Feb 262024
 

(Andy Synn gets his teeth into the new album from Darkest Hour, out now on MNRK Heavy)

Darkest Hour have been one of my favourite bands for… well, if you want a clue as to just how long, the shop where I bought my first copy of So Sedated, So Secure as a kid has been closed for about twenty years.

Which either makes me the worst possible person to review their new album due to my obvious bias… or the best, since I know exactly what they’re capable of and am therefore best prepared to judge them accordingly.

Let’s hope it’s the latter, shall we?

Continue reading »

Feb 262024
 

(Below you’ll find Daniel Barkasi‘s review of a new album by the Danish band Solbrud, which is out now on Vendetta Records.)

Black metal has been brimming with flavors and textures to please even the stingiest of palates. Denmark’s Solbrud contains a venerable cornucopia of variety – from the morose, to the hypnotic, to the unrelenting, and many variations thereof. They also never make the same record twice. With their latest IIII, they’ve ventured into creative choices that are bold and alluring. It can be said that there are four slices to this loaded-up pie. Continue reading »

Feb 252024
 

I have a lot to get to for this Sunday column as I continue to benefit from my day job at least temporarily leaving me alone. I hope it will be a benefit to you too. I’ll try to make this a bit easier to get through by calling out tracks to sample from the three full releases I’ve included.

ABYSSLOOKER (Russia)

I made a point of including music from a Ukrainian band in yesterday’s roundup, yesterday being the second anniversary of the egomaniacal thug Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. I wanted to make a point of including a Russian band today, the point being that sometimes blame can be painted with too broad a brush, and we ought not do that. Continue reading »

Feb 242024
 


Borknagar

It’s nice to begin a Saturday roundup of new songs and videos without bitching about my day job. Hard to bitch when I’ve had enough time to pull together roundups like this one for three days in a row. The cat’s away, so this mouse will play.

My spouse is away too. Has been since early last week, off visiting a sister in Nevada, so that’s another cat away. She’ll be back tonight, hopefully with her claws retracted, but the annoying state of air travel these days makes that unlikely.

Still, being annoyed by all the hassles is better than having part of the fuselage blow out at 16,000 feet. Fingers crossed that won’t happen on this trip, even though she’s flying the same airline, which will forever remember this video.

Anyway, my fellow mice, I hope you enjoy some or all of what follows. Continue reading »

Feb 232024
 

Born in Massachusetts in the year 2022, Compress released a debut demo that same year that got tagged most prominently with black metal, crust punk, and hardcore. It’s well worth tracking down (you’ll find it here), as long as you’re ready to be pounded into jelly and scared out of your mind.

That demo was and still is a ruinously intense experience, viscerally slaughtering and mentally combustive, accented by doses of apocalyptic harsh noise in case your brain hadn’t already been sufficiently sliced and seared.

Anyone who ran into that demo, and got run over by it, will experience fearful thrills from the news that Compress are now back, with a debut EP entitled The Final Level of Consciousness that’s set for a March 15th release by Eternal Death. And it’s that pulverizing and petrifying album that’s the source of the song named “Formosus” we’re now premiering. Continue reading »

Feb 232024
 

We have a pair of treats for you today, with our only regret being that we’re not offering them on Samhain Night, when they would more naturally aid in opening the portal between worlds of the living and the dead. On the other hand, as you’ll see, they’re capable of making every night feel like Samhain beneath a full moon.

Those two treats are the first songs revealed from Hymns to the Moon, the debut album from the German duo Moon Incarnate. These two, Christian Kolf (Valborg) and Matin Vasari (Beyondition), joined forces under the influence of the early works of the Peaceville Three – Paradise Lost, My Dying Bride, and Anathema – as well as early Amorphis, Tiamat, Katatonia, Samael, and Moonspell.

They may also have been under the influence of demonic possession, because this is blood-freezing and blood-pumping doom/death of a very high order. Continue reading »

Feb 232024
 


Photo Credit: Christian Martin Weiss

(Delays of various kinds make this interview of Hannes Grossmann by Comrade Aleks later in coming than we would have liked, but it’s better late than never, as we hope you will agree!)

This interview was started by email in October 2023 or so, and why do we publish it now? Because things happen not as planned, and it took too much time to finish it, though even that didn’t help much, so I feel it is incomplete. And I bet that you already heard Alkaloid’s third album Numen, which was released by Season of Mist last September, so what else to add?

However, it was good to get a response from Hannes Grossmann, Alkaloid’s drummer and a super-busy musician who’s involved in a few more bands and projects. You can listen to some of Numens songs while you read the text. I think that it won’t take much time. Continue reading »

Feb 222024
 

With paying work still leaving me alone, at least for the time being, I’ve found time to compile another roundup of new songs and videos. I can’t remember the last time I was able to do this on back-to-back weekdays. I have high hopes for three in a row tomorrow, though I did see that a refrigerator-sized satellite is supposed to fall to earth soon.

Like yesterday, we’ll go in alphabetical order.

DISRUPTION (SWEDEN)

To kick things off I’ve picked something that will kick you in the teeth but get your sluggish motor running hot too. Continue reading »

Feb 222024
 

As described by The Font of All Human Knowledge: “Homo homini lupus, or in its unabridged form Homo homini lupus est, is a Latin proverb meaning ‘A man is a wolf to another man,’ or more tersely ‘Man is wolf to man.’ It is used to refer to situations where a person has behaved comparably to a wolf. In this case, the wolf represents predatory, cruel, and generally inhuman qualities; in essence, the person is held to be uncivilized.”

The Italian black/death metal band Keres took that proverb as the name for their debut album which is due for release on February 23rd via Gruesome Records. It is, for them, a truth about the human condition that provokes disgust and rage. They define humanity as “the biggest plague on earth”:

“Over the centuries we killed each other for the most trivial reasons, hiding behind religion, political ideologies, false respectability and many other bullshit with the purpose of justifying what we have done and are still doing. But the truth is that our nature will always lead us to crave what we don’t have, bringing endless conflicts for this thirst of power, which will bring upon us our own demise. In the end, only ruins and dust of what we are will remain, this is our true legacy. We deserve extinction.”

Keres obviously don’t mince words. They don’t pull any punches in their music either, as you will discover for yourselves through our complete premiere stream of their new album today, on the eve of its release. Continue reading »

Feb 222024
 

(Anyone who has followed Comrade Aleks lo these many years knows that if any metal band is inspired by the works of HP Lovecraft he will eventually talk with them. As he did with Joseph Curwen from the Chilean death metal band Unaussprechlichen Kulten, and a good conversation it was.)

Chilean death metal band Unaussprechlichen Kulten was named after the fictional occult grimoire invented by H.P Lovecraft and R. E. Howard. And, according to its name, the band have continued to channel the will of ancient malign entities through their ferocious and macabre songs since 1999.

Their six album Häxan Sabaoth was released by Iron Bonehead Productions on the 2nd of February, and we made this interview with Unaussprechlichen Kulten founder Joseph Curwen (vocals, guitars) in the lead-up to its release. And, in my opinion, we had a pretty smart, even witty conversation thanks to Joseph. Continue reading »