Raphael Weinroth-Browne - Worlds Within

By Matt Hinch. Wake's previous album, Misery Rites, should have garnered the attention of anyone who hadn't been paying attention already. It was a potent blend of black metal and grinding madness. Anyone who thought new album, Devouring Ruin was going to follow the same formula would be wrong.

By Matt Hinch.

Painting by Heather Sita Black.

This site may be Metal Bandcamp but this solo album from Raphael Weinroth-Browne, Worlds Within, is barely even metal adjacent. That term doesn't make much sense anyway. Raphael has played with Musk Ox, The Visit, and of course Leprous so he is well known to the metal community. However, we haven't really heard him play the cello quite like this. Unaccompanied. Every sound on here was made by him on a cello. The instrument itself has great range but add in the percussive elements and effects pedals and you'd swear a whole orchestra is in on this. It's just him though. Rhythms, leads, everything. Worlds Within seems like a spectacularly apt title given the worlds that open up in the minds of the listener on this 45-minute piece presented as 10 movements.

All 10 of those movements are quite moving. The piece's bookends, “Unending I” and “Unending II” feel like dawn and dusk, casting shadows with beauty and subdued light, brightening and fading, albeit with melancholic qualities. Melancholy and darkness find their place often. “From Within I” and “From Within II” open up the mind and paint an expansive picture. Raphael himself has stated a mind-nature connection exists with this section and with eyes closed the majesty of both worlds fills the soul.

As we move into “From Above” and the “Tumult” suite Worlds Within starts to show its diversity even more. Non-traditional playing techniques (is that strumming?) and percussive elements change the mood. It feels more dramatic and expansive once the spacey layers find their home. Layers move in and out of consciousness amid a steady beat until gorgeous leads take your breath away. There are times even that the Walking Dead theme comes to mind. So does Blue Man Group!

“Fade (Afterglow)” brings things back down to earth after all the drama. In fact, it feels watery, like ripples spreading in a pond as rain falls on the surface, leading us back to the aforementioned dusk of “Unending II”.

Worlds Within is an escapist piece of music. Wrap it around you like a blanket and let the emotions it conjures penetrate you. Serenity, fear, joy, sadness, conflict, peace. Traditional sounds via untraditional methods form a profound 45 minutes of encapsulation. The cello is an amazing instrument and Raphael is an amazing musician and composer with amazing vision, passion, and skill. We all need to escape. Escape to Worlds Within.

Hubris - Metempsychosis

By Justin C. Chances are good that you’re reading this while under some level of self-imposed quarantine. It’s not a lot of fun, even for those of us who have had work from home situations before. It’s even less fun for people whose income depends on being able to go out in public and gather people around them, like our beloved bands.

By Justin C.

Artwork by Jérémie Hohl.

Chances are good that you’re reading this while under some level of self-imposed quarantine. It’s not a lot of fun, even for those of us who have had work from home situations before. It’s even less fun for people whose income depends on being able to go out in public and gather people around them, like our beloved bands.

So what to do? Well, there are no easy answers to that, but some folks are trying. Bandcamp itself is waiving its share of sales on March 20 to help artists. (And for those of you griping that it’s just a “token” or some such nonsense, please go away unless you’re also donating 100% of your income to others for any period of time.) Art as Catharsis, a label that supports all manner of avant garde music, is giving 100% of their profits directly to their artists through the end of March.

So what to buy, what to buy.... I got into Art as Catharsis way back when through Serious Beak, an instrumental band that Lachlan Dale, label founder, plays in himself. That’s a good start, but for a recent release of metal-adjacent, instrumental music, let me recommend the latest by Hubris, Metempsychosis, an entirely engaging album centered on Greek mythology.

I say “metal-adjacent” here because this doesn’t have the heavier vibes of bands like Russian Circles or Pelican, but like those bands, Hubris knows how to write a damn fine instrumental song. And although there is a lot of delicate loveliness, they also aren’t afraid to get their stomp on when needed. The heaviness is judiciously meted out, like around the halfway point of album opener “Hepius.” I’ve poked fun of other post-metal-type bands that seem to stick to the quiet-LOUD-quiet-LOUD formula, which can be a bit exhausting, but Hubris ebbs and flows, builds and retreats, making even their longer songs pass by like a dream.

Give Hubris a devoted listen, especially since your other option is to enter the Thunderdome to fight people over toilet paper. If you’re able, support the bands you like through Bandcamp this Friday, or from Art as Catharsis the rest of this month. Every little bit helps.

Rosk - Remnants

By Master of Muppets. Poland's Rosk have captivated me from the very first moments of their debut, Miasma. The masterfully executed suspenseful passages and brilliant balance between blackened abhorrence and baleful ambience of Miasma made for an immersive, mesmerizing experience that I'm still completely unprepared for

By Master of Muppets.


Poland's Rosk have captivated me from the very first moments of their debut, Miasma. The masterfully executed suspenseful passages and brilliant balance between blackened abhorrence and baleful ambience of Miasma made for an immersive, mesmerizing experience that I'm still completely unprepared for. Naturally, I was quite excited to learn that more Roskelry lay on the horizon. Stupidly, I was mildly disappointed to learn that Remnants would be an acoustic endeavor. Amazingly, I was wrong on both counts: this acoustic album is all kinds of awesome, to the point of trumping any expectations I'd held for a 'proper' electric follow-up.

Remnants is not your average acoustic album; it isn't an unplugged reconstruction assembled from the bones of earlier works, nor is it a collection of folky guitars and intermittent screaming passing itself off as metal. Like its predecessor, Remnants utilizes familiar building blocks for its own unique design, ultimately creating a soundscape unlike any that I've ever visited. This is a world absent hope or light, painstakingly crafted from minimalist acoustic guitars and haunting cello arrangements. Its delicate darkness and mournful lyrical poignancy render Remnants every bit as heavy as anything else bearing the black metal banner.

To be fair, Remnants is perhaps more closely related to doom than the atmospheric blackness that preceded it, but the fact remains that its six tracks comprise an emotional weight and intensity on par with the more straightforward sonic thunder of doom contemporaries such as Morne or Officium Triste. The simple yet nuanced plea of "Wait for me/ hold my hand... don't leave me (within rosary)" repeated throughout "Rosary" conjures darkly clear imagery of the loss of a loved one, and the haunting ambience that introduces "Ceased in Me" is as dissonant and anxiety-inducing as the scariest Icelandic act you can think of. Though it might not horrify your neighbors or deafen you in the process, Remnants will stuff you to the gills with all the weight and woe of the most funeral of dooms, and it is absolutely not recommended for the faint of heart.

