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.

From The Metal Archives Vol. 7

[When I add labels to the Metal Labels on Bandcamp page I usually scan their releases looking for anything interesting I might have missed. The reviews on The Metal Archives are a great help when doing this: a couple of great reviews

By the reviewers from The Metal Archives.

[When I add labels to the Metal Labels on Bandcamp page I usually scan their releases looking for anything interesting I might have missed. The reviews on The Metal Archives are a great help when doing this: a couple of great reviews means an album I should probably check out. With this series I'd like to share some of my finds - in this edition we feature two expansive takes on black metal from Lifeforce Records and Shaytan Productions, and a long lost death/doom classic finally available on Southern Lord Recordings]


Fjoergyn’s sound is extremely avant-garde and unlike any other band in existence. At its core, it is still very much rooted in black metal conventions but there is so much more to their sound. The standard tremolo picked riffs with non-stop blast beats are ever present on this album but when the songs slow down, the music becomes much more interesting. This is where Fjoergyn excels with absolutely gorgeous and incredibly haunting guitar melodies like the one in the middle of the closing track “Freiheit” that will make your jaw drop. It is not just the guitar melodies though. This album contains serious riffage of the fast and heavy varieties that really drive the more conventional sections of songs like “Leviathan.” The band also makes excellent use of symphonics and orchestrations, including moments of exquisite violin, which adds a lot of atmosphere to this album. [read SlayerDeath666's full review here.]

Epos starts off starts off with the ambient sounds of small waves lapping on the shore of a well known lake in Kyrgyzstan known as Issyk-Kul (in the Kyrgyz language means “warm lake”).

Issyk-Kul is surrounded by snow-capped peaks, but never freezes. This aspect of the lake is reflected on this album: the production is actually of dark warmth, an almost “milky” guitar sound is clearly audible, and somehow the overall crispness also retains this character. I found this to be a very strong aspect of this recording which lends Epos quite a unique atmosphere as far as Black Metal production values go. [read Hubster's full review here.]

Gammelsaeter’s vocals very between soft female droning to tireless growls that do justice to the death genre; this isn’t your operatic or goth vocals that are all the trend these days, but the droning of frozen, inevitable doom. This is the real deal: Serene, raw, and ugly as needed and when needed. While I like a good singer as much as the next guy, some types of music require the under produced, dragged screaming into the void, type of rawness; this delivers. The drums pound away, not a means of keeping the beat so much as to hammer Gammelsaeter’s vocals and O’Malley’s guitar chords home. Maybe that’s how they chose the group's name; the drums, vocals, and guitar jointly if methodically hammer you into a senseless empty vessel. [read Metalich's full review here.]

Krallice - Ygg huur

By Justin C. It feels weird to categorize Krallice as black metal at this point, given their latest album, Ygg hurr. Granted, they were never dyed-in-the-wool second-wave worshipers, so the shift in sound on their latest album isn't quite as abrupt as it might seem at first. To be honest, my first thought was, "Krallice made a Gorguts album!"

By Justin C.


It feels weird to categorize Krallice as black metal at this point, given their latest album, Ygg hurr. Granted, they were never dyed-in-the-wool second-wave worshipers, so the shift in sound on their latest album isn't quite as abrupt as it might seem at first. To be honest, my first thought was, "Krallice made a Gorguts album!" But listening to it back to back with Colored Sands, I realized that wasn't quite the full story. There's as much of Dysrhythmia's torturous prog goodness here as their is Gorguts, but given that all of these acts share members, it's not surprising that a lot of influence would bleed through them all.

Krallice at Incubate Festival 2014. Photo by Jostijn Ligtvoet

There's still a hefty dose of the Krallice's patented, extra-dissonant tremolo riffing, but those riffs butt heads with plenty of much stranger fare. Check out the first minute or so of "Over Spirit." The intro sounds like some kind of demented wind-up toy losing steam, but then it runs headlong into a truly righteous tremolo riff. The switch from chugging aggression to an airy, suspended guitar line in "Bitter Meditation"? Utterly beautiful.

The album opener, "Idols," has what might be one of my favorite riffs so far this year. It's a snaky single-note line, complete with counterpoint, that at times sound almost like a canon. (And I mean the musical type of canon here, not the artillery type of cannon.) You know how shredders in the 80s were always going on about their classical influences, which meant that they'd occasionally throw in a Bach line or a trill in a solo? Yeah, this riff puts all of that wankery to shame.

