“Kostnatění (Czech for “ossification”) is a one-man act composed of a Minneapolis-based artist known only as D.L., also of other acts like Glass Shrine, Hornet Murmuration, and The Outer RIM. While firmly rooted in the icy basin of second-wave black metal, Kostnatění, as its sophomore effort’s moniker suggests, is “a story of the human condition as a function of heat.”” Hot stove, cold music.
“I didn’t know what to expect with Deformity Adrift. Although I knew it’s rooted in the inherently unfriendly style of dissonant death metal, I wasn’t sure which breed: perhaps the scathing apathy of Mithridatum, the sun-bleached Altars, the occult mumblings of Mitochondrion, or the twisted technicality of Asystole, to name a few. I shrugged and thought, “I’ve seen it all” and pushed play on Nightmarer. What tormented me about the Berlin/Portland quartet is that, despite my best efforts to describe it with bands of similar ilk, I cannot put words to its latest foray. It rides the line neatly between the haunting devastation of its influences and a tantalizingly listenable quality that defies the need for abstraction. Nightmarer has created a unique dilemma.” DilemmaER!
Doom_et_Al and Dear Hollow spice up the season with their Top Ten(ish) of 2022. Come for the selections, stay to harass them over same.
“Keeping to our hollowed tradition of fashionably late Record(s) o’ the Month entries, we will now take a look back to July as it fades into the haze of memory.” The past is now, olde man!
“Beyond its cover’s deceptively pastoral mountain scene, Altars offers something lurking underneath. On paper, the trio deals in a collision of dissonant death metal name-drops we’ve come to expect, and it would be easy to stop there. But we won’t, because there’s something else. Ascetic Reflection’s unique take settles in the negative spaces between lurching and punishing with clarity and nimbleness, allowing its meditative lurch to burrow into listeners’ skin. Holding mirrors of the self and the divine and the futility therein, the aptly named Ascetic Reflection deals in shredding pain.” Altars of radness.
![Kroh – Altars [Things You Might Have Missed 2016]](https://www.angrymetalguy.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Kroh-Altars-album-cover-ghostcultmag-800x800-768x768.jpg)
“With acts like King Goat, Darkher and Khemmis snatching Album of the Month, I’d say this has been a good year for doom metal. Good thing, then, that this is also the year I found out how great this genre is, having mostly ignored it under the false assumption that all of it was paced like a 9-hour funeral.” Newbie re-education is an everyday struggle at AMG.
