To have any hope of finishing Part 2 of today’s column I’ve had to carve off some of the releases I had intended to write about too. Painful decisions to be sure, but between Part 1 and what follows in this Part 2, there’s probably too much music for any normal person to focus on already, and too many threats to your financial solvency if you like all of it well enough to go on a spending spree.

Part 1 was devoted to advance tracks from forthcoming releases (and one new single), but this installment includes complete streams of five new EPs, which ought to be enough to thoroughly burn this Easter to the ground. (Four of them are “name your own price” at Bandcamp.)

DRATNA

In the space of little more than a year, the Northern Ireland one-man black metal band Dratna (which is its creator’s name rendered in a medieval Irish language) has released three EPs of increasing quality and coalescing focus. The first two were Clíodhna and Altar (reviewed here), and the latest is An Cath (The Battle), which was on released April 20th. Continue reading »