“No month of horror movies leading up to the big day. No romantic nights with Elvira. No King Diamond/Mercyful Fate marathons. But, I’ll be goddamned if Halloween escapes me before 2019 ends. So, instead of turkey preparations and being thankful for the useless shit in my life, November is my new October. And, as it turns out, there’s no one I’d rather spend it with than Reveal and their third concoction of mindfucking black and death, Scissorgod.” No safety scissors these.
“The genre goes by many names—war metal, bestial blackened death metal, Christblasting necroatomik nuclear goat metal—but it always comes across as punishing and masochistic, the musical equivalent of flagellating yourself with a barbed leather whip. AND I FUKKIN LOVE EVERY SECOND OF IT.” Brutalisto masochisto metallico.
“I’ve reviewed a lot of fucking black metal for this blog, and while I could never see myself tiring of covering the genre, I’d rather drown before hashing out another “The current state of black metal…” intro. For one thing, the sound and philosophies of modern black metal are constantly in flux, meaning that those who stumble upon my writings more than a year after publication will find them roughly as relevant as an instructional hip-hop dance VHS tape from 1992. For another, releases like Achatius feel displaced from the black metal timeline as a whole; it’s a record whose influences are clear, yet whose ambitions intriguingly conflict with its intent.” What is real? Funereal.
“Some say 42 minutes is the optimal album length. Others may say 50. Some an hour, some half an hour. But rarely does a person declare 112 minutes as being the optimal album length. Well, ladies and gentlemen, I’ve got a sweet 112-minute triple album for you here. Oh boy. D.R. Grier is still wallowing in astral misery following his review of Midnight Odyssey’s two hour plus Shards of Silver Fade. He sits in the corner of the staff room muttering cosmological gibberish into an empty Carl Sagan mug. Grymm meanders in circles and wears a heavy cloak as he recites dark poetry influenced by his review of Cultes Des Ghoules 100-minute blackened-opera Coven, or Evil Ways Instead of Love. Steel is still lost somewhere between Songs From the North II and Songs From The North III: we hope for his swift return. Now it’s my turn — a rite of passage.” Size queenery.
“It’s that time of year again where people are scrambling for gifts to buy people, malls to populate, and year-end lists to create. It’s also the time of year when I try to step outside of my blackened, doom-laden comfort zone and try my hand at less bleak, more visceral waters. In other words, I done burned myself out on black metal for a bit, and what better pick-me-up is there than Swedish death metal?” Satisfying like Swedeath Fish.
“A lone cello sings a mournful melody in a minor key. Fluttering piano touches accentuate the subtle tremolando strings. The folksy piece develops patiently, oscillating between an ambient sort of vagueness and a nervous incisiveness. While the surprising first two and a half minutes of Bavaria’s Venenum’s full-length début Trance of Death stand in contrast with the carnage that will follow, they are also perfect archetypes of the eclecticism and compositional strength of the release as a whole.” Carnage before cello, never mellow. Cello before carnage, happy carcass.
“Bestiality is bad kids. Most legal jurisdictions agree on this. Perhaps this is why the English Goat Molestör re-branded to Grave Miasma a number of years prior to the release of their first full-length in 2013.” But goats never say no….
Morbid Angel, Nile, Sweden, AMG and Motorhead. Now THAT’S a party!
