Toadeater - Bit to ewigen daogen

By Justin C. While discussing this album with a friend, an obvious question came up: What the hell is a toadeater? The interwebs provided the answer: "Originally, a charlatan's helper who ate (or pretended to eat) poisonous toads so that his employer could display his prowess in expelling the poison."

By Justin C.

Artwork by Drowned Orange.

While discussing this album with a friend, an obvious question came up: What the hell is a toadeater? The interwebs provided the answer: "Originally, a charlatan's helper who ate (or pretended to eat) poisonous toads so that his employer could display his prowess in expelling the poison." So, an appropriately bleak moniker for a black metal band, with bonus points because they avoided using phrases like "necro" and "goat."

The band's second full length, Bit to ewigen daogen, starts off with the standard mood-setting, instrumental opener. To be honest, I’ve gotten a bit tired of this widespread pattern, but I have to give kudos to the band here for melodically tying the intro into the first track, which is much better than the usual, formless fare found in these. From there, we're off to the races with "Conquering the Throne," which immediately sets the band apart from a sea of melodic black metal. The song somehow manages to straddle the line between thin and frosty and a meatier, fuller sound. The driving energy reminds me of late-period Woe, with a punk-like aggression. The lyrics come barked out, syllable by syllable, directly on the beat while a guitar plays a chiming line above. It’s not long before the band breaks to a different direction, opening up to an airier sound while the drums and (audible) bass plow on. It’s a barn-burner of a track that maintains the momentum while giving space to compelling melodic lines.

"Crows and Sparrows" covers similar territory, but adding in some far-off, clean sing-chanting that actually manages to not sound trite or cheesy. "Returning the Crown" does a similar trick--it keeps the band’s core sound and energy, but also mixes in some influences that remind me of The Cure or Depeche Mode. That gothic/new wave-y sound wouldn’t necessarily be up my alley, but the band absorbs and incorporates it in an organic way that somehow makes those sounds seem like a natural fit in with the maelstrom.

The album comes in a little on the short side for this genre--just 36 minutes and change--but the upside is that the band doesn’t wear out their welcome. Without the lyrics, I can’t say if the band is pro- or anti-toad eating, but regardless of your own predilections, you should give this album a spin with whatever snack you prefer.

Nodus Tollens - Melancholic Waters Ablaze with the Fires of Loss

By Justin C. When I went to confirm the Bandcamp link for the debut album from Nodus Tollens, I came across the definition of the name itself at a link titled Thoroughlly Depressing Word of the Day. The short definition is “the realization that the plot of your life doesn’t make sense to you anymore.”

By Justin C.

Artwork by Nate Burns.

When I went to confirm the Bandcamp link for the debut album from Nodus Tollens, I came across the definition of the name itself at a link titled Thoroughlly Depressing Word of the Day. The short definition is “the realization that the plot of your life doesn’t make sense to you anymore.” Pretty appropriate for a DSBM album, although the album varies far and wide from the usual DSBM template.

The music on the album is as complicated as its title: Melancholic Waters Ablaze with the Fires of Loss. After a brief intro, the music seems to seek to unsettle, with “Hexenwald II Wölfinninwald” opening with some seriously off-kilter and dissonant guitar shredding. That stops abruptly and gives over to a lovely acoustic passage. Then we’re back to a more traditional black metal sound with vicious vocal rasps that can serve as a power exfoliant.

The album as a whole is as wide ranging as that track. Mournful melodies are topped with paint-stripping vocals. Songs with a more traditional black metal feel give way to extended acoustic guitar jams. “Ad Meilora” starts with chanting and church bells before moving into some lovely clean singing (although with electronic distortion applied) that immediately brought to mind the melodies of 90s alternative act Christie Front Drive. (That will probably be one of the most left field references I ever make, but that said, go listen to that band if you haven’t already.) Then the final track provides a gentle background behind guitar lines so jagged that they seem designed to disrupt your brain waves.

What to make of all this? Is it an insane mish-mash of ideas? Yeah, I think it is, but somehow it works. True, it’s less of an album as it is multiple music ideas seemingly fighting for supremacy, but sometimes what sounds like nonsense on paper ends up being an odd little gem, and although I do think this album might be a love-it-or-hate-it proposition with little ground between, it’s worth a listen to see where you fall.

Kamancello - Of Shadows

By Justin C. Cellist Raphael Weinroth-Browne is no stranger to Metal Bandcamp at this point. Matt Hinch recently reviewed his solo album Worlds Within on these very pages just a few weeks ago. Matt listed Weinroth-Browne’s metal bonafides--including Musk Ox and Leprous--but he’s no slacker when it comes to other projects.

By Justin C.

Artwork by Maahy

Cellist Raphael Weinroth-Browne is no stranger to Metal Bandcamp at this point. Matt Hinch recently reviewed his solo album Worlds Within on these very pages just a few weeks ago. Matt listed Weinroth-Browne’s metal bonafides--including Musk Ox and Leprous--but he’s no slacker when it comes to other projects. Kamancello is a duo, featuring Weinroth-Browne’s cello contrasted with Shahriyar Jamshidi’s kamanche, a Persian stringed instrument, bowed like a cello, which is prominent in music from Iran, Kurdistan, and other nearby Middle Eastern countries. As played by Jamshidi, it features sounds similar to the cello, but in a higher register and with a raspier timbre.

Of Shadows is the duo’s third album, and I’ll give you the highlight right from the top: The entire album is improvised and unedited. Now, depending on your depth of musical interest, you may have heard a jazz combo or two, and those might have shown you the fine line between masterful improvisation and “oh god why are we listening to a 20-minute trombone solo.” Kamancello are firmly in the former category, but they take it even a step further. Unlike improvising over a jazz standard with a fixed chord progression, Kamancello approaches their songs with the most minimal planning. Weinroth-Browne told me that sometimes he and Jamshidi will agree on a Persian mode or key signature beforehand, but sometimes not even that. They keep contrasting moods in mind for the progression of the tracks over the course of the album. Sometimes they’ll use alternate tunings for their instruments. But if you, like me, conjured an idea of the two men meeting in a room, silently nodding, and beginning to play, you’re not far off.

There is an extraordinary amount of communication here. Sometimes it’s relatively straightforward--you can hear a distinct call and response between the two artists late in “The Rider,” but you’ll find more subtle interactions elsewhere. “Dance of Shadows” finds the duo merging to a single melodic line before diverging again. “To Mourn” has melodies that wind around each other, elevating the song beyond a simple dirge to a piece as complex as the process of mourning itself.

