“Lacking imagination or originality is not a charge that I have seen directed at Mizmor, and certainly Prosaic launches out of the blocks in an onslaught of blackened doom, with even some sludgy nods thrown in. Fast, bludgeoning, and furious, initially it feels like a cleaner version of Mizmor’s self-titled debut, with more than a bit of Yellow Eyes and Primitive Man thrown into the mix.” Mizmor or Mizless?
“It’s funny that as the UK experiences a heatwave, I am writing about an album called Eis (Ice). Contrasting the cool summer breeze with the ferocious wind of blackened blastbeat barrages. Juxtaposing the clear blue skies with a grey mist of echoing feedback. Opposing the heat that has everyone spontaneously organizing a barbecue with cold, depressive atmospheres and morose vocals that make you want to stay inside and watch the rain. Responsible are Viennese four-piece Loather, and this is their debut, though they’ve been around since 2016.” Fire and Eis.
You know that scene in The Last of Us where we first meet the clickers, which can’t see but are attracted to the slightest sound? This is how I regard my fellow AMG scribes, as sightless fungi that I must not alert to the tastiest morsels in the sump until that point in time when AMG Promo Pit Rules allow me to make a breakneck sprint for the album I’ve been eyeing up. Until then, I have to stay absolutely silent. So it was that for almost a month after (the apparently, and happily, rejuvenated) Hypnotic Dirge Records alerted me to the existence and impending release of Beholden, the debut by Inherus.” Shroom squad.
“The medieval hellscape on Fredlös’ cover caught my eye at once. The scene would be peaceful and pastoral, if not for the gruesome executions, the demon, and the burning buildings. Then I noticed the dancing skeletons, the shallow graves, the corpses on the border, the apocalyptic background, and the skull and crossbones; there isn’t a glimmer of hope anywhere. Intrigued, I dug deeper. Fredlös is a side project of Entombed’s Alex Hellid, and the band’s debut attempts to narrate the late Middle Ages with a mix of folk elements and metal. The music matches the cover art to a T.” The dark rages.
![Konvent – Call Down the Sun [Things You Might Have Missed 2022]](https://www.angrymetalguy.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Konvent-Call-Down-the-Sun-01-768x768.jpg)
“Two years on and Konvent is back, and this time, they’ve nailed it. Call Down the Sun is slightly slower in pace than Puritan Masochism, edging just a teensy, tiny bit further toward the funeral doom end of the death doom spectrum. If the record doesn’t slow quite so much as to actually reach funeral doom pace, it is certainly funereal in tone and mood.” Sundown, mood down.
“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.
“Metal, and black metal-adjacent styles in particular, has traditionally tended towards the chthonic over the celestial in its imagery. But Am Himmel (“In the Sky”) choose to base their horror in the heavenly rather than the hellish. Their music purports to express, it seems, the eternal divine separation in “starless” metaphysical voids. It could be a project born out of piety or heresy. In either case, the import of existential terror is evident.” Heaven as Hell.
“My last encounter with Portland, Oregon’s Mizmor (מזמור) was not what I expected. I knew Mizmor from the bleak, blackened doom of Yodh and the crushing fusion of black metal, doom, sludge and drone on Cairn. On Dialetheia, A.L.N.’s project with Andrew Black, all metal was abandoned, however, in favor of ambient drone to explore the concept of obsolescence, both of traditions and, indeed, our whole way of life, on an imagined tour through a museum of collected nostalgia and past times. I struggled a bit with Dialetheia, missing the massive weight and oppressiveness of Mizmor’s earlier work, and also the catharsis that came with that. Which incarnation of Mizmor are we presented with on Wit’s End?” Mizmor or Mizless?
“Pinpointing the core sound Eye of Nix conjures proved difficult this last week and change. On one hand, I recognize the elements that compose the content within Ligeia—black metal, doom metal, opera, post-metal, a twist of psychedelia—but I struggle to come to a concrete solution as to what this record is.” The naming game.
“Goblinsmoker’s Toad King began a narrative arc about amphibious forest dwellers who are served by a goblin underclass. A Throne In Haze… is the second installment of the planned trilogy. While fun, this story is superfluous, since the lyrics are sparse and delivered in an unintelligible blackened rasp. A Throne In Haze... is a trim 26 minutes over three songs, and it’s all riffs, baby.” Let them eat riffs.
