Although the Australian solo black metal band Artanor released a split in 2009 (and its sole creator Menelyagor released a demo three years earlier under the name Fen Hollen), there has been no follow-up until now. But as follow-ups go, the band’s forthcoming debut album In Servitude of Darkness (to be released on July 27th by Gutter Prince Cabal) is an unusually ambitious one.

Rather than a stitching-together of unconnected individual songs, it’s the creation of a cohesive soundtrack to an expansive tale of fantasy that Menelyagor has been writing, a novel that relates the conflict between the Necromancer Rakinar and his evil minions, who have lost the capacity to distinguish between right and wrong, and Rakinar’s children and their allies, the Murkar. Menelyagor tells us this about the narrative and its connection to the music: Continue reading »