If you’re worried that this will be strictly classical music that you might not be interested in or otherwise attuned to, think again. “On the Precipice” will tempt you to bang your head--maybe just a little--or at least tap your foot to the driving rhythms. The players use every sound texture available to them. Sweetly bowed passages, staccato plucked lines, and even the occasional percussive sound with a finger tapped on the body of one instrument or another. Sometimes you’ll even be convinced you’re hearing a vocal melody, perhaps in a language you don’t understand.

The fact that these improvised pieces stand as fully realized compositions--sometimes much more so than songs that have been meticulously planned--is a testament to the level of artistic communication between these two musicians. They straddle the line between “music made for musicians” and easily accessible melodies and rhythmic figures that anyone can immediately grasp and enjoy. A balance is struck between music to get lost in and music to absorb while fully present. It’s a stunning work, and I heartily recommend it and their previous two albums.

Bell Witch and Aerial Ruin - Stygian Bough Volume I

By Justin C. You’d be forgiven for thinking Stygian Bough Volume 1 was a split, since it does list both Bell Witch and Aerial Ruin as artists, but it’s a bit more complicated than that. This album features Erik Moggridge, who plays dark, acoustic folk under the name Aerial Ruin, playing with Dylan Desmond and Jesse Shreibman, the duo that makes up Bell Witch.

By Justin C.

Artwork by Adam Burke.

You’d be forgiven for thinking Stygian Bough Volume 1 was a split, since it does list both Bell Witch and Aerial Ruin as artists, but it’s a bit more complicated than that. This album features Erik Moggridge, who plays dark, acoustic folk under the name Aerial Ruin, playing with Dylan Desmond and Jesse Shreibman, the duo that makes up Bell Witch. It’s not a new band, per se--it’s not even a new idea, since Moggridge contributed vocals to Bell Witch’s monstrous album Mirror Reaper. It’s a collaboration. Or, given that the music often drifts into tempos so slow that metronomes can’t measure them, a funereal relay race, with both musical entities passing ideas back and forth.

Maybe the clearest example are the songs “Heaven Torn Low I (the passage)” and “Heaven Torn Low II (the toll).” Part I is mostly Aerial Ruin’s show, featuring Moggridge’s inimical clean vocals and acoustic guitar. But as the song progresses, Bell Witch begins to creep in around the edges, giving Moggridge’s sound the epic swell that’s usually implied in Aerial Ruin’s music, but not actually present.

Bell Witch and Aerial Ruin live. Photos by Nessie Spencer (licence).

As Part I slowly fades, Part II roars to life with the distorted bass and slow-moving melodicism that’s unmistakably Bell Witch. Moggridge continues to provide vocals, but massive, distorted bass notes stretch out and break into howls. The songs clearly take heavy emphasis from Aerial Ruin and Bell Witch, in that order, but it would be a mistake to say that Part I is “Aerial Ruin’s song” and Part II belongs to Bell Witch. One often takes center stage, but the other is always supporting and expanding.

There’s a lot of heart-breaking beauty in this album, and even though it’s just over an hour--which is pretty tame by funeral doom standards--it has the effect of dilating time. I listened to this album during a long drive, the first in a long time, and the light, pandemic-affected traffic on top of the music made me feel as if I were being pulled into some other realm. The album feels endless at times, but not in a tedious or tiring way. Timothy Leary’s old drug-addled adage of “turn on, tune in, and drop out” applies in a weird way, but no LSD is needed here. The artistry itself that takes you away.

Eye of Nix - Ligeia

By Justin C. A tidy genre tag for Eye of Nix is elusive. We could go with Black/Doom/Avant Garde, from their Bandcamp page, and that’s more or less O.K., but that leaves out the gothic, psychedelic, and sometimes operatic elements. Maybe “post-everything” covers it.

By Justin C.


A tidy genre tag for Eye of Nix is elusive. We could go with Black/Doom/Avant Garde, from their Bandcamp page, and that’s more or less O.K., but that leaves out the gothic, psychedelic, and sometimes operatic elements. Maybe “post-everything” covers it.

Their newest, Ligeia, is that rare album that manages to encapsulate a wide palette of sounds without sounding like an album made by seven different bands. The first track, “Concealing Waters,” is actually a pretty good introduction in more ways than one. It’s a mysterious opener that showcases a lot of the sounds you’re going to hear on the rest of the album. Lush guitars and clean vocals start out, creating a doomy, psychedelic start reminiscent of Ides of Gemini and even a little bit of The Doors. Vocalist Joy Von Spain weaves a spell, but the perspective takes a hard left when the drums start to blast and she adds blackened harshness to her vocals. Sure, the song is almost 7 minutes long, but in a contradictory way, it feels both more immediate and more expansive than that run time suggests.

“Pursued” charges out of the gate with more of a death metal feel, but the proggy, off-kilter touches you heard in the album opener are still there, even if the mood has suddenly turned more vicious. This track also features the first demonstration of Von Spain’s operatic style of vocals. It’s typically not a style I enjoy in metal or its natural habitat--although I appreciate the skill--but Von Spain’s use of it as just one of the styles in her arsenal works for me.

The rest of the album dwells in these dualities--”Stranded” starts in an ethereal plane before moving to churning heaviness--and it’s a sound to behold. All of the band members get a chance to shine here. The intricacy of the drumming, the atmospheric guitar, the bass providing the solid bridge connecting the instrumentals, and the synths and “sound collages” are all showcased at one point or another, but yet this is still very much a band effort, and that band is exploring its own path in a very unique space. Even if one of the many things I mentioned here is usually a turn off for you, I highly recommend you give the whole a chance.

Errant - Errant

By Justin C. O.K., I’m not even gonna pretend I’m not a big fan of Immortal Bird (see, for example, here and here). So when I found out vocalist Rae Amitay was doing a solo project, I expected to like it. Sure, she could have done an album of deathcore-stye Prince covers that might have been hard to learn to love, but I had higher expectations.

By Justin C.


O.K., I'm not even gonna pretend I'm not a big fan of Immortal Bird (see, for example, here and here). So when I found out vocalist Rae Amitay was doing a solo project, I expected to like it. Sure, she could have done an album of deathcore-stye Prince covers that might have been hard to learn to love, but I had higher expectations.

Her self-titled album errant does not disappoint. Playing all the instruments, she brings the fire, feeling, and pathos from Immortal Bird, but shows it to us from a different angle. Album opener "The Amorphic Burden" starts on a subdued, doomy note, but it's not long before the song explodes into a very satisfying, full-tilt riff accompanied by Amitay's unmistakable rasps and growls. Not content to stop there, the song morphs again into an almost sunny-sounding, blackgaze vibe. It's a four-and-a-half minute song with at least three distinct movements. Pretty much what you'd expect from someone of Amitay's compositional skills. (And of course, Amitay still knows her way around a drum kit, throwing in a little off-kilter rhythm here and there to spice things up.)