As with Miasma, Remnants' greatest strength lies in its aptitude for perfectly paced progressions and their respective accompanying payouts. When "The Long Solitude" quietly erupts into subdued harsh vocals and decidedly more heavily handed instrumentation, it's like watching a slow motion car accident among loved ones; you can feel each passing moment intensify as the sonic scene plays out, you know that there is going to be a crash but the resultant explosion overtakes you all the same. "A Dying Breath" is another standout example of flawlessly timed and tender ruthlessness, patiently drawing an ominous doomy passage from a plodding background atmosphere into an all encompassing wall of gloom over the course of nearly nine minutes. Timing is something Rosk have a truly impressive grasp on, evidenced most admirably here among this barebones collective of unplugged sounds.

I can't recommend Remnants enough. It wanders admirably far outside the box of traditional acoustic metal conventions, sacrificing none of the passionate darkness of Rosk's electric works along the way. It is not an alternative to their plugged-in sound, but rather an alternate form of the very same essence. This Polish act has once again introduced me to a hauntingly wonderful new world, and though it might not be as harsh and jagged as the rest of the metalverse I would urge you to explore the shadow lands of Remnants for yourself, you might just find yourself not wanting to leave.

Anna von Hausswolff - Dead Magic

By Alain Mower. Anna von Hausswolff, the gem of Sweden's Experimental Pop scene, is only as difficult to describe musically as she is relentless in her pursuit of uncompromising creation of deep wells of emotion and meaning in her compositions.

By Alain Mower.


Anna von Hausswolff, the gem of Sweden's Experimental Pop scene, is only as difficult to describe musically as she is relentless in her pursuit of uncompromising creation of deep wells of emotion and meaning in her compositions.

To say that Von Hausswolff's music is Darkwave or Goth revival, takes away from the Neoclassical, Drone and Experimental sides that mirror and counter-define every movement. Shirking easy identification is almost an acknowledgement by the artist herself that the music exists somewhere between music and black magic; the modern and the tribal; the mind and the spirit; or, to drive home the juxtaposition that is "Dead Magic", life and death.

Anna von Hausswolff 2016. Photos by Pedro Roque.

Much of the unique sonic foundation of the album stems from the organ used and recorded on site, captured using the 20th century organ at Copenhagen’s "Marble Church", Marmorkirken, one of the largest churches in Scandinavia and center of the Frederiksstaden district in the capitol.

The production of Dead Magic was handled by Seattle based Randall Dunn (Master Musicians of Bukkake), renown for his production work with iconic acts such as Sunn O))), Earth, Boris, Kayo Dot, Myrkur and Wolves in the Throne Room (whose recent album, Thrice Woven, Anna von Hausswolff contributed vocals to).

Anna von Hausswolff 2016. Photos by Pedro Roque.

Anna von Hausswolff is most recognizable by her powerful and evocative voice, the kind of which you only hear a few in your lifetime. She uses this power to remind the listener of the magic that once resided in the spaces between our everyday, even in the mundane.

Music was magic, the changing of the seasons, the experiencing of snow on naked skin, squishing mud through our toes, magic was all around us. The death of magic, rooted in the death of perhaps our awareness, our connection with our past or our nature. The polarizing of all that we are, hope and despair, all that survives is here in Anna von Hausswolff's three movement, five songs.

The truth, the glow, the fall. Knowledge and fear of the unknown. Power and fear of death. A greeting and the fear of being forgotten.

Upcdownc - I, Awake

By Calen Henry. Upcdownc's I, Awake blends a weirdly anachronistic mix of mid 00's art metal into a cohesive modern sounding whole. Mixing massive riffs, samples, and synths they present as Stranger Things

By Calen Henry.


Upcdownc's I, Awake blends a weirdly anachronistic mix of mid 00's art metal into a cohesive modern sounding whole. Mixing massive riffs, samples, and synths they present as Stranger Things meets Pelican filtered through Fantômas to take the listener on an instrumental journey through the concept of sleep.

On the surface it sounds like a road well traveled. Sleep has been well explored in music but Upcdownc manage to justify themselves primarily through excellent composition, flow and the resulting mood. The different multi-track movements build in a classic post-metal mode but shy away from guitars shifting from synths, through clean guitars, into crescendos of crushing riffs. The build manages to sound natural and always manages to cling to a riff or a motif, never devolving into experimental noise.

In this way they manage to stave off one of the pitfalls of both instrumental music and post-metal; tedium. Bits and pieces fly by at almost the speed of Fantômas, but with a lot more groove. The riffs are killer. The band could easily get by playing straight up post-metal or stoner metal based on their riff composition and are to be commended for going out on a more experimental limb. The sparing use of riffs makes the eventual crescendos all the more satisfying.

The production, too, sets the band apart. They've gone for a kind of lo-fi vibe with a pronounced Rickenbacker bass thump, aggressive fuzz, keys that would be at home on a Perturbator album and a bit of treble bias to the mix. It might be too much for some in the louder parts but it certainly gives the album a unique timbre and keeps them our of the "Ameridoom" melting pot sound that many bands fall into by using the same group of producers.

Upcdownc, despite being new to me, are not a new band. They've been releasing music for around seventeen years (originally as Up C Down C Left C Right C ABC Start) and it shows on this I, Awake. It's a confident outing into well trodden territory that's something unique and and uniquely excellent.

Iah - Iah

By Karen A. Mann. Relative newcomers to the stoner/desert rock scene, Argentina’s Iah offer astral enlightenment through hypnotic melodies that keep the listener engaged, even without words. Formed in 2016, the band took it’s name from

By Karen A. Mann.


Relative newcomers to the stoner/desert rock scene, Argentina’s Iah offer astral enlightenment through hypnotic melodies that keep the listener engaged, even without words.

Formed in 2016, the band took it’s name from the Egyptian god of the moon, which is appropriate given their expansive, mysterious tendencies. Their instrumental compositions mix post-rock, prog, doom and stoner elements into a heady formula that elevates the listener to another astral plane.

Iah has two releases to it’s credit: a self-titled four-song album released in January of this year, and a two-song companion EP released in June. Though released separately, the two create a cohesive whole, and are meant to be heard together.

The first release starts off with “Cabalgan los Cielos,” a solid composition that’s heavy on delay, sludgy riffing and spacey interludes. The band pays homage to classic stoner rock, notably Colour Haze, Kyuss and Karma to Burn, through hypnotic melodies and a rock solid rhythm section that keeps the interstellar guitar elements grounded. As you might expect, Iah can tend toward the jammier side of stoner rock, especially on “Ouroboros” and “Stolas.” That latter song ends with some surprisingly doomy melodies, ushering in “Eclipsum,” the release’s final, and heaviest, song.

