AN NCS PREMIERE: ALBURNUM — “ON THE BONES OF PILGRIMS”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Jun 032024
 

Today we revisit the Dutch band Alburnum, whose 2022 debut album Buitenlucht proved to be a multi-faceted, soul-shaking, and intensely memorable first step. The occasion for our reunion with them is their completion of a follow-up album, The Withered Roots of Reality, which is now set for release on July 20th.

As you will know if you encountered Buitenlucht, Alburnum infuse their black metal with folk instrumentation and a reverence for musical traditions far older than the musical evolutions that produced the varying tropes of black metal as we’ve come to know them. They do it again on the new album, but have created even more ambitious and dynamic arrangements, a progression that is still inspiring and intensely moving but even more fascinating — as you shall discover today through our premiere of a song from the new album named “On the Bones of Pilgrims“. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: DOEDSVANGR, ALBURNUM, TANTUM, CARRION BLOOM, THRALL, BERATOR, VØLUS, PHENOM, VINTERDRACUL

 SHADES OF BLACK  No Responses »
May 082022
 

Happy Mother’s Day to all of you who are mothers, and as a reminder to those of you who were born of mothers (versus those who were the result of asexual reproduction). I intended to compile a roundup of new music yesterday, but was feeling under the weather. I’m feeling less incapacitated today, as you can tell from the volume of music in this week’s Shades of Black.

There’s a method to the way I organized the following songs. Words like “grim”, “depressive”, or “poisonous” may come to mind over the course of the first three tracks, and then things begin to turn more chaotic and violently unhinged, leading to a closing twist that’s more difficult to sum up.

DOEDSVANGR (Norway/Finland)

I’m beginning with a video for the song “As the Rivers Bleed Their Blessings” from Doedsvangr‘s newest album, Serpents ov Old, which was released by Debemur Morti last fall. The video was recorded at the band’s release gig for the album, which took place at Røverstaden (Oslo) on March 26th, 2022 (credit to Carl Eek of Necrolust Productions for filming and editing it). Continue reading »