The second track, "A Vacillant Breath," answered the question I immediately had when I heard about this project: Will Amitay do clean vocals? She does indeed, and she does them extremely well. Not long after I heard this track for the first time, I made a pandemic-terror-run to the grocery store and heard Heart's "These Dreams" over the store's sound system. The fact that I could hear a bit of the Wilson sisters' in Amitay's voice should say a lot about just how good her singing is. (This is also my humble request for a Heart cover on her next album.) The lyrics of "A Vacillant Breath" are a tour through a personal hell of self-loathing, with lines like "If there is a method to hide how deeply I have failed / I've yet to learn it,", but the emotion laid bare in both the clean and harsh vocals elevate the track well above a mere inventory of misery.

She may not cover Heart this time around, but we do get a cover of Failure's excellent track "Saturday Savior." If you don't know Failure, that's understandable because they never got the attention they deserved, but let this cover be an introduction. Amitay does a pitch-perfect take on Ken Andrews's vocals, and although the track isn't as ferocious as the EP's other three songs, the mood it sets is a fitting closure to a damn-near perfect debut. I want more of this. A lot more. Please?

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.

Tints of Obsidian - EP Edition

By Justin C. Once again, we present some takes on black metal bands--which of course has nothing to do with some other site’s black metal roundups. Any resemblance in name or purpose are purely coincidental. Black-death-doom-other band Lychgate has been making wild, hard-to-categorize metal for close to a decade now

By Justin C.

Once again, we present some takes on black metal bands--which of course has nothing to do with some other site’s black metal roundups. Any resemblance in name or purpose are purely coincidental.

Artwork by Khaos Diktator Design.

Black-death-doom-other band Lychgate has been making wild, hard-to-categorize metal for close to a decade now, and over three full lengths and their new EP, Also Sprach Futura, they’ve made music to fire up your mind and body. This EP doesn’t diverge too much from the singular sound they’ve developed--including the unmistakable strains of a pipe organ--but they do what they do so well that it doesn’t really matter. The spooky, almost-jazzy interlude in “Progeny of the Singularity” makes for a subtle break from the chaos, but album-closer “Vanity Ablaze,” with its staccato shouts over artillery drumming, will get your engine revving again. If you haven’t checked out this band, this EP makes for a more manageable intro to their dense sound.

Artwork by Aghy Purakusuma.

Pure Wrath self-identifies as melancholic black metal, and the label is particularly apt for their newest EP, The Forlorn Soldier. Although there are only three tracks here, the emotional impact is high. The EP deals with the 1965 genocide in Indonesia, part of a Western-backed anti-communist purge, a mass murder in which an international panel found that the U.S., the U.K., and Australia were all complicit in. Pure Wrath’s musical take matches that darkness. “When a Great Man Dies” might come charging out of the gate like standard, high-energy melodic black metal, but anything “standard” about this track goes out the window with the addition of an off-kilter piano riff that suddenly comes out of nowhere. The heavy emotional toll quickly becomes clear, and it’s amplified in the long, closing track, “With Their Names Engraved.” The track, at times, feels more like funeral doom than black metal, at least in spirit, allowing for rage and quiet mourning to coexist. Another highly recommended entry in this band’s catalog, and possibly one of their most affecting.

Former Worlds - Iterations of Time

By Justin C. Some metal, especially in the sludgy-doom arena, can be deceptive. An album starts with a furnace blast to your face, filled with SUFFOCATING ANGUISH. You’re immediately sucked in, but then about 35 minutes later--which is only the second song--you sheepishly raise your hand and say, “I’ve anguishly suffocated enough, thank you.”

By Justin C.

Artwork by Erin Severson from Former Worlds.

Some metal, especially in the sludgy-doom arena, can be deceptive. An album starts with a furnace blast to your face, filled with SUFFOCATING ANGUISH. You’re immediately sucked in, but then about 35 minutes later--which is only the second song--you sheepishly raise your hand and say, “I’ve anguishly suffocated enough, thank you.” Everything’s dialed to 11, and there’s little to differentiate one passage from the next.

Enter Former Worlds, who deftly avoid this trap on their first full-length, Iterations of Time. How do they manage it? Sure, the opener, “Spectre,” comes out blasting just as I described above, but listen to that rhythm section. They’ve got a filthy, slow-motion groove going on that carries the song along. Nobody’s going to mistake this for dance music, but might it be the rarely heard sludgy funk? (I hereby dub this microgenre Slunk™) It’s low and slow, but with a contradictory high energy and propulsion.

Add to that the songwriting skill--knowing when to bruise and when to step back to give the listener a little breathing room--and you have a four-song, 41-minute slab of doominess that holds your attention instead of abusing it. See “Variations on a Cave” for some of the band’s slick moves. There’s a higher-pitched line hanging eerily over the chugging, and vocalist Erin Severson mixes some lovely cleans in with her predominantly harsh bellows. I hate ending reviews with a negative, so I’ll say now there’s one point where the band slips, just a little. In the otherwise excellent “Widow Moon,” the closing track and the album’s longest, there’s an extended, quiet interlude in the middle that, although meditative and beautifully done, does have the effect of unmooring the song a bit. But this is a nitpick on an otherwise solid track.

If you’re looking for some genuinely inventive sludgy doom to kick off your year, you’d be hard pressed to do better than Iterations of Time. I knew I was going to write about this album halfway through the first listen, which is a testament to how hard this band can grab you and draw you in.

Dragunov - Arkhipov

By Justin C. Just a little over three years have passed since French post-metal duo Dragunov gave us Korolev, a concept album about the Soviet Union’s space program. They’re back now with another gem, Arkhipov, this time focusing on a specific and frankly terrifying incident that occurred during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

By Justin C.


Just a little over three years have passed since French post-metal duo Dragunov gave us Korolev, a concept album about the Soviet Union’s space program. They’re back now with another gem, Arkhipov, this time focusing on a specific and frankly terrifying incident that occurred during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The album takes its title from Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov, a Soviet naval officer. In October of 1962, he was a commodore in command of a flotilla of Russian submarines near Cuba. He was personally on board a sub named B-59. The U.S. Navy located B-59 and began dropping depth charges in an attempt to force the sub to surface. The captain and political officer both agreed to launch a nuclear torpedo. However, Commodore Arkhipov also had to agree to the launch, and he refused. If they had launched, it's entirely possible we wouldn’t be here to discuss metal or much of anything at all, except perhaps how to avoid irradiated super-mutants that would undoubtedly be hunting humanity’s few survivors.

