Jun 222021
 

 

If you are familiar with the catalogue of raw black metal assembled by the one-person Portuguese band Irae, then you will have some idea what to expect from the band’s new EP, intriguingly titled Dangerovz Magick Zpells from the Mesziah of Death — but you will likely still be surprised. The music is in many ways as idiosyncratic as the title, and its effect on the mind is confounding.

Like much of raw black metal, and perhaps especially that produced by the Portuguese cults, the music is willfully abrasive — yet this EP still manages to be enthralling. The moods are often harrowing in their displays of inner torment, but equally capable of reaching heights of tortured grandeur. The garage-band sound of the drums is primitive, but the beats are invigorating and head-hooking. The songs generate auras of blood-freezing, supernatural terror, but somehow still harbor beckoning, magical melodies that are spell-like and seductive.

We have further, more detailed, thoughts below about the fascinating contrasts within these unsettling yet beguiling compositions, which are not soon forgotten, but we also have a premiere stream of the EP for you, in advance of its June 24 release by Signal Rex. Continue reading »

May 292020
 

 

Over the course of the nearly 20 years that have passed since the spawning of Irae in the Portuguese black metal underground, the project has been prolific, with Irae’s music being released in three dozen demos, splits, compilations, live recordings, and five full-length albums, the most recent of which will be released by Signal Rex on the 20th of June.

Operating from within a Portuguese alliance known as the Black Circle, whose members also include Mons Veneris, Vetala, Decrepitude, and Rainha Cólera, Irae’s sole creator Vulturius has pursued a nihilistic vision of malice and misanthropy through a distinctive formulation that combines the aggressive abrasion of raw black metal with melodies of penetrating emotional power. On this new album, Lurking in the Depths, he was aided by session members on drums and synths, with the latter adding an important dimension to the music’s multi-faceted sound. Continue reading »

Mar 292020
 

 

After all the listening and writing I’ve done this weekend, honestly I’m out of gas. So let’s just go right to it….

BALMOG

We begin with a track that roams far and wide over its significant length. In the band’s own words, “18 minutes of oppression and mysticism”, but there’s more than that. The music is eerie and crushing, dissonant and disturbed, wailing and delirious, vicious and violent, spectral and sepulchral, swaggering and priapic, bombastic and bruising, grand and glorious — and also home to some head-hooking riffs and spectacular soloing. The vocals are wide-ranging as well, more often than not frighteningly insane, but also spine-tingling when they soar. In its cadences, it stomps, rocks, races, crawls, and drifts away into a rhythm-less ether. Continue reading »

Apr 272017
 

 

Over the course of the 15 years that have passed since the spawning of Irae in the Portuguese black metal underground, the project has been prolific, with Irae’s music being released in two dozen demos and splits, as well as compilations, live recordings, and three full-length albums, with the last album of new music being 2008’s Hellnation. On May 12th of this year, Altare Productions will release a new album by Irae entitled Crimes Against Humanity. One track from the album (“Genocide Journey”) has debuted previously, and today we bring you a second one, the song that opens the album, “In the Name of Satan“.

Operating from within a Portuguese alliance known as the Black Circle, Irae’s sole creator Vulturius has pursued a nihilistic vision of malice and misanthropy, and in this forthcoming album (to quote Altare) Irae “explores the lawless aesthetics of hate, extermination of feeble mankind and allegiance to the Adversary”. Continue reading »