A DIRTY HALF DOZEN: CHOIR / GENOCIDE PACT / KAVRILA / KHNVM / PLAAGDRAGER / SHEDFROMTHEBODY

 Album Reviews  4 Responses »
Dec 062021
 

(Andy Synn is a busy man but he still found time to craft some short reviews and recommendations)

It won’t be long now until I’m fully immersed in “List Season”.

As a matter of fact, I plan to have my “Top Ten EPs” article published by Friday as a little taster of what sort of thing to expect throughout the whole of next week.

Until then, however, I’ve got just enough time to sneak in a few short, succinct reviews (we’re talking 100-200 words max.) about a few more albums that I really think more of our readers need to know about.

So let’s get to it, shall we?
Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (SAMHAIN EDITION): COSCRADH, DEATHNOISEFREQUENCY, CEMETERIUM, KHNVM

 SHADES OF BLACK  1 Response »
Oct 312021
 


from a painting by George Cruikshank (1792–1878)

 

This year Halloween falls on a Sunday, and thus lines up nicely with our weekly effort to blacken the Sabbath. It also provides an occasion for a brief reminder about how Halloween came to be, though I’m sure many of you already know it. The following sketch is drawn from this article, which appeared in this morning’s Washington Post.

In a nutshell, the holiday traces its roots to a celebration called Samhain (pronounced “SOW-in”) that was observed by Irish Celts for thousands of years before the arrival of Christianity in the 6th century CE. Literally translated, it means “summer’s end,” and was thus a new year’s celebration. It was a time when they thought the veil between worlds was at its thinnest, and that all kinds of things could cross over on that night.

After Christian missionaries arrived in Ireland they eventually did what they did all over the world — they attempted to co-opt existing pagan traditions for their own purposes, to aid in converting the “heathens”. Continue reading »

A DIRTY (BLACK) HALF DOZEN: AKROTHEISM, DIM AURA, KHNVM, NORDJEVEL, SCHATTENFALL, TOTALED

 Album Reviews  3 Responses »
Apr 012019
 


Akrotheism

 

(Andy Synn prepared the following reviews for six new albums from the realms of black metal.)

It’s already the first of April and, somehow, I am already about six months behind in my reviews for 2019.

To try and address this problem, this week I’m going to be grouping together a bunch of different bands/albums to try and simultaneously clear some of this backlog AND get the word out about a few new (or relatively new) releases I think you all need to hear.

So let’s begin with six (well, five and a half) examples of the black (Metal) arts, shall we? Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: SINMARA, KHNVM, MEGASCAVENGER, TRIUMVIR FOUL, GOATKRAFT

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  7 Responses »
Jan 242019
 

 

I’m not going to pretend that this selection of five new songs is well-rounded, or that it’s going to appeal to a broad range of tastes. To borrow a pungent phrase from my friend Andy’s Altarage review yesterday, some of it probably qualifies as war crimes under the Geneva Convention. The most deviant extremists among you will probably lap up all of it; others may pick and choose, or just run for the hills.

If you’re in the mood to get your neck wrecked and don’t care how filthy you have to get, or how mentally traumatized, you’ll probably be fine. Probably.

SINMARA

If there’s a pinnacle in this post, before the descent into increasingly horrifying, visceral, and viscera-strewn trauma, it’s this new song by Sinmara, who are certainly one of the brightest beacons in the rich star-field of Icelandic black metal. However, to be clear, this isn’t easy listening, even for those whose brains have been thoroughly marinated in the poisonous broth of metallic hostility. Continue reading »