Writing a review is a bit like dissecting a body. The initial sentences are like the first incisions, same with the opening tracks of an album. An album opener should plant the flag for the sonic terrain about to be navigated. This can be applied liberally over genres, but with a Black Metal album it […]

I reviewed Watains’s Trident Wolf Eclipse in 2018. Being new to their music back then, but knowing about them for years, I went into their music with fresh ears. I really enjoyed that album as well as their prior releases. They play a pretty high-octane style of black metal but mixed in with their melodies and metal influences […]

If you follow this site and my writings (you’re not the only one as I’m kind of a big deal), you might be asking yourself why a folk metal album is getting the review treatment from me. Instead, you should immediately be thinking the subject of this review is entirely worth your attention. It’s been […]

I snagged the debut from Denmark’s Heltekvad due to a trio of things; it features Ole Pedersen Luk of Afsky. Second, Eisenwald is pretty reliable when it comes to black metal with the likes of Fluisteraars and Alda on their roster. And third, the heraldic artwork reminded me of medieval black metal bands like France’s Véhémence […]

I have an ex-girlfriend who had a favorite phrase of “I can do it myself” when I would try to help her. She was half joking. Maybe. Cut to us in my kitchen at the time, this phrase came about when I offered to help her with grabbing her drink while cooking, it fell on […]

Oh hey – just in time for World War III, AKA “The ACTUAL War to End All Wars” because this time around we’re all packing that doomsday-level heat. Sick. Seriously, for what its worth, who better to ring in the potential end of days, right? We’ve all been looking over at Vladdy-boy saying “Hey. HEY! […]

This review is brought to you by Google Translate.  Par le sang versé, the 2019 sophomore album from these epic/medieval French black metallers, snuck into the back end of my 2019 year-end list, but I if were redoing that year’s list, it would have been a top ten, maybe a top 5 release, as I […]

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 […]

2022, comin’ in HAWT. You know it’s true because of the way I spelled it. I already have 3-5 albums which are sure year end contenders and I’m writing this sentence on the last day of January. I’m not one to complain about an embarrassingly high amount of excellent metal, but it’s already been difficult […]

It’s not often you’ll stumble across a band whose biggest influences are listed as “Norland–era Bathory, Tolkein and Thin Lizzy.” But that’s exactly what Chaos Records says is served up by American one-man black metal project, Rökkr… or as I’ve been calling it, because I’m a child, Al Rökkr. “That’s what’s going on around the […]

One could say, when it comes to black metal, I have a mature palate. By that, I mean I’ve tasted a lot of it. Literally and figuratively. I’ve listened to a lot, but also took a bite out of a Darkthrone cd. It did not cure my Transilvanian Hunger. I’m a fan of bands within […]

Where do legends go when they die? Well, in the case of Greece’s seminal Black Metal act Necromantia, the answer is… uh… probably Hell, right? I bet they’d be pretty surprised and disappointed to find themselves crossing the pearly gates instead… Necromantia, along with legendary acts Rotting Christ and Varathron, is widely regarded as being […]

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 […]

Hot on the heels of solid, recent, and upcoming majestic, melodic, second wave black metal homages like Warmoon Lord, Arna, Sinira, fellow one man project, Winter Eternal, Kjeld, Wooden Throne and such, comes prolific lone Aussie ‘Nightwolf’ (also in Blood Stronghold and Eternum) and his 5th releases in as many years. And while it’s my […]

That album cover… I mean, BRA-FUCKING-VO. The mighty-as-hell Manowar-esque dudes holding various severed heads, the barely-clothed dusky maidens gazing upon our heroes here in awe and wonder. I mean, it’s just a thing of goddamn beauty. A modern classic in the realm of retro metal. I’ve been an absolute glutton for all these newer bands […]

Much like Warmoon Lord‘s recent opus, you can tell just from the moniker, the ‘not Emperor’s Into the Nightside Eclipse art work at all’,  cover art and song titles (“Crossing the Blackest Skies”, “The Illusive Wings of Death”, “Crown of Stars”, ) and the cover of Gates of Ishtar‘s “Dawn of Flames”, what you are […]

I grabbed this EP (originally self released digital last year) from North Carolina’s duo Snogard (Dragons spelled backwards apparently?), due to the cover art, with looks like a cross between Ian Miller artwork, and something I would have drawn on my 7th grade notebooks, as well as EP themes that explore different protagonists/antagonists in fantasy, […]

Imagine heavy metal as a city. A city in, say, a cheesy 1980s film. You can walk down the streets and you’ll encounter the nice part of town. You have your Slipknot, Metallica, Avenged Sevenfold. The mainstream stuff. That’s fine, but on this day, you came to the city to try something else. Something dangerous. […]

Here’s a release I completely overlooked earlier this spring, but as I was searching through the vast Teethofthedivine promo library in search of melodic black metal similar to stuff I recently reviewed by Warmoon Lord, Winter Eternal and Runespell, I stumbled across the short but excellent gem of a debut from this Spanish black metal […]

As I said in my review of Passéisme’s album of the year contender, Eminence, Antiq Records is becoming a very good, consistent label, plying black metal that’s a bit medieval , a bit avant-garde and sometimes both, as in the case of the French act, Ascète and their excellent debut album, Calamites & les Calamités. Also, […]

Last year Sinira, a 1 man black metal band, self-released this debut album The Everlorn.  The album went unnoticed and he eventually inked a deal with Northern Silence Productions to put out the album physically and with an alternate album cover for 2021. .  So this year when I first heard this album I really […]

I’m just gonna go ahead and start a personal series called “Dumbass Steve Discovers a Band That’s Been Around a Long Time but He’s Just Now Finding Out About.” I’ve officially made it a habit. In my defense, Pennsylvania/New Jersey’s Duskmourn (active since 2012) don’t appear to have any kind of super active social media […]

Some day we’ll be able to look back at the pandemic and fully realize some of the good things that came out of it. For one – it was a fantastic reminder that, in general, people are fucking gross, and their personal hygiene is not to be trusted. Ever. Remember in the beginning of it […]

As I write this review, it’s the second week of June – and so far in these two weeks, we’ve had a rainy, miserable weekend with a HIGH of 38 degrees, we’ve had a 3 day stretch of hot, sticky, humid 90s, and just about everything in-between. I’M OVER IT! Just give me normal summer […]

You kind of know what you are getting into here from the get-go: the band name taken from a Vlad Tepes song, the album title, the corpse painted, armored promo shots of lone Finnish member, Lord Vrăjitor, (also of Old Sorcery and doom act Musta Risti) the logo, the cool artwork, prior releases named Burning […]