“Źmiarćvieły is an anonymous collective from Belarus… maybe. They keep it under wraps. Like the enigma of their members, number, or location, the name itself is shrouded in mystery, its translation from Belarusian is equally murky. Debut Čornaje Połymia is a childlike EP that managed to stack itself into an undercoat to get into the R-rated LP screening. It’s a gamble, truly, to submit your debut EP without notoriety.” Masked bravery.
“The life of the unpaid, overworked metal reviewer is not an easy one. Cascading promos, unreasonable deadlines, draconian editors and the unwashed metal mobs – it makes for a swirling maelstrom of music and madness. In all that tumult, errors are bound to happen and sometimes our initial impression of an album may not be completely accurate. With time and distance comes wisdom, and so we’ve decided to pull back the confessional curtain and reveal our biggest blunders, missteps, oversights and ratings face-plants. Consider this our sincere AMGea culpa. Redemption is retroactive, forgiveness is mandatory.” Whoopsie.
“Your fifth grade science fair project. Frankenstein’s monster. That godawful sandwich you made of leftover hash browns, macaroni and cheese, hot dog buns, and spaghetti sauce. Said godawful sandwich growing furry mold sitting in the back of your fridge after vowing you’ll eat it later. What do all these have in common? They’re experiments, forays into the unknown. Rife with experimentation, will Mora Prokaza’s latest blackened oddity fall into the happy slurpee realm or the “acquired taste” maggot cheese kingdom?” I’ll just stick with the Haggis.
“I think we can all agree that the world is fucked. I was a middle school librarian for a few years and, while the majority of the population consisted of illiterate miscreants, the smarty-pants who could actually read (anything besides the latest Diary of a Wimpy Kid) would always go for a dystopian/post-apocalyptic book. From the holy trinity of Hunger Games, Maze Runner, and Divergent to newer and depressing takes on the genre, I’m convinced there’s gotta be something masochistic about indulging in a future whose bleakness rests solely on human shoulders, but every few years a new book or new movie will convince us again that such a future is inevitable without serious change. This brings us to newcomer 10:13, a new instrumental black metal act from the United States, whose sole member is multi-instrumentalist Neil Carter.” In the Age of Iron, they were metal.
