AN NCS PREMIERE: RUNESPELL — “VENGEANCE REIGN”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Aug 102021
 

 

The creative fires that burn in Australia’s Runespell seem unquenchable. Since the Unhallowed Blood Oath debut full-length in 2017, the band has released significant new works every year, including 2018’s Order of Vengeance, 2019’s Voice of Opprobrium, and the 2020 split with Forest Mysticism, Wandering Forlorn. And, like clockwork, Runespell has completed a new album that will be released on September 10th of this year by Iron Bonehead Productions, which has ushered forth all of the previous releases as well.

Runespell has already staked out a musical territory that presents (in the accurate words of the press materials) “grandiose melancholy given majestic flight” coupled with “bloodlusting energy no matter the tempo — widescreen in its vast landscapes yet fiercely focused….” And the new album displays those qualities again, but does so in ways that are perhaps even more dazzling in their extravagance, more unearthly in their aura, and more heart-stricken in their melodic moods. Witness the track we’re premiering today, “Vengeance Reign“. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: YSENGRIN, VALRAVNE, DUTHAIG, FETISHISM, RUNESPELL, FOREST MYSTICISM

 SHADES OF BLACK  5 Responses »
May 172020
 

 

Well, it’s already late in the day, so I’ll dispense with introductory blather and just get right to it.

YSENGRIN

“Potencée d’Or” first appeared on this French band’s debut demo T.R.I.A.D.E back in 2008. Along with three other tracks from that demo, it has been “re-imagined” and re-recorded for the band’s new album (and their last one) Initiatio. The album also includes a revised version of “Monumentum” from the Archivum MMV-MMX demo dating to 2010, plus four new compositions, including two ambient numbers recorded live with the help of Frater Stéphane (N.K.R.T., Rosa Crux). Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: RUNESPELL — “ALL THRONES PERISH II”

 Premieres  3 Responses »
Aug 022019
 

 

Nearly two years ago we premiered a complete stream of Unhallowed Blood Oath, the debut album of the Australian black metal band Runespell. It seemed to be a portal into the past, in more ways than one. It linked arms with the venerated traditions of Scandinavian second-wave black metal, and it also created a mythic atmosphere, one that cast the mind’s eye back into distant centuries, to times (whether imagined or real) that spawned sagas of warlike defiance and sacrifice, of bloodshed and bereavement, of heroic striving and irredeemable loss.

A second Runespell album, Order of Vengeance, arrived the following year, but the creative fires within Runespell’s alter ego Nightwolf have remained unquenchable. A third album, Voice of Opprobrium, is now set for release on September 6th by Iron Bonehead Productions, which also released the first two albums. And today we have the premiere of one of the new record’s six tracks, a song that calls us back to one of the most moving tracks from the debut album two years ago. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: RUNESPELL — “UNHALLOWED BLOOD OATH”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  5 Responses »
Sep 272017
 

 

The first press release I saw for the debut album of Australia’s Runespell concluded by describing it as a “mesmerizing maelstrom of alternately grim/gorgeous frequencies”, presenting “flickering refractions of times distant and as yet lived, black metal wielded as weapon, totem, and portal simultaneously”. All those sentiments I’ve quoted are accurate, but the one that rang most true is the characterization of the music as a portal into the past.

In one sense that rings true because the music links arms with the venerated traditions of Scandinavian second-wave black metal, but it’s also true in another sense: The music has a mythic atmosphere, one that casts the mind’s eye back into distant centuries, to times (whether imagined or real) that have spawned sagas of warlike defiance and sacrifice, of bloodshed and bereavement, of heroic striving and irredeemable loss. To make your way through this vividly imagined and beautifully rendered album is to become moved, and enthralled.

And we will now give you a chance to make your own way through the album as we premiere a full stream of Unhallowed Blood Oath in advance of its September 29 release by Iron Bonehead Productions. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: GRIFT, RUNESPELL, BIESY, GRAVE CIRCLES, SORGOTH

 SHADES OF BLACK  2 Responses »
Jul 302017
 

 

I picked advance tracks from three forthcoming albums and two recent EPs for this edition of SHADES OF BLACK and arranged the streams in a way that made sense to me. I had to cut out a few other streams due to the inconvenient encroachment of the rest of my life, so you’ll probably see another one of these collections tomorrow.

GRIFT

In 2015 Grift released a video for a song from the Syner album named “Svältorna“, a song that I included in our list of that year’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs. It was made by Daniel Blomberg and Grift’s Erik Gärdefors near a small mountain named Kinnekulle in the southwestern Swedish province of Västergötland, and it featured Gärdefors‘ father Dag Gärdefors, whose face alone tells a thousand stories.

Now the same trio have collaborated again (along with Simon Blomberg) on a video for a new Grift song — “Den stora tystnaden”” (“The Great Silence”) — which “follows the red thread” from the video for “Svältorna”. Continue reading »