If perchance you have never encountered this album before, here’s the concept: way back before the new millennium, the mad genius space hippie Arjen Lucassen brought together a lot of other exceptional instrumentalists and vocalists and made an album. On this album, some unknown entity has kidnapped a bunch of characters from various points in earth’s timeline and brought them together for what seems like the ultimate psychedelic escape room: the Electric Castle. Here, the characters are confronted with their culture’s beliefs around death, self, and the supernatural, all voiced by a phenomenal international cast, among which Sharon den Adel, Damian Wilson, and Fish.Continue reading
Anyone who thinks that Black Metal is a conservative and formulaic sound need only look at (amongst the plethora of progressive and avant-garde entities) Norwegian’s Vreid and how have incorporated outside and wider aspects into their black metal fabric. Whilst that more typical black metal sound is firmly at the band’s core, their willingness to bring in the sounds of Hard Rock and sixties and seventies influence has afforded them the “Black n’ Roll” moniker and thus helps them stand out in some capacity to many of their peers. Following on in this trend, eighth album, and first on Season Of Mist, Lifehunger is not only one of their strongest to date, but possibly the easiest of their catalogue to break into.
