Yesterday I bemoaned the trouble that weeks ending in Bandcamp Friday’s create for me in trying to compile the usual Saturday roundup for NCS. It creates similar troubles for picking music to recommend in these Shades of Black collections: just way too much potentially interesting stuff to check out.
Yesterday I tried to compensate (only slightly) by stuffing a greater-than-usual number of new songs into the roundup. For better or worse, I don’t have time to do that today — below you’ll find only four advance tracks and one new EP. I hope you like all of it, or at least find some one thing to brighten (i.e., darken) your day.
ANTE-INFERNO (UK)
In the fall of this year Ante-Inferno will release their third album in what is developing as a steady every-two-years sequence (our own Andy Synn reviewed their first two albums here and here).
The name of the new one is Death’s Soliloquy. It’s described as “[a]n ode to madness, mental illness, death obsession and unfettered suicidal despair”, and the band provided these additional details about its conception:
“The album’s theme is death viewed through different lenses and experiences. A soliloquy is where a character in a play speaks their thoughts aloud, but they’re speaking to themselves rather than to the audience. So this is like Death speaking on behalf of those who have died, reliving the final moments of their lives and what led them to that point – because the dead can’t speak, but Death was there with every one of them at the end.”
All of this is unsettling, and so is the new album’s first single, “The Cavernous Blackness of Night“, but the song is absolutely exhilarating as well.
Over the course of its 8 1/2 minutes it scorches the senses, creating sensations of torment and wretchedness, but it does that elaborately, by layering guitars that writhe and blare, constantly shifting the drum patterns, and making a prominent place for nimble bass notes.
Those blaring guitar melodies sound almost like horns, somehow both exultant and distressed. As the song evolves, however, the music begins to sound even more fraught. A guitar solo slowly moves through the angst-ridden riffing, trailing sorrow in its wake. And a vibrantly trilling guitar-lead seizes attention near the end as it appears and reappears, sounding both wistful and in pain.
It’s really an extraordinary song, instrumentally intricate and meticulous yet bursting with passion, including the vocals, which are shattering in their intensity.
Death’s Soliloquy will be released digitally by the band and in physical editions by Vendetta Records on November 22nd. The album’s nightmarish cover art was created by Khaos Diktator Design.
https://ante-inferno.bandcamp.com/album/deaths-soliloquy
https://vendetta-records.com
https://vendetta-records.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/anteinferno
ANTIKVLT (Austria/Sweden)
Having started today’s collection with Ante-Inferno, I couldn’t resist thinking about following that with the music of Antikvlt. But I didn’t know anything about Antikvlt‘s music before listening to this next song. Fortunately, my homophonic aspirations were rewarded, because the song turned out to be very appealing.
At the outset, “No Rest for the Sacred” comes off as raw in tone and mean in mood, driven by a vicious pulsating riff and hammering drums, accompanied by ravenous howls and murderous screams.
That’s all well and good, but the song gets more interesting, thanks to the unexpected appearance of solemn, haunting, chant-like singing, eerily warping arpeggios that ring as well as scour, and signs of rising delirium and twisted bleakness in the guitar’s glittering dissonance. The nimble and nuanced bass-work also starts seizing attention, and it’s one reason the song is worth hearing more than once.
It turns out that Antikvlt was started by Chris Marrok from the Austrian band Anomalie; I haven’t yet discovered who the other person in the band is, though they’re apparently from Sweden. The song below is from a debut album that will come out sometime in 2025.
https://www.facebook.com/antikvlt.blackmetal
https://www.instagram.com/anti.kvlt.blackmetal/
https://immortalfrostproductions.com
SKOGNATT (Germany)
I’ve been following the releases of Skognatt since discovering their entrancing and chilling EP Autumn Skies in 2020. On Friday of last week, just in time for Bandcamp Friday, Skognatt released a new EP named Andromeda.
From the EP’s name along, you can infer that Skognatt has set its gaze on the stars, an inference reinforced by the names of the EP’s four songs — “Andromeda“, “Cosmos“, “Alpha Centauri“, and “Nebula“. In line with this impression, you might expect an abundance of ambient synths, both ethereal and expansive, and therefore you might be surprised when that opening title track explodes in a furnace of blasting drums, scorching screams, and maniacally whirling (though brilliantly gleaming) guitars.
Skognatt does bring into play rapidly rippling keyboard notes and maniacally throbbing bass tones in “Andromeda” as the riffing rises to even greater heights of dangerous intensity. But the music does dramatically change, giving us what we might have originally guessed was coming — a soft and celestial phase. Yet it’s just a brief digression before the music becomes a nova of madness and fear again.
Over the course of the next three tracks, Skognatt again takes us slowly gliding through the wonders of a flight into deep space (“Cosmos“), but also strikes again with distressing intensity in “Alpha Centauri“, which despite its expansive sweep and shrill wailing synths seems even more hopeless in its moods than the title song. That song also includes some interesting keyboard work in an interlude that sounds like electronic bubbles popping, an interlude that further includes wordless angelic singing.
The EP’s closer, “Nebula“, takes us back into another wondrous ambient glide among the stars, mesmerizing in its effects, and refreshingly buoyant after the largely downward mood swing of the preceding track.
Andromeda is again the solo work of D.V., with drum programming on this release by NV of The Devouring Void.
https://skognatt.bandcamp.com/album/andromeda-2
ANOMALIE (Austria)
I guess it was a foregone conclusion that after including Antikvlt in today’s collection I would also include a song from Anomalie‘s new album, given the connection of Chris Marrok to both bands, and especially because this new Anomalie song is so good.
That’s not surprising, based on the quality of Anomalie‘s previous releases (you’ll find reviews of all the preceding Anomalie albums by our Andy Synn among the articles collected behind this link).
The new song, “Perpetual Twilight“, is the first advance song from a new Anomalie album named Riverchild, to be released by AOP Records and MVD Entertainment on November 1st.
High-flown singing appears right away, as does a surge of racing yet bleak riffage and thunderous drumming. And yes, as the riffing rises and falls, even as the drumming steadies, it channels grim and defeated moods, and the wailing tones within that heavy shroud (including vocals) only add to the emotional gloom.
But the song’s mood changes, through an amalgam of savagely slashing guitars, bestial snarls, and bowel-loosening bass-lines. A wavering and warbling arpeggio also seems to signify confusion, and pinging keys and clattering cymbals create a vibrancy that even feels optimistic.
Thankfully, the band also reprise the song’s opening phase, because it’s so stirring, though they’ve got one more change in store for us at the end, with gentle acoustic notes guiding the voice into the beyond.
One hell of a trip, this is….
https://artofpropaganda.bandcamp.com/album/riverchild
https://mvdb2b.com/
https://www.facebook.com/The.Anomalie.Experience
YOTH IRIA (Greece)
I have just enough time to bring you one more song before having to turn to more mundane tasks on this Sunday, and the one I chose is a song off a new album by the Greek band Yoth Iria.
“We Call Upon the Elements” is the song’s name, and it’s a fitting title because the music does sound like a summoning of elemental forces. But it’s an intense and infectious ritual for sure.
As a voice savagely snarls the words, and the drums chop like axes and burst like bullets, the riffing creates a feverish skittering presence which also rises in blazing streams of heart-lifting glory. A guitar solo adds to the glory, but also magically gestures toward the supernatural.
The name of Yoth Iria‘s new album is Blazing Inferno. It’s set for release on November 8th by Edged Circle Productions.
https://edgedcircleproductions.bandcamp.com/album/blazing-inferno
https://www.facebook.com/yothiriaofficial