Arnaut Pavle - Arnaut Pavle

By Dave Schalek. Portland, Oregon label and distro extraordinaire Fallen Empire Records is extremely generous on Bandcamp, asking customers to name their price for most, if not all, of the releases and re-releases from the label.

By Dave Schalek.

Artwork by Astral Body Horror

Portland, Oregon label and distro extraordinaire Fallen Empire Records is extremely generous on Bandcamp, asking customers to name their price for most, if not all, of the releases and re-releases from the label. Not only that, but Fallen Empire Records has its collective ear finely tuned to the underground, mining the analog waters for some truly excellent releases, mostly of the black metal variety.

One of Fallen Empire’s most recent finds is Arnaut Pavle, a mysterious Finnish outfit who will be releasing their debut full-length in 2014. While we wait for that, Fallen Empire treats us to a re-release of their previously released (and sold out) demo from earlier this year. Arnaut Pavle play sloppy, messy low-fi black metal that comes off as a collision between early Gorgoroth and d-beat fueled latter day Darkthrone. The whole glorious mess is very rough, in your face, and definitely a bastard child of the analog era.

Fallen Empire’s specialty, at least on Bandcamp, is providing high quality digital releases of material that would only otherwise be available on vinyl and/ or cassette formats. You can’t go wrong by jumping on board Fallen Empire Records with the debut from Arnaut Pavle.