Unlike the other songs on this release, there’s no build up to this one. “Eclipsum” begins with a sludgy, head-bobbing wah-driven riff that veers off into an ambient passage before crashing back in at the end.

Iah gets heavier on the two-song EP, while also adding more structure to their compositions.The band is at its best on the final song, “Nuboj,” which reveal the band’s progressive and post-rock influences through a combination of straight-ahead heavy rock, soaring guitar melodies and Pink Floyd-style ambience.

Overall these two releases serve as an impressive debut from this new Argentinian band.

Dynamic Metal Roundup

By Calen Henry. Metal is loud and abrasive, but metal fans like it that way. Over the past 25 years, there has risen a pernicious side to the loudness of metal (and music in general). Dynamic range compression has

By Calen Henry.

Metal is loud and abrasive, but metal fans like it that way. Over the past 25 years, there has risen a pernicious side to the loudness of metal (and music in general). Dynamic range compression has drastically increased in a phenomenon called the Loudness War.

Simply put, during mastering much contemporary music is altered to raise the volume of all parts to the same level as the loudest part, often the drums. The resulting loss of dynamics decreases the overall impact of the music; when you turn it up everything gets super loud, instead of some parts being accented.

A loud master doesn't necessarily ruin an album, and poorly produced dynamic albums can still sound terrible, but there are essentially no examples of more dynamic masters sounding worse than the louder version, provided other factors are not also drastically altered.

Thankfully, since I started paying attention a few years ago the trend has been toward more dynamic masters for metal, though it's far from standard. That being said, a few artists really stand out in both their commitment to dynamics and their excellent music.


I'm a sucker for concept albums and Vainaja take it even further; they're a concept band. Comprised of The Preacher, The Cantor, and the Gravedigger they play absolutely crushing death doom, in Finnish. The concept revolves around Wilhelm, a mysterious (and fictional) cult leader believed to have risen from the dead to corrupt the townsfolk with his blasphemous sermons. The albums are based upon unearthed excerpts of his writings.

Musically, their first album Kadotetut is pretty straightforward death doom while the second Verenvalaja expands the sound with more interesting arrangements and some guest guitar work by Hooded Menace's Lasse Pyykko. On music alone Vainaja have made a name for themselves, but going above and beyond, they've released digital versions of the vinyl mixes for both Kadotetut and Verenvalaja and they sound incredible. Vainaja was the catalyst to write this roundup.

Death doom is far from the first genre one thinks of in relation to dynamics, but the dynamic mixes sound incredible. The drums in Verenvalaja are absolutely thunderous and every filthy guitar note is clearly audible. Plus the dynamic master makes it positively easy to blow through the whole album in one sitting. It will make you yearn for a vinyl mix of every album

Bordering on a household name, at least in the metal community, Horrendous inject just the right level of "progressive" into Old School Death Metal to make super interesting albums without leaving the bounds of "OSDM". In contrast to full on progressive death metal Horrendous stick to the OSDM sound but shake things up with truly interesting melodic compositions. Their two most recent albums, Anareta and Ecdysis were some of the earlier of the "New Wave of Dynamic Metal" and they sound fantastic. Everything from the buzzsaw guitars to the powerful drums and lush acoustic passages sounds phenomenal.

Like Vainaja, Be'lakor made a name for themselves based on their music, then released vinyl masters of older albums. Widely praised for injecting new life into the somewhat stale Melodic Death Metal scene, the vinyl masters of Stone's Reach and Of Breath and Bone sound stellar. Each individual part of the music, right down to the individual drum and cymbal hits comes through with amazing clarity adding another level to already fantastic albums.

Kuaun's latest album, Sorni Nai, sees the Finnish singing Russian band craft a concept album about the Dyatlov Pass incident. In 1959 a group of 9 skiers in Russia disappeared then were found dead with bizarre injuries and the whole story is still unknown. Sorni Nai is a cinematic album flowing through doom, black metal, post rock and even sections broaching on classical. It's all delivered with a huge dynamic mix and is Pay What You Want on Blood Music's Bandcamp (like all their releases).

Auric are another fantastic anomaly on this list. The Arkansas based band play blackened sludge with echoes of early Mastodon (they use the same tuning) and Pallbearer. Their most recent full length, Empty Seas, is absolutely jaw dropping and criminally underrated. They employ an Elder-like ability to incorporate aspects of Stoner metal, sludge, black metal, and post-rock into a cohesive whole, and bless it with a hugely dynamic mix. The drums, though have an oddly compressed character which stands out strangely during slower passages, but helps preserve clarity during the some of the lightning fast sections. Of particular note is the track "Backlit", where they take a filthy sludge riff and build all sorts of levels of melody over top of it. So good.

If this list piques your interest in dynamic metal it's worth noting that Earache records has a large back catalog of classics ranging from the death metal triangle (US, Sweden, Britain), to grindcore available as Full Dynamic Range versions; digital versions of the vinyl mixes. It's worth revisiting classics like Carcass' Heartwork and Entombed's Left Hand Path to hear the dynamic mixes.

Ex Eye - Ex Eye

By Justin C. This one's a bit of a treat for me to write up, because as a former sax player myself, I've long been an admirer of Colin Stetson's playing. You can hear all manner of his

By Justin C.


This one's a bit of a treat for me to write up, because as a former sax player myself, I've long been an admirer of Colin Stetson's playing. You can hear all manner of his weird and wonderful sounds at his own Bandcamp. The fact that he's gathered together a band, Ex Eye, that's heavy enough (or at least, using my term, metal adjacent™ enough) for Relapse to release their self-titled debut is pretty exciting.

Stetson contributes both alto and bass sax on this album. No, that wasn't a typo--I mean bass sax, not baritone. There's a performance video of the album's opener, "Xenolith; The Anvil," on Bandcamp, and that metal behemoth you see around Stetson's neck is a bass sax, which is what happens if you light some candles and leave an alto sax and a tuba alone to mate. Most people don't know it's a thing at all, and there aren't many who specialize in it. A decent chunk of the bass-y thunder you'll hear in "Xenolith" is a result of that sax and the synths mixed in. And although this is an instrumental album, but you might be fooled at times. Some of the human/animal-like sounds you'll hear halfway through "Xenolith" are also coming from that sax.

