SHADES OF BLACK (PART 2): GOATCRAFT, PLUTONIAN SHORE, KREUZWEG OST, PRIMEVAL MASS

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHADES OF BLACK  6 Responses »
May 032015
 

 

Over the last week I came across a lot of music I thought was worth sharing that could all loosely be labeled “black metal”, so much music that I’ve divided this collection into two parts (Part 1 is here). Part of what interested me in all this music was the diversity of the sounds. In some cases, the main connection to the label “black metal” is simply the spirit I sense in the songs, and in other instances simply the presence of certain musical elements in combination with others that aren’t typically associated with this increasingly amorphous genre.

And so, some of what you’re about to hear in this two-parter may be quite different from what you’re expecting, but I thought it was all very good and I hope you enjoy it.

GOATCRAFT

I haven’t written about this one-man project from lovely San Antonio, Texas, since the spring of last year, when I repeatedly featured tracks from Goatcraft’s last album The Blasphemer — as well as Lonegoat’s answer to this question (which I still find remarkably perceptive and eloquent): “What in your opinion are the essential elements – instrumentally, emotionally and philosophically – that comprise the heart and essence of Metal?” (reprinted at the end of this post). Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 1): COFFIN HAZE, TAPHOS NOMOS, DEVILSPIT, BLOOD CULT

 Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHADES OF BLACK  4 Responses »
May 032015
 

 

Over the last week I came across a lot of music I thought was worth sharing that could all loosely be labeled “black metal”, so much music that I’ve divided this collection into two parts. Part of what interested me was the diversity of the sounds. In some cases, the main connection to the label “black metal” is simply the spirit I sense in the songs, and in other instances simply the presence of certain musical elements in combination with others that aren’t typically associated with this increasingly amorphous genre.

And so, what you’re about to hear in this two-parter may be quite different from what you’re expecting — from deathly surf rock to Alcoholic Rural Black Punk Metal to “necroclassical”, and beyond.

COFFIN HAZE

So let’s start with the deathly surf rock. I have no idea who is in Coffin Haze or precisely where they’re located (other than somewhere in the UK) — and believe me, I’ve done some looking. The only reason I discovered them at all is because Caligari Records is going to be releasing their debut demo on tape later this year, and I happened to see a post about it on Caligari’s Facebook page. (In fact, I discovered all of the first three bands featured in this post through Caligari’s Facebook page.) Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: SWARÞ, LUSTRE, MUR, MURG, GENOCIDE SHRINES

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHADES OF BLACK  12 Responses »
Apr 212015
 

 

If you’re new to our site, “Shades of Black” is the name I put on round-ups of recommended new music when everything I’ve found coincidentally happens to have some connection to black metal. As you’re about to find out, my definition of “connection” covers a big swath of territory.

Some of the songs featured in this post come from albums that are already available for streaming in their entirety. I’m mentioning them now because I’m afraid if I defer writing anything until I can listen to the whole album and prepare a review, there’s a chance I won’t write anything at all.

SWARÞ

The fact that my tastes in metal are so wide-ranging has good and bad consequences. I think it’s good for the site, because without trying very hard I can contribute variety to the music we feature simply by writing about what I like. It’s bad because I don’t have the kind of depth of knowledge that comes from really immersing myself in just one or two sub-genres. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: FALSE, PALE CHALICE, BOTANIST, DEMONICAL

 Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  9 Responses »
Apr 102015
 

 

Yesterday brought a wealth of new music, and I’ve collected a few of the riches in this post. The first three songs are black metal, and the fourth isn’t — but it’s still obsidian and it still rips.

FALSE

With only an untitled EP in 2011 and a split with Barghest in 2012 — collectively totaling three songs — the Minneapolis black metal band False have established the kind of underground credibility that makes their debut album one of the year’s most highly anticipated releases. For me, “highly anticipated” became an understatement after I saw them perform at last summer’s Gilead Fest in Wisconsin. In a word, the performance was stunning (reviewed here).

Yesterday, Gilead Media announced pre-orders for the album — which is also untitled — and put up the first advance track for streaming on Bandcamp. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: AN UNHOLY ANARCHY COMPILATION, MALTHUSIAN, AIMA, GHOLD, BLEAK

 Free Shit, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHADES OF BLACK  3 Responses »
Mar 032015
 

This is another one of those new-music round-ups that I would normally label “Seen and Heard”, but it happens that everything I’ve collected here is so heavy and dark that “Shades of Black” seemed more fitting, even though the music isn’t exclusively black metal. Perhaps needless to say, I’m really high on everything collected here.

UNHOLY ANARCHY RECORDS

Yesterday, Maryland-based Unholy Anarchy Records released a stunning digital compilation of songs via Bandcamp. It’s a free download, but I’m sure that throwing a few bucks their way would be very much appreciated — and this thing is so damned good that a contribution would also be well-deserved. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: FALSE, ACHERONTAS, DØDHEIMSGARD, VOLAHN, MISÞYRMING, GHOST BATH

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHADES OF BLACK  5 Responses »
Feb 152015
 

 

This is a round-up of news and new music that I discovered in a long bout of listening and reading yesterday. It happens that all the items in this collection concern black metal, but black metal is a broad spectrum, and it happens that the music you’re about to hear is quite diverse — and all of it very good.

