“Belgian five-banger Carnation are nothing if not reliable. Time after time, these purveyors of vicious and serrated old-school HM-2 death metal prove themselves to be a cut or two above the standard. Punky swagger often combined with rabid bloodthirst as Carnation spewed forth tome after tome of hard-hitting, hooky material without fail.” Flower POWERS.
“When I reviewed B R I Q U E V I L L E’s third record, Quelle, I got tetchy about all the spaces between the letters, and various other pretensions. However, the Belgian project’s mesmerizing brand of instrumental post-metal won me over. Its bleak, misery-drenched tones conveyed everything that slightly uncomfortable-to-look-at album artwork suggested it might, ranging from a sludgy Bossk to Godspeed You! Black Emperor in tone. At almost an hour in length, and with a few strange choices in its composition, Quelle did struggle a little under its own weight but it still held my attention. Although the spaces now seem to come and go, it would appear BRIQUEVILLE have found a new way to irk me with their fourth record, IIII.” B r i c k by BRIQUE.
“You may know Ôros Kaù’s sole member CZLT from experimental-free-jazz-black-death-drone project Neptunian Maximalism, or perhaps one of the half-dozen other extreme metal projects he’s part of. In his solo work he takes a distinctly more blackened and aggressive approach, though it’s not exactly your straightforward black metal. Thanatos—the first half of an announced diptych, with Hypnos to follow shortly—channels reflections on death and spiritual freedom through occult imagery and echoing avant-garde death and black metal. It’s about as impenetrably menacing as you might expect, perhaps more atmospheric, but denser than predecessor Imperii Templum Aries.” Neptune unbound.
“Ever since Huck N Roll tragically jumped his mountain bike into a combine harvester, I’ve been missing my buddy dearly. Out of everyone among the AMG staff, his taste and mine aligned the most, especially around prog, psychedelic and stoner. So it’s only right for me to carry on his legacy and dive into the new Fire Down Below.” Stone the surf.
“I greatly like Gateway’s vibe on the project’s second full-length, Galgendood. That murky, disgusting, viscous feel that one compares to the questionable liquid running out of a pierced trash bag is a tough thing to replicate. Sure, bands like Coffins and Sepulcros make that shit look like cake, but one small fuck-up and the whole thing goes to pot.” Gateways to goop.
“Like labelmates Lucifuge and fellow Flemings Bütcher, Violent Sin play relatively unadorned blackened speed metal tinged with thrash. That means raw riffs, drunken drumming, and especially raspy blackened vocals with falsetto flourishes. Altogether, Violent Sin are an amphetamine-addled amalgamation of Hellhammer and Mercyful Fate.” Sins of the elders.
“Voids are not an uncommon thing to discuss in metal. Somehow putting to music the vastness, the unfathomability, the colossus of nothingness is a feat in and of itself, and many have attempted to bring it to life. It’s the ultimate futility, the great vanity. While many have tried, from the mysterious Prava Kollektiv’s Voidsphere, the Swiss enigma Death. Void. Terror., and the dense death metal of Desolate Shrine or Abyssal, they are mere glimpses of the monument, the perspective of madness. When the cold nothingness attaches to the skull and does not shake, will Predatory Void provide the siren’s song sprinting to the early grave?” When voids attacks.
“In all my years of being a music consumer, I’ll freely admit that little surprises me anymore. Sure, every now and then, something will come along and provide an unsettling moment, like a ragtime ditty or a handclap breakdown, but overall, well… we know what to expect from just about everything these days. Even within the confines of metal, things have gotten a bit comfy and cozy. So when Belgian quartet Lethvm drops a mixture of post-hardcore, post-metal, doom, and black metal on my furry lap in the form of their third album, Winterreise, I cracked my murder mittens, donned my noise-canceling cans, and kept my mind as open as felinely possible.” Blacknip.
![Psychonaut – Violate Consensus Reality [Things You Might Have Missed 2022]](https://www.angrymetalguy.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/a3982478728_10_1.jpg.webp)
“Mixing slow-build dynamics, psychedelic excursions and cathartic crescendos with sudden explosions of fury, Psychonaut draws inspiration from the likes of The Ocean and Baroness (in that bygone era when Baroness wrote compelling music and didn’t crush their albums into unlistenable garbage at the production stage). Complex, sprawling, dense, and yet accessible, Violate Consensus Reality swirls around the listener.” Psychodrama.
“Post-metal and black metal are both styles of music I can enjoy mainly under the right circumstances. There are so many interesting ways to apply each one, but combining them together, I feel, has the greatest potential. The Agallochs of the world hold special places in my heart, and this is a big part of what initially attracted me to Belgium’s Soul Dissolution.” Post runners.