The opener has almost a 70s, proggy feel to it, but the next track, "Opposition/Perihelion; The Coil" shows that Stetson isn't averse to using more intricate "sheets of sound," a term coined by reviewers of John Coltrane's overwhelming soloing in the late 50s. It's a lot to take in at first, but it's best to just let the intricate arpeggios wash over you until a moodier, sparser sound arrives halfway through the song, letting the synths, drums, and guitars shine through with the sax dancing in the background. As if knowing that might have pushed you passed your recommended daily allowance of ALL THE NOTES, the next track, "Anaitis Hymnal; The Arkose Disc" starts with a gentler, more mystical vibe, although that vibe gets a shot of adrenaline when the track dips its toes into some blast beat-type drumming a little ways in.

I've talked a lot about the sax on this album, but the rest of the band deserves a lot of credit as well. At times, it's hard to tell where the synths and guitar end and the sax begins, and that's part of what elevates the music. This isn't a jazz quartet playing with distortion to try to push into fusion, rock, or metal--it's a different entity entirely, running roughshod over any genre lines I could really throw at you. I know there's a decent contingent of people who hate horns in metal, and this album can be difficult to approach sometimes, but as I often do when I review things that are a bit more outre than usual, I urge you to give this a chance. The songs are long (and even the song titles are long and strangely punctuated), but I think this will reveal itself to you over multiple listens. Any open-minded fan of music will likely find a lot of things here to sink their teeth into.

Saule - Saule

By Justin C. If you're familiar at all with the vague-but-popular "post-metal" and "post-rock" tags, you have a pretty good idea of what to expect from an album labeled that way. The vocals will be sparse (or absent completely)

By Justin C.


If you're familiar at all with the vague-but-popular "post-metal" and "post-rock" tags, you have a pretty good idea of what to expect from an album labeled that way. The vocals will be sparse (or absent completely), there will be alternating passages of calm and heavy, song lengths will be long, and, in many cases, nothing about the music will stick in your head. There are exceptions, of course. Planks did it very well (and their final album, Perished Bodies was probably their best). Russian Circles continue to do it brilliantly. To this list, I'm going to add the Polish band Saule, who have just released their self-titled debut. It doesn't hurt that they have a secret weapon that lifts them above the pack, but I'll come back to that.

Saule fits pretty well with my genre description. There are lush and solemn passages interspersed with explosions, with clean guitars and distorted riffs competing for attention. The ebb and flow works nearly perfectly. I'll get my one gripe about the album out of the way--the closing song, "O," is a decompression/drone-type track that adds very little to the proceedings. But aside from that minor misstep, I found myself drawn along with this album, and it really is a whole-album experience. I think "III" and "V" are standout tracks, but in general, I'd be surprised if anybody jumped into their car after work and said, "I've had 'II' stuck in my head all day, and now I'm going to blast it!" It's not that kind of music.

I don't know if there's a mathematical formula for balancing out the soft and loud so that this kind of album holds your attention, but if there is, I think Saule's got a damn good estimation of it. On top of that, Saule has that secret weapon I hinted at before: the vocals. They may have done themselves a disservice by burying the vocals in the background for most of the opening track, but when they kick in, they're fantastic. The timbre of the singer's voice is very reminiscent of a lower, gruffer Roger Daltrey, and I'm loving it. I'd be surprised if it were intentional--I think it's just how this individual's voice works--but that semi-familiar, gravelly rasp is spine tingling, especially for a fan of The Who. It's potent and expressive, and the vocal lines in "III" even put me in mind of "Love, Rain O'er Me" from Quadrophenia. I can't back that up with a harmonic analysis, but they both have a beautiful, yearning quality to them. And of course, we all finally get to hear what Roger Daltrey's black metal rasps and death metal growls might have sounded like if The Who had gone a very different direction in their later years. Saule's vocalist sticks mainly to his "clean(er)" register, but I can’t imagine anyone complaining about his voice being too saccharine or pretty for metal.

I found myself drawn to this album immediately, in large part becuase of the vocals, but I think for some folks, it will take some time to warm up to. I urge you to give the first few tracks a chance before you hop on to the next thing. You'll be happy you did.

Planning for Burial - Below the House

By Justin C. When I first saw the cover for Planning for Burial's new album, Below the House, I immediately said, "That's Pennsylvania." There was probably a brief spike in my blood pressure, maybe the beginnings of a fight-or-flight reaction. I'm probably no different than anyone who grew up in a place where they never felt they belonged and fled as soon as possible

By Justin C.


When I first saw the cover for Planning for Burial's new album, Below the House, I immediately said, "That's Pennsylvania." There was probably a brief spike in my blood pressure, maybe the beginnings of a fight-or-flight reaction. I'm probably no different than anyone who grew up in a place where they never felt they belonged and fled as soon as possible, but the muted color palette and sense of gloom conveyed by that cover art is how most of my childhood memories from Pennsylvania look. Thom Wasluck, the man behind Planning for Burial, moved back to his childhood home to record Below the House, and when asked in an interview at CLRVYNT what moving back to Pennsylvania was like, he said, "Pretty awful. [Laughs]" You can read that interview for more insight into what it was like moving back and recording there, but given that "gloom" finds its way into most genre descriptions of Planning for Burial's work, you'll quickly figure out where you are on the emotional spectrum without the background story.

For our purposes, this is probably more of a metal-adjacent(tm) album review, although it fits in well with The Flenser’s catalog. There's harshness here, and if you were to listen to the opener, "Whiskey and Wine," with its heavy, Jesu-like undercurrent and black metal-like vocals, you might go in expecting a more metal album than what you're actually going to get. Sure, the third track, "Somewhere in the Evening" comes back in with that molten bottom end, and there are some shrieks buried deep in the mix, but the clean vocals on top make this feel like a conflict between listlessness and rage instead of a full-on barn burner.

More than anything, this is often sparse, vulnerable music. "Threadbare" accurately describes the music it contains. The vocals are clean, the music is at times minimal and stark, although there's also a warmth to it, as hard as it may be to pick out at times. There's a bit more fire to Below the House than Planning for Burial's last album, Desideratum, but the heaviness comes from mood, not volume. "Dull Knife, Part 1" might sound like heavier shoegaze or slowcore, but "Part II" is a singular-minded, almost plodding tune that builds so subtly that you might not even notice. The plaintive, repeated line, "Call me back home / calling me back," is damn near heart-breaking, even when additional guest voices join Wasluck.