Krallice at Incubate Festival 2014. Photo by Jostijn Ligtvoet

What else is there to like here? Plenty. The bass is up in the mix and hard driving. The percussion is fascinating in its own right, but as with the best rhythm sections, it blends in with the rest of the music rather than trying to stomp all over it.

All that said, I did find this a hard album to warm up to. It took a while for my initial disappointment over this being "not a Krallice album" to fade. But once I learned to stop trying to dissect how much Krallice vs. Gorguts vs. whatever it is, I liked it a little bit more each time I listened to it.

Cloak of Altering - Plague Beasts

Written by Craig Hayes.

Artwork by Mories

Individual musicians, who work on a slew of different projects, aren't a rarity in metal, but Maurice de Jong’s (aka Mories) discography stands out as particularly formidable. Among Mories’ various projects include Gnaw Their Tongues (black/industrial/experimental/doom); De Magia Veterum (avant-garde black metal); Aderlating (drone, blackened noise, and malicious electronica); and Seirom (mesmerizing waves of celestial guitar). That’s a fair spread of musical interests right there, and accompanying those bands is a steady stream of releases that underscore Mories’ ceaseless creativity too. However, that’s not what makes him a formidable artist.

The reason that Mories’ oeuvre is so intimidating, is that he can be guaranteed to produce a uniquely twisted interpretation of whatever sub-genre he’s exploring. And, in the case of his music that resides in the realm of the unstable and extreme, it always comes with a deeply unnerving component too. There’s definitely something very unsettling about Mories’ Cloak of Altering project, with previous releases from the band, like 2012’s Ancient Paths Through Timeless Voids, seeing symphonic black metal shoved through a digital hardcore/industrial electronics meatgrinder.

Cloak of Altering produces the kind of noise you’d expect to hear if Spektr, Mysticum, and Emperor all decided to gobble hallucinogenic toadstools, and then jam together until their extremely painful death arrived. Really, the clue to Cloak of Altering’s objective is right there in the band’s name, because Mories certainly aims to alter reality by wrapping the listener in something chaotic and unsound. He contorts tremolos screeds into sickening form, assaults already abrasive vocals with breakneck percussion, and promises an experience that is very, very wrong, with all the demented synth and electronics.

Of course, in the world of Cloak of Altering, very, very wrong is exactly the point that Mories is aiming for, and the band’s latest offering, Plague Beasts, hits that mark. The fact the album is being released by the consistently fascinating label Crucial Blast is a enough of a hint that it will contain the kinds of hostile, cutting edge noise that'll drill right into your synapses, and Plague Beasts certainly does that. The album distorts black metal with barrages of electronic insanity and all manner of crooked rhythmic wrenching, and the result is a freakish hybrid, with Mories, the mad scientist, concocting endless evil mutations in the lab.

Plague Beasts' self-titled opening track kicks in with rapid-fire drum-and-bass blastbeats, followed by caustic programmed pummelling, and baleful riffing and vocals. Then Mories layers in the synth on the track, and things get real weird, real fast. “White Inverted Void” and “Translucent Body Deformities” bring more murk and fuzz, with orchestral passages transforming into bursts of blackened static, and symphonic sections getting trampled by dissonant riffs and glitch-fed electronics. And just when you think it’s going to be an aggressive sonic blitzkrieg, a sun-lit second or two appears, making things even more deranged.

You’ll find much the same sense of schizophrenic transformation on Plague Beasts’ other tracks too. Mories injects melody in some places, then chokes the life out of it with brain-piercing percussion. He ramps things up with a sweep of progressive or psychedelic synths that wouldn't seem out of place in the 70's, and then demolishes that with an onslaught of acid riffs, fetid vocals, and grim electronic mayhem.

Mories plays DJ Frankenstein throughout Plague Beasts, building malformed songs from monstrous parts, with every single one of them pissing pitch-black, spiteful toxin out of some gnarled appendage onto banks of short-circuiting synthesizers. That’s what makes Plague Beasts so utterly brilliant; it’s a descent into madness and nightmare visions with Mories taking demonic glee in unnerving and disturbing. There’s no cruel to be kind here. Like a lot of the best releases from Crucial Blast, Plague Beasts is cruel to be fucking cruel. Just like the world outside your door.

