“Panychida began as a fairly meat-and-‘taters black metal project in 2004, but has gradually been expanding its sound to include a greater emphasis on the classic heavy and thrash bands of yore. Gabreta Aeterna is the band’s most expansive and diverse effort yet, going all-in on the thrash, complete with righteous solos and rock-with-your-cock out passages.” Blackness in a hard place.
“Violence is as American as cherry pie, or so the great MLK Jr. once said. The genesis of this hunger for bloodshed has many roots, but an obvious one is the Wild West. A perfect storm of technological force, an insatiable desire for expansion, a fondness for guns, and laws that were… flexible. It was a violent time, and black metal is violent music, so it seems curious that these have never really been combined before.” of gunsmoke and corpsepaint.
“I love albums that make me feel cold. Hamferð’s Tamsins likam has that effect; regardless of environment or actual temperature, listening makes me feel as though I’m wrapped in darkness, walking through the dead of winter. October Falls’s The Plague of a Coming Age has a similar effect. These albums are prized in my library. In a non-menacing way, they conjure darkness in the most comforting way possible. Always I’m on the lookout for more, and today, I have found some. Hailing from Denmark, Sunken release their second album, Livslede, which roughly translates into “a profound and lasting discomfort with existence.” To summarize: it is dark, it is emotional, and it is fantastic.” Sunken woe-nuts.
“Ambient music and metal, on the surface, appear to have little in common: ambient’s gentle, relaxing melodies are, superficially, a far cry from the furious pummeling and screeches that defines most metal. And yet, the two go frequently hand in hand, possibly because, when you adjust to it, metal, like ambient, can be hypnotic and soothing. It would explain why bands such as Wolves in the Throne Room and Violet Cold have both released ambient records, in the form of Celestite and the Sommermorgen trilogy, respectively. Now we have Gruppe Planet, a German supergroup of sorts.” Travel restrictions.
““In mainstream literature, the anti-hero dies. In Ural literature, everyone dies.” This cheery adage is not only the plot of Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, but also the philosophical basis for the music of Russian black metal group, Vspolokh. The band makes no bones about its admiration for its Ural heritage, playing a form of music it describes as “Ural Chthonic Black Metal.” Color me intrigued.” Blackness and death in a Russian winter.
“Well. This fucking sucks. As most of you are probably aware unless you literally just woke up from a 2 month coma, the summer of 2020 has effectively been cancelled because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Concerts, tours and festivals the world over have bid months of preparations and investments goodbye. Now, MetalDays has joined the fallen, as the Slovenian government has decided to keep the ban on public events in place.” You can’t stop the Metal Days.
When I
“When I’m unsettled, I retreat to what I know; to what I’m comfortable with. And while there’s a global pandemic locking down the planet, these are profoundly unsettling times. When the promo bin threw some atmospheric black metal my way, I was completely on board for that. This is the genre, after all, that got me into metal, and it’s where I feel most at home. No matter the time of day, or my mood, I can always spin some atmoblack. The icy embrace warms my cold heart and calms me. Which is all to say that Realm of Eternal Night, the debut album from British outfit Argesk, is precisely the kind of music I was looking for this week.” No escape.
“Thokkian Vortex has always been a little… odd. Into the Nagual frequently sounded like standard second-wave black metal fare, with few frills and even less fuss. But then, out of nowhere, weird ambient tones would emerge, combined with chanting and strange instrumentation. While it didn’t work particularly convincingly, like great uncle Bob removing his dentures as a party trick at Thanksgiving, it had a peculiar charm.” Throne to the wolves.
“Hello everyone! As I cannot pay the rent in the skulls of newbies, I work during the daytime for a traveling company. As such, I know that right after Christmas, people booking holidays surges. Now before you spend money on some dumbass idyllic location like the Canary Islands or Iceland, why not sweat it up with a bunch of strangers in black for a week on a field of grass in Slovenia? That’s right, bitches, it’s time for the first Angry Metal Days update!” Metal Avengers Assemble!
![Sun Worship – Emanations of Desolation [Things You Might Have Missed 2019]](https://www.angrymetalguy.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Sun-Worship-Emanations-of-Desolation-01-768x768.jpg)
“Too much music is released and there is not enough time nor space to cover it all. Some publicists game the system and generate artificial hype for their artists. A certain uniformity in year-end lists plagues major publications. An echo chamber of taste ensnares the metal community. Some of these reasons and a plethora of others may be why bands like the Berlin-based (deathened) black metal duo Sun Worship fly under the radar.” Sun and black winter.