I found this album difficult to listen to, but not because of rapid-fire time changes or overwhelming dissonances. This music is difficult because it cuts to your core if you let it in, and it taxes you emotionally. As I mentioned up top, I think this album carries a little more weight for me because Wasluck and I share Pennsylvania as the setting of perhaps not the most fun times, but beauty can still come from that. As the only lyrics for "Dull Knife, Part I" say, "This is the place I live / But it's not my home / This is the place I live / My roots don't grow." Get into this gloom and let it change you, and maybe even free you.

Italian ultraviolence: Nomura - Inerte Affondare / Zeit - Monument

By Craig Hayes. Back in 2010, Italian blackened grindcore band The Secret caught my attention with their blistering third album, Solve et Coagula. And a couple years later, the even more intense Agnus Dei. Thanks to those albums I started looking around to see what other violent Italian punk ’n’ metal bands I was missing out on

By Craig Hayes.

Back in 2010, Italian blackened grindcore band The Secret caught my attention with their blistering third album, Solve et Coagula. And a couple years later, the even more intense Agnus Dei. Thanks to those albums I started looking around to see what other violent Italian punk ’n’ metal bands I was missing out on, and that’s how I first stumbled on ferocious "deathpunk" horde Hierophant. I unpacked Hierophant’s latest album for you here, but I also thought that I might as well mention a couple of other storming releases of a similar ilk from Italian metallic hardcore bands Nomura and Zeit.

Artwork by Blessend

Post-rock adds that extra special something to Italian blackened hardcore quintet Nomura’s Inerte Affondare EP. In fact, if not for that additional element, Nomura might well have been lost among the oceans of metallic hardcore on Bandcamp. But the band clearly appreciate that it’s the subtle variances in tempo, tone, and even genre itself that can provide the all-important hooks or handholds when otherwise pitch-black and warp-speed music goes flying by.

Bookending Inerte Affondare are two great examples of just that. The first track "Nebbla", and last song "Apnea", are the most atmospheric and multifarious tunes on the EP. Both mix howling black metal with screaming vocals and hard-hitting hardcore. But it's the melodic undercurrent of post-rock/metal that rises and falls on those tracks that makes them so interesting. That said, Nomura also sound pretty goddamn appealing when they're just tearing it up with the kind of neck-wrecking metallic hardcore and that would make any Converge fan happy on "Foschia", "Vento Contro" and "Ageusia". So I guess that's the best of both worlds, then. Inerte Affondare annouces a band that's well worth keeping a close eye on in the future.

FFO: Hessian, Oathbreaker, Young and in the Way, The Secret, Hexis and Converge.

Cover Artwork by SoloMacello

Venice-based four-piece Zeit coat their hardcore in a thick metallic crust. But it’s not the usual 'blackened' metal fuelling their sound. Grindcore and mathcore are what drives the propulsion systems on Zeit's recent Monument EP, and much like the band's full-length debut, 2015's The World is Nothing, Zeit's aggressive new EP hurls sonic barrages at you in a rapid and unforgiving fashion.

Along with three new original tracks, the Monument EP also features a ripping cover of At The Gates’ "The Swarm". That adds melodic death metal into Zeit’s sonic repertoire this time round, and that’s a pretty good indication of a band being open to developing their sound further. Monument is volatile and vitriolic, and it serves as great introduction to Zeit. But don’t forget to also check out that excellent debut, The World is Nothing.

FFO: Rot in Hell, Converge, The Dillinger Escape Plan, Napalm Death and all the bands above.

Lotus Thief - Gramarye

By Justin C. Lotus Thief, perhaps the sole band working in their self-described genre of "text metal," is back with their second full-length, Gramarye. Born from the partnership of Bezaelith and Otrebor, the man behind Botanist, their first full length, Rervm, gave musical form to an epic poem written by Titus Lucretius Carus during the time of the Roman Empire.

By Justin C.


Lotus Thief, perhaps the sole band working in their self-described genre of "text metal," is back with their second full-length, Gramarye. Born from the partnership of Bezaelith and Otrebor, the man behind Botanist, their first full length, Rervm, gave musical form to an epic poem written by Titus Lucretius Carus during the time of the Roman Empire. For the recording of this album, they've added a third member, Iva Toric, who adds synths and another lovely voice joining with Bezaelith's own.** They've also expanded their subject matter--instead of one author, this album covers a veritable library of magic- and belief-based texts, including Homer's Odyssey, the Egyptian funerary text the Book of the Dead, and Aleister Crowley's occult work, The Book of Lies.

I've seen quite a few genre tags attached to Lotus Thief, including space rock, ambient, doom, drone, black metal, post-rock, psychedelic, and more. I looked back to my review of their first album, and I realized I cleverly avoided getting too nitpicky about genres. I'd advise you to do the same, because a full subgenre dissection offers little in the way of insight. At their core, Lotus Thief plays damn good metal, maybe leaning more toward art rock than anything else. There are hints of everything I listed, but everything has been blended so well that you'll never find the seams that join them.

What they continue to do brilliantly with that basic sound is add different touches and textures to match their subject matter without pulling too far away from their core sound. Circe is a goddess from The Odyssey who was fond of turning her enemies into livestock, a fate Odysseus managed to avoid. The chugging riffs and heroic guitar soloing that appear in the song itself puts a vivid image in my mind of Odysseus's galley beating through the waves toward home. "The Book of Lies" has just enough eerie atmosphere built in to conjure Crowley's occultism without going over the top, and the doomy opening riff, which the band revisits as the song progresses, is the perfect topper.

And through it all, there's Bezaelith's siren voice. She has very little competition when it comes to this, and if the music itself is at times cerebral, her singing is the beating heart that keeps the whole thing grounded and compelling. Favorite moments? It's hard to say where to start, but go to around the 4:30 mark in "Salem" and listen to this pure, elevating beauty. Listen to it several dozen times in a row, maybe. (I'm not saying I did that. I'm also not not saying I did that). As good as the entirety of the album is, the emotional crescendo that builds through "Salem" and album closer "Idisi" should provide at least 200% of your recommended daily allowance of feels. I said it in the review of Rervm, and I'll say it again here: If these vocals don't melt your heart, I don't know what to do with you.

We've had a good year of book-ish metal. Gorguts gave us a 33-minute tour of The House of Wisdom, and now Lotus Thief takes us from the library and back into the books themselves. But as unique as the subject matter may be, Lotus Thief continues to build an incredible sound rich enough to match.

**Lotus Thief underwent some personnel changes since the recording of Gramarye, and at the time of this writing, they are performing as a quintet.

