“A “Valravn” is a supernatural being, often in the form of a knight or raven, that consumes the dead on the battlefield. The name is apt because the band’s sound is a cannibalization of many black metal bands that have come before. Specifically, the icy combination of melodicism and aggression pioneered by Dissection, Sacramentum and Darkthrone.” Devour to evolve.
“On the surface, Blight House sounds very much like a classic death metal and grindcore mashup, biased towards the caveman and gore variety of each genre, respectively, and then filtered through a raw and grimy production.” It was the best of times, it was the liverwurst of times.
“While The Eye featured as many ideas as the many heads of a hydra, Position | Momentum streamlines them into a more focused beast. Expect second-wave tropes in tremolo, blastbeats, and vocalist Matteo Rizzardo’s ferocious shrieks (in his native Italian), but like Calligram’s catalog, the sophomore effort ascends beyond the Darkthrone and Mayhem worshipers of the cold dead world.” Calligram calling….
“Let me just address the elephant in the room: Voidmilker? Sure, metal’s got lots of voids – don’t even get me started. However, milk is far from the most metal liquid, unless you thought Milking the Goatmachine was the most kvlt thing since Mayhem took a shit on the ashes of an unsuspecting Norwegian church. And kvlt Voidmilker is, because black metal is the name of the game.” Got void?
“Sammath’s style isn’t my usual cup of tea, but Godless Arrogance still wowed me nearly a decade ago. Avoiding any pretense of variety, the Netherlands’ Sammath played war metal in the truest sense. Monotony can be hit-or-miss, but Sammath made it work through the emotive power of their music. Godless Arrogance both sounded and felt like being in the trenches during a losing battle. Its successor Across the Rhine Is Only Death shattered the underpaid Score Safety Counter in 2019, leaving me with high expectations for 2023’s follow-up Grebbeberg.” Back to the front!
“Just as the painting focuses on a spectrum of blacks, earth tones, and distortion, so Ǥứŕū does with their fusion of black metal and doom metal. Expect the typical unholy blackened trinity of shrieks, tremolo, and blastbeats, alongside the dramatic and full-bodied baritone and thicker tone of doom.” Painting with tar.
“Drowstorm is a project of Sudbury, Ontario’s Joe Caswell, mastermind of all things black metal. Acts like the Viking black Burden of Ymir, the post-black Olim, and second-wave worship Vintertodt populate his repertoire – Drowstorm’s vicious edge of dissonance is a new step into the chasm.” Drowstorming with menace.
“For the uninitiated, Tulus has been around since ’91, 1996 debut full-length Pure Black Energy considered a cult classic of early black metal. Although taking a six-year break between 2000 and 2006, the trio has amassed six full-lengths and a compilation over the project’s career.” Olde and still Khold.
“Who could have foreseen that I would grab an album with “steel” in the title before our Mighty Ape could get his banana-stained whore hands on it? Perhaps it was due to the absence of “swords” that I now hold in my sausage fingers the debut record from New Jersey’s The Gauntlet.” Stealing the steel.
Steel Druhm put sweat equity into his Top Ten(ish) of 2022 and you will repay him with readership and blind acceptance.
