Posts Tagged ‘Black Metal’
Posted in Reviews, Reviews › S on Friday, September 21st, 2012
One of the recent forum threads here at Teeth of the Divine tried to define a signature sound or aesthetic for USBM (that’s American black metal for those of you in the dark). I arrived at the conclusion that it’s a meaningless exercise, because the term is so broad. Just as the United States contains […]
Tags: 2012, Black Metal, Horror Pain Gore Death Productions, Jordan Itkowitz, Review, Shadows in the Crypt
Posted in Reviews, Reviews › K on Monday, September 10th, 2012
Eastern Europe has produced some excellent pagan black metal bands over the last decade or more, the most well-known being Drudkh, Negura Bunget and Nokturnal Mortum. Yet there are undoubtedly dozens of other quality, uniquely Eastern acts still sheltered by those untravelled hills and forests. Ukraine’s Khors is one of those treasures. Wisdom of Centuries is their […]
Tags: 2012, Black Metal, Candlelight Records, Jordan Itkowitz, Khors, Review
Posted in Reviews, Reviews › L on Friday, August 10th, 2012
Laster, from Utrecht, in the Netherlands, have a classic ’90s atmospheric black metal sound – some might label this as DSBM (depressive/suicidal black metal), a term that gained popularity around the time of Leviathan and Xasthur, but Burzum’s spare and vicious nocturnes needed no such moniker back in the day. Others might also tag this […]
Tags: 2012, Black Metal, Dunkelheit Productions, Jordan Itkowitz, Laster, Review
Posted in Reviews, Reviews › M on Monday, July 30th, 2012
My boys and I sometimes look under the stones around our property. We know what we will usually find – dry, dusty things, the occasional beetle, maybe some fungus. Occasionally we are surprised by a lizard or newt, if it is wet enough. And so it goes with bands like Mystagog, from Hungary. I know what […]
Tags: 2012, Black Metal, Jordan Itkowitz, Mystagog, Neverheard Distro, Review
Posted in Reviews, Reviews › I on Monday, July 9th, 2012
“If you gaze into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.” Everyone knows that Nietzsche quote. The man is featured on the cover of Ihsahn’s fourth solo album – inverted, but there nonetheless – but I’m not going to choose that overused and pithy bit to describe the darkness contained within. Too obvious. Instead, […]
Tags: 2012, Black Metal, Candlelight Records, Ihsahn, Jordan Itkowitz, Progressive Metal, Review
Posted in Reviews, Reviews › V on Thursday, May 31st, 2012
Vetterkult, the newest album from Norway’s Vetter, is one of those albums that just misses on almost all marks. It’s one of the classic albums that builds up to a crescendo but falls short of being dynamic. When the elements and ideas come together on Vetterkult, the album works well. Unfortunately, those moments are not […]
Tags: 2012, Black Metal, Demonhood Productions, Mike Sloan, Review, Vetter
Posted in Reviews, Reviews › V on Thursday, May 17th, 2012
It’s not often these days that a brand-spankin’ new black metal band comes out of the woodwork and does the genre of music properly. Usually the young “kvlt” tikes latch onto the typical Dark Throne/Dark Funeral/Burzum/early Emperor coloring book and fail miserably. The general reasons for said failures is because the kids just don’t know […]
Tags: 2012, Black Metal, Demonhood Productions, Mike Sloan, Review, Vithr
Posted in Reviews, Reviews › H on Wednesday, May 16th, 2012
Oh man, what a weird little album this is. Hail Spirit Noir are two guys from Greece, playing a kooky mix of black metal and late ’60s psychedelic folk. I wish Pneuma were actually 40 years old, and that I’d found it on vinyl in the back of some musty old secondhand store, all covered […]
Tags: 2012, Black Metal, Code 666, Hail Spirit Noir, Jordan Itkowitz, Psychedelic, Review
Posted in Reviews, Reviews › G on Monday, May 7th, 2012
Cthulhu mythos and Lovecraftian fiction have long been a part of metal, but in my experience it’s generally been in the realms of cavernous doom or gnarly, undulating death metal and typically a more nasty, disturbing musical representation of the subject matter. But here come France’s The Great Old Ones, and in typically elite French […]