[Go to the post to view the Bandcamp player]

Botanist - Nero di Marte - Void of Sleep crowd-funding

Written by Justin C.

Art by M.S. Waldron

I came across (and donated to) two crowd-funding efforts that I think are worthy of your attention. One is born of happy circumstances, but the other much less so.

As frequent readers of the site may have noticed, I really love the one-man black metal phenomenon that is Botanist. This bio-black metal band centered on Otrebor's hammered dulcimer playing satisfies a musical need I never knew I had.

I don't know if there's a huge overlap between Bandcamp enthusiasts and vinyl collectors, but Botanist is doing a Kickstarter campaign to fund the pressing of a vinyl version of III: Doom in Bloom (minus the Allies recordings). Picking my favorite Botanist album at this point is like asking most parents which is their favorite child, but Doom in Bloom will always be high on my list. The opening track, "Quoth Azalea, the Demon," has delicate melodies that haunt my dreams.

Even if you're not into vinyl, this Kickstarter has something for you. You can get a digital download of a rehearsal/live performance from the band for a measly $6, and the recording is exclusive to Kickstarter backers. There's a ton of other merch available, and the band is flexible about combining rewards. Just give them a head's up. As of this writing, they're about $150 away from full funding, and every little bit helps. It helps the band, and it helps me, as otherwise, I will be forced to cover whatever's left over to make sure this happens. The funding period ends on May 15.

Kickstarter: "III: Doom in Bloom" Double LP Gatefold

[Go to the post to view the Bandcamp player]

Alex Eckman-Lawn

As I mentioned, the other crowd-funder is for less happy news. Italian bands Nero di Marte and Void of Sleep had all of their gear stolen after a show in Rome. We're talking a 25,000 Euro loss. As fans of this kind of metal know, bands other than KISS don't travel with and/or own truckloads of gear, so this can be a devastating career ender. That would be a real shame in this case. The list of stolen gear is heart rending. As an amateur musician, this would be devastating to me, and I don't rely on my equipment to make a living.

The entry-level reward for their IndieGoGo campaign is a split EP from the two bands for 10 Euros, and given the two bands involved, I expect it to be excellent. Nero di Marte's self-titled debut is available on Bandcamp. I didn't realize this until recently, or I probably would have written something for it here. I've been enjoying the CD version since it came out. Nero di Marte scratches the same itch for me that bands like Gojira and Byzantine do. Not because they're sound-alikes, but because they all fit in that nebulous progressive metal genre that sometimes gets labeled "groove metal" for lack of a better term. It's immediately accessible, but complex enough to keep you coming back.

I know less about Void of Sleep and they don’t appear to have a Bandcamp presence, but a quick perusal on YouTube convinced me I need to check them out more in depth. Obvious touchstones are Opeth and Tool. (I hate to do such a short-handed "recommended if you like" write up for what appears to be a very good band, but I wanted to get this out there sooner rather than later.)

Right now the bands are at about 4,200 Euro of their 20,000 Euro goal, but this is a flexible funding campaign. Unlike Kickstarter, IndieGoGo allows for crowd funds other than all-or-nothing, so the raised funds go to the band even if the full amount isn't reached. I certainly hope they reach much higher than what they have now. The funding period ends on May 13.

IndieGoGo: NERO DI MARTE - VOID OF SLEEP: Stolen gear donations and Split EP

[Go to the post to view the Bandcamp player]

Shining - One One One

Review by Justin C.


Let's get this out of the way up front: There's saxophone on this album. I know some people have an attitude about horns in their metal, but I think saxophones are pretty metal. Yes, they're literally made of metal, but I think they're also metal in attitude. Ihsahn certainly agrees, and you can trust him, right?

I admit that I'm biased. Long before I started playing guitar, I played the saxophone. Adolphe Saxe, the inventor, originally designed versions for orchestra and military bands, but for my money, it didn't find its true home until the invention of jazz. You may only know it from the mewlings of people like Kenny G, but in the hands of players like John Coltrane and Eric Dolphy, the sax has been used to create some of the strangest and most demanding music in existence. And what is that if not metal? Personally, I don't think I would have gotten into more extreme metal if I hadn't already cut my teeth on avant garde jazz. Without doing an academic study, I'd even go so far as to say that the experimentation started in 1950s and 1960s jazz paved the way for some of the crazy metal we have today.

