(We welcome back Neill Jameson (Krieg) with the first installment of a multi-part post devoted to under-the-radar black metal releases worthy of greater attention.)

While it seems a lot of what’s going around in black metal these days is more driven by aesthetics and shock value than ever, it still has a certain potency that other genres within metal don’t seem to be able to match. That being said, I can’t think of a lot of current bands that I obsessively listen to the way I would when I was younger and potentially more full of shit than I am now at this ripe old age.

Elderly bitching aside, I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about records and bands that went somewhat under the radar at the time of release and sit in relative obscurity now, mostly because people have shitty taste (myself included), so I figured I’d use a column or two and shed some light on some records in the genre I’ve never been able to walk away from for whatever reason, the sort of releases that if I ever came into an excess of money I’d love to release on vinyl so that they would sit in my office unsold while people download it along with some weird virus that broadcasts Russian incest porn to their e-mail contacts. Here’s a few to start with: Continue reading »