“Gorod’s assignment with The Orb is to figure out how to follow up 2018’s magnificent Æthra. This album’s predecessor, which followed on a string of excellent releases, is among the best albums that I have ever underrated. But Æthra brought change and continuing on this trajectory, The Orb is the band’s first fully independent release. And that raises the hackneyed, obvious question: is all this change good, actually?” Won’t somebody think of the riffs!?
“Act of ImpalementPerdition Cult offered each of their influences like a charcuterie board, Infernal Ordinance streamlines them for a maximum punishment platter.” Poke-e-man.
“Greece. The Hellenic Republic. Land of gods and titans. Home of turquoise seas, moussaka, ouzo, and … a surprising number of death metal bands. New kid on the block, Wothrosch is looking to tap into that scene on its debut album. The three-piece out of Athens dropped two singles in 2022, both of which now appear on Odium, the band’s full-length debut.” Death in the isles.
“Through a medium of heavily atmospheric blackened doom, Bit Meseri mainly succeeds in communicating its occult inspiration. There is something of the ancient near east in the lilt of the guitars, reverberating against dusty darkness in quieter passages. The music also holds a distinctively ceremonial air that recalls Praise the Plague in its cavernous grandiosity and Behemoth in a near-warlike march, and guitars that parody church organs.” Necrofancy.
“While I don’t consider myself to be a huge Behemoth fan—in fact, I haven’t even listened to all of their releases—I rather enjoy most of the band’s albums with which I’m familiar. Demigod is a blackened death classic, and I like The Apostasy quite a bit too—and not just because it features an appearance by my beloved Warrel Dane (R.I.P.). The Satanist had some great moments, but the amount of pretense on display was a bit unnerving. And that sense of foreboding was ultimately justified with the release of its follow-up, the at times cringy I Loved You at Your Darkest. While initially hesitant to cover that album’s successor, I was overcome by curiosity.” Curiosity and the beast.
“I’ve listened to a goodly amount of death metal this year, and seem to be at a place mentally where I just want more and more of it. When I saw the name Ensanguinate in the promo sump, it spoke to me of wet, gruesome things and horrid death sounds most unappetizing. Naturally, I took it home to pet and cuddle.” Draining blood!
“Just over three years ago, I lost my damn mind over Wachenfeldt’s debut album The Interpreter. I gushed so mightily over its symphonic, thrashened, blackened death metal that hazardous material mitigation crews are still working around the clock to clean up the contamination. That record executed its dark mission so well that it eventually became my Album ‘o the Year for 2019, so if I said that its successor was my most anticipated album of 2022, it would be a gargantuan understatement.” Fanboys awaken.
“I have mixed opinions on uncomfortable extreme metal. While I’ve enjoyed bands like Ulcerate and Gorguts, I can’t listen to Imperial Triumphant or Ad Nauseam ad nauseam without getting frustrated. Call me stupid (you’re probably right). So it was with great trepidation that I picked up the third album Trespasser by Idol of Fear, an underground Canadian experimental black metal band that I’d never heard of.” Trespassing on your comfort.
“Nihility may sound familiar for a death metal band, but that’s because there’s a lot of them. This particular Nihility is a blackened death metal quartet from Portugal.” New year, old nihilism.
“For a relatively young genre, metal has found its fair share of adherents who quickly discovered their musical niche and haven’t budged from that sound. While this applies to both listeners (I’ll proudly wave the tattered OSDM banner until the day I die) and practitioners, it’s most noticeable with new and emerging bands not only harken back to a particular sound, but actively refuse to grow beyond it. Much like the Vogons in the immortal tome A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, these bands refuse to evolve. This may merely be my own bias showing, but this phenomenon seems to be most pronounced amongst the black metal set. Ever committed to all things trv, it would appear these corpse painted cretins believe that metal peaked somewhere around 1993. So when I picked up Viserion’s debut Natural Selection, I was understandably apprehensive.” Status woe.
