“Canada’s Finnr’s Cane are much more than their limiting label might suggest. Inspired by the rugged beauty of their country, third album, Elegy, draws great gasps of atmosphere and exhales somber doom with every breath, adding some much-needed weight to the genre. But, as Finnr’s Cane’s music is often improvisational, and considering their penchant for rambling ephemera, I am left to wonder if the band can steer their vehicle in the appropriate direction.” Citizen Caning.
“A black metal Transcending Obscurity release with monochrome artwork: who could have ever foreseen this one falling into my velvety grasp? Portugal’s Gaerea certainly put their Muppet-est foot forward when casting Unsettling Whispers into the Angry Metal Promo Sump, and yet I was wary. Black metal is the best metal, ov course, but it’s also everywhere and lately sounding too similar to itself. Sure, a few vague details got my attention, but I’m a poseur and all the Muppet love in the world can’t make an album innovative or objectively meritorious; did I perhaps build my hopes too high only to find yet another band trying to be either Ulcerate or Agalloch?” Black metal art.
“It’s not exactly a secret that I enjoy of deep atmospheric black metal just as much as the next guy deems to be unhealthy, though even I don’t know where my own obsession with the sounds ov misanthropy came from. Maybe it was Maine, maybe it was Northern winter nights. Maybe it was you people, maybe it was me and my staunch opposition to joy that lead me here; whatever the case, it sure felt right to pluck Skyborne Reveries’ Winter Lights from the promo bin after a bit of… unpleasantness.” Muppet and the winter moon.
“World’s Blood operates at a similar intersection of folk, atmospheric black metal, and progressive tendencies as Agalloch. I would make some terrible puns about if it can take up that mantle or if it would merely be a pale imitation of those folkloric influences but I won’t do so as a man of class.” Class is cancelled.
“The Australian summer is defined by a great many things but none more so than the irresistible sanctuary of our sprawling beaches. Umber bodies glisten and preen, hot chips sting the air with vinegar and the roar of the surf is a siren that beckons with a deafening song. Those sun-dappled waves bear a deception, however, because beyond the surface of their undulating splendor belies the dark rips that drag people down into an airless oblivion. I kept thinking about this frightful dichotomy as I listened to Solitude by Finland’s Totalselfhatred, a musical cry for help bifurcated by aching beauty and self-destruction.” Fear and loathing at the beauty parlor.
“First-time long-time readers will note this site’s rep for lofty production expectations. Hell, even yours truly, who once indulged in sub-100 kbps Youtube rips, the food court Chinese of music formats, somehow finds himself infected with those same insidious ideals. Still, that total production meltdown, the one that drags down a perfectly otherwise great score and results in public gnashing of teeth, has escaped me. So when I saw that Nature Stays Silent was mixed by a 19-year-old one-man band ‘at home,’ I braced my eardrums for maximum pain.” Bardd of hearing.
“Oh, departures. Not traditionally a wildly anticipated experience, and yet to know someone is to invariably set the stage for a future farewell; all roads end in goodbye, whether spoken aloud, though silently alone, or else whispered in the dark before an audience of no one. Some goodbyes sing of poignant possibility, others give voice to the shape of grief to come. But the declaration of egress I now deliver unto you, my children, sounds… waaay more fuckin’ bleak than I had intended to, yo, good Jørn. In a nutshell, what I mean is that RÛR’s self-titled triumph is the last black metal review I intend to write for a while and it’s as befitting the occasion as they come.” Goodbye to necromance.
“For just a moment I’m going to break Angry Metal Guy‘s most sacred of journalistic vows to explain how Sojourner’s The Shadowed Road ended up in my undeserving hands. Occasionally, one of our editors will send out an office-wide memo requesting a quick turnaround on a high profile review. Such was the case with Sojourner’s sophomore effort, and while this Swede-Kiwi joint venture yielded a decent debut in 2016’s Empires of Ash, what I perceived as a safe, derivative take on the atmospheric black/folk formula failed to hoist me up on the bandwagon. Volunteering to cover its follow-up, then, was an action born as much from curiosity as it was from a desire to stem undeserved hype. Well, fuck me running, because this time the hype is more than deserved.” All aboard the H-train.
“A long time ago, on a website far, far away, I stumbled across a trve underground gem: Pantheion, the punishing debut of South Africa’s Crow Black Sky. Their take on blackened death was unique and impressive, and though the website was deemed a complete failure and ultimately collapsed into obscurity, I never lost interest in Crow Black Sky. Years passed, proper whore websites rose to power, and albums came and went, all without so much as some light clucking from the promising act. My tiny, blackened heart-thing spent many long nights petitioning a Crow-less sky, lifting its skinny metaphoric fists like antennas to Jørn and praying for the call of the bird. Eventually my hope went the way of common sense, gone and pretty much forgotten. So it goes, yo. Then on January 17, 2018, Jørn sent me a miracle.” Well, he is the Crow King.
![Dawn Ray’d – The Unlawful Assembly [Things You Might Have Missed 2017]](https://www.angrymetalguy.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Dawn-Rayd-The-Unlawful-Assembly-01-768x768.jpg)
“Dawn Ray’d’s black metal is dense and aggressive, often almost too brutal and hasty in its delivery, as if crumbling under the pressure of channeling the musicians’ revolt at the systemic inequality and oppression. Yet, at the same time, Dawn Ray’d deliver an incredibly melodic and tuneful sound.” OCCUPY!
