Jan 272019
 

 

If you came here this Sunday expecting the usual SHADES OF BLACK column, I’m sorry to disappoint you. The post you’re about to read is one I intended to publish yesterday before turning to the next SOB column, but I didn’t get it finished in time before turning to certain long-planned weekend activities. Those same activities prevented me from giving much thought to SHADES OF BLACK yesterday, and will probably make it tough to get that column done today either. Only time will tell.

I checked out all the following new videos and songs on Friday, and then revisited them this morning. It was one of those listening sessions where the stars seemed to align. Though the genres represented here are different, the music flowed in such a good, atmospherically dark way, in part because (as I hear them) they all incorporate ingredients of doom, without any of them really being what most people would call doom metal.

THE MOTH GATHERER

To open this collection I chose “Motionless in Oceania“, the first “single” from the new album by the Swedish band The Moth Gatherers, whose line-uo has changed a bit since their last record. Esoteric Oppression is the group’s third album, and it will be released by Agonia Records on February 22nd. It’s so immensely powerful that I felt flattened and stenciled by the sounds, like a thin sheet of tin beneath an industrial-strength die stamp. Continue reading »

Oct 142016
 

hierophant-mass-grave

 

I nearly decided to call this round-up “Overpowering Audio Carnage” or “Your End Is Near”, but decided those headlines wouldn’t quite suit everything I’ve collected here — though they would suit most of it.

I guess I’m in a bloody frame of mind, and these songs struck the right chord, some of them because they’re fucking bloody and cathartic and some of them because they turned my fevered mind in other appealing directions. I’m going to start with the especially nasty and destructive stuff.

HIEROPHANT

I’ve been meaning to check out the music from Hierophant’s new album Mass Grave and finally took the plunge when CVLT Nation premiered a track from it yesterday (thanks to Utmu for pointing me to it). I’m glad I was sitting down or it would have knocked me flat. Continue reading »