As soon as the broodingly ominous opener of Khariot’s aptly titled Esoteric, “Astralign”, comes to a close, the sheer maddening chaos of “Hydra” makes it immediately apparent that Gavin Foo is not a very big fan of melody – at the very least, he’s made it a point to keep the use of it to […]

After four years of listening to their fantastic debut, aptly titled Space Grind, news of Psudoku’s Planetarisk Sudoku quickly made it one of my most anticipated releases of 2037 – well, that’s what it says on their bandcamp, anyway. How nice of the aliens to have released it for human consumption 22 years in advance. […]

The whole orthodox black metal scene has gotten to a point where individual bands are nearly indistinguishable from one another, but despite that, I don’t think I’ve ever really heard anyone imitate the ones who started all this shit in the first place, Deathspell Omega… until now. Enter Plebeian Grandstand. Filled with immense, searing rage, […]

Unendlich is the project of Baltimore-based musician Michael Connors, whose debut Monarch of the Damned might come off as a tad ambitious, but also surprisingly professional. Its variety is in line with, say, the recent Abazagorath offering, though Connors does limit himself a bit more within the black metal framework. Haunting acoustics, driving percussion and […]

Microtonality seems to be creeping its way into black metal as of late. Aside from a brief implementation on Blut aus Nord‘s revolutionary album The Work Which Transforms God, Adam Kalmbach (better known as the sole member of Jute Gyte) was the first to really use it as a central concept, pushing the boundaries of […]

Despite the integrality of palm mutes in thrash metal, Rigor Mortis‘ lauded, 1988, self-titled debut was at its core, little more than a blitz of rapid tremolo riffs, performed with an unfailing precision and feverish velocity that could only come from Mike Scaccia. It’s almost as if he never considered palm muting worth his time; […]

The cover art of The Depths’ Preaching Death is drawn in the rotten, decrepit style of Justin Bartlett, perhaps best known for crafting the artwork of Lord Mantis’ Pervertor and Dragged into Sunlight’s Hatred for Mankind, albums which blurred the line between misanthropic sludge and scorching black metal. Preaching Depth isn’t too far off from […]

Exodus are an odd creature among the old guard of thrash metal. Having barely avoided the dreaded scourge of the nineties by breaking up after 1992’s Force of Habit (which was middling but not outright offensive), they reappeared in 2001 with the stellar comeback, Tempo of the Damned. That still didn’t stop them from turning […]

When it comes to brutal death metal, I often find myself turning to the Japanese for something more eccentric than the norm. Bands like Glossectomy, Jenovavirus and Infected Malignity have all satisfied this craving at one point or another, their abnormal, twisted song structures placing them a notch above the piles of boring Suffo-clones and […]

Believe in No Coming Shore is the third full-length album from Cascadian black metal act Falls of Rauros, now into their tenth year since their conception. Through these years their sound has remained fundamentally unchanged, and perhaps for the better; their brand of rural, introspective atmospheric black metal has always been very endearing to me. […]

Ellorsith’s 1959 possesses a gravitas rarely heard in a band’s first release. Inspired by the Dyatlov Pass Incident of 1959, in which nine ski hikers died mysteriously during a night on the northern Ural Mountains, the music is a fitting representation of the event’s cold and cryptic nature. Opener “Vvedénije” (it sounds spooky until you […]