Although rolling out our year-end LISTMANIA extravaganza has been a nearly all-consuming endeavor, I’ve stolen fragments of time here and there over the last week to explore new music. Especially because time has been short, I’ve resorted (with some guilt feelings) to the harried person’s old stand-by: Listen to the first track of an album stream; if it grabs you, listen to more; if it doesn’t, move along. The first tracks of the albums and EPs featured here all grabbed me. The first and last songs in this collection are single advance tracks from albums that aren’t out yet. They grabbed me, too.

As the post title signifies, all of the music is connected in some way to black metal (though perhaps more tenuously than is usually the case in these posts). Despite that loose connection, no two bands sound alike.

TEITANFYRE

The first song in this collection is by a Russian band named Teitanfyre and it comes from an EP labeled Anno MMXV that’s projected for release by Inferna Profundus Records in February or March of next year. Metal Archives lists five Teitanfyre releases since 2008, including a 2011 debut album (Morbid Death’s Scepter), but this song has been my first exposure to their music. Continue reading »