SHADES OF BLACK: ÆNIGMATUM, ASEITAS, BLACK HATE, CAPE OF BATS, ULTHAR

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May 102020
 

 

I spent hours yesterday trying to catch up on listening to new metal. I now have a giant list of things I’d like to recommend, including enough blackened sounds to fill up a four-part SHADES OF BLACK today. I haven’t figured out how to make that happen, and I don’t know how any normal person would be able to digest all of it even if I could. But I’m going to continue pondering how to deal with my desire to put it all out there. In the meantime, here’s the first installment.

I will say that the “shades of black” in this collection are often very faint shades, with other stylistic ingredients much more prominent than black metal. But I think all this stuff is outstanding, and fits very well together, for reasons you’ll figure out as you listen.

ÆNIGMATUM (U.S.)

“A wild ride full of twists and turns”. That’s how this Portland band describe Adorned In Wrath, a two-track demo that will be released on May 22nd, which they say will serve “to give a glimpse of our forthcoming sophomore full-length”. The first of those two songs, which is streaming now, is definitely a wild ride — in fact, that’s an understatement Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: ASCENDENCY, BIESY, HELGAMITE, KENAZ, NEKUS, OMINATION, TITHE

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May 032020
 


Ascendency

 

We’ve now entered the second full month of a government-ordered shutdown here in Washington State, with only minimal re-openings permitted before June, and maybe not even then. Meanwhile, elsewhere in the country communities are being encouraged to become human petri dishes by venturing out to movie theaters, gyms, restaurants, beaches, etc. Good luck to them. I’ll be interested to see what grows within their cells, or doesn’t.

Meanwhile I’ll try to suppress my own depression and anxiety over the prospect of another month within these walls, and continue to sift through the great mass of new metal in an effort to make my life, and perhaps yours, a little more harrowing and wretched. To that end, below you will find six individual tracks and one album to stream. I also have a collection of other complete releases I would like to recommend. Maybe tomorrow…. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 2): TOSKA HILL, ARCHAÍA SOFÍA, DEATHSIEGE, LUSTRE

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Apr 262020
 

 

This completes today’s two-Part column. This installment includes an advance track from a forthcoming release, a demo single, an EP, and a full-length album, and the sounds are quite diverse.

TOSKA HILL (New Zealand)

If you visit the “About” section of this Auckland band’s Facebook page you’ll see a quote from Vladimir Nabokov about the meaning of the Russian word toska:

“No single word in English renders all the shades of toska. At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning. In particular cases it may be the desire for somebody of something specific, nostalgia, love-sickness. At the lowest level it grades into ennui, boredom.” Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 1): ELFFOR AND KUOLEMAJÄRVI

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Apr 262020
 

 

I’ve packed a lot of music into this Sunday’s column — four complete albums or EPs, as well as an advance track from a forthcoming record and a demo single. It’s all so new that I haven’t spent much time with the music, and am therefore probably not in the best position to give it well-considered opinions. But the first impressions have been so exciting that I didn’t want to wait. Not for the first time, impulse has again ruled this day.

Because there’s so much music here, I divided the column into two Parts. Part 1 is devoted to two full-length albums.

ELFFOR (Spain)

Unholy Throne of Doom is the latest album by this band from the Basque Country, which began long ago as the solo project of Eöl but seems to have fleshed out into a full line-up, with one of the members performing tambourine, flute, and a traditional Basque instrument called the Alboka. Released on April 22nd, the album consists of four tracks, each of them in the range of ten to thirteen minutes. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 2): CARPE NOCTEM AND ÁRSTÍÐIR LÍFSINS — “ALDRNARI”

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Apr 192020
 

 

Earlier today I promised a second installment in this weekly column, and this is it, though it focuses on only a single release — but it’s a big one, album-length in size and featuring the work of two bands who have always made a big and very favorable impression: Carpe Noctem and Árstíðir lífsins.

The name of this new split is Aldrnari and it’s set for release by Ván Records on April 24th. It features cover art by Artem Grigoryev and is said to explore “themes of death and war, fire and life”. Each band contributed one song to the split, each of them more than 22 minutes in length, and both are now up for listening on YouTube. We’ll briefly consider them one at a time. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 1): IMPIETY, AKATECHISM, SLIDHR, EAVE, GOLDEN LIGHT, HEILUNG

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Apr 192020
 

 

You may have noticed that I didn’t post anything yesterday, a rare missed Saturday opportunity. I participated in three virtual happy hours on Friday afternoon and evening and somehow didn’t understand that I wasn’t required to drink straight through all of them. Saturday taught me that lesson, brutally.

