OUR LIST OF 2025’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 16): VALLETTA, LACABRA, MANTAR

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2025  No Responses »
Jan 232026
 

(written by Islander)

In yesterday’s segment of this list I was explaining about the challenges I face in preparing it. Even though not one solitary soul asked me to do that, I knew you were hungry for the information — though maybe I was sensing a desire for pita bread and a big tub of hummus or a rack of ribs, and I just misinterpreted things. Desires don’t always reach me through the ether in their original form.

Anyway, I mentioned that one of the challenges was figuring out how to group together songs in these daily segments. Even within my odd mind there’s no particular rhyme or reason to many of the groupings, but sometimes there is, and today is one of those times. The first and third songs below just rock the fuck out, and even the one in the middle felt like it belonged, albeit for somewhat different reasons than rocking the fuck out.

All three of these songs were ones I was convinced I’d have to find a place for in this list from the first time (of many times) I heard them. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2025’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 9): IN MOURNING, CYTOTOXIN, JORDSJUK

 Exceptions to the Rule, MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2025  No Responses »
Jan 142026
 

(written by Islander)

We’re at another installment of this list where I don’t really have any organizing principle to explain why I put these three songs together. They’re just three songs I thought deserved to be on the list, and they happen to come from three really good 2025 albums too, but each one sounds very different from the other two. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: MANTAR, BALMOG, JUODVARNIS, DARK MEDITATION, GRAVEWITCH, MESSA, MARES OF THRACE, IMPURITY

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Feb 012025
 


These are bathrooms I visited in Port Orchard, Washington

(written by Islander)

It’s been a hell of a week hasn’t it? More like a week from hell. The daily news has become a series of Hieronymus Bosch paintings, the ghastly ones whose details have frequently appeared on the cover of metal albums.

On the other hand, it’s been a heavenly week if you focus on the kind of music that typically makes its way into these Saturday roundups. So let’s forget about the news for now and move right to that!

MANTAR (Germany)

I’m never going to not rush to check out new music from Mantar. (Forgive the double-negative, I guess I haven’t completely forgotten about the news.) Especially when it’s prefaced by this kind of statement from guitarist/vocalist Hanno Klänhardt: Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: MANTAR, SAVAGE LANDS, FRONTIERER, ASS TO MOUTH, ROTTEN SOUND, RITUAL FOG, SKAPHOS, THE SWORD, SOLIPSISM, PLAGUEFEVER

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Nov 162024
 


Mantar photo by Sonja Schuringa/Chantik Photography

I have my second miserable cold in two months, and how are you doing? I’ve been focusing on music that I thought would help blast the snot out of my head. I’ve included a lot of that below. I can’t tell that I’ve really come un-clogged, but it has made me feel better in other ways, including providing catharsis for being so pissed off that the virus has hit me again so quickly.

As you can see, I had time enough to do lots of listening and watching yesterday and this morning. As usual, the music from the 10 bands featured below isn’t all I heard and liked, but I had to draw the line somewhere. I moved some of my choices to tomorrow’s SHADES OF BLACK column, and others I hope I’ll get too somewhere down the road. Continue reading »

OVERFLOWING STREAMS: BAXAXAXA, BLUT AUS NORD, CELESTIAL, DECOHERENCE, FABRICANT, FORTIÐ, FREYA, HARM’S WAY, MANTAR, SKÁLMÖLD, THY CATAFALQUE

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Jul 182023
 


Baxaxaxa

Today is the 199th day of 2023. On this day in history, among many other instances of idiocy and abuse, the First Vatican Council decreed the dogma of papal infallibility and Adolf Hitler published Mein Kampf. It’s also the birthday of Nelson Mandela, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, Hunter Thompson, Vin Diesel, Geno Suarez of the Seattle Mariners, and maybe you, as well as the death-day of Caravaggio, Jane Austen, Benito Juarez, Machine Gun Kelley, and hopefully not you.

It also happens to be a rare weekday when I had time to pull together a roundup of recommended new songs and videos, which has nothing to do with commemoration of any of the preceding events. There’s so much here that I’ve throttled my usual descriptive verbosity (Satan knows there’s more than enough hot air in the atmosphere today already) and left aside some of the cover art until I can upload it later today. (Presented alphabetically by band name, which led to some interesting juxtapositions).

BAXAXAXA (Germany)

Prepare for: low-end rumbling and thrumming plus grim vibrating riffage, immense jolting chugs and ethereal gothic synths, dragging tones of agony and fanatical serrated-edge yells. The experience is menacing and morbid, feral and ferocious, infernal and infectious…. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2022’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 2): IMMOLATION, KONVENT, MANTAR

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2022  No Responses »
Jan 032023
 

In my mind it was a foregone conclusion that this list would include something off the 2022 albums by these three bands. Picking just one track from each of them was a bigger challenge — and yes, my self-made and self-imposed rule for this list is that it will include only one song by any one band, hard as it might be to pick just one.

