Obviously, I didn’t make the usual Saturday round-up of new songs and videos yesterday. I was victimized by a combination of too much partying the night before and too much work for my fucking day job. This Shades of Black column is also a bit out of the ordinary. I tend to focus on brand new releases and advance tracks from forthcoming records, but today I’m playing catch-up, calling attention to three albums I’ve been enjoying which came out in March or April. And none of these releases is unadulterated black metal — in fact, the “blackening” is often minimal — though the other ingredients in these amalgams differ from band to band.

(I’ll also mentioned that Panopticon’s new album is out now in digital form, and you should go listen to it here; I already spewed a bunch of words about it in mid-April.)

MUR

This French band’s new record, Truth, is classified as an EP, but it’s more than 30 minutes long, and it’s a great way to spend a half-hour, as long as your’re not a rigid genre purist. Continue reading »