This is a collection of news and new music I discovered last night and this morning. When I use the “Shades of Black” title, it doesn’t always mean that everything in the post will be black metal, but it does today. On the other hand, most of the music in this post isn’t likely to conform to any preconceptions that most casual listeners may have about the sound of black metal. If one were to construct a bell curve of the genre, almost everything in here would be out on the edges.

ABIGOR

Austria’s Abigor have finished recording their tenth studio album, entitled Leitmotif Luzifer — The 7 Temptations of Man. It will be released by Avantgarde Music on July 11. Despite Abigor’s long history, I’ve never listened to any of their previous releases from start to finish, and I’m not even certain I’ve ever listened to any individual songs. So this new album will be my first proper introduction to the band — and from what I’ve heard so far, it will be a very happy meeting.

Abigor have created a Bandcamp page on which they’ve uploaded two different teaser tracks, each of which contains excerpts from songs on the new album. They emphasize on that page that “no synthetic elements have been used” in the recording of the album — “the guitars are completely free of any effects, neither reverb nor any special effects edit were allowed to touch the string instruments on this album”, and “for vocals only reverb and delay has been used, no pitch or chorus or any other effect stained the purity and directness”.

The teaser clips collectively include nearly 18 minutes of music, though no complete songs. To say the least, the music displayed by these teasers is esoteric and eccentric, but it’s also fascinating and rich in its diversity. Continue reading »