“Ornaments originating in Swedish folk music and the raw vigor of an old school black metal clash and reveal themselves swiftly, while guttural growls launch the album on a path of continuous, neverending motion. And thus Fjällbrandt, the mastermind behind Sweden’s one-man black metal band Panphage, presents his third and final full-length record under the moniker, closing the project with his most accomplished work yet.” Ending on good terms.
“In my stint with Angry Metal Guy, I’ve encountered not one, but two overly congested forms of black metal. I’ve either encountered black metal that goes beyond its initial consume-by date, or I’ve been bombarded by one-man basement metal, with the latter only impressing me here and there. So when I get a 4-song, 34-minute album with two of the songs dipping below the 7-minute mark, let’s just say the hairs on my neck and back shoot up straighter than those on Don King’s head.” Basement king or cellar fail?
“It’s the music that sends me careening through a canyon as dark as a Nick Cave soundtrack and as unique as a Sólstafir record. It has a suffocating mixture of Shining-like desperate, voice-throwing screams and cleans moodier than your grandma’s sanitarium. Coming off 2013’s Burzum-esque EP, I hoped Gärdefors would push on. I hoped for his refusal to revert back to the generic sounds of Fyra elegier. I hoped for more Syner. Well, my hopes became reality. And that reality is Arvet.” (TGIDF) Thank God It’s Depressive Friday.
“The AMG promo sump is a murky, fetid cesspool, and you don’t always find exactly what you expected when delving into its brackish, primordial ooze. Swedish two-man band Sons of Crom were clearly labelled as “epic heavy metal” by some AMG toadie, which to my mind conjures images of Atlantean Kodex and triggers my involuntary salivation reflex. The band’s second full-length, The Black Tower is many things, with epic being one of them, but they’re quite far afield from what I was expecting.” From sump to summit.
“With the AMG promo bin positively bulging under the sheer weight of obscure one-man black metal projects nowadays, whenever I’m tasked with reviewing the work of an unfamiliar BM outfit, I’ve almost begun taking it as a given that it’s going to be a solo affair. When Gudatall—the latest effort from mysterious Swedish black metallers Murg—landed in my inbox, I almost choked on my caviar when I cued up a promo photo and found there to be not just one individual behind the name, but two.” Two is the unkvltist number that there’s ever been.
“One-man black metal projects are like rats nowadays; you’re never more than a few meters away from one at any given time. Okay, I may have made that up, but there does seem to be quite a surplus of them knocking about at the moment. While this abundance of choice is great for those of us who like our music bleak and wintery, with every man and his dog getting in on the act, cutting through the chaff and finding material actually worth listening to can seem like a pretty mammoth task.” Allow us to separate the wheat from the rats.
“Having first encountered Munich’s Waldgeflüster on their split with Panopticon earlier this year, I was intrigued and further encouraged to investigate their brand of atmospheric black metal. A couple from our valued community rate their work as among the best in the genre. Try though I did, I found myself somewhat underwhelmed.” El Cuervo vs. buzz.
“Be it that Sweden’s Grift is named after the English word describing the acts of a con man or the Swedish word for “grave” is irrelevant to me. When I think of the word “grift,” my mind immediately turns to the clever 1973 film, The Sting.” Is the Doctor a frustrated hustler?
“Sweden’s Draugurinn is the dark ambient personification of one-woman-band, Dísa Á. Even though she didn’t make a blip on my metal detector until recently, that hasn’t been for a lack of effort on her part. With both Draugurinn and her black metal persona, Turdus Merula, she’s been releasing quite the number of full-lengths since 2010.” Well, this is certainly dark and unhappy!
“The lines are so blurred now. To a large extent, gone are the days when you could look at the geographical location of a band and know exactly what they had in store for you. Nobody made the death of the old order clearer to me than an obscure band operating out of the rural mining areas of Bergslagen, Sweden going under the chic moniker of Murg.” I hate those blurred lines….
