SHADES OF BLACK (PART 1): VOLKOLUN, PESTE UMBRARUM, ADVERSO

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Aug 192018
 

 

You nay have noticed that we had no WAXING LYRICAL post yesterday, given that Mr. Synn was otherwise occupied. Rather than attempt to cobble together a Saturday post myself, I decided instead to get a head start on what will become a two-part SHADES OF BLACK for today, with new music from four bands in this part and four more in Part 2. In this one, I’ve picked two recent full releases and advance tracks from two other albums.

VOLKOLUN

Path Through The Mist is a new EP by Volkolun (Волколунь) from Belgorod, Russia, who released a debut album (Only Trees Remember Centuries) five years ago. Though I haven’t heard the album, and therefore had no inkling what might be coming, the EP knocked me over from the first time I heard it. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: TEMPLE NIGHTSIDE, AETERNUS, ESSENZ, TEHOA, BLEEDER

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Aug 122018
 

 

There’s a reason why I chose SHADES OF BLACK as the title of this series many years ago, instead of something like BLACK METAL. It avoids debates about whether the music I choose to highlight is or isn’t that thing, and allows me to roam a bit more widely than I would even if I were just applying my own definition of what belongs in the genre, which in itself would still take us well beyond whirring guitars, blasting drums, and scalding shrieks. It allows me to choose the following collection of excellent new music without thinking too hard about it.

TEMPLE NIGHTSIDE

In 2013 the vaunted Australian band Temple Nightside released their debut album, Condemnation. They’ve released one other album since then (along with a couple of splits), in the shape of 2016’s The Hecatomb. Now, rather than releasing a full-length of entirely new material, they’ve re-recorded their debut album — although “re-imagined” is a better word for what they seem to have done. It makes sense that they would also commission new cover art, and they enlisted the abundant talents of Elijah Tamu for that. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (MID-WEEK EDITION): ONE TAIL ONE HEAD, SLAVEHOUSE, LURING, SAINTE MARIE DES LOUPS

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Aug 082018
 

 

(Today we have a rare weekday edition of SHADES OF BLACK for you, and once again we’re turning the column over to NCS supporter HGD, who has selected some black gems for your listening pleasure.)

While there’s not necessarily any real stylistic theme to these releases (as they all cover different aspects of black metal), there is an thread of finality that runs through all of them.

ONE TAIL ONE HEAD

The first item in this list is a new song from Nidarosian black metallers One Tail One Head. They announced recently that they would be relasing a debut album, Worlds Open, Worlds Collide, through Terratur Possessions on October 5. More importantly, this will also be the only full-length released by the band, as they have decided to go their separate ways after their upcoming European tour, with a performance in their hometown of Trondheim in December being their last. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: HELRUNAR , A FOREST OF STARS, LUCIFERICON, SARKRISTA

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Aug 052018
 

 

My whirlwind trip to New Mexico is about to end, with a pair of long flights that will get me back to Seattle looming ahead today. I found a little time last night and this morning to sample some of the new black and blackened metal that has surfaced in recent days, and picked three new tracks to recommend. All of them are from forthcoming albums I’ve been eagerly awaiting. And at the last minute, I added an EP originally released in May, but more recently made available on Bandcamp.

HELRUNAR

Vanitas Vanitatvm is the name of the new album by the German band Helrunar. September 28th is the date selected by Prophecy Productions for its release, roughly three and a half years following the  excellent Niederkunfft.

Stylistically, frontman M.D. places it between Niederkunfft and that album’s predecessor,  the massive Sól. He says: “The songs are more compact and mature, also mostly faster, and again, more black metal. Apart from that, there have been influences you might call nostalgic.” Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (OVERFLOWING STREAMS EDITION): COMMUNION, FEVER, HIMELVARUWE, KOMMANDANT, SANGUINARY TRANCE, SKELETAL SERPENT, THE SPIRIT OF IUVENIUM, TAUR-IM-DUINATH, TETH-NAHASH

 SHADES OF BLACK  3 Responses »
Jul 292018
 

 

I have a lot of black (and “blackened”) metal I’d like to recommend this Sunday. But because of a two-day picnic that Ms. Islander and I are hosting this weekend at the NCS compound for co-workers and other friends, I don’t have time to write much about each song or album that I’ve chosen. So I’m resorting to a thing I’ve done in the context of the SEEN AND HEARD posts during the work week when I’ve been in a similar metal-flooded, time-short situation, which I’ve called OVERFLOWING STREAMS, for obvious reasons.

Here’s a big torrent of music, with fewer words of review than usual, and I hope it’s not so much metal that you’re deterred from investigating for yourselves. I’ve arranged the music in alphabetical order by band name,

COMMUNION

In December of last year I posted about a stream of a song called “Witching Thrust” by the Chilean black/death band Communion. It came from their second album, The Communion, which was then set for release by Hells Headbangers on January 26th. The whole album popped up in a Bandcamp alert I received late last week, which might mean that it only recently became available as a digital download. Or maybe it was just a reminder. Either way, I got all fired up again listening to the song “Witching Thrust”. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 2): BAUME, NIGHTGRAVE, UTEN HÅP, ULVEN

 SHADES OF BLACK  1 Response »
Jul 222018
 

 

Our friend HGD handled Part 1 of today’s SHADES OF BLACK installment, and he made some excellent picks that coincidentally were on my list, too, but his efforts gave me the time to focus on a few more.