Why I decided to put the following three songs together in one segment of the list, I’m not 100% sure, but it may have had something to do with the fact that all three songs were first presented with three excellent videos.

IMMOLATION (U.S.)

I think I could have written a track list for Acts of God, taped it to the wall, closed my eyes, and thrown a dart at it, and wherever the dart struck on the track list would have made a fine choice for one of 2022’s most infectious songs. Not wanting to further disfigure any walls, or more likely to hit something a few feet away from the target, I tried to approach the task a little more rationally, but impulse won out anyway. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: SCARCITY, RAAT, STEINGRAB, LYCOPOLIS, NOCTU, MANTAR

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK  1 Response »
Jul 172022
 

 

As you could already deduce from the previous two posts at this site, in recent days I found more than the usual amount of time I could devote to new music. My day job left me alone, or I ignored it, and I shrugged off household chores too. Baseball presented the only serious competition, because a certain team in the Pacific Northwest is on a historic winning streak (and I hope I didn’t just jinx them by mentioning that).

Focusing on black metal for purposes of this column, I settled on one dazzling album, a collection of quite varied “singles” from forthcoming records, and a new video. You’ll also find poetry.

SCARCITY (U.S.)

Scarcity‘s new album Aveilut (a Hebrew word for mourning) is difficult to describe. In part because it’s a single 45-minute composition, and in part because the trip maneuvers and whipsaws us through a spectacular labyrinth, it defies efforts to explain that “this happens, and then that happens, and then this other thing happens”. How tedious that would be, despite the hope that mapping the album would make it easier to comprehend.

Trying to pick out signal moments as illustrations of the music wouldn’t work very well either, because there are so many, and because they dramatically diverge from each other. Continue reading »

MANTAR – PAIN IS FOREVER AND THIS IS THE END

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Jul 072022
 

(Andy Synn hopes that this is not the end for Mantar)

I discovered something this weekend. Something which shook me to my very core.

Did you know there are some people out there who don’t like Mantar?!

I mean, to be clear, I don’t expect every person to like every band – that would be madness – but before this weekend I’d never encountered anyone who actively disliked Mantar before.

Honestly, I’m still shaken by this particular revelation… but maybe the band’s new album will be able to change a few hearts and minds?

Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: MANTAR, WAKE, MERGER REMNANT, ARMED FOR APOCALYPSE, HOURS OF WORSHIP, TOADEATER, NON SERVIAM

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Jun 182022
 

 

A Friday night spent carousing followed by a lazy Saturday morning doesn’t make a good predicate for a Saturday music roundup. And yes, I was languid this morning, rather than hungover, after exercising rare restraint on the alcohol last night. But though functional today, I wasn’t feeling motivated. The cool, gray, damp weather outside may have had something to do with that. While the rest of the country seems to be an oven, I was luxuriating in a Pacific Northwest gift.

And then, and then, I still spent an hour and a half flitting through a list of new songs and videos I’d made in as the week went by. Finally, I made these picks.

MANTAR (U.S./Germany)

Mantar have a new look, at least for the video you’re about to see, and new stylistic ingredients in the music too, but they haven’t forsaken their visceral intensity. It pours out through the vocals, which reach shattering zeniths (and also bring Kurt Cobain to mind at times), and through the angst-ridden but soaring riffs and keys, and the booming and battering drums. It’s also damned difficult to get out of the head once you’ve heard it. Continue reading »

OVERFLOWING STREAMS: MANTAR, KONTINUUM, EXECUTIONER’S MASK, OBLIVION THRONE, THE SECOND FOVEA, VEGAS, LIVIDUS, ATOLL, NIGHTBEARER, FABIAN FILIKS

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Apr 092022
 


Mantar – pic by Matthis van der meulen

 

I was a hamster last week, racing along the treadmill at my day job, with the only apparent signs of progress being motion and the cage filling up with shit. Oh lordie, while I was spinning that wheel the NCS in-box and other message accounts filled up with a lot of shit too — the good shit!

Based on my pawing through it this morning, I found a lot to share, as you’re about to discover in a very wide-ranging musical excursion. But since I’ve now got to go scrub my paws with lye you won’t find my frothy words or cover art in as much abundance as usual.

MANTAR (Germany)

Let’s begin with a new song and video from one of our favorite bands. I have a long list of people (none whom I personally know) that I’d like to hang low so the rats can get ’em because they make life more miserable by their existence. I’d like to beat and scorch them with this song before they take the drop, though they won’t deserve the song’s great chorus. Continue reading »

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