Last night as I was making my way through my ever-changing list of new music to check out, I had the good fortune of finding many of the songs you’re about to hear. They were scattered among a larger collection of things I listened to, some of which will come in Part 2 of this post, but it dawned on me that these in particular would make for good companions on an interesting (and sorrowful) musical trip, especially if combined with a few others I had heard recently. I’ve arranged them in a way I think makes some sense, with a flow in the changing sounds and moods that I found appealing.

One other thing about this playlist I found appealing is that it represents (mostly) a course change in the music on the site. In recent days we’ve been heavy into various shades of black and death metal. Most of these songs represent a departure from that — and a fairly dramatic one in the case of the first three tracks below. (Thanks to my friend Miloš for sending me the links through which I found two-thirds of these tracks.)

HELENGARD

I should mention that most of the songs in this post are drawn from complete albums or EPs that have recently been released. I wish I had time to write about them more thoroughly, but I’m only going to comment about specific songs and let those guide your decisions about whether to explore the albums in greater depth. The first song comes from Firebird, the new album by the Ukrainian band Helengard, which was released on April 14th. Continue reading »