A decade ago, Katatonia made a daring and calculated shift in their style – something that few bands have attempted and even fewer have weathered – and succeeded with their artistic vision and metal reputation intact. Over time, we’ve heard subtle shifts and additions to that evolutionary sideways leap, from the eclectic stomp of Viva Emptiness […]

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 […]

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 […]

It’s been four years since the release of The Faceless’ ambitious last album, Planetary Duality. That’s plenty of time for some kind of musical or sonic metamorphosis (and plenty of band member change-ups as well), and on their new concept album Autotheism, the band truly spreads its mutant wings. I was impressed with Akeldama, their […]

Throw some more incense on the fire, here comes another flaxen-haired acolyte come to join the coven of female-fronted, psychedelic and devil-worshipping hard rock. Last one of these I covered was Finland’s Jess and the Ancient Ones; here are their labelmates/countrymates in Seremonia. This variety of 70s proto-doom is shaggy like a forest nymph in […]

This year-old Chicago outfit is going out this fall on Obituary’s Carnival of Death tour, which is packed with old-school death (the reformed Broken Hope, plus Jungle Rot), and technical death (Decrepit Birth). Yet the press notes described Encrust as similar to Mastodon, Clutch or Kvelertak, so that seemed an odd addition to the bill. Then I sampled the first track, “Predatory Skin,” and […]

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 […]

I just reviewed The Netherlands’ Laster, and now here’s Sweden’s Lustre. Laster, meet Lustre. Lustre, Laster. Both are atmospheric black metal from the genre equivalent of House Stark, but Lustre is more ambient and stripped-down. Good for late-night reverie, bad for driving. The four long, highly repetitive tracks on They Awoke the Scent of Spring remind […]

This is the third full-length from St Petersburg’s Epitimia, a band listed as ambient black metal on the Metal Archives. I haven’t heard their previous releases, so I have to assume that’s correct, but on Faces of Insanity, their sound is more like a mix of the lush, melodic death/doom of Swedish and Finnish acts […]

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 […]

There is heavy metal, and then there is metal. It bugs me when some people (either not metal fans, or religious authorities, or simply older people who likely still have Tipper Gore/PMRC headlines echoing in their heads from the early 80s) call it all “heavy metal music.” Heavy metal is a specific genre, mostly from […]

Jess and the Ancient Ones are: a) an improvisational theater group at an old folks’ home b) a rival band on ‘Josie and the Pussycats’ c) the latest entry to the female-fronted occult/psychedelic hard rock revival B would be cool, but yep, it’s c. And that’s a good thing, ‘cause it’s been one of the […]

“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, […]

Twice in a row now – for 2009’s Process of a New Decline, and last year’s Transcendence EP – I’ve dubbed France’s Gorod one of, if not the most creative tech death bands on the planet. For my money, they’re certainly the most entertaining – complex yet cogent, brutal yet playful, and limber and listenable […]

Fear Factory’s last album, 2010’s Mechanize, reunited Burton C. Bell and Dino Cazares, and hammered home with a collection of fierce, fast paced, classic Fear Factory songs. Bringing Gene Hoglan in to replace the formidable timekeeping skills of Raymond Herrera (currently playing in Arkaea, along with bassist Christian Olde Wolbers) was quite the coup, and […]

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 […]

“Are you ready for some black metal?,” the guy in line ahead of me growled to his buddy. I didn’t step in to correct them, choosing not to be ‘that guy,’ but technically there was only one black metal band on tonight’s bill: Watain. The rest, all blackish, either by association or subject matter. Devil’s in the details.

It’s not often you get to cover Buddhist-inspired metal, much less Buddhist metal from Portugal. I was very impressed by The Firstborn’s fourth release, The Noble Search, back in 2009. It blended prog and melodic death with thick, roiling sludge, not unlike Mastodon or Gojira, and then blessed it all with a breeze of East […]

“Terrible way to die,” Óspakr said, expelling plumes of breath into the frigid night air. “Never seen no man swallow a snake before.” Geirr grunted his affirmation, lost in thought. The guard was still scanning the horizon, watching for moonlit glints on armor, a reflection on a blade, listening for a barely suppressed cough. It […]

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 […]

Naglfar’s second album, Diabolical, is still one of the most successful ‘cold’ purchases I’ve ever made. And by cold, I don’t mean frosty black metal, although that obviously applies. No, in this case, I mean that I’d never heard the band before, and bought the album on a whim. This was back in 1999, the […]

I remember the first time I heard Katatonia and their doom masterpiece, Brave Murder Day. It was off the Century Black Firestarter compilation in 1997, and “Murder,” which was sandwiched between Borknagar and Arcturus, struck me as just completely miserable. It had a dry, dessicated sound, like something left to rot in a dim, airless […]

Almost four months into 2012 and I’ve finally found my first candidate for this year’s top 10. The band in question is Sydney, Australia’s Paradigm, who I’d never heard of before this – and chances are, from the meager exposure out there on the metal web, you haven’t either. However, If you’re a fan of […]

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 […]

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 […]