Cripes, I haven’t had an album make me scratch my head as much as this in quite some time. OWDWYR is a technical death metal/grind/djent experimental metal trio (aided by a literal army of guest drummers for almost every track- including Kevin Paradis of Benighted and Kenny Grohowski of Imperial Triumphant) that utilizes classical and […]

Even though it has been 7 long years since Poland’s experimental black metal act Furia released Księżyc milczy luty back in 2016, the sexy ass song “Zwykłe czary wieją” still gets a lot of airtime and kept the band on my radar over the years. So I was delighted when Huta Luna showed up out […]

This long fairly long-running Norwegian black metal band is new to me, but when I saw references to the likes of early Arcturus and Borknagar in the promotional blurb that came with it, I had to check it out. And Ye gads the blurb was correct! And indeed, eccentric symphonic black metal with a quirky […]

For this one, I want to take a trip back to heavy metal city where the mustachioed man wearing the trench coat from my last Veilburner review resides. Turning the corner once again past the mainstream shops, I see the man and two masked men standing over his lifeless corpse. Oh shit, the Veilburner duo […]

In 2020 my then girlfriend and I planned a trip to London.  The timing was based on convenience of our schedules and not any particular event.  I’m a bit of an Anglophile and was excited to find music events going on whether it was electronic, metal, grime, indie etc in one of the most densely […]

“What does music mean to you? I don’t know. But it’s full of emotion It’s not happy. No. It’s not happy”- from “Eternal Unrest”. Crikey. so I thought Christian Consentino was the only solo artist from Australia making epic, classically inspired, symphonic progressive black metal. Well, apparently there is another one who has been around a […]

Greece’s Hail Spirit Noir are one of the most original and weirdest bands out there.  Really out of the box, non-linear type of music.  I have enjoyed their different types of albums, and while they started out as some avant-garde black metal band and their musical influences continued to expand and morph into some Twilight […]

I’ve been feeling a bit… contemplative, lately. Join the club, right? We’re all finding ourselves in a world that just sorta… isn’t the one we knew it to be. And all this time in quarantine has given everyone time to really think about their lives. Are you happy with the way that it’s going? Are […]

Azure Emote have been around since 2003.  The debut album Chronicles of an Aging Mammal  was released in 2007 and the follow-up in 2013, The Gravity of Impermanence in 2013.  This band is the brainchild of Mike Hrubovcak and the band continues to incorporate their eclectic and highly original brand of death metal with their […]

So about 8 years ago and for another webzine,  I reviewed the second album from Australia’s Arkheth, IX & I: The Quintessence of Algaresh, a sprawling, brilliant, epic 2 CD , 10 song, 150 minute album of Symphonic black metal in the vein of Emperor, Keep of Kalessin, Dimmu Borgir et al.  Well, apparently  my review […]

The guys over at Zeitgeister Music sure are creative, I’ll give ’em that. That’s the small German label responsible for avant-garde black metal act Klabautamann, the opulent and tragic Woburn House and the hoary progressive doom of Valborg, among others. It’s an incestuous collective, with the members freely circulating from one act to another, and […]

If you are the kind of a person that thought the 2011 releases by the likes of Ana Kefr or Unexpect were just too much, too chaotic and too avant garde, just go ahead and leave now. Go on! You’ll be doing yourself a favor. On the other hand, if you thrive on those sort of […]

I’m not entirely sure how to describe the second, self-released album from Italy’s Laetitia In Holocaust. I mean, if the moniker and the cover art–a group of giant insects gang banging the planet earth–doesn’t clue you in the level of weirdness contained on Rotten Light, I’m not sure I can help. Falling ever so generally […]

Often, the terms “progressive”, “experimental” and “avant-garde” are overused (my self included) to describe any music that simply can’t be pigeonholed, categorized, or maybe defies our metal shuttered concepts of what should be construed as “metal”. Bands like Arcturus, Ulver and Solefald, who break the mold of metals restrictive constraints are either hailed as geniuses […]