SHADES OF BLACK: GAEREA, HAEIRESIS, THECODONTION, EISENKULT, RAAT, SOMNIATE, OBSCURE RELIC, ENSHADOWED, JUODVARNIS, ODIOSIOR, TERROR MACHINE

 SHADES OF BLACK  2 Responses »
Jun 142020
 


Gaerea – photo by Catarina Rocha

 

Maybe you know about the “Overflowing Streams” format that we use for especially large collections of new music we want to recommend? The idea is to (regretfully) cut back on words and save the time needed to find, download, and upload cover art, and let the music streams mainly speak for themselves. And that’s the format I’ve resorted to for this week’s Shades of Black column, which is mostly a collection of recently released individual songs from forthcoming records.

GAEREA (Portugal)

The meteoric rise of Gaerea continues. In both its sights and its sounds the new video that begins this collection is extremely powerful. The inner pain they express is mutilating. The music is both crushing and explosive, delirious and despairing, sweeping and scathing. For such intense music, it’s also thoroughly immersive… or perhaps it’s better said that this is an emotional vortex that’s hard to escape. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 1): HAEIRESIS, HALPHAS, MERZOTNA POTVORA, TØMHET

 SHADES OF BLACK  7 Responses »
Dec 082019
 

 

There’s so much music here that I have divided this into two parts to make it more easily digestible. There’s a risk I’ll never finish part two. The all-or-nothing strategy might have been better (to be determined).

I will add that there are three bands in this collection that you won’t find on Metal-Archives, which I mention as a hint about the diversity of sounds you have ahead of you.

HAEIRESIS

Saulius Bielskis is a prolific creator, with a half-dozen active bands and solo projects to his name. Haeiresis is one of his principal endeavors, with four EPs, a split, and a 2011 album on the Haeiresis discography. The most recent of the EPs, Emanations, is a three-track effort released on tape on November 11th by an underground Lithuanian label named Ghia. It was developed and finalized at the same time as the 2018 Haeiresis EP, The Bleaking. If you listen to both EPs, it will probably become clear why the two were released separately rather than as a single album-length work. Continue reading »