(written by Islander)

The creation of underground metal is a global phenomenon, more extensive and varied in some countries than in others but still ubiquitous. Ukraine is one nation with an extensive and fairly multi-faceted history in the field, yet even when considering the music that’s currently being generated, the first thought that comes to most of us now is… war.

Now more than 30 months after Russia’s unprovoked invasion, the conflict, which the aggressors thought would end quickly, has settled into a grinding devastation with no end in sight, still peppered with almost weekly atrocities inflicted on non-combatants; this week, for example, brought Russian ballistic missiles that killed more than 50 people and wounded almost 30 others in Poltava, followed just yesterday by a nighttime missile and drone attack on Lviv that killed 7 and injured more than 50.

Life goes on, of course, even under the grim shadow of a war that will reach its thousandth day in November, and part of that life is the making of music, a visible way of defiantly demonstrating that life does indeed go on despite a tyrant’s determined effort to grind it into bleakness and despair. Continue reading »