Fathomage is a one-man, Australian, self-confessed Orthodox Christian who goes by the name of ‘Akul’. But don’t let the orthodox Christian thing put you off, as his music isn’t preachy ‘white metal’ at all but rather a Summoning (he has dabbled in Tolkien themes for prior album Minas Morgul – The Nazgûl Awaken) inspired take […]

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 […]

Listen, I’ll be quite upfront- Heralds of Strife is my most anticipated album of the year. Both the previous albums from this criminally underrated Indonesian black metal act, (2015s Homeward Path and 2018s Fortress of Primal Grace) were my top albums of the year respectively. So this review not going to be very objective, as […]

Back in 2015 I discovered this Indonesian atmospheric black metal act and their second album, Homeward Path was my favorite album of that year….by a long shot. So I’ve been eagerly awaiting the follow up since they announced it last year, and like Homeward Path, the sound has developed just a tad since the Black […]

While trying to find a video/sample to put into my reviews of Alda’s Passage, and Crom Dubh‘s Heimweh, I keep seeing YouTube suggestions for songs from a band called Vallendusk. Well, eventually I clicked on one of the songs from the band’s Pest Records 2013 album, Black Clouds Gathering, and I was hooked. And not just […]

I’ll get the big Mumakil out of the room right away. Yes, Utah’s Caladan Brood are heavily, and I mean heavily influenced by Summoning. Plodding but regal, majestic, and somber synth laden black metal with brittle guitars using fantasy literature as a backdrop (in this case Steve Erikson’s The Malazan Book of the Fallen series, […]