Nov 072017
 

 

We are privileged to bring you the premiere of a song from the new album by the Colombian black metal occultists in Ignis Haereticum. Bearing the name Autocognition of Light, it will be released on December 1 by Goathorned Productions.

I have my friend Austin Weber to thank for turning me on to the terrible wonders of this band’s 2014 debut album, Luciferian Gnosis. In his review for us here, he described the album as “depraved and ferocious”, “off the beaten path and frighteningly dissonant”, “evil and twisted”, “a world of perplexing terror” that might be “the wisdom of a bright vision” or “madness in masquerade.” Continue reading »

Oct 292017
 

 

This is Part 2 of a three-part SHADES OF BLACK feature for this week. As I explained in Part 1, I assembled a dozen items, all but one of them consisting of new music. I arranged them in alphabetical order by band name and then divided the list into three parts. I’m going to try to finish Part 3 in time to post it on Monday morning.

EWIGKEIT

James Fogarty has a long and impressive list of bands and solo projects on his resume, including The Meads of Asphodel, Old Forest, Svartelder, and In the Woods…. But his longest-running project, the one that came first, is Ewigkeit. The first album under that name was Battle Furies, released in November 1997 by the Eldethorn label, and now it’s being released again — but this isn’t a mere reissue. Continue reading »

Oct 042014
 


(In this latest installment of a multi-part piece, Austin Weber continues rolling out recommended releases from his latest exploratory  forays through the underground. The first installment is here and the second is here.)

ANTHROPOMORPHIC SOUL

This release came to my attention by way of my good friend Corey Jason, also known as the sole force behind The Conjuration, whom I’ve covered here at No Clean Singing several times. So it’s fitting that what he sent me was also a one-man death metal band.

Anthropomorphic Soul is a Portugal-based projected led by sole member Nuno Lourenço, with a few guest solos and guest sax playing added for good measure. Seed Of Hate is certainly experimental death metal, yet always interesting, wrapped in a mechanical sheath of industrialized buzzing, giving it a very different, demented, horrifying feel. The skronky saxophone embellishments on “Anthropomorphic Soul” and “A New Beginning” add another flavor of mania into the mix, especially since they are not quick sax solos but extended soundscape additions — much like the quirky orchestral/choral overlays that also rise to the surface from time to time.

Seed Of Hate is hard to categorize, as it doesn’t really fit within one kind of death metal, nor is it clearly inspired by a single source. The problem I usually have with one-man death metal is that, minus Necrophagist and a handful of others, the songwriting often falls flat in favor of technical performances that are highly derivative. Fortunately, Anthropomorphic Soul does not succumb to that pitfall. For that reason alone, Seed Of Hate is worthy of your time. Continue reading »