SHADES OF BLACK: MYLINGEN, PALACE OF WORMS, MORK, STRJA, ETHIR ANDUIN, TIDELESS

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Feb 192023
 

I didn’t oversleep today, so there’s a lot here. And I don’t just mean the volume of music, but the stylistic range of it too. Black metal has become a vast canvass, but I’ve often gone off the edge of the canvass too. And I’ll add that there are more variants of doom in this mix than usual.

MYLINGEN (Sweden)

To begin today, I’ve chosen At Night I See Demons, the head-spinning debut EP released last month by the Swedish black metal band Mylingen, a collaboration between multi-instrumentalist V.J. (from Apathy Noir) and vocalist G.C. According to Metal Archives, their name is based on the word “myling“, which in Scandinavian folklore was “the phantasmal incarnations of the souls of unwanted children killed by their mothers and forced to roam the Earth until they could persuade someone to bury them properly.” Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ETHIR ANDUIN — “LAST STRUGGLE”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Feb 242020
 

 

Alexander Ivanovich Vvedensky was a Russian poet who died in 1941 at the age of 37, and whose work is said to have had a formidable influence on “unofficial” and avant-garde art during and after the times of the Soviet Union, though his writing was little-known in Russia until long after his death. During his life he faced repeated arrest and died while being transported to one of Stalin’s Gulags.

One of Vvedensky’s poems, “Potets“, recounts the experiences and reflections of a dying man, including his last conversations with his sons. The poem inspired the Russian band Ethir Anduin to create the song we’re premiering today from Ethir Anduin‘s new album, Pathway To Eternity. The Agony. It is one of eight substantial tracks on the album (collectively they amount to 80 minutes of music), each one with its own concept, but in the aggregate forming a diverse yet unified whole.

The album, which will be released by GrimmDistribution on March 16th, also marks a turning point for Ethir Anduin. The band was formed in 2006 as the solo project of A.V. Fenrir, and while guest vocalists appeared among the seven albums preceding this one, Ethir Anduin now has an official vocalist named Luka, who makes her first appearance with the project on this new album. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ETHIR ANDUIN — “MEANINGLESS EXISTENCE”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Nov 072018
 

 

I’ve observed more than once in our pages that creating purely instrumental metal in compositions of unusual length is a challenge fraught with risk. Even a song of more than 10 minutes that includes voices puts demands on the attention of discerning listeners that are difficult to reward, and when the additional sonic textures and emotional energies that can be contributed by a good vocalist are subtracted from the equation, the dangers of drifting attention are magnified.

Of course, we can all think of at least a few examples of musicians capable of surmounting such challenges, whose lengthy compositions and instrumental performances grab hold of our heads and don’t let go until they’re ready to. And I think we have a new example of such prowess for you here, in the track we’re premiering from the new album by the Russian band Ethir Anduin. The song’s name is “Meaningless Existence“. Continue reading »