I’ll try to make up for lost time today with two installments of this usual Sunday column.

IMPIETY

Versus All Gods is the ninth full-length by this famous Singapore band, and the first one since 2012’s Revenge & Conquer. In those seven years two new guitarists joined the line-up, and something happened to the song-writing as well — something that seemed to convey rejuvenation, a return to the thermonuclear energies that fueled earlier releases, coupled with the mastery that comes with experience, sort of like a barbarian horde that has learned through decades of successful conquest how to decimate even more powerfully and brutally. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: ANAMNESI, HORNWOOD FELL, IXAXAAR NEXIA, FUNERAL RITES

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Apr 122020
 


Emanuele Prandoni, the man behind Anamnesi

 

After writing this morning’s premiere feature for a song by From the Vastland (which I urge you to hear if you haven’t), I succumbed to a plague. No, not that plague, a plague of laziness. By the time I roused myself out of the stupor, hours had passed. To keep this post from appearing too late in the day, I did some painful cutting back of what I had planned to include. But what’s left here is very, very good.

ANAMNESI

“S’Enna e S’arca“, the second single from a new album by the Italian band Anamnesi, is a magnificent song and a multi-faceted one. Its anchor point is a combination of deep drilling riffs and high swirling ones, the combination creating a feeling of cold cruelty and fevered anguish over heavy drum thunder, slashing cymbals, and scintillating fills. The song includes bestial vocals and a variety of sharp rhythmic breaks that introduce booming and jolting sensations. The music is perpetually accented by riveting drumwork and by morphing guitar emanations that seem increasingly bleak and haunting, but with sounds that also resemble birdsong at one point.

The sharpest break comes near the middle, when the music transforms into mystical keyboard ambience before the drum and bass mount a methodical and magisterial skull-pounding assault, and those glimmering and gouging riffs return. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: ALASTHOR, BLIGHT, BOREAL, BURIAL, SKOGNATT, SLAGMARK

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Apr 052020
 

 

I nearly called this SHADES OF BLACK-PART 1, because I have a few albums I want to recommend and briefly review, in addition to the individual tracks and EPs I’ve collected here. I’m going to try to do that, but in looking at other things that are already in the works I’m not sure I can push myself to do it quickly. So we’ll see, but in the meantime I hope you’ll enjoy what follows. I believe that each of these six bands are making their first appearance at NCS.

ALASTHOR

The Belgian duo Alasthor claim inspiration from such bands as Marduk, Arkhon infaustus, Dissection, Gorgoroth, Funeral Mist, Nargaroth, and Mgla, and for their lyrical themes they draw upon studies and practices of the Left Hand Path. Their newest release, Mahapralaya, is a four-track offering that was revealed on March 24th. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: BALMOG, IRAE, SØRGELIG, LEBENSSUCHT, SYMBIOTIC GROWTH

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Mar 292020
 

 

After all the listening and writing I’ve done this weekend, honestly I’m out of gas. So let’s just go right to it….

BALMOG

We begin with a track that roams far and wide over its significant length. In the band’s own words, “18 minutes of oppression and mysticism”, but there’s more than that. The music is eerie and crushing, dissonant and disturbed, wailing and delirious, vicious and violent, spectral and sepulchral, swaggering and priapic, bombastic and bruising, grand and glorious — and also home to some head-hooking riffs and spectacular soloing. The vocals are wide-ranging as well, more often than not frighteningly insane, but also spine-tingling when they soar. In its cadences, it stomps, rocks, races, crawls, and drifts away into a rhythm-less ether. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 2): ISKALDE MORKET, COLDWORLD, OMNIKINETIC, CRUSTY OLD TOAD

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Mar 232020
 

 

Here’s the second part of this week’s column, which I began here yesterday. As usual, I’ve been unable to write about everything I wanted to write about and have had to be (relatively) brief, but that’s because I have a couple of album reviews to finish writing — they will accompany premiere streams today, both of which will be worth your time.

All of the music you’ll find below was created by one-person bands — one from the UK, one from Germany, and two from Portland, Oregon. In these days of the virus, when most people follow the edicts of social distancing, we may come to increasingly rely on such one-person projects for new music. Not all of that will be as good as what you’re about to discover.

ISKALDE MORKET

This is the UK project I mentioned; its creator lives in Norwich. The album, Metaphysics of Mass Murder, was released on March 17th. The band’s thumbnail description of the music on Bandcamp is “Apex Dissonance. Labyrinthine Technical Black Metal”, and that happens to be not only evocative but also accurate — though it doesn’t go quite far enough. Continue reading »

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