Make - Pilgrimage of Loathing

By Karen A. Mann. After playing and recording on and off for years, Chapel Hill, NC, trio Make suddenly ascended to a higher level with last year’s The Golden Veil. That album showcased the band’s ability to play opposites against each other: clean and sludgy, natural and mechanical, stark and lush

By Karen A. Mann

Cover Art by Fritz Silberbaur

After playing and recording on and off for years, Chapel Hill, NC, trio Make suddenly ascended to a higher level with last year’s The Golden Veil. That album showcased the band’s ability to play opposites against each other: clean and sludgy, natural and mechanical, stark and lush.

In the year since that release, much has happened in the US, especially in their home state of North Carolina. Mass shootings have made us weary, Donald Trump has a legitimate shot at becoming our next president, and in North Carolina, a law was enacted that (among other things) dictates that transgender people use toilet facilities that correspond to the sex on their birth certificate. The members of Make are pretty angry about all these things, and have made no secret of their disgust with their government and those who applaud the government’s actions. With laser-like precision, they’ve managed to channel all this seething anger and hate into their latest release, Pilgrimage of Loathing. The result is like a sledgehammer wrapped in gauze.

Pilgrimage of Loathing begins with "The Somnambulist," which sets the scene for the entire album. The song begins with foreboding, atmospheric guitars, and angry rolling drums. Suddenly there’s a calming interlude with clean vocals. The song reaches a sludgy climax with bellowed lyrics, "YOU, you were wrong!"

From there the album veers from unrelenting noise to the types of soothing melodies your yoga instructor might play during a session. A prime example is "Two Hawks Fucking." While the name is rather ham-handed, it’s a pretty good description of what the song actually sounds like -- sensual and majestic. Meditative. I made the mistake of listening to this while driving through an empty landscape, and had to turn it off because I could feel myself going into a trance.

If that song lulls you to sleep, you’ll be slapped awake by "Human Garbage," which angrily bursts open from the first note, with sludgy bass and guitars, and screamed/bellowed vocals. At 3:23, it’s the shortest song on the album, but it packs a lot of venom in a small package.

The album ends with "Nothing," which opens with a repetitive guitar delayed guitar, slight drums, exotic melodies, and chant-like singing. But like almost everything else on Pilgrimage of Loathing, this song doesn’t stay calm for long, as it builds to a crescendo of frenzied screaming and ends with angry white noise.

Make - In Pursuit

By Karen A. Mann.

By Karen A. Mann.


I wrote last year that The Golden Veil by North Carolina’s Make was the best album I’ve ever heard by a North Carolina band. I am lucky to live in a state with a very strong music community (not just metal), so I knew that was a strong statement, but months later I still agree. A trio from Chapel Hill, Make has been active for years, but seemed to burst into greatness (and garner a lot of well-deserved praise in the process) with that one release. That album is a brilliant mixture between unstructured distorted, instrumental ambience and pure lumbering, bellowed rock songs.

In December, the band suddenly released a two-song EP, In Pursuit, which picks up where The Golden Veil left off.

Photos by Karen.

The EP begins with “Always Waiting for the Bigger Axe to Fall,” an 11-minute instrumental piece that gradually moves between pure noise to a simple, slightly distorted, melody, that grows into a slightly funky groove.

“Between the Ocean and Your Open Vein” is shorter at 5:28 and is also instrumental, but begins with a structured beat that gradually becomes more layered and shimmering.

With only two songs, In Pursuit leaves the listener just slightly unsatisfied, which is one reason why it’s best as a companion to The Golden Veil and is perfect either as a precursor or a coda to that release. Hopefully it’s also a bridge to another transcendent release from this remarkable band.

Short and to the point 1

MOBILE PREVIEW

By Aaron Sullivan.

Artwork by Dusty Peterson

Behold! The Monolith return with their third full length, Architects of the Void. This marks the first album with their new line up since the passing of bassist/singer Kevin McDade. Initially they tried to go as a three piece with guitarist Matt Price doing vocals and new bassist Jason Casanova. But the final line up was formed when Jordan Nalley was added to handle vocal duties.

It may have taken a while to solidify the new line-up. But this new album proves it was worth the wait. All the things you’ve come to love about this band are all still here. The outstanding musicianship, the heavy sludge, the progressive nature of the songs, and the balls out thrashing assault. An ass kicker from start to finish.

Blake Green is one half of Wolvserpent. He also has an Ambient side project called Aelter. We'll add one more to that list. His black metal project called Il'Ithil who’s first offering, Ia'Winde, was one of my favorites of 2015.

This is raw atmospheric black metal. Songs are bleak and fast paced. So cold and frostbitten you may feel the need to put on a coat. Buzzing guitars layered over beautiful melodies. His harsh vocals perfectly drowned in the mix. Only two songs, but it leaves you wanting more. For fans of Striborg and ColdWorld.

Painting by Aron Briggs

Volahn’s Aq'ab'al album was another of my favorites of 2014/2015. I saw these guys open for Wolves In The Throne Room in 2014 and was blown away. So when I picked up this album my expectations were high, and they were met.

Raw, uncompromising, in your face black metal. Vocals are throaty and remind me of a howling wolf at times. Songs feel progressive, never really staying in one place with one riff for very long. The addition of acoustic passages add great dynamics to the albums. Had the pleasure of seeing them live twice last year and the songs were even better live.

From Montreal come Big|Brave and their album, Au De La. To describe this album is no easy task. As they take from Post-Rock, DOOM, Noise and sprinkle in a few other genres for good measure...

A three piece with no bass. Songs are heavy and sparse. Guitars go back and forth from droning ambience to crushing riffs. Drums are HUGE in sound and scope. Vocals waver between chants and blood curdling screams. When brought together they become songs that hypnotize the listener. An amazing album.

Illustration by Viral Graphics

From my local scene comes Trapped Within Burning Machinery with a new album titled, The Filth Element. As you read the title I’m sure you are reminded of the film The Fifth Element. That is no coincidence. In fact each song title is a character from the film with each telling their story.

As they are a local band for me I was able to sort of witness the progression of this band from their first album and it is breathtaking. Hearing these songs for the first time I knew this album was going to be stunner. The emotions contained within this album are brought forth in way I had not heard from a band like this since the days of Asunder. The ability to go from these beautiful melodic guitar harmonies to crushing riffs is a thing to behold. With a single sustained note they go straight to the heart. They prove once again that even when quiet, music can still be heavy.

Make - The Golden Veil

By Ulla Roschat. Three piece band MAKE from Chapel Hill/NC have released their 2nd full length album The Golden Veil. The album can roughly be labeled as post-rock with sludge, psychedelic, doom and drone influences…

By Ulla Roschat.