Tags: 2012, Black Metal, E.Thomas, Les Acteurs de l'Ombre Productions, Review, The Great Old Ones
Posted in Reviews, Reviews › P on Wednesday, May 2nd, 2012
If Satyricon weren’t boring they’d be Panchrysia. I hadn’t heard of these Belgian black metallers until recently so I had a peek through their back catalog. I was surprised to find how familiar the riffs were. After two releases with an oppressive, Zyklon-esque production, 2008’s Deathcult Salvation adopted more of the cold, clinical style of […]
Tags: 2012, Andrew Young, Black Metal, Panchrysia, Review, Shiver Records
Posted in Reviews, Reviews › E on Monday, April 23rd, 2012
It’s been awhile since I’ve had anyone satisfy my yen for Dimmu Borgir-style symphonic black metal. For awhile, and mostly in the late ’90s, it seemed to be everywhere: Old Man’s Child of course, but also Mactatus, Mystic Circle, Stormlord, Morgul, Anorexia Nervosa, Thyrane, Carach Angren, Ninnuam, and so on. And although most of those […]
Tags: 2012, Black Metal, Code 666, Eternal Deformity, Jordan Itkowitz, Review, Symphonic
Posted in Reviews, Reviews › K on Wednesday, April 11th, 2012
Kommandant‘s approach to black metal is one that is strongly focused on invoking a particular ambiance and frame of mind. The aim here isn’t to simply grab one by the throat and desecrate; there’s a strongly adamant intention to progressively absorb the listener with the elements present in this sound. Make no mistake, there’s plenty […]
Tags: 2012, ATMF, Black Metal, Kommandant, Noch, Review
Posted in Reviews, Reviews › K on Tuesday, March 20th, 2012
There’s an old adage that states ‘never judge a book by its cover’, and that applies aptly in the case of the debut album from Columbia’s King. Based on the Dark Funeral reject cover art, song titles like “Non laughter – Zero Fucking Happiness” and “Kill the Posers Like Fucking Christians” as well as the […]
Tags: 2012, Black Metal, Death Metal, Deathgasm Records, E.Thomas, King, Review
Posted in Reviews, Reviews › S on Wednesday, February 29th, 2012
Empyreal Cycle is the second self-released effort from Slovenia’s Smargroth, a fantasy based (knights, dragons, wizards etc) melodic black metal band. And while they aren’t bringing anything really striking or new to the table, they perform their chosen style well enough to be checked out by fans of Dissection, Sargeist, Naglfar and other less extreme […]
Tags: 2012, Black Metal, E.Thomas, Review, Samrgroth, Self-Released
Posted in Reviews, Reviews › B on Tuesday, February 28th, 2012
Willowtip has scored yet another massive-sounding and terrifying band in Australia’s Beyond Terror Beyond Grace. If you want to know what they sound like, well, the name says it all. These guys have created a black/post-metal sound at once brutal and transcendent – full of terror, full of grace and yet beyond both. Nadir pulverizes you with […]
Tags: 2012, Beyond Terror Beyond Grace, Black Metal, Jordan Itkowitz, Post-Metal, Review, Willowtip Records
Posted in Reviews, Reviews › S on Monday, February 27th, 2012
Remember that jaw-dropping moment in your childhood when you saw ex-Green Ranger Tommy Oliver coming back stronger than ever as the badass White Ranger in Season 2 of the Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers? Yeah, Sigh’s upcoming album certainly did an excellent job at evoking that long-forgotten feeling of inane joy. As always, the Japanese are […]
Tags: 2012, Black Metal, Candlelight Records, Dane Prokofiev, Review, Sigh, Symphonic
Posted in Reviews, Reviews › G on Tuesday, February 21st, 2012
France’s Griffar started out as a pagan black metal band; their 2000 release Of Witches and Celts featured lengthy, highly melodic compositions and a buzzy, wall-of-sound approach. After a few aborted attempts to return over the last decade, they’ve finally reformed with an updated and more muscular sound. Griffar now sounds like late 90s melodic black […]
