“Beautiful and melodious in equal measure, At One with the Night Sky occupies that stratospheric space where the most ethereal atmoblack resides, evoking more faithfully the ebullient tones of Skyforest and Deafheaven than the tumultuous desperation of Mare Cognitum. Delicate twinkling effects and peaceful dalliances with cosmic ambiance characteristic of Skyborne Reveries further embellish Lightlorn’s high-flying approach.” Platonic forms of beauty.
“Hailing from Wales and established in 2021, atmospheric black metal quintet Ofnus don’t even have a page on Metallum, yet are already signed to the well-established Naturmacht Productions. Primed to release their debut record, Time Held Me Grey and Dying, Ofnus aim to tug at the heartstrings and ensconce the listener in vast swaths of despair and grief. Atmospheric black metal is well known as a vehicle for such depressive moods, but we’ve also seen countless albums pass through these halls only to be forgotten entirely, the memory of our experience with them lost to a bottomless void from whence none return.” Get Ofnus my lawn!
“A Hill to Die Upon represents the steepest improvement between two albums that I encountered during my overextended employment at AMG Torture Racks and Surgical Paraphernalia. After the disappointing sophomore slump that was Inferis, I assumed the German troupe responsible for the mighty Purgatorium, a veritable clinic on killer slam riffs and technical prowess, burned too brightly too soon. But A Hill to Die Upon gained a well-deserved rating upgrade and remains one of my most revisited albums in the entire deathcore pantheon.” Hill kills.
“The infinite expanse. Oceans above. Stars whose light is a glimpse into the ancient past. Physics. Astrophysics. Space: the Final Frontier. Space odysseys are great unless you’re beaten to death with a bone by your ape bud or gaslit by your own computer – super awkward. Plenty of black metal has ventured beyond the firmament for some ethereal goodness, but do any of them chronicle creation?” Omega men.
“The middle of the Venn diagram of melodic and atmospheric is where I find my favorite kind of black metal. Sizzling with the energy and catchiness of epic tremolo refrains and blastbeating tempos, and shimmering with veils of synth. If it’s a good example at least. Hence, I rushed to pick up Inherits the Void’s sophomore record The Impending Fall of the Stars as soon as I saw the magic adjectives melodic and atmospheric applied to their black metal style.” Void estate planning.
“All is not well at the edge of the cosmos. Some of us look to the heavens and see a frontier, a blank page for all mankind to fill with the best of ourselves. Others, like the black thrash cosmonauts of Blasted Heath, can only widen their eyes in horror at the vast and indifferent expanse. This foursome may hail from Indianapolis, but their first transmission Vela sounds like a broadcast from a far corner of the galaxy. The message? No one is living long or prospering out here, the ship’s AI is starting to get cheeky, and we’ve lost contact with the colonists on LV-426.” Space madness.
“Back in 2019, I raved about Vimur’s sophomore album, Triumphant Master of Fates. It was a magnificent expulsion of incendiary black metal fueled by venom and vitriol. Three years later, the Atlanta quartet readies their next salvo, entitled Transcendental Violence. Lucifer only knows what the hell that means, but there’s no doubt that destruction awaits.” Violence as currency.
“Space. Black metal. It’s a match made in heaven! People have been writing black metal albums about space for decades, and it doesn’t seem to matter how oversaturated that specific niche gets. Metalheads eat it up. I eat it up. Space is such a massive thing anyway that the possibilities are quite literally infinite to our comparatively minuscule imaginations, so in that way it makes sense that there’s always a new invader breaching the bulkheads. Enter Vorga and their debut full-length, Striving toward Oblivion.” Space inwaders.
“Each year we aggregate the voluminous listery that occurs in these hallowed pages in order to delineate the favorite (or rather, lowest common denominator) records from a given year across the various writers and tastes that we now characterize.” This is what it sounds like when mobs rules.
El Cuervo and Diabolus in Muzaka proudly display their Top Ten(ish) lists without a shred of self-awareness. It’s gross really.