FALSE

This first item is a piece of news, an official announcement of an album that’s been on my personal “most anticipated” list for 2015 since I heard it was being recorded last year. It’s the debut full-length by False from Minneapolis, and it will be released by Gilead Media in the May-June time frame, both as a double-LP and as a CD. The cover art (above) is killer — I’m eager to see what the LP gatefold looks like.

False have only released three songs in their meteoric career — two of them on an untitled EP in 2011 and one on a 2012 split with Barghest (reviewed here). But False are fond of long songs, and so those three add up to almost 45 minutes of music — 45 very intense minutes. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: URFAUST, IDOLATRY, ADDAURA

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  6 Responses »
Jan 202015
 

 

This is a collection of recent music I heard over the last 24 hours that I want to recommend. As the post title suggests, the music is loosely connected by elements of black metal — and I do mean “loosely”, especially in the case of the first song.

URFAUST

I first learned of the Dutch two-man band Urfaust when our long-time supporter Utmu wrote about them in a guest post two years ago, a post I would commend to people who are new to Urfaust. Even today, I’ve still only dabbled in the band’s previous recordings, but enough to recognize that their approach to black metal is highly distinctive.

More than four years have passed since their last album, but Germany’s Ván Records is now poised to release a new 12″ vinyl EP from the band. Entitled Apparitions, it features painted artwork by ThornyThoughts Artwork. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: LVTHN, NECROSAVANT, OUTER HEAVEN, GNAW THEIR TONGUES, CONDOR, BÖLZER AND SPECTRAL LORE,

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHADES OF BLACK  3 Responses »
Dec 212014
 

 

I suppose this post could be considered Part 2 of a collection I began yesterday (here). It’s a big selection of music I discovered over the last couple of days that in widely varying degrees incorporate elements of black and death metal into the sound. And I do mean “widely varying” — no two of these bands sound alike, but I hope you’ll agree they all sound good.

LVTHN

LVTHN is a Belgian black metal band with three short releases to its credit, all of them appearing in 2014. The first one, Adversarialism, I reviewed here. The next two of those releases came this month — a four-song EP entitled The Grand Uncreation (which includes a cover of a Katharsis song) and a split with Lluvia entitled Illuminantes Tenebrae. Both are worthy of separate reviews, but I’m so pressed for time that I’m afraid I’ll never write them. I decided this short comment is better than nothing.

In a nutshell, these five new LVTHN songs are potent examples of bestial black art — torrential hailstorms of knife-edged riffs undergirded by the distant rumble of percussion and pierced by flesh-rending vocals, with waves of dark, dramatic melody moving through the music like the migration of leviathans. It’s gripping, galvanizing, ravaging music, with just enough well-placed breaks in the onslaught to prevent total sensory overload.  And the Katharsis cover is obliterating. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: LEVIATHAN, HUMAN BODIES, DEAD IN THE MANGER, HIC IACET

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  7 Responses »
Dec 202014
 

 

Here is a collection of recommended items from the blacker end of the metal spectrum that I spotted and heard yesterday; I have some others that I’ll feature tomorrow. I wrote most of this last night, just before the alcohol-soaked holiday party hosted by the place where I work. The parts that don’t make any sense were written this morning as I began the long road to recovery.

LEVIATHAN

Yesterday brought additional details from Profound Lore about the next album by Leviathan: As previously disclosed, the album’s title is Scar Sighted; it will be released March 3 digitally and on CD; it was produced, engineered, and mixed by Billy Anderson; and it includes nine tracks. There was also this info about the album’s packaging, with a reference to the artwork I’ve included at the top of this post:

“Scar Sighted” will be packaged as a boxed CD edition (the only version of the CD this will be available as) which will come with eleven two-sided inserts featuring exclusive paintings by Jef Whitehead himself (one of them being the one pictured, LEVIATHAN logo watermarked specifically for online purposes, there is no actual front cover for “Scar Sighted”). The vinyl edition, to be released a month or so after the CD/digital version will also be specially packaged and will be released via the artists’ own Devout Records imprint (in which we will directly update you on its progress in due time).

This is an album I’m eager to hear, in part because I have a feeling it will include some surprises (see this interview of Wrest for reasons why I think that). This is the track list: Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: ISRATHOUM, CHALICE OF BLOOD, NEFANDUS, NIGHTBRINGER, VERBUM VERUS, WEDERGANGER

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Nov 052014
 

 

In my daily searches for news and new music that I think would be worth your time, sometimes I come across so many exciting new discoveries that it feels like the flood gates have been opened, or that I’ve opened Pandora’s box thinking that it was my underwear drawer, or that a pack of wolves have materialized in my skull and started devouring its meager contents.

That happened over the last 24 hours. I found so many new things worth recommending that I’ve split this round-up into two posts. By chance, many of them all involve the same label — Daemon Worship Productions — so I’m collecting those in this first post.  More info about all the releases discussed below and related merch can be found here.

ISRATHOUM / CHALICE OF BLOOD

Our last mention of Israthoum on the site occurred almost two years ago when Andy Synn reviewed the band’s second album, Black Poison and Shared Wounds. That is now being followed by a new Israthoum split with the Swedish black metal band Chalice of Blood, which was originally announced at the beginning of this year. Like that preceding album, the split is adorned with spectacular artwork by Held (Ubertragic Art).  (Click the image to view a larger version.) Continue reading »

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