BAUME

The French one-man band Baume released a debut album named Les Années Décapitées in March, which I would have missed but for a recent recommendation from a trusted source. You can guess from the album’s cover art that this isn’t going to be the kind of black metal that brings Les Légions Noires to mind, and in fact black metal is only one of the ingredients that flow through the music that Juif Gaetan has created. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 1) (HGD EDITION): ARCHEMORON, SVARTMÁLM, ULTHA

 SHADES OF BLACK  2 Responses »
Jul 222018
 

 

EDITOR’S NOTE:  Roughly one week ago NCS patron HGD, who has been kind enough to send us recommendations of new music from time to time in the past, prepared a SEEN AND HEARD round-up of new music that we happily presented along with his own introductory comments. And today we’re doing it again, but this time HGD’s recommendations fall within the focus of our Sunday SHADES OF BLACK posts. Once again, the words of introduction are his. We’ll have a second SHADES OF BLACK post a bit later today.

ARCHEMORON

Archemoron (translated as “beginning of death” from Ancient Greek) are a black metal band from Athens, Greece. They formed in 1999 as a thrash/heavy metal band under the name Ancestor before changing their style and eventually their name in 2008. Their third album, Year of the Harvester, was released on June 20 through Bowels of Noise. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 2): SVARTKONST, CROWS OVER BRÁVELLIR, WALSUNG, BLUTFAHNE, TATANHAMMER, WITCH KING

 SHADES OF BLACK  7 Responses »
Jul 152018
 

 

The four bands whose music I collected in Part 1 of this post don’t really sound alike, but I found all of the music explosive and emotionally intense, and that had something to do with why I packaged their music together in that opening installment. There’s probably even less connective tissue between the songs in this second installment, and I’m not sure I’ve even succeeded in organizing them in a way that would make for any kind of appealing flow from one to the next. But I really do like everything here a lot… a WHOLE LOT.

SVARTKONST

Devil’s Blood, released on June 29th, is the debut album of the one-man blackened death metal band Svartkonst, the work of Swedish musician Rickard Törnqvist, who mixed and mastered it as well as composing and performing all the music. It hooked me immediately with the opening track “Black Light Burning“, and I stayed hooked for the next nine tracks. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 1): DAUÞUZ, INSIGNIUM, LYKAIONAS, ILDARUNI

 SHADES OF BLACK  2 Responses »
Jul 152018
 

 

It’s always difficult to choose songs for these Sunday columns, not because the pickings are slim but because of the constant abundance of music from the black realms that catch my fancy every week. This week I thought I might have time to make the choosing a bit easier by making more choices. I haven’t written Part 2 yet, and it’s conceivable that I won’t finish it in time for posting today before I have to turn to other activities. But if not today, then you’ll see it on Monday.

DAUÞUZ

Before we turn to the music of this German duo, let’s have a small lesson about the band’s name and its pronunciation. “Dauþuz” is a Proto-Germanic or Norse word for death. In its spelling it includes a letter (þ) from Old Norse called thorn, which (as The Font of All Human Knowledge tells us) originated from a rune found in Icelandic and Norwegian rune poems. That rune is called Þurs in Old Norse (“Thurs”) or Þurisaz (“Thurisaz”) in its Germanic variant, and it appeared in the old rune poems as a name for giants.

The letter thorn (or þorn ) survives in only one modern language — Icelandic — where it’s pronounced something like th as in the English word thick, but not exactly. And so now, when you tell your friends how amazed you are by this band’s music, you’ll be able to do so without mutilating the pronunciation of their name by sticking an unwelcome “P” sound in the middle of it. But you probably knew that already. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: CENOTAFIO, TEHOM, DEAD MOON TEMPLE, BATHYUM, FACELESS GOD, NIDSTANG

 SHADES OF BLACK  2 Responses »
Jul 082018
 

 

Sometimes I refer to these collections as playlists, despite the fact that I often include at least brief reviews of complete EPs or albums. But this week’s SHADES OF BLACK really is just a playlist. You’ll find links to full streams of six recent or recently discovered albums or EPs here, but all I’ve done is to pick out one song from each of them as “teasers”. I just don’t have time to do more, much as I wish I did.

And even if you don’t have time to explore everything in depth on your own, I do think it’s a good playlist, with interesting variations of style and mood. If I were on Spotify, I might be able to make an actual playlist of these tracks, but I’m not. Perhaps you’ll do it on your own — after reading all of my words, of course, because they’re so vital as an introduction. (Please stop snickering — it undermines my self-esteem.)

CENOTAFIO

We’re not easing into this playlist, but launching it in harrowing fashion with “Letargo a su posterior hipnosis“, the third track from La Fatídica Excrecencia De La Subtierra, the 2017 debut album by the Chilean band Cenotafio, which was re-released at the end of May 2018 by the Mexican label Throats Productions. Continue reading »

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