It’s an incredible story that I personally hadn’t heard before, and once again, Dragunov captures the intensity of the situation with just guitars and drums. The band is still instrumental, so except for a few scratchy sound samples, the story is told without a sung, growled, or spoken word. The slow build of “B-59”, featuring a simple, eerie guitar line that eventually builds to heavier riffs with discordant notes punctuating on top, is as good a musical recreation of what that argument aboard the sub must have been like. Similarly, “Keldysh” includes quiet pings that will be familiar to anyone who’s watched a TV show or movie with a submarine using sonar. The sonar is joined by alarms, what sounds like Morse code, and a muscular riff with lockstep percussion.

Even if you don’t care much about Soviet history, Dragunov should appeal to anyone who likes powerful, memorable riffs. They’re not noodly or overly technical, but they’re always head-bangingly good, whether they’re taking a slow Sabbath-esque approach or ripping along like a freight train. I’ve said it in previous reviews, but the fact that just two people are making this incredible noise is beyond impressive. Instrumental metal is often hit-or-miss because we’re so used to having the vocal component. A less competent band would write songs that probably should have vocals but just don’t, but Dragunov is back to show us, once again, that there’s a right way to write compelling, heavy instrumental music. And the right way is their way.

Lotus Thief - Oresteia

By Justin C. I’ve seen a lot of talk about Lotus Thief being post-metal or post-rock or post-whatever, but let’s get something straight: Their latest, Oresteia, is a rock opera, and a damn good one. Remember The Who’s Tommy or Husker Du’s Zen Arcade?

By Justin C.


I’ve seen a lot of talk about Lotus Thief being post-metal or post-rock or post-whatever, but let’s get something straight: Their latest, Oresteia, is a rock opera, and a damn good one. Remember The Who’s Tommy or Husker Du’s Zen Arcade? Yeah, I know, they all happened before you were born, but that’s what we’re looking at here. A concept record telling a story over its length. Except instead of a deaf and blind pinball wizard, the source material comes from three linked tragedies by Aeschylus: Agamemnon, Libation Bearers, and The Eumenides, a 2500-year-old trilogy of plays known collectively as Oresteia.

Lotus Thief’s self-designated genre of “text metal” might still be the best way to think of them. Having grown from a one-off contribution to a Botanist album, the band has put out three striking albums inspired by and devoted to books. Oresteia is probably the most ambitious in scope and sound. The project has grown into a full-fledged five-member band, helmed by frontwoman Bezaelith and her otherworldly vocals.

Given the plays used as inspiration are Greek tragedies, you can probably guess the general themes. In "Agamemnon", the titular King of Mycenae returns from The Trojan War only to be murdered by his wife, Clytemenstra. Revenge is called for, of course, so in "Libation Bearers", Agamemnon’s son comes back, as ordered by Apollo, and commits matricide. His son then flees, pursued by "The Furies", seeking justice for his act of...seeking justice.

The music itself walks right up to an intersection of artful rock and musical theater, of all things. Just a step or two further, and Lotus Thief might have gone over the top for my own tastes, but they walk the line between the nerdy sincerity of musical theater and a more natural expression of feeling that you’d expect from such a skilled rock/metal band. Tension builds and flows with the plot of the plays, but even if you knew nothing about them, the vocal and instrumental performances are top flight. There are no searing displays of technicality, but it’s not that kind of music--this is music based on superior songwriting and flawless execution. The interludes between the songs that represent the plays set the appropriate moods (“Banishment”, “Woe”, and “Reverence”) flawlessly, cementing the show-stopper pieces together seamlessly.

And those vocals. Way back in 2014, I was listening to Rervm while recovering from surgery. I missed the release date of Oresteia. because this time my fuzzy buddy, Marshall the Cat, was having surgery while I simultaneously suffered from a turn-your-body-inside-out stomach virus. It’s bad luck, but it’s hard to think of a voice I’d rather have in my ears at these lower times. Bezaelith croons, soars, and even snarls with a little 70s rock swagger in "Libation Bearers". Some may find the harsh vocals too few and far between, but they act as perfect counterpoint to the rest of the bravura performance.

Will some find this all a little too much? Too dramatic, too literary? Sure, maybe. But it’s their loss. If Lotus Thief decides that their next album will be an ode to the phone book or the source code for Microsoft Windows, I’ll be listening.

Svrm - Занепад

By Justin C. I got hooked on Svrm’s new album, Занепад, from the first song alone, so I had to go and bug the Vigor Deconstruct folks until they gave me the rest of it. The album is actually pretty short by recent black metal standards

By Justin C.


I got hooked on Svrm’s new album, Занепад, from the first song alone, so I had to go and bug the Vigor Deconstruct folks until they gave me the rest of it. The album is actually pretty short by recent black metal standards--just 5 songs coming in at 21 minutes--but it feels much more expansive than the running time suggests.

Other than a second member providing some brief acoustic passages, Svrm is one-man Ukranian black metal. Google translate tells me the title means “Decline,” and the other song titles (at least the ones that Google didn’t hilariously butcher) are things like “In Hell” and “The Road to Death.” So yes, definitely bleak, but Svrm falls into an area of black metal that I’ve been calling, at least in my head, triumphant black metal. A good comparison would be Vanum’s Ageless Fire from earlier this year. That one is one of my personal AOTY, and Svrm pulses with the same kind of energy. Yes, Svrm’s vocal content is probably pretty bleak--it’s described as “rooted in Ukrainian lore,” and that’s a country that’s had a rough time since World War II.

But in spite of the pain and melancholy, there’s a feeling of restless, indomitable energy that comes through. If the last track is “The Road to Death,” then the music fights every step of the way. That track has drawn me in for repeated, end-on-end listens. The distorted, choral-like electronic effects that open the song give way to full-throttle second-wave BM, with that extra kick of defiance underneath, especially in the raspy shrieks right in the front of the mix. Another quieter interlude breaks in later, turning the song into a five-minute mini-epic that I get a little bit more from every time I listen.

I know it’s too early to start my best of album list for 2020, but I don’t care. I just found the first contender.

Attic - Foster

By Justin C. Surprise reunions with old friends are a good thing. Way back in 2015, I reviewed the debut album from Attic, a band dabbling in several subgenres and occasionally happy spring-time lyrics, but making it all work. If you’d asked me recently if that

By Justin C.


