SHADES OF BLACK: PLAGUEWIELDER, FROSTNATT, SAMIARUS, SCHATTENFALL

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Jan 122025
 

(written by Islander)

Here we are again in the very early part of another new year. In these dawning new days with a long stretch of more days looming ahead I’ve thought about why I continue toiling away on this blog after so many years despite the mental pressures and time demands it imposes. I think there are two main reasons.

The first is a continuing fascination with the music we cover and how it has changed and continues to change. If all the numerous sub-genres had stagnated, boredom would have set in. Repeatedly listening to newer generations of musicians doing basically the same thing as older generations might not have been completely fruitless, but I doubt I would have wanted to keep writing about it.

The second reason is the challenge of the writing, the challenge of not saying the same kinds of things over and over again. Repeating the same methods of describing audio sensations would also have become boring. Falling into a rut and not trying to get out would have been easy; trying to do better is frustrating, a mission of only incremental gains beset by recurring feelings of failure and backsliding. But so far, that mission has seemed a better alternative than just giving up.

These thoughts have been on my mind today because I decided to devote this Sunday’s column mainly to a small group of complete releases. Writing about entire albums or EPs is harder for me than introducing individual songs — a bigger challenge. And on the other hand, I thought the records I chose represent, in different ways, a resistance to stagnation. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: VIDMERSHIY SHMAT, OBRIJ, FROSTNATT, ENGE STORE, FUNEBRE, ULVIK, VESPERWYND, NARRENWIND, GROHOT

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  6 Responses »
Nov 272022
 


Vidmershiy Shmat

My NCS time can be captured by this formula:  NCS = 24 – [FDJ + FAF + SBBS + MAE], where 24 is the number of hours in the day (a constant I haven’t figured out how to extend), FDJ is Fucking Day Job, FAF is Family and Friends, SBBS is Sleep, Bathroom Breaks, and Smoking, and MAE is Meteors and Earthquakes.

EAD (Eating and Drinking) doesn’t enter into it because I can do those things at the computer. So far, the value of MAE has been Zero. I might have made a place for DDD (Disease, Dismemberment, and Death), which would leave the calculated NCS time at Zero, but hope springs eternal!

The most consequential variable (so far) is FDJ. Unfortunately, I can’t ignore it, as I sometimes do with FAF, and it’s difficult to minimize the time required, as I sometimes do with SBBS. But during this long Thanksgiving holiday it has left me alone, and that’s why I finished two big roundups on Friday and Saturday, and now a third one here. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 2): FROSTNATT, VOLLMOND, HINTERKAIFECK, STELLAR DESCENT

 SHADES OF BLACK  1 Response »
Apr 112021
 

 

To the extent writing about music matters at all as a form of guidance, it clearly matters more in the case of complete albums or EPs than single tracks. Particularly when a writer is as verbose as I am, it doesn’t take much more time to just listen to a song than to read some goofball’s frothy impressions of it. But it obviously takes a much bigger investment of time for a listener to absorb an album or EP, and so getting some kind of overview can be useful, at least if you trust who’s providing it.

Therefore, the fact that I’m not providing a completely comprehensive overview of the six records collected here (all of them released between late March and last week) is a miserable failure. Much as I hate to be so brief, I’ve still attempted to at least give you a flavor of what each album brings. Given my time constraints, the alternative might be to say nothing about them at all, which I guess might be even worse.

FROSTNATT (Russia)

Frostnatt‘s debut album Det kommer til å bli kaldt, which follows a run of EPs that began in 2019, is a largely instrumental work (with a scattering of vocal samples and a few harsh expulsions) that’s both rugged and scintillating, combining primitive, earthquaking percussive rhythms and brilliantly vibrant ringing melodies of varying moods that stick in the head like hot spikes, plus a well-placed and sublime piano piece. And thus it generates an unusual shamanistic spell, delivering primal, visceral punch as well as ancient and mystical atmosphere, enhanced by moments of poignant beauty and piercing heartache. My favorite track: “Til sydpolplatået“. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: STORMKEEP, FROSTNATT, CIBOLA, CHANNELER, AKVAN, VOREUS, VALRAVNE

 SHADES OF BLACK  4 Responses »
Nov 082020
 

 

I spent a joyful day yesterday, though I was rooted in front of the TV instead of listening to metal. But the good feeling carried over into this morning as I began listening to things, and in rapid succession found music that just seemed to fit together beautifully for this column. The arc of sounds as I’ve arranged them here was almost exactly the sequence in which I heard them, and I’ve kept it that way even though not everything here qualifies as black metal.

What made the experience even more thrilling was that five of the seven bands here were new to my ears (some of the music comes from debut releases).

STORMKEEP (U.S.)

I don’t have to spend a lot of time formulating words to describe Stormkeep’s “Glass Caverns Of Dragon Kings“, because Jon Rosenthal did his usual excellent job in writing about it when Invisible Oranges premiered the track two days ago: Continue reading »