Vermörd - Dawn of the Black Harvest

By Matt Hinch. In a way, Vermörd are to black metal in 2015 as Noisem were to thrash in 2013. A bunch of teenagers with prodigious skills leaving listeners awestruck by not only their chops but by their songwriting acuity. They even come from the same area. Vermörd's debut EP, Dawn of the Black Harvest

By Matt Hinch.

Illustration by Luciana Nedelea

In a way, Vermörd are to black metal in 2015 as Noisem were to thrash in 2013. A bunch of teenagers with prodigious skills leaving listeners awestruck by not only their chops but by their songwriting acuity. They even come from the same area. Vermörd's debut EP, Dawn of the Black Harvest is a feast for the ears.

It's as steeped in eroding darkness as you'd expect from the artwork. Intro track “Disciples of Shakhbûrz” sets an ominous and dreary tone but with shades of triumph in its minimalist ambience. “Plagued Eyes from the Scrolls of Xafmirtas” blows that all away in a flurry of flesh-searing black metal and spirit-conjuring solos. Brilliant tremolos and relentless percussion drive into the skull like cursed nails, hammering home Vermörd's technical death metal side.

Terrifying and frigid BM screeching is met with deathly growls, further cementing their unholy union of blackness and death. They manage to convey that sense of ancient grandeur while absolutely flattening with face-melting speed and superb guitar acrobatics.

Vermörd show tremendous promise and ridiculous talent. They bring together melodic black metal runs with the crunch of death metal and turn it into something harrowing, oppressive, epically stirring and monumental in scale. It's to the point and not moody or brooding. Dawn of the Black Harvest is death and black metal made for getting it done with maximum bloody efficiency and zero sacrifice (other than virgins).

Lord Time - Drink My Tears

By Aaron Sullivan. Lord Time is the solo project of Los Angeles black metal band Harassor’s drummer, Sandor GF. Much like the solo projects of his other band members, Lord Time allows him to explore the many other sides of music and experimentation he’s into outside of the Harassor moniker.

By Aaron Sullivan.


Lord Time is the solo project of Los Angeles black metal band Harassor’s drummer, Sandor GF. Much like the solo projects of his other band members, Lord Time allows him to explore the many other sides of music and experimentation he’s into outside of the Harassor moniker.

Drink My Tears is ostensibly one song clocking in at over 50 minutes. But upon listening you realize quickly it is many different songs that make up this single track. These songs range from slow hypnotic dirges to raw black metal. Vocals can range from gurgling shrieks to distorted monotone, almost robotic sounding vocals. Some songs are broken up by experimental ambient pieces. The transitions are not abrupt. In fact many fade from one right into the next. There is no real pattern to how it flows, which is great. It helps the music stay fresh as you never know what is coming next. You return to things that sound familiar but nothing is repeated. The low-fi production of it gives it a bit of a haze. While listening, it gives you an almost dream like feeling (or nightmare depending on your mindset).

For me while listening to it I get this image of a journey through a multi roomed house. Every door opened leads you to a different place and sometimes back from which you came. It also reminded me a bit of the boat scene in Willy Wonka. While he remained calm (Lord Time) the passengers (the listener) are freaking out and unnerved not only by the images. But also by the uneasy feeling of not knowing what comes next. But like them you know you must stay until the end.

No doubt a single track of over 50 minutes is a bit daunting for most music listeners. But with so much content contained within the length is really just an afterthought. It’s great musical journey from start to finish.



On Lord Time's Bandcamp Drink My Tears is broken into two tracks. But it was recently re-released on CD and can be heard (and bought) as intended, as a single track on the Universal Consciousness Bandcamp page.

Obsequiae - Aria of Vernal Tombs

By Justin C. When we talk about metal bands being "old school," the timeline doesn't go back all that far, relatively speaking. For black metal, that might mean a second wave sound, or maybe going all the way back to ye olden days of the late 1980s for Bathory.

By Justin C.


When we talk about metal bands being "old school," the timeline doesn't go back all that far, relatively speaking. For black metal, that might mean a second wave sound, or maybe going all the way back to ye olden days of the late 1980s for Bathory. Metal as a whole doesn't go back much past 45 years or so, if we're considering Sabbath to be the genesis. Obsequiae, however, is here to show us what real "old school" means, and it's medieval. Literally.

Obsequiae's second album, Aria of Vernal Tombs, finds the band building on the sound they established on their debut, Suspended in the Brume of Eos. Blackish metal is interspersed with, and takes inspiration from, music from centuries ago. Aria's opener, "Ay que por muy gran fremosura," is from a collection of religious musical poems dating to the mid-1200s. "L'amour dont sui espris" is a rocking little lute ditty attributed to a French troubadour from roughly the same time period. All of the medieval pieces on the album are interpreted by Vicente La Camera Mariño playing a medieval harp.

The metal tunes, in turn, take inspiration from the ancient songs that fall between them. "Autumnal Pyre" plays with the melodic ideas in "Ay que por muy gran fremosura," except with distorted guitars and blackened shrieks. But if this were just an album that alternated between medieval tunes and metal covers of those songs, it would be more novelty than art, but the band doesn't fall into that trap. Obsequiae somehow manages to live in a musical world that's both ancient and modern at the same time. It's an alternate universe where electric guitars were invented 600 years earlier and were not only used to play the music of the time, but also changed the development of that music fundamentally.

The medieval tunes take a more prominent role on Aria than they did on Brume of Eos, but there's still plenty of meaty metal to sink your teeth into. "Pools of a Vernal Paradise" may mimic the free-flowing intro of the lute piece before it, but the thundering percussion and hints of Sabbath-ian riffage bring the heavy. The closing track, "Orphic Rites of the Mystic," may be preceded by one of the most delicate harp pieces on the album, but it contrasts that with some of the most ferociously performed vocals on the album.

There are a million great moments to absorb here. The songs are complex, mixing in ornamentations well known from Renaissance and Baroque music with surprising bits of dissonance and rhythmic sleights of hand that you wouldn't expect. It's a fantastic piece of music, and as a classical guitar player, I think it would be incredible if more people dug into the music Obsequiae is drawing from. But those excursions should be in between obsessive listens and re-listens to Aria, of course.