“How convenient! An extreme metal record distributed by none other than Extreme Metal Music. Can’t get much more straightforward than that! The band is Voltumna, who I am sure every single person here has heard of before. The record is Ciclope. The time is now. The place is here. The reviewer is me. Time to crack open this cyclopic skull and see what lurks inside! Blackened death metal? Just what I wanted!” Extreme gifts.
“I don’t like black metal. Not in its traditional form, anyway. Give some blakkened fukkin thrash or blakkened fukkin death and I’ll bang my head till my skull cracks open, but usually traditional black metal just leaves me shrugging. Often the riffs feel secondary to the atmosphere and it’s telling that a band like Mgla could get as big as they did with a shtick that was essentially “we play black metal, but with riffs you actually care about.” Of course, there are always exceptions. Swedish quintet Avslut earned some acclaim on forums I frequent with their 2018 debut Deceptis, which I enjoyed for its ability to work clever riffing into a traditional black metal template.” Riff tiff.
“You know that feeling when you’ve entrusted someone you don’t know to do a job, and you realize early on that they are capable and competent and that, for this particular task at least, you don’t have to worry? Listening to Negator’s latest effort, Vnitas Pvritas Existensia, is a lot like that. Within the first 5 minutes, you know exactly what you’re getting yourself into: furious, no-nonsense Germanic, occult black metal (with a distinct paucity of U’s in the song titles).” Goats til Sunday!
“As I’m typing this, I’m in the most comfortable of cargo shorts and death metal t-shirts. Birds harmonize from the tops of leafless trees as my eyes and nostrils water due to flowers, weeds, and various fauna having a mass self-orgy. Yep, it’s springtime here in the realm of the Grymm, and yours truly isn’t quite prepared for the eventual descent into summer[1. Which I’m predicting will be next week.]. So what’s a man-cat to do to try to cool off just a little bit more? As I’m currently out of ice cream, it only makes sense to crank some icy-chill black metal from the happiest of lands: Norway! Nordjevel’s second album, Necrogenesis.” Evil in the shade.
“Infernal Execrator is a band that enjoys beating its listeners into tenderized meat, then massages the broken flesh with salt and vinegar. Their 2014 debut, Ad Infinitum Satanic Adherent, was a nonstop bloodletter that didn’t leave much to the imagination. But this year’s Obsolete Ordinance appears to have the flavors of a midsummer stew. How rich are these flavors?” Stewing in evil juices.
“One of my top modern bands is Anaal Nathrakh, and seeing that instrumentalist Mick Kenney produced the debut of Californian black metal band Sicarius’, charmingly called Serenade of Slitting Throats, got me intrigued. When I started listening, that rush of excitement hit once again; now this is a band worth watching.” Benicio del Toro approved.
“First, a question: do you love King Diamond? If the answer is no, you’re dead to me. If the answer is yes, congratulations; my definitive opinion deems you worthy. If, however, you’ve always been enticed by the inherent fun of the King’s horror-fiction but have never been able to click with Bendix’s unique vocals, or perhaps found the music a little lacking in extremity, then… you’re dead to me. But fear not, fallible one, a saviour crests on this wan-mooned abyss of night. Zornheym, a Stockholm based predator culled from the likes of Dark Funeral, Diabolical, and Facebreaker, have collectively extended their talents into a symphonic project whose oeuvre borrows from both black and death metal.” A one way ticket to the nervous hospital.
“I typically like to treat albums as self-contained works. Music evolves with the artist; any band will tell you that a given record is a time capsule chronicling a band’s creative impulses at a given point, and that, ideally, it should not be beholden to prior albums. Yet certain works regarded as important transitional pieces may not be appreciated as such until years later.” Does that language worry you?
“Entombed,progenitors of Swedish death metal, went on to create – for better or worse – death ‘n’ roll, and continued down a path of their own paving. Apparently eager to once again try his hand at a little heavy lifting, the legendary L-G Petrov gathered up contemporaries from such little known bands as Necrophobic, Unleashed, Defleshed and Dark Funeral to create the destructive Firespawn.” Super group of Swe-death.
“Post-black has often struck me as expressing a decadent sort of misery, one which is more malaise than malice, an effeminate whimpering against the dying of the light. It seems to cry out to the God it vehemently denies exists and beg for a purpose, painting a bleak sort of hopelessness; a musical version of an off-brand Sartre, if you will. Like Sartre’s Roquentin, post-black bands create to find a purpose, but they end up stuck in the slime, accepting the hilariously overstated “death” of God and tradition, whining like Nietzsche’s Last Man for the dull pain of a meaningless existence to stop.” Feel the Nietzsche.