Surprise reunions with old friends are a good thing. Way back in 2015, I reviewed the debut album from Attic, a band dabbling in several subgenres and occasionally happy spring-time lyrics, but making it all work. If you’d asked me recently if that was the last we’d heard of them, I probably would have bet that they’d moved on to day jobs, families, and all the rest. But here we are, almost five years after their debut, with a second album, Foster, in our hands and ears.

I think it says something that, in the sea of of Bandcamp notifications and promos I get, I immediately remembered who Attic was when I saw the new album notification. Their “bright death metal,” for lack of a better phrase, stood out in a crowd of OSDM caverncore bands. Foster sees the band with a new singer and down one guitarist, but the musical sensibilities that made Seasons so damn enjoyable are still present.

Attic still do the magic trick of mashing up doom, death, black, thrash, and some proggy tendencies all together without sounding like a sonic slop bucket. Hell, you can hear all of these in the opening track, “Of Endless Sage and Sky.” The death-doom intro leads to chunkier riffs, then the song slows down to a crawl with ringing riffs before firing back up to a thrashing good time. It should make for a distracted listen, but Attic uses all these and still sounds like the same band throughout. In a time when it sometimes seems like memorable riffs are few and far between, Attic puts out a barn burner like “The Wyrm,” filled with chugging riffs that make me want to drive a million miles an hour and pound the steering wheel.

Attic has brought forward a lot of what they did well on their debut. The simple, ringing riff that opens “Summer” harkens back to “Spring” on Seasons. “Summer” has a sunrise-breaking feeling carried by all of four notes, but the band favors this kind of straightforward melodicism, and in another move that could turn deadly in leser hands, they use repetition to build momentum, like in “The Washing.” This is not a case of “We like this riff so we’ll keep playing it until the audience leaves to get a beer.” This is “We’re going to wring every bit of metal goodness out of this riff until we’re all spent.”

Add all this in with and overall stronger sense of songwriting and style, while still pushing the edges a bit (check out the cool pizzicato riff and whispering vocals of the closer “Particle”), and we’re left with an album that gives no indication of a long gap between recordings. It’s a unique band that’s managed to survive and progress. But I better not have to wait five more years for another album, or I’ll...furrow my brow? Frown? That’s menacing, right?

Alcest - Spiritual Instinct

By Justin C. I finally had the opportunity see Alcest live when they toured with their last record, Kodama. As a long-time fan, it was a fantastic experience: a small venue and a band putting everything they had into their performance. I remember being struck by how heavy Alcest can be, especially on stage.

By Justin C.


I finally had the opportunity to see Alcest live when they toured with their last record, Kodama. As a long-time fan, it was a fantastic experience: a small venue and a band putting everything they had into their performance. I remember being struck by how heavy Alcest can be, especially on stage. That’s not necessarily unusual--the energy of playing in front of a live audience plus many amplifiers often kick up a band’s power quotient. But what I didn’t realize at the time is that it was a little bit of a preview of the energy they’d bring to their next new album, Spiritual Instinct.

Invisible Oranges did an interesting interview with Neige, and in it, he describes this album as a kind of catharsis, a (slight) step away from his more “otherworldly” musical ideas and incorporating more darkness. Make no mistake--this is Alcest-level heavy. This isn’t a brutal death metal album that comes pitched to you as “PANCREAS-RIPPING BRUTALITY ARGGHGHHGHGH!1!!!1!” The very Alcest-ian sense of melody and sweeping soundscapes remain present, but what you do get from Spiritual Instinct is a harder-driving energy than you might expect.

Photos by Abrisad.

The opening track, “Les Jardins De Minuit” (roughly translated, “The Garden of Midnight”), starts out with a pulsing bassline joined by a keening, single-note guitar riff. It’s not long before we’re into some frenetic drums and tremolo riffs with clean, melodic singing riding the wave until Neige punctuates the whole thing with his black metal shrieks. If that sounds like what you usually expect from Alcest, you’re not wrong, but the song kicks off a propulsive feel that carries through the rest of the album, both in the more metal parts and the quieter, introspective interludes. Previous Alcest albums made me want to transport to a different dimension--the dreamworld from Neige’s childhood that drives so much of his musical vision--but this album makes me want to make that journey on a rocket.

One of my favorite tracks, “Le Miroir,” showcases the stronger sense of duality in this album. The song starts with a gently ascending and descending guitar line, swelling and deflating like slow, meditative breathing. (Try breathing along with it--it’s doing wonders for my anxiety.) The line is eventually layered with Neige’s crystal clean vocals, light electronic touches, and distorted guitars. The drums build and eventually recede. It’s not the heaviest track on the album by any means, but again, there’s that sense of motion and release.

It’s easy to get hung up on the heaviness level of Alcest albums. Is this one more or less black metal than the last one, or is this more of their shoegaze side? But as Neige said himself in the IO interview, “There is something people like about us, and it’s also something we like about ourselves which is the fact that we keep the Alcest touch — this thing that makes us Alcest — but every time we sound different.” I think that’s key to their enduring appeal. There’s always that underlying essence that makes their sound instantly recognizable, regardless of whether Neige is trying exorcise some demons or float through the ether.

Interview - The Ecosystem of a Botanist

Botanist’s newest album, Ecosystem, is another “Collective” album, wherein main-man Otrebor brings his live band into the writing and recording process. The result is in perfect harmony with Botanist’s “solo” albums, but yet also brings in different sounds and energies.

By Justin C.

Botanist’s newest album, Ecosystem, is another “Collective” album, wherein main-man Otrebor brings his live band into the writing and recording process. The result is in perfect harmony with Botanist’s “solo” albums, but yet also brings in different sounds and energies. Metal Bandcamp has covered Botanist from its very beginnings, so you’ve gotten a lot of words from me about the project. For this release, I wanted to change it up a little, and Otrebor was kind enough to answer some of my questions about the album.


In the overall arc of Botanist's developing discography, are the collective albums planned, or do they come about more spontaneously?

The “Collective” albums take a lot more practical planning mostly because they involve other people’s schedules, priorities, and work ethics. In Ecosystem’s case, the initial idea came during the 2017 European tour to make an album that we would play entirely on stage — further differentiating studio / solo Botanist from the live band. We would take a year to write it, and tour on it in 2019. When it’s just me, that kind of deadline is easy to stick to, but with other musicians involved, it goes much slower... like, The Shape of He to Come took 3 years! In contrast, VI: Flora took me 4-5 months from beginning of writing to completing tracking of all instruments. So a year and a half to have a finished album to send to be pressed to vinyl in time for a planned tour made for tight scheduling, as any delays by one member would make all other members’ work more stressful.

