Welcome to our usual Sunday feature on metal in a blackened vein. I had already pulled together most of these songs last Sunday, hoping to prepare a Part 2 of the Shades of Black installment that I posted then. But I got carried away by the usual flurry of activity that begins on Mondays, and failed. Since then, of course, I’ve come across more black metal that I’d like to recommend. The result is this gargantuan collection. I hope you can find time to at least sample everything.

The songs I originally chose for this post a week ago were mostly on the melancholy, depressive end of the black spectrum, sometimes with a folk influence. I’ve now interspersed some different moods and energies in the collection. (I want to thank my friend Miloš for originally recommending a number of the releases that I chose for this collection.)

VOID MEDITATION CULT

To begin this playlist I have a song from the debut album of the hooded Ohio band Void Meditation Cult — Utter the Tongues of the Dead — which will be released on October 31 by Hells Headbangers. It follows a 2011 demo named Sulfurous Prayers (and those songs were also included in a 2013 split with Sperm of Antichrist, which seems to have been another project of the main man behind Void Meditation Cult, who goes under the name of Desolate Defiler). Continue reading »