SHADES OF BLACK: ONIRISM, HECATE, MISANTHROPIC RAGE, ENDE, KOSTNATĚNÍ

 SHADES OF BLACK  2 Responses »
Feb 252018
 

 

I stared at my long list of recent black metal releases that I found appealing. My eyes drifted further down the list to all the releases and advance tracks from weeks past that I had wanted to say something about, but hadn’t. That daunted feeling that crept into my head like a bad old friend, it locked up my brain. To unlock it, I tried to allow instinct to take over, and speared these five names based on the thought that the flow of the music would provide some interesting twists and turns as you move through them.

ONIRISM

Upon encountering this one-man French band’s second EP, Sun, last year, I tried to sum up my reaction in these words: “Onirism isn’t the first band to combine utterly enthralling and transcendently beautiful sounds with the kind of savagery that makes you want to hide under your bed, but holy hell, they do it well.”

Later in the year I revisited Onirism through our premiere of a track from the band’s split with Pure Wrath, and left enthralled again. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 1): CHRONAEXUS, ENDE, SCHATTENVALD, SACRAMENT OV IMPURITY, STRIBORG

 SHADES OF BLACK  5 Responses »
Mar 052017
 

 

I’ve divided this Sunday’s collection of music in a black vein into two groups. In Part 1 I’ve collected recent releases, all of which are full albums. In Part 2, which I probably won’t finish and post until tomorrow morning, I’ve gathered advance tracks from forthcoming releases.

I’ve also taken a different approach to the albums included in this post. Instead of trying to sum up each one, I’ve picked one song from each album to write about, and then provided a full stream of the entire album for you to explore further.

CHRONAEXUS

I learned about this first album from my Sacramento-based NCS comrade DGR. Chronaexus is a trio from his stomping grounds, and two of the three — guitarist/vocalist Nick Liuzzi and bassist Bret Tardiff — are also members of the excellent funeral doom band Lycus and the black metal band Minenwerfer, while Liuzzi and drummer Pete Chavez are also participants in the brutal death metal band Slaughterbox. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: LLUVIA, JASSA, ENDE, VOMIT OF DOOM, JORDABLOD, HIRSI

 Album Reviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  6 Responses »
Sep 042016
 

Lluiva-Enigma

 

I’ve been messing with this site for almost 7 years and I continue to be astonished by how much good metal from all over the world appears on a weekly basis. And so a lot of new music awaits you in this round-up of metal in a blackened vein, but there could have been more. In fact, I forced myself to separate new music from five other bands and assemble those tracks in another one of these posts, though I can’t be sure I’ll finish it before being diverted by other things.

I’m starting off with tracks from two new releases that are headed our way from the Fallen Empire label, and then branching off into other directions.

LLUVIA

We haven’t given enough attention to Lluvia (a one-man project from León, Mexico), even though the band’s last album Eternidad Solemne was celebrated in our friend Ben Smasher’s list of 2015’s best albums (and he’s not the only writer around the web who embraced the album last year). We have another opportunity to do better, because Lluvia has already completed a new album, the name of which is Enigma. Continue reading »