Three piece band MAKE from Chapel Hill/NC have released their 2nd full length album The Golden Veil.

The album can roughly be labeled as post-rock with sludge, psychedelic, doom and drone influences…, roughly, because MAKE use even the typical post rock/metal elements in a way that makes them totally their own. The loud-quiet contrasts, the slow build ups and cathartic release, we all know well. MAKE drive them to unusual extremes at times and they manage to surprise within the well known patterns.

Beautiful, unhurried dreamy melodies provide a sense of abundance of time and space, often steeped in compelling psychedelia you can easily lose yourself in, but the next crushing riff will find and destroy you before you realize what just happened. All contrasts are extreme, be it the dense and the spacious, the loud and the quiet, the frail and the crushing.

Into this abundance of time and space MAKE complect different musical styles and layers of textures easily and smoothly. There are bits of spaced out psychedelia, acoustic folk, noisy ambience, drone, doom, and touches of progressive, black and death metal. All this is used in a thoughtful and unobtrusive way that this sense of abundance of space is retained. The vocals are used in the same vein, diverse in themselves, harsh and clean, but modestly dosed.

The album is best listened to in the given order of the songs. Right from its start the first song feels like an intro and there's a flow between the songs that builds an overall coherence of the intricate soundscapes that allows the nearly one hour and seven songs to evolve and expand their dark and cold, but irresistible atmospheres. And it's, most notably, MAKE's sense for creating spellbinding atmospheres that makes The Golden Veil outstanding.

The song "The Immortal" is featured on The Wicked Lady Show 94

Lotus Thief - Rervm

By Justin C.. Botanist's third full length, Doom in Bloom<, included a second disc called Allies, featuring collaborations with other musicians. Those songs stood in stark contrast with Otrebor's usual one-man, blackened hammered-dulcimer show. One of those songs, Nymphaea Caerulea, was with an immensely talented woman going by the name Bezaelith

By Justin C.


Botanist's third full length, Doom in Bloom, included a second disc called Allies, featuring collaborations with other musicians. Those songs stood in stark contrast with Otrebor's usual one-man, blackened hammered-dulcimer show. One of those songs, "Nymphaea Caerulea", was with an immensely talented woman going by the name Bezaelith, who also was a touring bassist with Botanist for a time. The duo went by the name Lotus Thief, and they're now back with a luscious full-length, Rervm.

Instrumentally, Otrebor provides his usual high-caliber percussion here, and Bezaelith handles everything else. The lyrical content of Rervm is based on the epic poem "De Rerum Natura", written by Roman poet Titus Lucretius Carus over 2000 years ago. The poem was meant to elucidate the ideas of Epicurean philosophy and science, which contains some surprisingly modern ideas, given its age. Lotus Thief cleverly labels their genre as "text metal," and as you might guess, the lyrics are pretty fascinating to read.

To be honest, though, I connected with this album on a more emotional level. I got my hands on the promo a day before going in for surgery, so I was in a bit of a distracted state before and after. At the risk of sounding melodramatic, Bezaelith's vocals on this album were a major comfort to me in the hours immediately before and after the actual operation. They're cleanly sung, and she often harmonizes with a veritable chorus of other Bezaeliths. If you can listen to the opening vocal lines of "Aeternvm" without your heart melting at least a little, I don't know what to do with you. It's made all the more satisfying when the subtle underlying percussion suddenly bursts into furious Otreborian blasting immediately after.

Musically speaking, this isn't the heaviest thing you'll hear all year. The riffing actually reminds me a bit of bands like A Perfect Circle at times--heavy, but with a heavy focus on melodicism. But regardless of the level of heavy, it's brilliant. The electronic touches Bezaelith adds to her guitar and bass are on point, and Otrebor supports it all with a deft touch on the drums. The album subtly ramps up in complexity and aggression as the six tracks progress. For example, "Discordia," appropriate to its name, is a darker and more aggressive song than "Aeternvm," so if things seem a bit too sweet at the outset, that's not all Lotus Thief has to offer you. I know that some reviewers have found the ambient interludes off-putting; each song ends with one, and they vary in length, but I find letting them wash over me to be a perfectly pleasant experience. I haven't subjected them to much intellectual scrutiny, but I don't find myself getting impatient with them like I do with some long intros and outros. The album breathes with them in place.

There's a lot to delve into with this album, and other reviewers have done much more thorough discussions of the text and lyrical content than I have, but as multi-layered as the album is, it's also immediately accessible. I can't recommend it enough.

Year of No Light - Tocsin

Written by Ulla Roschat.

Artwork by Simon Fowler

If I only could make movies, I’d make a movie to this soundtrack, the pictures and stories are all here in my head. Once again Year of No Light prove that they aren’t only able to write a perfect soundtrack to a movie, but that they can write a perfect “soundtrack” that creates a movie in your head.

After two full length albums, several split releases and the soundtrack project Vampyr, Tocsin now is the third full length album (and the first through ‘Debemur Morti Productions’ ) of the French Post-Metal band from Bordeaux. The album comprises five tracks with an overall playing time of nearly one hour - one hour of atmospheres and heaviness, carefully balanced out to keep up the tension between a sense of a lurking hovering menace, its execution and its emotional impact.

Photo by Pedro Roque.

The opening track "Tocsin" takes its time to conjure up a haunting atmosphere, beginning with quiet synth sounds, slow paced drumming a dirge like doomy atmosphere which builds up as a harbinger of pain and sorrow. The ambient sounds grow slowly from ripples into huge waves a colossal sea monster would raise when emerging from the dark cold depths of the oceans. By the time you notice and recognize its presence in form of a heavy monolithic riff you’re already lost in the deathly embrace of its tentacles, dragging you down to meet cold dark emptiness in dissonant electronic sounds and feedback. The track is indeed a perfect introduction into the album. Starting slow, quite simple in structure, but with details and layers, forceful and hypnotic.

"Géhenne" seems, at first listen, to leave the thread of moods the opener had set. Much faster and sounding almost cheery and light, it’s a real counterpart to all other songs, but actually it gives expression to the state of mind after you've met a devastating evil force. Jarring black metal sounds, melodic but noisy, steer the song towards a frantic dissonant ending. The ostensible cheeriness is one of hysterical insanity.

Photo by Pedro Roque.