Thematically, it’s all the same level of planning, or rather, an album being a “Collective” doesn’t make it more or less planned inherently than a solo album. The most conceptual album I’ve got planned for the future is a solo album, but the “Collective” albums to date and to come are more thematically conceptual than Botanist I/II, III, V, VI...

What drew you to the idea of doing an album focused on the Redwood ecosystem? I know a little about them, and they're pretty fascinating, especially the "mini-forests" that can actually grown on top of them.

The mini forests within the branches of the redwoods are amazing. Redwoods are my single favorite botanical entity, so having a concept album revolving essentially around them would be very inspirational to me. Redwoods will be making another entry or two in albums to come.

Reading the lyrics puts me in mind of a biology textbook in verse form. You cover a lot of scientific ground, but the musical end result certainly doesn’t come across as a dry recitation. Are there particular challenges to lyrically detailing an ecosystem, or do you approach it as you would any other narrative arc?

I don’t really have a deep answer for you. I researched redwood forests, pulled out eight elements that would inspire me to write a song about, and applied that balance of Romantic spin on scientific fact that most Botanist lyric writing draws from. There’s not so much a narrative arc present. The theme is the ecosystem of a redwood forest in the Pacific Northwest of the United States (also some stuff is taken from research about forests in Santa Cruz), but it’s not like a King Diamond album where there are characters and a plot one can follow. I wanted the darkest, most unsettling song to be “Disturbance,” as it’s about forest fires, and the last song to be the triumphant uplift, and that had to be “Red Crown” — the culmination of the theme of the red crown (a term used to describe clusters of redwood trees) mentioned throughout the album to come to a climax with that song being the tribute to Sequoia Sempervirens itself.

The rest of the album’s list was determined by emotional flow and how much one song’s first note transitioned well from the previous song’s last note, how well each side fit onto an LP, and how well we could imagine this album as a live set would flow. Song 1 has a strong anthemic chorus, and its intro works well as a “we’re beginning the set / album” attention getter, before the volume kicks in. Song 7 (“Abiotic”) is the relaxed breather before the big finale. Stuff like that determines how the album gets arranged — it’s largely after that the sets of lyrics get paired up based on mood.

In terms of music, I'm continually impressed with your ability to write a melody that can convey almost any shade of emotion, and every album has some new sonic aspect that keeps things fresh. What struck me with this album is that there are more clean vocals, often in chorus with other band members. You worked those into the last collective album, The Shape of He to Come, but they seem to play a larger role here. Some of them are even painfully vulnerable, like in "Abiotic." Was that a conscious decision to go that direction, or did it just happen naturally? Is it hard to step out from behind a more black metal vocal styling into something so unadorned?

Thanks for that first comment. I want the music Botanist creates to feature a full range of emotions. As much as I love metal, it’s one of the biggest critiques I have of it: Bands on average tend to stick to the same emotional space that they set their bands out to inhabit. Personally, it would burn me out to have to always be angry, or sad, or happy when creating, and having to convey a singular emotion on stage, particularly negative emotions, day in and day out on tour, and to be around that energy that it creates, with people bringing and expecting that kind of energy to the shows... I question what kind of toll that would take.

I want there to be more clean vocals because of the emotional facets that a variety of vocals can bring: screaming, consonant melodic vocals, dissonant, eerie melodic vocals, deathgrunts... it will be an ongoing study of how to experiment implementing them to new results. It’s also because I want to challenge myself on singing better. That’s a personal challenge too, to be willing to be vulnerable on a whole new level. To grow as an artist and explore that emotional feedback. I’ll be the first to admit I’m not a great singer, but I do have the ability to write a melody, understand how to construct a harmony, and kind of like my drumming and probably all of Botanist, my style is mine and you'll know it’s me when you hear it. The challenge going forward is to increasingly admit to myself, “yeah, I sing.” It was a self-realization when I was in the studio with Fredrik Nordström and was hemming and hawing about the singing, saying I wasn’t a singer. Fredrik’s response was, “You are. You’re singing on the songs.”

It’s a weird thing coming from a place where I wanted just to play drums in bands, to then doing whatever vocals I could because I was the only person who would, to developing vocals into things I never would have attempted 10 years ago. Then the big challenge is to get it as good as I honestly can, present that new vulnerability to the world, and be prepared for whatever reaction.

“Abiotic” is painfully vulnerable. You’re right. Cynoxylon helped me with some of the sections, and his comment in a part or two after tracking was, “That’s pretty femme.” And it is. It’s an aspect of Botanist that needs to be, whether it’s me singing or not.

Botanist has passed its 10-year anniversary as a musical project. Climate change and environmentalism were certainly ongoing topics when you started, but now in 2019, the conversation seems to be both more impassioned and, unfortunately, just as unproductive. Does that affect how you approach Botanist?

It has no effect on the creative output. I create because I have the fervent desire to do so systematically. I do so in Botanist because I’m obsessed with classical botanical art, Romantic poetry and art, and black metal. What keeps me doing Botanist in particular is it’s enabled me to find something to support that is bigger than I am, that transcends my self-importance and personal needs — feeling that I do what I do to support my own perception of the greater good, which is something I can comfortably and confidently do through art.

For those of us with OCD tendencies, I have to ask: What about V? Where is album V? :)

It exists. It’s called Whorl, and was created somewhere in late 2010-early 2011. The 16-minute “Lathyrus” was up on Botanist.nu for a while in 2011 when I had samplers from the first five records to listen to. Whorl is largely what got Botanist signed to The Flenser in 2013 — Jonathan really wanted to release that record in particular. The problem was that Flora also existed at the same time, and the only person who thought Whorl was better was Jonathan. Haha. Balan from Palace of Worms listened to both on our marathon 2-man drive back from dropping off all the other kids at Sea-Tac airport after our 2013 West Coast tour, and he said Whorl was ok/good, but Flora was clearly the one to release after Mandragora as it was the most remarkable step forward. I believe he’s right, and the fans and critical feedback support that. Look, Whorl is fine, it’s the fifth solo record, it’s not as good as the sixth, and the sixth was ready to go at the same time. Botanist “V” will for sure be released, I’d love to do it with The Flenser, and I’d love to put it out between solo records “IX” and “X,” so by then it will be unmistakably be old school as fuck, and it will at least appeal to the crowd that prefers “the old stuff” more. Hahaha.

Lingua Ignota - Caligula

Way back in 2011, Tori Amos threw out a random comment in an interview about the power of emotion in music: “I'll stand next to the hardest fucking heavy metal band on any stage in the world and take them down, alone, by myself.” As I remember it, there was a

By Justin C.