Tags: 2012, Black Metal, Griffar, Jordan Itkowitz, Non Serviam Records, Review, Thrash
Posted in Reviews, Reviews › A, Reviews › I, Reviews › K on Friday, February 10th, 2012
The Pacific Northwest gets a lot of USBM love – all those towering primeval forests, rugged coastlines and deep, billowing fog banks conjure the same fascination and mysticism as the old country (i.e. Norway). But what about the Great Northeast? There’s more up there than just Martha’s Vineyard, dropped r’s and lobster rolls. They’ve got […]
Tags: 2012, Aoi, Black Metal, In Human Form, Jordan Itkowitz, Katahdin, Review, Self-Released
Posted in Reviews, Reviews › S on Friday, February 3rd, 2012
Viktor Scheer and András Nagy are the only holdovers from the last album. Viktor producing and András doing virtually everything else.Everything old is new again. Welcome back founding guitarists János Barbarics and Csaba Csejtei. János played on The Pagan Winter, Phantoms and Haunting, Csaba played on The Pagan Winter, Phantoms, Forsaken Symphony and Glory And […]
Tags: 2012, Black Metal, Candlelight Records, Grimulfr, Review, Sear Bliss
Posted in Reviews, Reviews › A on Tuesday, January 24th, 2012
Moribund has always been notorious/iconic for having a roster of bands that sound as though they record their albums with faulty walkie-talkies. It really makes me wonder how these bands connect the amps to those walkie-talkies, and doesn’t doing this void the warranty for the walkie-talkies as well? What if they got trapped in their […]
Tags: 2012, Azaghal, Black Metal, Dane Prokofiev, Moribund Records, Review
Posted in Reviews, Reviews › K on Friday, January 20th, 2012
Germany’s Klabautamann wowed me with their 2009 release Merkur, which featured a surprising Opeth-meets-Enslaved progressive black metal sound. I was particularly impressed by the soft, jazz/lounge-inspired interludes and the inventive compositions. The fact that the vocalist sounds like a dead ringer for Grutle was a bonus as well, so I slotted the album in at […]
Tags: 2012, Black Metal, Jordan Itkowitz, Klabautamann, Review, Zeitgeister Music
Posted in Reviews, Reviews › S on Thursday, January 19th, 2012
As usual at this time of year, I get a few CDs for review that came out late the year before. Such is the case with Ahdistuksen Aihio Productions who sent me Ave Maria‘s Chapter I and this, the debut from Finland’s Saturnian Mist. And while Ave Maria left me unsettled but only slightly impressed, Gnostikoi […]
Tags: 2012, Ahdistuksen Aihio Productions, Black Metal, E.Thomas, Review, Saturnian Mist
Posted in Reviews, Reviews › A on Thursday, January 19th, 2012
Here’s yet another addition to the growing collection of fine but quirky, experimental German black metal. This time in the form of duo ‘A’ (guitars/vocals) and ‘C’ (drums) and their Ave Maria debut, Chapter I. I don’t have a whole lot of reference points for this act, but it’s safe to say they definitely sound […]
Tags: 2012, Ahdistuksen Aihio Productions, Ave Maria, Black Metal, E.Thomas, Review
Posted in Reviews, Reviews › A on Wednesday, January 11th, 2012
Anyone has a Latin dictionary? Here is the impressive debut from Minnesota’s Atrum Inritus and as you can tell from the moniker, album title and track titles like “Aegrus Evert”, ” Sacramentum Exeuntium”, ” Tenebris Descendi” and “Ephemera”, there’s no doubt about what we are dealing with here: Black metal. While all the above and […]
Tags: 2012, Altar of the Dead Productions, Atrum Inritus, Black Metal, Doom Metal, E.Thomas, Review
Posted in Reviews, Reviews › A on Monday, January 9th, 2012
American black metal is like Japanese pasta—a non-indigenous dish that actually does justice to the original (and perhaps even surpasses!) from time to time. Hence, I’d expect nothing less from the eclectic Abigail Williams, who have really gone off the edge of the cliff this time round and switched to playing an ambient form of […]
Tags: 2012, Abigail Williams, Black Metal, Candlelight Records, Dane Prokofiev, Review, Symphonic