SHADES OF BLACK: ROTTING CHRIST, CHARUN, SATANIC NORTH, DODENKROCHT, FRAGMENTUM, CANTIQUE LÉPREUX, BEDRÄNGNIS

It is a good thing to be tolerant of people who are different from you, including people who believe things you think are ridiculous. But tolerance is sorely tested by people who are hypocrites and con-men, whose professions of faith are a cover for corruption, hatefulness, and abuse of others.

Having those people in mind today, and all the people who have fought back against them (with a kind thought also for the sweet people who humbly try to follow the precepts of such passages as Matthew 7:12 and 25:35-40), I picked the following five songs from forthcoming records and two complete releases to recommend to you on this Easter Sunday.

ROTTING CHRIST (Greece)

Rotting Christ, but of course I’m starting with them today. Their new album ΠΡΟ ΧΡΙΣΤΟU (Pro Xristou) — “Before Christ” — “serves as a fervent tribute to the last Pagan kings who resisted the onslaught of Christianity, guarding their ancient values and knowledge”.

Photo by Chantik Photography

The latest single from the album, “Saoirse“, is “a tribute to the Irish King of Tara, one of the last kings to resist the expansion of Christianity”. In Gaelic, “Saoirse” means “freedom”. The song arrived with a video featuring the artwork of Costin Chioreanu.

It’s a rousing song, a grand battle cry elevated by heroic choral voices and sweeping melodies with a mythic (and somewhat melancholy) aura, and driven on by the surging throb of blood-pumping riffs, booming and hammering drums, and Sakis Tolis‘ fierce snarls.

Pro Xristou will be released by Season of Mist on May 24th.

https://shopusa.season-of-mist.com/band/rotting-christ
https://orcd.co/proxtristoupresave
https://linktr.ee/Rotting_Christ

 

 

CHARUN (Italy)

The next song, “Impending Decline”, is the title track of Charun‘s debut EP, which was presented through a lyric video.

The words, strikingly voiced in deep, rounded growls and spine-tingling howls, are certainly more grim than those of Rotting Christ‘s song, and the feverish riffing more despairing in their mood, but the song is just as stirring.

The bass plays a signal role in the song, especially during a mid-point phase when the music gentles and becomes more haunting, and the bass leads again into a torrential flurry of wildly skittering riffs, racing and jolting drums, and bellowing vocals, all of which makes for an electrifying finale.

The EP was released on March 29th by New Density Records. I haven’t had time to listen to the rest of the songs yet, but there’s no doubt I will.

https://newdensity.bandcamp.com/album/impending-decline
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100075430612048&mibextid=LQQJ4d

 

 

SATANIC NORTH (Finland)

Satanic North attracts attention due to the presence in the band of Petri Lindroos (Ensiferum, Warmen) and Janne Parviainen (Ensiferum), but vocalist Von Occult and guitarist Skomorokh play equally vital roles, and the fierce visage and scorching voice of the former threatens to steal the show throughout the arresting video for their new song “Behind The Inverted Cross“.

Satanic North don’t try to reinvent the wheel in this song, but it’s damned exhilarating nonetheless — a riveting blast of hellfire and fury, a vicious turbocharged assault of blazing fretwork, hurtling percussion, scalding screams, and haughty roars, interwoven with episodes of feral swaggering that gets heads moving.

“Behind The Inverted Cross” is from Satanic North‘s self-titled debut album, which will be released on April 19th by Reaper Entertainment.

https://lnk.to/SatNorAlb
https://www.facebook.com/p/Satanic-North

 

 

DODENKROCHT (Netherlands)

Dodenkrocht are known for powerfully melding black and doom metal. However, in their new album, they say they pursued “a more black metal approach, and with less doom episodes than previous releases”. That certainly holds true for the album track “Architects of Pain“.

In this song, the drums go full-tilt from the start, the shrieking and roaring vocals are diabolically enraged, and the shrill trill of the harmonized riffs and keys are fire-bright and sweeping. The drums also hammer like a muscle-moving metronome and the guitars seem to rapidly boil in agony.

There’s one point in the song when the band stop stealing the listener’s breath away, when the pace slows, the vocals shriek in wrenching pain, and the music shimmers in fevers of misery and dismay. That phase is just as transfixing as what comes before and after it, but an order of magnitude more hopeless.

Coffin World will be released on May 11th — on CD by Dodenkrocht, on vinyl and tape by Zwaertgevegt, and through online media by Auric Records.

https://www.zwaertgevegt.nl/product/dodenkrocht-coffin-world/
https://www.zwaertgevegt.nl/product/dodenkrocht-coffin-world-2lp-pre-order/
https://dodenkrocht666.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/DodenkrochtOfficial/

 

 

FRAGMENTUM (Belgium)

The next song in today’s collection is clearly less rooted in black metal than others I’ve picked for today, but it’s still a kindred, and the themes of the band’s new EP Corn Ritual, which were inspired by Mayan culture, connect with other things I’ve chosen for today.

