SHADES OF BLACK: NIGHT CROWNED, ASET, ANTANIA, CIRKELN, FASTER THAN THE DEVIL 2, HEADSTONE BRIGADE

 SHADES OF BLACK  3 Responses »
Sep 102023
 

I hope this Sunday finds all of you well, and ready to have your heads bounced around like tennis balls in a spinning dryer. Which is a way of saying that the music I picked for today’s collection careens around, not staying in one musical place for very long and ending with a curveball that swerves outside the black(ish) metal strike zone.

NIGHT CROWNED (Sweden)

We latched on pretty hard to the music of Night Crowned, beginning with our premiere of a song from their 2018 debut EP, Humanity Will Echo Out, continuing through our premiere of a song from their 2019 debut album Impius Viam, and moving on from there with a lot of enthusiastic commentary about their second album Hädanfärd in 2021.

And so we’re already relishing the release of their third album Tales, now set for release by the Noble Demon label on November 10th. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: RITUAL DEATH, HELL MILITIA, CIRKELN, MOSAIC, CHARCA

 SHADES OF BLACK  No Responses »
Feb 132022
 

 

What I’ve chosen for this week’s black metal column provides a good variety of music for heathen tastes (or at least I think it does). It includes reissues of some older EPs, a trio of recently revealed tracks from forthcoming albums, and one full-length that came out about 10 days ago.

RITUAL DEATH (Norway)

I remember hearing about this band, most likely through Karina Noctum‘s interview of T. Ciekals, though the focus of that interview was his band Djevel. But I didn’t follow up to see what Ritual Death was all about until noticing that the Russian label Living Temple Records had released tape and digital editions of two Ritual Death EPs on February 11th of this year. Continue reading »

OVERFLOWING STREAMS (PART 2): CIRKELN, FACELESS BURIAL, FULL OF HELL, GNOSTIC GORILLA, GRAVE SUPERIOR, INGESTED, SHITANGEL, UMBRA VITAE, VENOM PRISON, VOLTURYON

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  1 Response »
Jun 272020
 

 

This is a follow-on to another gigantic round-up I posted yesterday, and almost all of the songs and videos below were released during the last five days.

I may have mentioned that although my day-job (which still hasn’t reopened) is in Seattle, I live on an island in Puget Sound. Living here has lots of pluses and a few minuses, one of which is that whenever one of the weather gods so much as sneezes the power and the internet go out, which is what happened this morning.

So, I’ve been using my phone as a hot spot. That has slowed me down, and has made doing this tedious enough that I’ve not only cut back on my words but also largely left these items without the usual purchase links, Facebook pages, and other info about the records. I’ll try to go back and fill all that in when doing it is a less annoying process.

CIRKELN (Sweden)

An epic musical narrative, both gloom shrouded and frenzied, melancholy and murderous, haunting and majestic. Seemingly a Tolkein-esque tale told by an orc bred in the subterranean halls of Utumno and raging against his enslavement, the dramatic song blends numerous heavy metal styles to very good effect. Continue reading »