With "Désolation" the album turns back to the more slow and doomy atmospheres. Here you find yourself, quasi in sober state again, in the dark lonely vast emptiness, recognizing its inescapability with an utter depressing heaviness executed by droning sludge doom. Here the balance between crushing heavy power and and melancholic solemn atmosphere is most outstanding and of vibrant emotional tension which is continued in the following track "Stella Rectrix". A short quiet and slow synth intro, followed by a monstrous riff and beautiful melancholic melodies, gaining speed with a dynamic build up, with swirling guitars, breathtakingly energetic drumming and a lot of references to early dark ambient electronic krautrock. The last track "Alamüt" is the least describable (at least for me). It feels somewhat like a long outro, its dynamic, chaotic, still not incoherent.

If I only could make movies…., Tocsin is one of the most inspiring albums of 2013’s releases. Is it the fact that it’s entirely instrumental, or indeed Year of No Light experience of actually having made movie soundtracks, the overall dark and epic orchestral sound (3 guitars, 2 drums, 1 bass, 4 of 6 band members taking care of all the electronic sounds, synths/keys), or their ability to create that incredible balance and tension between heaviness and atmospheric parts of which both strike with a devastating emotional impact?… whatever might be to blame for creating pictures in my head… who cares!

[Go to the post to view the Bandcamp player]

Note: Originally posted on the defunct Temple of Perdition blog.

Pet Slimmers of the Year - Fragments of Uniforms

Written by Justin C.


The reason I randomly picked this band out of the digital promo pile is probably obvious--in a sea of bands based on the same three or four root words (BlackNecroDeathBlood!), a band whose name sounds like a product from your local veterinarian's office is bound to stand out. The name might be a little silly, but the band plays some of the best instrumental rock/metal I've heard in a while.

The UK's Pet Slimmers of the Year hover somewhere near the edge of metal and rock. If you put a growler on top of this music, the riffs would definitely be heavy enough to push this into post-metal or post-hardcore territory, but they've gone in a slightly different direction. The band calls themselves "primarily instrumental," and to that end, there are clean vocals on three of the tracks. The vocals are very good, managing to be emotive without being at all saccharine. The soaring vocals on "La Tormenta" are a particular standout. I wouldn't have minded vocals on all of the tracks, but I admire what they're doing here--like the recently reviewed Colosso, Pet Slimmers seem to be saying, "If the song needs to be instrumental, it will be, but if it needs vocals, that's fine, too. We're not going to restrict ourselves that way."

The instrumental parts lean toward the sweeping and majestic. The band specializes in heavy, very melodic riffs, and they build and fall from a lot of what I call "well-earned" crescendos. I've heard a lot of bands in this general genre that have two dynamic settings: very loud and very soft, and they mercilessly careen between the two. It's effective in the short term, but it can get to be wearying for the listener in a hurry. Pet Slimmers manage to ebb and flow in a more organic way.

All of the instrumental performance are great, but I have to give the band special props for the interaction between guitar and bass. They're not afraid to let the bass take a more melodic stand, like in "Gathering Half the Deep and Full Voices" and "Churning of the Sea Milk." (As you may have noticed, the band's flights of fancy in naming things isn't restricted to the band name itself.) In songs like these, the guitar takes a more atmospheric, rhythmic role, and the tasteful drumming is always matched perfectly to the flow of the music.

This release initially snuck by me, probably because it's not completely metal, nor is it completely post- or alternative rock, but since I found it, I've spun it many, many times. Highly recommended for anyone who likes their heavy mixed with some light.

[Go to the post to view the Bandcamp player]

Gotta love the Greeks

By Kevin Page. We start in Thessaloniki, home to Kult of Taurus, a black metal band with one full length album under their belt (Divination Labyrinths, released in 2013). Formed in 2007, they released a demo, EP and split before finally releasing their debut late last year.

By Kevin Page.


We start in Thessaloniki, home to Kult of Taurus, a black metal band with one full length album under their belt (Divination Labyrinths, released in 2013). Formed in 2007, they released a demo, EP and split before finally releasing their debut late last year. Vicotnik of Dodheimsgard mixed and mastered this album (if that sorta thing gets you all wet and giggly). But what works me up is the quality of the music. It's black metal no doubt, but it deviates enough from the standard formula to keep me interested. The guitar has almost a punchy jazz tone to it. They leave space in their sound, which gives everything room to breathe. And unlike another band we will talk about later, this isn't a huge time commitment on your part, as this blows by in slightly over 30 minutes.

[Go to the post to view the Bandcamp player]

Our next stop is in Athens (where we shall stay for the remainder of this post) to check out Lunatic Medlar. Featuring Nick (bassist of Universe 217) on bass here as well, their debut album Finely Tuned Machine was self released last year. This is a FREE DOWNLOAD of sludgey progressive doomy post rock with vocals reminiscent of Crowbar. I did mention this was a FREE DOWNLOAD right? Simply no reason for you not to check them out.

[Go to the post to view the Bandcamp player]

I normally roll my eyes and don't think much when I'm told to check out yet another one man black metal band. But Spectral Lore came highly recommended from people who's opinions I respected. III is actually the band's fourth full length album released (and my introduction to them). This is going to take a time commitment on your part, running at 87 minutes in length. Even after 4 full spins I don't feel I've fully grasped the extent of what Ayloss is doing, but I know enough to recommend you check it out.. Progressive ambient black metal is the general style here, but it has a little bit of everything: traditional black metal, acoustic guitar & serene passages that make you feel like you are in a planetarium. It would be an understatement to say this is not what I usually listen to, but after each spin I seemingly want to come back for more. Also, the 2CD version from I, Voidhanger Records has some pretty nifty packaging and exceptional artwork.

[Go to the post to view the Bandcamp player]

I guess when you are the cradle of Western civilization you are gonna churn out some quality metal bands. So let's finish this off with Dead Congregation, who needs no introduction. It's been 6 years since they released an album, so you are surely going to see this pop up on many year end lists. Promulgation of the Fall (released by Martyrdoom Productions) is straight to the point, no bullshit, no frills death metal. What they truly excel in is their ability to not overstay their welcome or sound like they are trying too hard. Dead Congregation are not playing anything that you haven't really heard before, but they play it so well and convincingly, its hard not to appreciate. And unlike the plethora of bands that go with the old sinister evil tone, they stay away from the overly reverbed wall of noise too many get caught up in.

[Go to the post to view the Bandcamp player]

As much as I would have loved to include the new albums by Aenaon & Hail Spirit Noir in this post, Code666 Records doesn't have them up on their Bandcamp. So you'll have to track those down yourself (and I highly recommend, no, IMPLORE YOU, to do so). But on a more positive note, that allowed me to talk about some other great bands. [Note: Both albums are now available on Bandcamp, and Kevin wrote about them here.]