Not long ago, we confessed on this site the reason why we so rarely post negative reviews about new music. It’s not because we like everything we hear (though undoubtedly some readers think we’re too easily impressed). It’s because we’re devoted to extreme metal and we’d rather sing its praises than spend our time slagging hard-working bands whose music doesn’t happen to zap the right chords in our addled brains.

The problem is that sometimes we hit a stretch of listening where, by sheer chance, we go through several albums in a row that don’t strike those chords — and then we’re out of time. We’re under self-imposed pressure to get something new up on this site, but we just don’t have any new music we can honestly praise at that moment. So then what the fuck do we do? We post pictures of catz. Or woodpeckers.

We hit one of those stretches the last couple of days. So, what to do? We were thinking about pictures of toads (don’t breathe sighs of relief too quickly — we might still do that eventually). But this time, with apologies to all our toad lovers, we’re trying something new. Just for a change, we’ll say a few brief words about those albums we heard recently that, by random chance, just didn’t get us all hot and bothered. They’re not bad. In fact, the musicians are extremely talented, and there’s parts of them we think are pretty fucking cool. But on the whole? Not music we’re likely to listen to a second time, given our tastes.

So, after the jump, hit-and-run comments about Triptykon (pictured above), Ne Obliviscaris, and Persefone.  And just so you can form your own conclusions, we’ll give you a song to hear from each album — because this really comes down to a matter of personal preference.  (continue reading after the jump . . .) Continue reading »