“Last month I sampled an advance track for Earth Rot’s third full-length album, Black Tides of Obscurity, and I rather enjoyed what I heard. And now that I’ve spent some significant time with the full record, I have to say that I’m completely blown away. Black Tides of Obscurity is the sound of a band that believes the answer to the question “Should we play old school Swedish death metal or true Norwegian black metal?” is an emphatic “YES!”” Rot n’ roll.
“In years past, metal music took its sweet-ass time in order to drop us the good stuff. Don’t get me wrong, I do like a good, slow burn, but usually we (and by proxy, you) usually don’t hear anything jaw-droppingly good until later in the year. Not 2020, man. Barely into our third month, and we’ve already got strong contenders for Album o’ the Year, and it doesn’t seem to let up anytime soon. And now, we’ve got the much-anticipated Viperous by Vredehammer, an album everyone here at AMG’s been anticipating since Violator knocked us all on our collective ass back in 2016.” Bow down to the Snakehammer.
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“My first “real” metal band was Iron Maiden. The second was Children of Bodom, and through them, I found other melodic death metal bands like Norther and Kalmah. These last three bands were all listed on Metal Archives as “power metal with harsh vocals,” as a kind of elitist bid to disassociate melodic death metal that was too melodic from the “death” part of the label. While it was kind of a ridiculous strategy, it is true that there’s a major subsection of melodic death metal that has little in common with death metal aside from growls or screams.” Death’s revenge.
Valkyrja is a Swedish black/death outfit intending to channel “violence, deprivation, and loathing through means of extraordinarily potent audio emissions.” There are a million different directions black/death can take, and fourth full-length Throne Ablaze revels in a groovy, thrashy style a la Vredehammer or Horizon Ablaze. While it is flawed, there’s a likable simplicity about these Swedes, as it feels that their music makes no pretense about being the most atmospheric, heavy, or “kvlt.” Shame of Thrones.
“Arizona’s Spirit Adrift, a one-man doom machine featuring the talented voice, musicianship, and songwriting of one Nate Garrett, dropped a promising debut last year with Chained to Oblivion. Just a hair over a year later, Garrett returns with a fully fleshed-out band, a slightly altered sound, and a new album in Curse of Conception.” Those adrift are not always lost.
“Expectations can be an odd thing when dealing with hybrid genres. The more genres descriptors added to the band’s tag, the harder it gets to form a view of what you’re going to listen to, and it doesn’t just apply to blackened melodic industrigothic deathfolk. Take Infernal Angels, now releasing their 4th album in 15 years. Various sources I checked listed the band as melodic black metal, melodic black/death metal, or plain black/death metal.” Get in your pigeonhole!
“I’m not an expert on black metal; in fact, I’m somewhat at an initiate level. While I have dug the occasional blackened affair like Axamenta, I’ve never had quite as much love for the kind of gritty, treble-laden, snare-abusing, hysterically-snarled theater that has been hated by parents, loved by anti-establishment youths and mocked to varying degrees by just about everyone else. This makes for a difficult situation when the dumping grounds of December leave naught but black metal promos.” Black is the season.
“I’ve been hitting the backspace key a lot as I’m writing my Top Ten(ish). Not because of a lack of anything witty to say, or a sheepishness of my selections. No, rather it’s because I’m of two minds as I type this.” Two minds, but only one weighty list!
“Ingar Amlien is a persistent fellow. Having formed Crest of Darkness in 1993 to pursue darker fare than his progressive main band Conception would allow, Amlien weathered line-up changes and several fine-tunings of their blackened thrash formula. Their last album, 2013’s In The Presence of Death, impressed our very own Madam X with their rifftastic blasphemy, goofy cover notwithstanding. Now it’s my turn to enjoy deep of Norwegian black-thrash with their seventh album, Welcome the Dead.” Welcome…to your grave!
“Norway’s Vredehammer started off as a solo-project for mainman Per Valla in-between work with his other bands, Elite and Allfader, as a way to branch out of the traditional sound of his country’s musical export of choice. Until most recently, Valla was hired on as a live second guitarist for Abbath’s band, but quit to concentrate on completing Vredehammer’s second full-length, Violator. I bring this point up because Violator isn’t dissimilar in style and approach to the lovable crab-walking ex-mainman for Immortal.” We like crabs, and Abbath.