Way back in 2011, Tori Amos threw out a random comment in an interview about the power of emotion in music: “I'll stand next to the hardest fucking heavy metal band on any stage in the world and take them down, alone, by myself.” As I remember it, there was a short burst of garment rending and name calling from the dumber side of the internet metal community, completely missing her point and falsely equating “power” with “volume.” There are a lot of metal bands Amos probably isn’t familiar with (see, for example, Immortal Bird) that do deliver the kind of emotional experience Amos was referencing. But the fact remains that Tori is and always has been metal in spirit, and for emotional power, she easily outshines basic-bro metal bands.

This memory resurfaced when I first heard Lingua Ignota’s debut full-length, Caligula. Kristin Hayter is the creative force behind the project, and although she and Amos don’t share a lot of sonic similarities, they do share some experiences. Both Amos and Hayter have played with or have ties to the heavy music scene (Trent Reznor and Maynard James Keenan in Amos’s case vs. The Body and Full of Hell in Hayter’s), both have “complicated” relationships with Christianity, and both have classical music training, piano and voice, respectively. But while Amos has often mixed her emotional power with a bit of sweetness in presentation, Hayter’s music is the ragged edge of an exploding star.

That’s not to say there isn’t beauty in Hayter’s work. Album opener “FAITHFUL SERVANT FRIEND OF CHRIST” finds Hayter’s voice riding on a beautiful string arrangement. You might mistake it for a legitimate hymn if it were not for the dark timbres and the final lyrics, “Bend before unending night.” The fact that she invokes Satan to stand beside her in the next song is another hint that we haven’t stumbled onto Profound Lore’s first gospel record.

Picking genre tags is even less helpful than usual here. The accompaniment to Hayter’s singing is often minimal, with piano or keys punctuated by an occasional industrial or noise flourish. But Hayter’s work is first and foremost defined by her virtuosic voice, ranging from the choral to the operatic and all the way up to black metal-esque screams. “FAITHFUL SERVANT” has a stunning choral arrangement of layers of Hayter’s voice in a striking-but-clean vocal style, but the very next track, “DO YOU DOUBT ME TRAITOR,” finds her diving into the lower depths of her impressive range, pleading, “How can you doubt me now?” The song eventually erupts into Hayter’s barely contained shrieks, and the dripping venom she adds to the line, “Every vein of every leaf is slaked with poison” is delivered with such nuance and delicately applied timbre that it’s difficult to imagine anyone singing the word “slake” in a way that’s more viscerally evocative of the word’s literal meaning.*

There are too many amazing moments to detail here, although I’m tempted to do it. The album is a tour-de-force performance pitting Hayter’s substantial chops against soul-shattering emotions barely restrained. I’ll confess: I wanted to write this review much earlier, to coincide with the release of the album, but I just couldn’t do it. Part of that was because the usual b.s. and work stress, but part of it was that the music demands an investment that can be difficult to give. That is in no way a critique--great art should challenge us, or maybe more than that, great art should sit us down in a chair in a room and scream in our faces until we acknowledge it, and Caligula does that. Hayter has been relatively open about her history of a domestic abuse survivor, and although she describes her music as a way of talking about those experiences allegorically, there’s very little to shield the listener from that power, and as someone who’s had some run ins with abuse in my own adult life, I initially shrunk back.

But much like Hayter had to write this music, I felt I had to write this review. I’m going heavy on the astronomical analogies, but this album is a meteor strike to your soul, and if it doesn’t produce a reaction in you, then you might be dead inside. If your takeaway from another site’s blurb is, “Oh, singer-songwriter with electronic/industrial touches, a pretty voice, and occasional metal shrieks,” your expectations going into this are going to be shattered like the breaking glass in “SORROW! SORROW! SORROW!” (even after many, many listens, the sound still startles me every time. That’s where this music is going to take you.) I know I’ve paraphrased this Iggy Pop quote about Coltrane dozens of times, but this is music that can be difficult to get close to, and it’s not going to be for everyone. And that’s fine. But for those who can engage with this work, I think you’ll find yourself changed to a degree you wouldn’t have expected. I am.

*It’s at 1:07 in the track. Go listen now. Do it. I’ll be here when you get back.

Russian Circles - Blood Year

By Justin C. When I reviewed Russian Circles’s last album, Guidance, I noted that there seems to be a certain obsession with the band’s heaviness, with each new album cycle prompting folks to declare that the instrumental trio is at their “heaviest yet.”

By Justin C.


When I reviewed Russian Circles’s last album, Guidance, I noted that there seems to be a certain obsession with the band’s heaviness, with each new album cycle prompting folks to declare that the instrumental trio is at their “heaviest yet.” The fact that I see statements like this referring to every album makes me think a lot of people are missing the point. In fact, here’s my HOT TAKE: By most measures, I’d say the heaviness quotient* of any given Russian Circles album, including their newest, Blood Year, is pretty close to their baseline level of heaviness.

How closely Russian Circles adheres to metal adjacency might be a way to help clarify their genre, but in reality, the band’s a bit more subtle than that. The basic elements of their style are rock and metal based, and for sure, there are always some truly crunchy moments on their albums. On Blood Year, “Milano” ebbs and flows with some doomy/sludgy flavor, and album closer “Quartered” is pretty much fire from beginning to end. But that said, you need to listen a little more deeply to understand their magic.

I said that Guidance had some of their most delicate work, and going back further, Memorial saw the band pushing their limits even further, going so far as to include guest vocals from Chelsea Wolfe. Compared to those two albums, Blood Year is one of their leaner, more muscular albums. To my ear, they’re working more with their basic elements than on other recent records. It’s heavy in its own way, but it doesn’t lack the nuance that they always bring to their work. “Kohokia,” for example, plays with subtle shifts between light and dark, leaving you unsure as to whether you’re being uplifted or weighed down. And “Ghost on High” is another short gem that the band seems so good at--a fleeting interlude with an almost Baroque feel.

Is Blood Year a game changer for the band? Not really, but on the other hand, it doesn’t need to be. Thirteen years after their first album, Russian Circles remain as beguiling as ever, and they remain the standard bearer for how to do instrumental rock/metal.

*Most of our sophisticated readers of course know that the heaviness quotient is calculated thusly:

Immortal Bird - Thrive on Neglect

By Justin C. Immortal Bird’s self-description of “crusty blackened proggy deathgrind” may be tongue-in-cheek, but I think it actually reveals a nugget of truth. As I’ve listened to their newest, Thrive on Neglect, on nearly endless repeat these past few weeks,

By Justin C.


