The most interesting bands are not the ones that come out of the box ready made to ingest. The best shift like a sea at storm, creating and destroying, adding and taking back what it wants. Downfall of Gaia too has continued to adapt and improve, pushing themselves and everything else outward with every release. After a few years absence, the band has returned again with their new album, once again aiming high as they can. Continue reading
It is without a second’s hesitation that Norwegian second-wave Black Metal deities Mayhem are regarded as one of the pinnacles of the style: as one of the seminal acts. Their full length debut De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas (Deathlike Silence) is rightly acclaimed as one of the very best – if not the actual best, which is my personal opinion depending on whether I’ve listened to that or In The Nightside Eclipse (Candlelight) most recently – Black Metal albums, while earlier releases Deathcrush (Posercorpse) and Live In Leipzig (Obscure Plasma) have also attained legendary status for their wild, raw nihilistic fury.Continue reading
It’s easy to love Sigh. It’s also easy to find them really annoying. Starting off as a Japanese branch of Black Metal’s second wave, Sigh has since mutated in all sorts of bizarre and interesting ways, integrating everything from classical influences to jazz breakdowns to having a nude, blood-smeared woman shrieking out vocals over Venom covers. As one does. At best, it made them a glorious thing to hear. At worst, it just sounded like a formless din.Continue reading
I’m looking at Spirit Crusher (Prosthetic) the latest release from Sweden’s Dödsrit and I’m getting a feeling. Not super familiar with the band but judging by the font and the presence of umlauts we know extreme music is on the way, particularly of the Black Metal persuasion. And these song lengths certainly suggest experimentation and a non-commercial nature. Dödsrit is a one-man project isn’t it?
Those one man acts always have the most to say.Continue reading
While no person is an island, entire of themselves, the principle should not be applied to Deafheaven. For while there are glorious, rich, organic threads that tie and bind each of their albums to the others, and each collection is clearly derived from the same creative womb, Ordinary Corrupt Human Love (ANTI-), the San Franciscan quintets’ fourth album, continues the premise that each occurrence is a happening in and of its own right, and that responses to one do not necessitate a similar response to another.Continue reading
Whether we like to dwell on it too much or not, hype is always going to be a sticking point with any band, and when you consider the enormous cult following a band like Wolves In The Throne Room have amassed over the years, the weight of expectation may have been almost too much to bear. Thankfully, Washington’s favourite black metal visionaries have never been lacking in ambition, and Thrice Woven (Artemisia) proves this as one of their most dense and captivating works yet.Continue reading
Treading a different path to many of the bands playing their part in Norway’s Black Metal scene, Bergen’s Vulture Industries (known previously as Dead Rose Garden) have produced their own particular, peculiar brand of Avant-garde/Progressive/post-Black Metal since 2003. Continue reading
There’s no point starting anywhere else. If you can’t get past the vocals, this is not the album for you. And stating that is not just about addressing the elephant, or rather addressing the yelps of the goat being castrated in the room, it’s worth highlighting as it is achingly and obviously Ghost Bath’s “thing”. They don’t have vocals (or lyrics, even) in a traditional sense. They have the anguished yelps and howls of frontman Nameless. And if you can’t deal with that, no amount of all-consuming ambient meanderings, lush Cascadian post-blackened swathes, progressive indulgences or melodic expositions that occur under, over and around the wails is going to make this an album you can get on with.Continue reading
London-based Progressive Black Metal group code wanted to revisit some older material on their Lost Signal (Agonia) EP to see if they could cast it in a new light. This EP is six songs in total, comprising of three from the album Mut (Agonia) and three from their first three records. The band produced and mixed the EP themselves to show rich power melody and dynamics.Continue reading
When it comes to black metal, I tend to be on the pickier side especially with the production value of an album. The latest release from Caïna, Christ Clad in White Phosphorus (Apocalyptic Witchcraft) has only brought that side of me out even further into light. I found that while a few of the tracks were enjoyable for a raw black metal tone, most of the others were just jumbled messes with lacking production. Also, I tend to enjoy a track here and there that serves as an intro to the track that follows, but the ones in this album just seem random.
‘Fumes of God’ came off at first as an okay track but progressively gets worse as it wraps up with unnecessary synths that throw off the rest of the instrumentals. It sounded as if I was listening to a black metal song and a YouTube ad started playing in the background on my laptop. ‘The Promise of Youth’ is one of the better tracks on the album. In your face black metal with nothing fancy trying to make something “different”. Even the synths that come in late are not overbearing and are only ever truly present towards the closing measures. ‘Extraordinary Grace’ was the most obnoxious twelve minutes of my life as I was waiting for some more black metal after a couple minutes. Then I hoped that it would climax into black metal. Then I hoped it would just end faster. The final track, which is the album track, is what sounds like someone trying their hand at Depeche Mode type vocals with a mid-80s Mayhem demo playing over a shitty stereo in the background.
After fifty-three minutes, Christ Clad in White Phosphorus comes to an end. This is one of the few times where I only listened to an album maybe three times before just hammering out a review to be done with it. Caïna supposedly has other material where each release has its own mood and emotions. Perhaps that’s where I should have started listening to them. Unless, of course, it sounds like this album.
4.0/10
TIM LEDIN
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