“Few albums reveled in existential despair like Sun of Nothing’s The Guilt of Feeling Alive. While punishing in ways that recall Neurosis or Blindead, it settled heavily into tension and despondence beneath the devastation. It always hinted at something without fully grasping it, fluid and powerful heft contrasting with an overwhelming bleakness. Despite its black metal influence, Sun of Nothing did not offer a bleakness like DSBM’s passing glance at a winter landscape, but represented the grey of its troubling cover art: the day-in and day-out of a cold, tired, and worn city, shrouded in smog. For its first album in fourteen years, the Greek quartet has offered something that stands shoulder to shoulder.” Maze of tormets.
Post-Black Metal
Laster – Andermans Mijne Review
“What a weird band Laster is. As a name in the ever-expanding roster of strange, wailing, and skronk-toned black metal spilling off the banks of Utrecht, Netherlands, the three cloaked comrades join the ranks of other regarded underground acts like Grey Aura, Nusquama, and Verval—each featuring a Laster member no less—truly pushing the bounds of what the genre can harbor.” Laster man standing.
Bolt Gun – The Tower Revew
“The Tower feels like ascent. You’ll feel light as air, floating upon the ether in warm sunlight, only to crash to earth in plummeting gravity. While journeys are not uncommon across metal’s many weathered and storied expanses, Australia’s Bolt Gun offers a vertical trek. Its experimental fervor, blackened climaxes, and monolithic weight, and above all, the emphasis on atmosphere, offer scenic vistas and groveling earth alike, hurtling towards the summit and the zenith. Always majestic, as if in reverence to the colossal structure always in view, The Tower feels like a chronicle: a breathing, organic, but dense legend.” Climbing creativity.
Dymna Lotva – The Land Under the Black Wings: Blood Review
“Art is a conduit for many things, but it’s particularly powerful when both its contents and very existence make some form of protest. A subversion of the status quo and illumination of its not-so-hidden darkness. Such is the case for Dymna Lotva’s third record The Land Under the Black Wings: Blood, a collection of stories of sorrow and injustice—both real and apocryphal—from their native Belarus.” Cries in the darkness.
Fen – Monuments to Absence Review
“Most 70-minute albums don’t justify their own existence. In the past, UK band Fen have both succeeded and failed at that task. Doom_Et_Al fanboi’d all over hour-long The Dead Light while elegant Lady of the Night Madam X found the 75-minute Winter entirely too much Fen. The atmoblack outfit now return with the 68-minute Monuments to Absence.” Everlong?
1476 – In Exile Review
“Well, 1476’s In Exile is certainly more than I bargained for. Having dropped my previous promo for this week because I had suspicions about the political leanings of its members (that it was bollocks made this a happy development), I picked up 1476 on a whim. And it’s a lot. Of many things. A lot of music, clocking in at over an hour. A lot of styles and influences—the accompanying blurb describes In Exile as “wonderfully all over the place”; the latter part of that statement isn’t wrong but the adverb, we’ll see.” Leatherface and open space.
AMG’s Unsigned Band Rodeö: Cisza – She Yearns for Other Worlds
“AMG’s Unsigned Band Rodeö” is a time-honored tradition to showcase the most underground of the underground—the unsigned and unpromoted. This collective review treatment continues to exist to unite our writers in boot or bolster of the bands who remind us that, for better or worse, the metal underground exists as an important part of the global metal scene. The Rodeö rides on.” Poland invades YOU!
Chrome Waves – Earth Will Shed its Skin Review
“When I reviewed Chrome Waves’ last effort, 2021’s The Rain Will Cleanse, I described its languid, whimsical tones as the epitome of great work music. While not intended as a slight to the band, as everyone needs great work music, it was hardly a ringing endorsement for the Midwest post-black metal quartet. I finished that review, however, by saying that the band had done enough (on tracks like “Aspiring Death”) to make me think they had a great record in them. Mark Z., who had also awarded a 3.0 to the band’s previous record, A Grief Observed, materialized unbidden in the comments to agree with my assessment.” High tides of potentiality.
Downfall of Gaia – Silhouettes of Disgust Review
“Now into their fifteenth year, German four-piece Downfall of Gaia need little introduction, particularly for longer-standing readers of this venerable blog. We didn’t cover their first two records, Epos (2010) and Suffocating in the Swarm of Cranes (2012) but since then, Downfall of Gaia has had a very good run in the hands of the normally-highly-critical Mark Z., with each of their next three albums swanning off with a coveted 4.0.” Worst downfall ever.
Leiþa – Reue Review
“Bamberg, Germany’s Noise is a busy man. By my count, he put out three EPs under his Kanonenfieber moniker—two of which I covered here—and a very good full-length with his Non Est Deus project in 2022. Alongside that, he was, it seems, producing, in all senses of the word, another record as his third alter ego, Leiþa.” The many faces of Noise.