“When you hear about certain genres, do you have an image that pops into your head? It’s not always fair, but the most obvious one is black metal. You just got an image of a corpsepainted weeboo hanging out in a dark forest. Boom. I’m a fucking magician. What about sludge? Did you see a backwoods redneck with a twelve-gauge and a six-pack? Sporting beards, greasy locks, and enough flannel to challenge Saskatchewan?” Not your hick uncle’s sludge.
“There are many threats facing our world today. Some are man-made (climate change, for example), while other dangers manifest as actual men and women. But is there any threat less talked about than that facing Sweden today? The time vortex seemingly whirling across that Scandinavian country, spitting out 70s alt-rock bands left, right and center? From Witchcraft, Horisont, and Graveyard to my subject today, Lykantropi, and, let’s be honest, recent Opeth too, there is a significant number of them around.” A plague of the past.
“There are few things that pair with black metal quite like dark ambient, but one of them is folk music. This goes double for the somber folk music of the more frigid Slavic regions. While tried and (sometimes) true acts like Drudkh are around, they aren’t the only stalwart Slavs to play in this sandbox. Enter Russian hybrid act Epitimia, fielding a formula mixing folk, dark ambient, and black metal for four albums now. Like many Russian bands, they smartly write only in their mother tongue (always a positive in my book). But at Angry Metal Guy Headquarters, lyrics are only a small slice in the rankings.” Pull the Thread and see what happens.
![Henry Derek Elis – The Devil is My Friend [Things You Might Have Missed 2018]](https://www.angrymetalguy.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Henry-Derek-Elis_The-Devil-is-My-Friend-768x768.jpg)
“We don’t get many promos for dark Southern Gothic Americana, but The Devil is My Friend by Henry Derek Elis definitely qualifies as such. Over the years Mr. Elis has performed on various side projects with members of The Swans and Megadeth, as well as fronting his own thrash band called Act of Defiance. This is a very different kind of music however, mixing old timey southern music with modern interpretations thereof like the recent works of Tom Waits and Clutch. Add an ominous metallic sheen and a penchant for dark subject matter, and you wind up with something quite intriguing and entertaining.” Way South of Heaven.
“Extreme metal purists skip this review now: we’re venturing into the realm of fancy-pants, hairy-fairy dark-ambient neo-folk. Picture this – you’re listening to an album that’s blowing you away. Riff after riff after riff pummels your puny brain and causes you to moan and grin and sway like a bath-salt sniffing metal whore. Then, as the riffs reach their apex, as the album continues to wither your bones into ash, an ambient interlude drags you upside down and twists your expectations inside-out. Now you’re either going to despise this forceful, useless intrusion or revel in its sweet unexpected nectar.” Taste the nectar, contract the nectar rabies.
“2017 saw the release of the début full-length by Switzerland’s unusual, folksy black metal band called Ungfell. I was introduced by the ever-insightful Alex at Metal-Fi who held it up as one of his best of the year. While Tôtbringære was only just shy of real greatness and probably deserved a nice write-up, I never put pen to paper. Scarcely a year later and I’ve resolved to rectify this deficiency by reviewing their sophomore album called Mythen, Mären, Pestilenz. Does it stack up?” Swiss misery.
“I have been covered in filth lately. Dragged through a mire of pestilence, I have sampled fruit irrigated by the grotesque and profane. Blast-beats that scorch the earth, inchoate riffs fat with torment and wretched vocals fit only for withering a pleasant disposition. Black metal, death metal, doom, grind and thrash. I’m a mess and I need to divest myself of the depravity that’s accumulated over the months. A panacea is in order, something that can wash away the silt and leave me lighter, fresher. To that end I have chosen to bathe in the antiseptic waters of Suuliekki, the new album by Finland’s Sammal.” Scrub-a-dub-dub.
