The French Black Metal band’s 16th album, Ethereal Horizons (Debemur Morti Productions), shows that Blut Aus Nord never makes the same album twice. They embrace every side of the genre here while cloaking them all in their signature atmosphere. This is the sound of a smoke machine enveloping a band rather than just seeing it on stage. The opening track finds atmospheric black metal being pushed in new directions,, This is balanced out by the pained moaning of the clean vocals cuts through the thickness of sound, bringing Mercyful Fate‘s earliest incarnations of black metal to mind. They worked in the obligatory storm of blast beats and tremolo-picked guitars needed to identify their blackened intent, but without dialing in the cliche black metal tropes.  Continue reading →