Tag Archives: Atmospheric Metal

ALBUM REVIEW: CMPT – Na utrini

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CMPT weaves an impressive atmosphere on Na utrini (Osmose Productions). The Balkan black metal band sets themselves apart from the pack by not just going full blast in your face. Not falling victim to the sophomore slump, the band is assured in what they are doing here. The choked rasp of the vocals to the most prominent element to ground the band in his sub-genre. It moves along with an eerie creep.  It’s not until the second song that the drummer begins to push for more momentum, This restraint is their strength, as there is no shortage of Black Metal bands out there still trying to bleed blast-beats from the late nineties era sound, that find too much conformity coming from a misanthropic genre. Here the guitars tap into the trademark metallic buzz of black metal, but the band has already set the stage for a wider range of dynamics, making this a more well-balanced listen.Continue reading →


ALBUM REVIEW: Ulcerate – Cutting the Throat of God

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On Cutting the Throat of God (Debemur Morti Productions) Auckland, New Zealand’s Death Metal three-piece Ulcerate continue to refine their musical representation of an exploding volcano raining down molten rock and laying waste to all below. 

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ALBUM REVIEW: Convocation – No Dawn For The Caliginous Night

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 Winter is undeniably creeping forward as the nights draw longer and the cold ever sharper. Even aside from this, happenings feel ultimately bleak and the world is increasingly grief-stricken as a result. Perhaps suitably, Convocation makes a welcome return; a band that conjures that sense of foreboding and misery, if in a general sense rather than at specific events.

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ALBUM REVIEW: Saor – Origins

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Andy Marshall is the poster child for harnessing the random beauty of nature and threading it together with the limitless opportunity atmospheric folk/black metal presents. His Caledonian imprint (a fancy, old-fashioned way of saying Scotland) isn’t foreign to the scene, but the coming together of his various musical arrangements is second to none. And that’s a hill I will die on.Continue reading →


ALBUM REVIEW: Aeviterne – The Ailing Facade

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Like all movements that promise to reinvent a genre, dissonant / experimental Death Metal collapsed into a messy trend of imitators focussing on the most obvious aspects of their influences’ sound and missing the nuance. Fortunately, it passed the test of leaving behind enough building blocks for worthwhile successors to construct something interesting – and New York four-piece Aeviterne are one of the most interesting in a while.

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Disperse – Foreword

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Polish and English progressive rock and metal quartet Disperse returns to present their third studio album Foreword (Season of Mist). This band may take inspiration from bands such as Pink Floyd, and Dream Theater, but it ends up with a very modern sound , in some parts similar to pop bands such as Kensington, but with a more progressive bent to their music.Continue reading →


Eater Of Worlds – Dennie Grondelaers And Reinier Schenk Of Saille

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Saille Dries Gaerdelen

Saille at Bloodstock 2015. Photo credit – Dries Gaerdelen

While roaming the green green grass of Bloodstock Festival earlier this year, Ghost Cult caught up with Saille to discuss their first appearance at the legendary festival, and how work on their next opus is coming along…

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If there was something special about Bloodstock Festival in 2015, aside from the bands and the people of course, it was the constant sunshine and heat; something we always hope for at UK festivals but we rarely get (anyone who has encountered Download Festival at its worst will testify to). However, while this is great for the fans it does not necessarily prove to be so for those bands on the main stage who strive for dark and haunting atmospherics. The likes of Agalloch and 1349 across the weekend made due effort and came out well; for poor Belphegor the presence of butterflies clearly visible to the stage proved too comical to take them seriously.

With their debut Bloodstock appearance on the Sophie Tent instead of the main stage, Belgian black metallers Saille luckily benefited from the tent atmosphere, able to showcase their tone and visuals unaffected, and as a result proved one of the weekends highlights.  Speaking to vocalist Dennie Grondelaers and guitarist Reinier Schenk before their Sunday set, they both understand their stage positioning, and are very positive about their setting.

“We have to accept the fact that we are a growing band; if we are on the main stage we would just vanish into nothing” begins Grondelaers, philosophically.

Schenk “I prefer to play inside because we can bring our own light show”

Grondelaers “Its certainly interesting for black metal bands to play in the sunlight.”

 

With a very strong release ethic which has seen 3 albums in the last 4 years, Saille have, unsurprisingly reached UK shores more frequently as of late, but Bloodstock represents their first festival appearance, at least in the UK. With so many festivals across Europe now, competition is as fierce as ever. Grondelaers muses “I don’t think it’s actually well known (outside of the UK), but people who know Bloodstock are really excited about it, but I also think the main audience is people on the mainland.”

Schenk: “There is a lot of competition on the continent, a lot of small countries and huge festivals, if you can’t see a band there then maybe come here, like Emperor last year.”

Grondelaers “Plus it’s the same weekend for Party San in Germany and Brutal Assault in the Czech Republic.”

Despite the competitive nature of the festival season however, Saille are very positive about Bloodstock and say there is a big plus on its side. Grondelaers explains: “It’s a small festival, there are very big bands but on a smaller scale, compared to say Graspop which is nice but its huge, about 50,000 people. Here it’s half (that) and much more laidback, more relaxed and you don’t have to walk around. You don’t have to walk 4 hours on some sandy trail to get to your camping spot.”

 

With the festival season still in full swing even after Bloodstock, Saille have a busy schedule of more European festivals before returning to regular venues, and the writing of the follow up to last years Eldritch(Aural Music). With a very fast paced release schedule before, this time around they want to take things differently. On the subject of new music, Grondelaers adds “We want to take a little more time for the next album, we are not putting any deadlines on it this time.”

