues can be found in the inspirations of these Dutch deviants: Destructo was formed in 2018 as a side-project between erstwhile Dödsrit and Nuclear Devastation bandmates Soulcrusher and Motörphallus (and later joined by drummer Necrohammer) as a tribute to bands like Sarcofago, Syphilitic Vaginas, and Japan’s Sabbat, and in their forthcoming debut album they’ve also brought forward forward influences from Bathory, Hellhammer, and especially G.I.S.M., thus creating a bastard child of first-wave black metal and ’80s speed metal and thrash.

The album, fittingly entitled Demonic Possession, is indeed one very wild and blasphemous ride, a ten-track, 40-minute experience guaranteed to juice your adrenaline into overdrive. It’s coming out on November 19th via Dying Victims Productions, and we’re as happy as fiends to premiere a song from it that exalts the “Black Mark“. Continue reading »

Sep 242021
 

 

Portuguese black metal isn’t a monolithic or monochromatic sound, any more than black metal is in any other country. But it seems undeniable that one of the strongest and oldest strains of the black arts in Portugal is a particularly raw and hostile form of black metal. Among the progenitors of that movement are the two men behind Morte Incandescente, whose veteran talents have been built through involvement in an extensive array of bands over more than two decades.

They are perhaps best known from the work of their principal bands — Vulturius with IRAE and Nocturnus Horrendus with Corpus Christii — but Morte Incandescente has been much more than some side project. Indeed, on October 31st the band’s fifth album will be released through Signal Rex. What it shows is the benefit of veteran talent.

To be honest, a lot of raw black metal seems mainly calculated to inflict ruin, in the most ruinous ways possible, and that in itself can become monotonous and un-memorable. Morte Incandescente‘s new album, on the other hand, is definitely neither of those, as you’ll learn through the song we’re premiering today. “Nós Somos O Underground” (“we are the underground”) is primitive, feral, vicious, and viscerally gripping, and yet also remarkably dynamic and laden with many hooks. Continue reading »

Sep 232021
 

 

Three years ago we got the chance to premiere a track from Imperialist‘s electrifying debut album Cipher, a sci-fi-themed work that the releasing label (Transcending Obscurity) introduced with references to the traditions of Necrophobic, Dissection, and Sacramentum, with nods to the thrashier dynamics of Aura Noir and Vektor as well. That album caught lots of eyes thanks to the cover art by Adam Burke, and the music opened lots of eyes too.

As you can see, Adam Burke has done it again with the painting emblazoned on the cover of this California band’s forthcoming sophomore full-length, Zenith. And we’re again getting the chance to premiere a song from the new record in advance of its November 26 release by the same Transcending Obscurity Records. Continue reading »

Sep 232021
 

 

The chain-wielding, blunt-instrument-bearing, masked marauders in Bloodmouth are bent on inflicting audio carnage. This Aussie band includes members of Canberra’s Ploughshare, Mental Cavity, and IEXIST, and through Bloodmouth they discharged their fury through a pulverizing amalgam of ’90s grindcore and death metal that pays homage to the likes of Dying Fetus, Pig Destroyer, Nasum, and Arkangel.

The band’s debut release is a vile and violent 20-minute scourge named Unmanned. It will be fully uncaged by Brilliant Emperor Records on October 29, and today we’ve got one of its visceral assaults for you to check out, a track named “Copcrocalypse“. Continue reading »

Sep 222021
 

 

Slovenia’s Hellsword came together a dozen years ago, dedicated to the sounds of first-wave black metal, drawing inspiration from the likes of Venom, Bathory, and Hellhammer. With two well-received EPs to their name — 2011’s Blasphemy Unchained and 2014’s Sounding the Seventh BellHellsword are now on the verge of launching their first full-length strike: On September 24th their debut album Cold Is The Grave will be discharged by Emanzipation Productions, and today we’ve got the premiere of all nine tracks.

Lyrically, the band deal with topics such as devil worship, the end of the world, death, desolation, mortality, and the absurdity of human existence. And with such happy thoughts in mind, and a take-no-prisoners attitude, Hellsword deliver 42+ minutes of blazing heavy metal hellfire. Continue reading »