Immortal Bird’s self-description of “crusty blackened proggy deathgrind” may be tongue-in-cheek, but I think it actually reveals a nugget of truth. As I’ve listened to their newest, Thrive on Neglect, on nearly endless repeat these past few weeks, I realized that the key to their addictive sound is rooted in duality. They offer up ever-mutating songs, shifting tempo and feel, playing with oblique angular sounds and quick-change ups that will tickle your noggin while maintaining an emotional and musical immediacy from more straightforward realms of metal, making sure you’re not ignoring your feels in the face of the intellectual challenges of the music. Yes, the previous bit may be one of the most pretentious paragraphs I’ve ever written about music, but bear with me, because I promise that it gets to the heart of what I think makes this band so special, and what makes Thrive on Neglect their best album yet.

Vocalist Rae Amitay and bassist John Picillo are joined on this album by two new friends, Nate Madden on guitars and Matt Korajczyk on drums. The core of their sound from previous albums remains the same, but it’s refined and sharpened here. “Vestigial Warnings” takes twisty turns through blasty grind and slower, doomier fare, only to return to a primal stomp at the end. But balancing that, there are moments like the beginning of “House of Anhedonia,” where Amitay opens the song by screaming “We are cursed!”, moments that offer an immediacy that bores right into your brain. “Avolition” is long by Bird standards, coming in over 7 minutes, but it has a telescoping guitar riff that’s one of the favorite things I’ve heard in a while--and of course they fade out with a version of the same riff with harmonics, and I’m a sucker for harmonics. Technically interesting, but still grab-you-by-your-shirtfront direct. Add to that a high, slinky bass riff, and any instrumental music itch I have is well and truly scratched.

The instrumental prowess is matched by emotionally raw lyrics that describe, well, let’s say human relationships that perhaps aren’t operating at their peak. The beginning of “Avolition” offers twisty, dark word play in its first line, “Infatuated with not being alone.” Amitay lets her voice range from low growls to a higher rasp, but her voice never does anything that doesn’t bleed rage and honesty. In album opener “Anger Breeds Contempt,” she percussively bellows “You are. Infection. If. I turn. To face you. I. Know I’ll. Become salt.” adding a nice Biblical allusion thrown in for good measure. If you didn’t know before, her rhythmic delivery here shows her split life between vocalist and drummer.

As of late, we’ve all read a sickening amount of bullshit justification about why shit like stupid Nazi-inspired lyrics somehow “keeps metal dangerous,” but Immortal Bird shows a different, better way. This music is dangerous because it’s musically challenging and emotionally direct and raw. Confronting your inner demons is always more dangerous than lame shock tactics, and adding musical complexity and immediacy in such a fine balance shows Immortal Bird at the top of not only their game, but the whole damn metal game.

Misþyrming - Algleymi

By Justin C. You’d be forgiven if, like me, you tended to get a little lost in the Icelandic black metal scene. The number of bands and seemingly relentless release schedules might make it hard to find a new favorite band to

By Justin C.


You’d be forgiven if, like me, you tended to get a little lost in the Icelandic black metal scene. The number of bands and seemingly relentless release schedules might make it hard to find a new favorite band to hang your hat on. Add in unique Icelandic characters--like “þ”, or as I call it, “p with a horn”--and it can be hard for dumb Americans like myself to even communicate about the bands effectively.

I think Misþyrming’s newest, Algleymi, might add some clarity to my life, though. I was so blown away by the promo that I’m writing about it after just two listens, which is a pretty big departure from my usual “10 or more listens with notes” anal retentive approach. Simply put, this album rips and roars in all the right ways. I’ve listened to--and even enjoyed--a fair amount of obscure-leaning black metal, but Algleymi is furious and, at times, downright catchy.

The album starts off with a far-off-sounding yelp before launching into frenetic, no-frills black metal. “No frills” in this case doesn’t mean simplistic or boring, though. The tremolo riff that starts the opening track might hew pretty close to the second wave we know and love, but throughout the albums, the riffs are always melodic, but sometimes majestic, triumphant, chiming, or mysterious in tone. The vocals are a bit lower in register than what’s become typical--think of a gravely rasp a little lower than what Gaahl typically uses--but they scratch an itch I didn’t even know I had. They tend to sound fervent, somewhere between a stern proclamation and a growl, but no less ferocious.

Sometimes I get a little nervous when I see a black metal album with eight or more tracks all around the seven- to eight-minute mark, because that often signals an album that sounds a lot longer than it actually is. Misþyrming avoids this trap by virtue of pure fury, and adding the occasional interlude, like “Hælið”, that stand on their own musically, giving a break into the tension without letting the listener mentally wander off.

If you were inclined to let this one slip by as just another Icelandic release destined to get lost somewhere in the North Atlantic of your record collection, you need to fight off that urge. This is an album worth spreading the news about, even if typing the song names involve a lot of copying and pasting.

Helms Alee - Noctiluca

By Justin C. I stumbled across Helms Alee just one album ago, with 2016’s Stillicide, so I can’t pretend to be intimate with their entire career arc. I’ve seen them described as sludge, psychedelia, and grunge, but I think all of those are off the mark

By Justin C.


I stumbled across Helms Alee just one album ago, with 2016’s Stillicide, so I can’t pretend to be intimate with their entire career arc. I’ve seen them described as sludge, psychedelia, and grunge, but I think all of those are off the mark, especially when talking about their new album, Noctiluca.

I’ve been listening to the promo for this album compulsively. Helms Alee might be metal adjacent at this point, but they manage to mix heavy with charm in a way that have made a recent car accident and injury on top of moving to a new house somewhat bearable. Songs like “Be Rad Tomorrow” have a propulsive, infectious energy. The riff and rhythm are relatively simple, but they’re a great example of doing a lot with a little. Add the combination of both lilting and driving vocals on top in the chorus, and you’ll want to drive down a sun-baked road 100 mph while listening to it.

This particular track also shows off one of the band’s greatest strengths: all three members make strong vocal contributions. Ben Verellen primarily supplies a style I like to call “hollering” next to Dana James’s and Hozoji Matheson-Margullis’s cleans, be they ethereal or driving. The combinations and harmonies brought all kinds of bands to mind, including Kylesa and The Breeders, but that’s more of a “for fans of…” list than anything else.

Helms Alee also manage that rarified achievement of mixing different levels of heavy, light, and trippy while always sounding like the same band. “Play Dead” wanders into early-Baroness territory of heavy rock/metal with interludes of bewitching harmonies, but “Lay Waste, Child” wouldn’t be out of place on the soundtrack of Apocalypse Now. There’s nothing jarring about the transitions, though. This might not be the kind of bruising music that we typically cover here, but Helms Alee have made a cohesive, compelling album out of disparate sounds, and in doing so, they make a compelling argument against anyone who says that rock is dead.