Reiner Schenk continues in blunt fashion. “Deadlines always destroy something, if it’s the artwork or the production, it sucks.”

Grondelaers “It’s a bit too early to talk about it but we have pretty much worked out the concept will be about pain and suffering.”

“We tried butterflies and love but that was taken already” Schenk deadpans.

 

WORDS BY CHRIS TIPPELL


Shape of Despair – Monotony Fields

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It’s staggering to realise that Finnish sextet Shape of Despair have been travelling their heart-rending road for twenty years. New album Monotony Fields (Season of Mist), the band’s fourth, is their first in eleven years and first without their noted growler Pasi Koskinen. The good news is that Koskinen didn’t take the magic with him.

This is poignant stuff: from the atmospheric synth work building the form of opener ‘Reaching the Innermost’, the immense dirge ‘The Blank Journey’ and devastating closer ‘Written in My Scars’; to the sparing piano intermittently puncturing subtle yet powerful riffs, dropping tears into the soul. With piercing, vertiginous lead chords, and the moving intonations of Natalie Koskinen stopping the guttural growls of Henri Koivula, there’s more than a smattering of the symphonic here.  The funeral march pace, however, lends more than enough real gravitas to ensure that the passion is not diluted.

At over 70 minutes’ duration, this is a long trek so the lighter touches serve to enhance and tickle the brain: the evocative, cosmic synth of the title track underpinning the mournful growl and ramping up the emotion rather than urinating on it. The tempo also, hardly relenting, rarely moves above a respectful coffin retinue. The nebulae of ‘Descending Inner Night’, augmented by lead pedal effects, are stellar and supremely emotive – the Anathema-like cleans here chilling the bones, the whole a premier example of an outfit atop their game and as moving as the Liverpudlians to whom they perhaps invoke most comparison. The swell of ‘In Longing’ and the slightly more up-tempo ‘The Distant Dream of Life’ is chest-filling, the contrast of the harsh vocal a delicious melding of tastes, the latter an incredibly touching track and the embodiment of this album’s seeming intent to enlighten and give hope as it simultaneously crushes all resolve.

Often nearing the borders of Cheeseville without ever setting foot inside, Monotony Fields adds a touch of light to the overwhelming darkness of Funeral Doom yet, far from trivialising it, only increases its power to move and intrigue. This is as refreshing as it is heartfelt and affecting.

 

8.0/10

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PAUL QUINN


An Autumn For Crippled Children – The Long Goodbye

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An Autumn For Crippled Children have a very credible reputation, one of almost unreserved critical acclaim gained over the four albums that precede The Long Goodbye (Wicker Man), four albums that have established the Dutch post-black metal band as able to combine prolificacy and class in rare measure, and a band whose raison d’etre is in the beautifully dark and melancholic.

And release seven (in six years, for they have also produced two EPs)  will continue that reputation, and starts by snapping the head of the listener to attention with a deformed upbeat Death Rock opening trio that fuse goth-punk, black metal jangle and profound Cascadian melodies. Like a permeating disease, the white noise of distortion sits like an ethereal fog atop the bleak atmospheric music playing beneath its influence, as the dance beneath slows from the Death Rock four-step of the first three songs to a statuesque stall of reflection which subdues the mood.

Whether that is the right play or not depends on whether you’re prepared to accept The Long Goodbye for what it is, rather than what you thought it was going to do, or indeed what you wanted it to do. After the unexpected and pleasing opening, the expected combination of black metal shuffle and despondent atmospheres takes over from ‘When Night Leaves Again’.

Taking it for how it plays out, The Long Goodbye proceeds to unveil post-Black Metal dejection, with songs like ‘Endless Skies’ that segue from gentle mood pieces into evocative and epic movements, before recalling some of the simple touches that impressed from the outset towards the tail, with ‘Gleam’ an expansive story splashed with flickers of Americana that explodes , contradictorily, into an uplifting yet sad beauty in the manner of a Deafheaven.

As mentioned at the outset, An Autumn For Crippled Children have a strong reputation that they’ve cultivated and maintained at every step of their existence. The Long Goodbye will only serve to enhance that standing, with the exploration of death rock, alongside their usual despondency and delicate post-Black metal, adding a welcome vibrancy and impetus.

 

8.0/10

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STEVE TOVEY


Oblivionized announce February UK tour

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Up and coming UK grind trio Oblivionized are hitting the boards to promote their upcoming new album Life Is A Struggle, Give Up which is due for release via fledgling label Secret Law Records in March of this year by taking the fight to the UK gig scene in February.

Bringing the chaos with them are French quartet Plebeian Grandstand, whose latest slab of atmospheric metal Lowgazers is out now on Throatruiner.

Catch the pair at the following venues near you.

7-8/02/15 – Lisbon (Portugal) – RCA Club (Burning Light Festival)

14/02/15 – Plymouth – Underground 

15/02/15 – Bristol – Exchange (Rad Not Sad Fest) 

16/02/15 – Canterbury – The Lady Luck Bar

17/02/15 – Leeds – Santiagos Bar

18/02/15 – Hull – O’Rileys

19/02/15 – Chester – The Compass

20/02/15 – Nottingham – Stuck On A Name Studios

21/02/15 – Brighton – The Green Door Store and Fitzherberts (two separate shows)

 

 

 

Steve Tovey