SEEN AND HEARD: THE MUNSENS, LAMP OF MURMUUR, AN ABSTRACT ILLUSION, NIPHREDIL

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  5 Responses »
Sep 182025
 

(written by Islander)

As I write this I am in Nottingham, England, and eagerly looking forward to attending Andy Synn‘s wedding on Saturday. An overnight flight brought me from Seattle to London with an early arrival yesterday, and I didn’t feel too much the worse for wear despite only napping for an hour on the 8-hour flight. Then came a car ride to Nottingham and a lunch there with Andy, his bride-to-be, and some other American friends (including DGR) who have also come over for the event.

By the end of our long lunch and a post-prandial drink at another spot, I was hitting the wall. I fought to stay up until 6 pm and then crashed hard. But I woke up early this morning after 12 1/2 hours of sleep feeling great, and now I’m quite happy with my jet-lag solution!

Of course it’s still weird being on UK time, weird in the sense that I decided to pull this round-up together with something like 7 hours to go before it will magically appear in line with our normal daily posting schedule, instead of just minutes. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: IHSAHN, DÉLÉTÈRE, NIPHREDIL, ANGEL OF THE ABYSS, RAAT, DISCIPLINE

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  4 Responses »
Nov 192023
 

I hurt all over, thanks for asking. The result of a week spent trying to exercise muscles that turned into limp noodles after months of sedentary living. If I could get all the lactic acid out of my body it would probably fill a barrel.

Well, maybe hurting all over wasn’t the worst thing as a basis for picking the music in this Sunday column today. It led to selections that will make you hurt in different ways too.

IHSAHN (Norway)

The hurting begins with “Pilgrimage To Oblivion“, a new song from Ihsahn that surfaced three days ago in two different versions. The main version combines orchestral bombast and terrorizing screams, frenzied strings and plundering percussion, to create a thoroughly harrowing experience in keeping with the song’s title and the video’s tale of personal ruin. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 2): HUMAN SERPENT, KAVYK, THE KRYPTIK, LIVING ALTAR, NIPHREDIL

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  7 Responses »
Jan 252018
 

 

Yesterday I posted the first Part of this three-part collection of new or recently discovered black metal. If the rest of my life will cooperate, I should be able to post Part Three tomorrow. As previously explained, I arranged all the music in alphabetical order by band name and then divided the list into thirds. And so tomorrow’s music comes from bands whose names follow the letter N — unless I find something else I want to tack on, or forget how to alphabet.

HUMAN SERPENT

My comrade DGR pointed me to For I, the Misanthropist, the third album by the Greek band Human Serpent. I don’t think we’ve written about Human Serpent before, although in preparing to write this post I saw that the band’s last release (just a few months ago) was a 20-minute collaboration with Isolert, who I have tried to expose to our readers on a couple of previous occasions. That’s a release I need to listen to (and you can listen to it here as well). Continue reading »