You’ll find the EP’s title song below, along with a lyric video. Wordless chants and punchy drums open the song, and it unfolds into swirls of exotic keys, jolting bass-grooves, and rapidly skittering guitars. The vocals also grab attention with their cavern-deep growls and serrated-edge howls.

The song is well-geared to getting muscles throbbing and blood pumping. Near the end, a serpentine solo creates an inviting presence, and those swirling keys surprisingly shift into a darting dance not common in death or black metal.

Corn Ritual will be released on May 10th by Gio Smet Records.

https://www.facebook.com/fragmentum.zone

 

 

CANTIQUE LÉPREUX (Canada)

Now we move into a couple of complete releases, beginning with the third album from the Québec City black metal band Cantique Lépreux, which was released by Eisenwald on March 29th. Here’s a thematic description provided by the label:

Le bannissement tells the abduction of a young girl and the sickness that is forced into her. Tainted, and rejected by those who should have protected her, she flees to wild and unexplored land, where she shatters and mends herself continuously. In these countless battles, she severs her bond to reality, subverts the sickness, and overthrows those who had seized her innermost Dream. Through banishment, liberation.

As you already know if you’re familiar with this band’s past works, they’re formidably capable of whipping up raging vortices of assaulting drums, frantically swirling riffs, and thoroughly vicious vocals, and they do that again in these new songs. But as you also may know, and as they do again here, they’re equally capable of creating sonic edifices of ancient grandeur within the songs.

At many times, even in the midst of gut-rumbling and skull-cracking drumwork and fanged vocal hostility, the band weave audio tapestries of elegance and even romantic nostalgia. The music can seem to whirl and spin like a jubilant dance, with flickering and whistling musical fires spiraling high, backed by nuanced bass-work. It can also seem to burst open like a sudden sunrise, almost blindingly brilliant and breathtaking.

In fact, feelings of jubilation and glory are almost ever-present in the music (how else to interpret the magnificent soloing in “Rivières rompues” or the sheer exhilarating vibrancy of “Par la gueule des fantômes“, for example?), though the music does subtly shift into moods of longing, even when the sense-surround sweep of the richly layered music remains wholly consuming and the drums continue flying like bats out of hell. Here and there, as in “Archétypes” and “Le rêve primordial” (or at least for parts of those), the band also move the music into more melodically distressing and downtrodden phases.

The completely immersive music often rolls like vast tides, crashes like a tempest, whirls in exultant delirium, or soars with the sun. Generating such sensations throughout the length of an entire album might be too much to ask of a listener, but not here — the music is just too spectacular and brilliantly filigreed to tire of it. And the band do wisely create an interlude, through the sublime acoustic instrumental that appears in the afore-mentioned “Rivières rompues“.

https://cantiquelepreux.bandcamp.com/album/le-bannissement
https://ffm.bio/cantiquelepreux

 

 

BEDRÄNGNIS (Switzerland)

To close today’s collection, I chose an EP named Verlorene Seelen und ihr Zerfall. It was released by the Swiss black metal band Bedrängnis on March 22nd, and it follows their 2022 debut album Die Bürde die wir tragen.

According to google translate, the EP’s title means “lost souls and their decay”. In keeping with that title, the music could be slotted into the sub-genres of misanthropic and depressive black metal. The music is deeply melodic, elucidated through riffs and guitar-leads that ring with relative clarity and penetrate with power, but the melodies are wrenching.

Along with the heart-break and desperation in the moods of the music, the band bring along strikingly savage vocals, like wolves on fire, bass-lines with iron-shod heaviness, and dynamic drumming that’s capable of flying like the wind and rampantly thundering, to drive the music to heights of terrible intensity. There’s also a wailing guitar solo, with a tone that sounds like a cross between a flute and a violin, in the midst of “Fährnis“, that really seizes attention.

The songs include other accents and shifts that I haven’t mentioned, including the blazing sensations that elevate “…danach Traum” and the the soft and mysteriously beckoning intro to “Unmensch“. Like the music of Cantique Lépreux above, there’s also an elegance in the music (for want of a better term), and a hearkening back to ancient eras.

Suffice to say that although “depressive back metal” might be an apt descriptor, it’s hard to think of this music as gloomy, and it’s definitely not monotonous. Well worth taking in all four songs from beginning to end.

https://bedraengnis.bandcamp.com/album/verlorene-seelen-und-ihr-zerfall
https://www.facebook.com/Bedraengnis