SHADES OF BLACK: MISOTHEIST, DEATHLIKE DAWN, GLYPH, DARK PLAGUE, BLESTEMAT, BEHOLDER, VALRAVNE, PÂLEFROID

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK  No Responses »
Mar 032024
 

Here’s the way today’s collection of music goes: The first four choices include two albums and two singles that I thought fit well together. The music by all four bands is unmistakably harsh and hostile, but it’s also adventurously inventive and head-twisting, laced with the kind of unpredictable and unexpected elaborations that might invoke in some people’s minds the amorphous label “avant-garde”, or at least the term “unorthodox”.

After that I’ve included four other individual songs as bonuses. Later I’ll explain why I used that word to explain their presence here, if you make it that far (and you damn well should). Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: PÂLEFROID — “L’EFFONDREMENT” AND “MOS MAJORUM”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Aug 252022
 

In January of this year the French one-man black metal band Pâlefroid made its first release, a three-song EP named Soleil de cendres. Pâlefroid is following that with a self-titled debut album, which will be released by the distinctive Antiq label on September 26th. It includes the three songs from Soleil de cendres and six more new songs. Today we present two of those previously un-heard tracks, “L’Effondrement” and “Mos Majorum“.

That previous EP revealed a multi-faceted dynamic, combining both incinerating vocal intensity and solemn spoken words, ravaging riffs that moved in momentous waves and slashed with feral power, fire-bright leads that flickered and entranced like sparks from a bonfire, and pulse-popping drum- and bass-work. The music ripped and ravished, whirled and levitated, was rough and raw, but was also grand, sweeping, and even elegant and elaborate in its channeling of melancholy moods of remembrance and desperation.

The EP’s music seemed to hearken back to a long-lost age (some might even be tempted to call it “medieval black metal”), but it also brought forth breathtaking ferocity and powerfully head-moving riffs with a visceral appeal (sitting still while the song “Pâlefroid” blazes and rocks is a particular impossibility). Through all three songs, the emotional power was intense — intense enough to put your heart in your throat and send your head spinning.

And that brings us to “L’Effondrement“. Continue reading »