SHADES OF BLACK (PART 1): SPIRE, WODE, SNĚŤ, TOTALITARIAN, NACHTIG

 SHADES OF BLACK  5 Responses »
Feb 072021
 


Spire

 

These columns are always difficult to put together. There are just so many worthy candidates to choose from. But this weekend seemed even more difficult than usual. In an effort to call attention to as much new music as I could, I’ve made this a two-parter. To get things started, I chose advance tracks from four forthcoming records and sandwiched in a new video for a song we’ve praised before. Part 2 will be devoted to a few complete new releases.

SPIRE (Australia)

First up are a pair of stunning advance tracks from Temple of Khronos, the second album by Australia’s Spire. “Harbinger” is an immediate storm of reality-rending chaos, a conflagration of blasting drums, massed, maniacally swirling guitars, and a choir of vocalists who seem to be in the throes of a mind-scarring out-of-body experience. The intensity will suck the wind from your lungs, but the glimmering, otherworldly melodies, which become stricken with grief and despair when the momentum slows, and the ominous chanting, which adds an element of solemn and haunting grandeur, make the song even more compelling. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: SPIRE — “LABYRINTHINE”

 Premieres  3 Responses »
Jul 112016
 

CDDG4T1-003.pdf

 

Australia’s Spire have been rising steadily from underground depths like an obsidian tower surging through basaltic slag. They first appeared through a self-titled EP in 2010 and then followed that with 2011’s Metamorph EP and a 2015 split with Midnight Odyssey. Continuing their upward momentum, the band have now recorded a debut album entitled Entropy, which will be released on the 19th of August by Iron Bonehead Productions.

The first advance track from this imposing monolith surfaced in June, and “Void” proved to be a dense and devastating hurricane of sound, a deeply doomed and despairing brand of black metal. Now we give you the chance to hear a second track. Fittingly, this one is called “Labyrinthine“. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK (PART 3): IMPERIUM DEKADENZ, SPIRE, MORTHUS, FIRTAN, BLOODRAIN, DREAD SOVEREIGN

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK  9 Responses »
Jun 092016
 

Imperium Dekadenz-Dis Manibvs

 

This is the third and final part of a post I began two days ago devoted to recent song and video streams, as well as full releases, in a blackened vein. This doesn’t exhaust what I’d like to recommend from what I’ve been listening to over the last week or so, but after this I’m going to get back to the more usual schedule of posting these Shades of Black collections on Sundays. Hope you find some things to like in what follows. In case you missed the first two parts of this post, here are links:

Part One
Part Two

IMPERIUM DEKADENZ

I first discovered this German band in the spring of 2010 and wrote a review of their then-current album Procella Vadens (which is superb), except I wrote it as if Suffocation’s Frank Mullen were writing the review. Seemed like a good idea at the time. I failed to review their next album, 2013’s Meadows of Nostalgia (also excellent), only managing to praise two songs from it. And now a third album is on the way, with the first advance track premiering yesterday at Rolling Stone (of all places). Continue reading »