Nov 182019
 

 

Mount Soratte is a limestone mountain ridge roughly 45 km north of Rome. No less an authority than Virgil identified Apollo as its guardian deity, and in another age the mountain was used by ancient Italic and Etruscan peoples as a sacred place for for the worship of Soranus and then Apollo Soranus. The worshippers were firewalkers and were referred to as Hirpi Sorani (the “wolves of Soranus”). And it is this ancient fire cult that is the subject of the debut album of the formidable Italian black metal cult Comando Praetorio.

The name of the album is Ignee Sacertà Ctonie, which itself refers to fire and to the mysticism of the underworld, whose gods were also linked to the rituals on Mount Soratte. The music is in keeping with the album’s thematic inspirations, creating an array of dramatic sensations that are mystical and profound, ominous and dire, melancholy and doom-stricken, and — of course — incendiary.

We have already commented about the first strike from the album, a song called “Barbarie della Pietà” that was released in October, and now we present another one of the album’s four substantial tracks, this one named “Pire di Ere Incenerite“, as we approach the December 13 release of the album by ATMF. Continue reading »

Oct 242019
 

 

We all have coping strategies for problems we can’t solve. You know you can’t make the problem go away, so you just… cope… the best you can.

One of my problems, which I’m sure you get tired hearing me whine about, is that I can’t keep up with all the new metal that emerges every day. I try to find time every day to make lists of what I want to check out, but am rarely able to listen to even a significant fraction of the entries.

One of my coping mechanisms for this problem, when I actually have time to do some listening, is just to focus on what I added to the top of the list most recently, and just make myself temporarily ignore how much is seething underneath — which is how I picked the songs in today’s collection.

THY CATAFALQUE

You can tell you’re getting close to the end of the year when you start finding music from releases that are planned for 2020. I’m pretty sure the song I’ve chosen to begin today’s collection is the first excerpt I’ve selected for a round-up that comes from a 2020 album (although the second one is just a bit further down this page). Continue reading »