More than six weeks have passed since my last MISCELLANY post, and I’ve been kicking myself black-and-blue for not writing them more regularly. In case you’ve forgotten, I use this MISCELLANY series as a vehicle for checking out bands whose music I’ve not heard before. We keep a list of MISCELLANY candidates, based on messages we get from bands or things we’ve read, and then when I’ve got the time, I pick a few bands from the list, listen to one or two songs, not knowing whether I’ll like the music or not, and then write about what I’ve heard. I also stream for you the same tracks so you can decide for yourselves whether it’s your kind of thing.

This installment of MISCELLANY diverges from the usual form in a couple of respects.  First, the selection process wasn’t quite as random as usual — this time, I decided to pick bands who I knew were all within the genre of black metal. Second, I already knew and liked the previous releases from one of the bands I picked — Aosoth — though I hadn’t yet heard anything from their newest release, so that’s a bit of a cheat on the usual rules.

So, with that preamble, here we go. The music I sampled for this post came my way from Progenie Terrestre Pura (Italy), Aosoth (France), Falloch (Scotland), and Towering Filth (U.S.). It’s all black metal, but the styles of music turn out to be quite different. Black may be the absence of light, but these bands prove (and prove well) that there are shades of black after all. Continue reading »