“If there’s anything I could say for certain about Malist, it’s that they can get a hell of a lot of variety out of the superficially simple ‘atmospheric black metal’ subgenre. This variety, spanning melodic, second-wave, and quasi-DSBM styles, has doubtless played a role in Malist’s very positive reception in these halls. At least through 2021’s Karst Relic.” Mal, Maler, Malist.
“The last record from Non Est Deus, Impious, impressed me. I’ll admit, not to quite the same degree as Leiþa or Kanonenfieber, the other two projects from Germany’s black metal maestro, Noise. Still, it scored a highly respectable 3.5 and, really, my complaints were minor quibbles. When I recently sat down to interview Noise, he explained to me the concept for the fourth Non Est Deus platter. He took stories from the Old Testament and, essentially, imagined what would happen if you took God or the Holy Spirit, or whatever you want to call it, out of the equation. Answer? Everything goes to shit.” God’s away on business.
“Malist’s previous album Karst Relict was a decent but not outstanding piece of atmospheric black metal. This latest outing, As I Become Darkness, mainly follows in its predecessor’s footsteps in terms of quality, though Malist has now largely dropped pretensions to atmosphere. As Twelve—who rescinded reviewing rights after a couple of listens—informed me, it is essentially “atmospheric black metal, without the atmosphere.”” Now 100% atmo-free.
“TRNA first came to my attention not long ago, when I volunteered to review Istok, their fourth full-length release, without knowing anything about it. I learned that the band describes their own music as “celestial blackgaze” and thought, what could go wrong? Obviously, that answer to that is “everything,” but I was optimistic. As I read about the band’s story, one that drifts away from their Russian homeland to try and capture the spirit of an altogether dreamier, darker, and more abstract place, I grew increasingly intrigued.” Space gaze.
“Like distant thunder, the world of atmospheric black metal is simultaneously a comfort and a terror. I’ve been craving new atmospheric music lately. Thinking back, my two most recent forays into its claws have been the most recent offerings by Old Growth and Winterfylleth. Good enough albums, but neither really grabbed me the way I’ve been hoping for. Whether because of too much atmosphere, not enough variety, or just an altogether lack of menace or edge, atmospheric black metal of this particular vein was not all that good to me in 2020. So when I encountered Karst Relict, the third full-length in as many years from Malist, the solo project of one Ovfrost (Bewailer), I was cautiously optimistic.” Malist in Hell.
“Do you remember the first time you heard Swallow the Sun’s The Morning Never Came? How those crushing tones and shattering gutturals hit you like the saddest ton of cement ever and you thought that, indeed, the light would never grace your world again? How the subtle, folky elements added a sense of longing, while the sound of waves crashing made you feel lost in a sea of hopelessness and never being found? And above all, how fucking evocative that feeling was? And how you had to go bask in the sunlight to recover from it? That’s the feeling I had when I popped in Bewailer’s debut album Where My Demise Dwells.” Swallowing more sadness.
“Ov all the cruel ironies in this angry metal world, black metal’s oversaturated state, at this point presumably mere days from breaching mainstream radio status, is likely the one that yanks my unicorn the most. That the brave new musical world discovered by such wanderers as Burzum, Mayhem, and Bathory would be further explored and defiled in time was never a question, yet the rampant proliferation of new obsidian acts we find ourselves plagued with is less akin to expansion than to… well, frankly, a fucking plague.” Semi-cold.
“Malist’s In the Catacombs of Time – the album in question, for the contextually challenged – is about as joyful as an AIDS diagnosis. One-man blackened army Ovfrost leads a 10 track charge against cheer, skulking through an expansive spectrum ov sombre and sullen sounds along the way.” Bleak, blackened and miserable is no way to go through life, yo.