Photo © Per Ole Hagen, Artist Pictures Blog, All rights reserved.

In support of that thesis, we have Shining, a fascinating Norwegian band that started out as a jazz quartet but ultimately morphed into the black-electro-industrial metal band we hear today. Their previous album, Blackjazz, was so far out there that it was hard even for me to get a foothold, but their newest, One One One, has all of their experimentation but with insane catchiness and immediacy. Just try to listen to the opening track, "I Won't Forget," and not get it stuck in your head. Jørgen Munkeby's vocals are snarling and raspy, but completely intelligible. Unlike a lot of metal singers, he doesn't drop down to a low guttural for emphasis--he charges up to the very top of his range. Guitars are processed with outer-space distortion backed by punchy bass, keyboards provide all manner of different textures, and the drums are frenetic but laser-precise. And then there's Munkeby's saxophone. His tone is fantastic by any traditional standard, even when he pushes it to the limits, and he uses his sax to full effect as a metal instrument. Check out the solo in "The One Inside." It's as fearsome and gripping as any guitar solo you'll hear.

Photo © Per Ole Hagen, Artist Pictures Blog, All rights reserved.

The album wouldn't be so good if it were all jazz freakouts. The songwriting is also tight and top notch. For example the guitar riff in "Blackjazz Rebels" is as catchy and bluesy as anything out there. Even though it's immediately accessible, I find new things to dig on every listen. If you passed on this one because you were put off by the out-there-ness of the last album, I'd urge you to check this one out. You may be as pleasantly surprised as I was.

[Go to the post to view the Bandcamp player]

The photos originally appeared in this Shining, One One One live at by:Larm article, check out Per Ole's Flickr for many more Shining photos.

Krallice - Years Past Matter

By Andy Osborn. Brooklyn’s finest proto black metallers are back with a new full length, Years Past Matter. The indefinable quartet has been confounding fans for the past four years with their insane virtuosic approach to avant-garde extreme music

By Andy Osborn.


Brooklyn’s finest proto black metallers are back with a new full length, Years Past Matter. The indefinable quartet has been confounding fans for the past four years with their insane virtuosic approach to avant-garde extreme music. This album, arriving just 16 months after their previous full-length, is as esoteric and mind-bending as one can expect from such a group. Arranged in six pieces, the tracks are inexplicable titled "IIIIIII", "IIIIIIII", "IIIIIIIII" and so on. But these aren’t songs, they’re slabs of metallic calculus concocted and condensed into auditory journeys.

Everything from the album art to the song names reeks of existential musings that the common listener can only begin to identify. The extremely long passages are contortions of sound seemingly guided by some long-dead sentient being, with Krallice’s signature nonstop algebraic-like tremolo remaining as the centerpiece. Nicholas McMaster and Mick Barr’s vocals rarely appear over the course of the hour-long cosmic exploration, but Colin Marston’s huge production and Lev Weinstein’s crushing skinsmanship hit so hard that you’ll never for a second think anything is missing.

Like all Krallice releases, Years Past Matter is not something that can be digested easily. It’s insanely complex, layered and multifaceted in every way imaginable, requiring dozens of listens before even the most tertiary layer is scratched. And while it’s stylistically similar to 2011's Diotima in many ways, that’s a good thing. For a band like this to progress their sound even more would not only be practically impossible, it’s something our tiny mortal brains wouldn’t be able to comprehend anyway.

Krallice - Diotima

Krallice's Diotima was added to the Profound Lore Bandcamp. Progressive black metal may be an oxymoron, but Krallice pulls it off so very nicely. Serpentine, intertwining melodies with hyper fast tremolo picking coupled with massive death metal growls.

Artwork by Max Hooper Schneider, Nick McMaster and Karlynn Holland

Krallice's Diotima was added to the Profound Lore Bandcamp. Progressive black metal may be an oxymoron, but Krallice pulls it off so very nicely. Serpentine, intertwining melodies with hyper fast tremolo picking coupled with massive death metal growls. The production is natural, and heavy sounding, it captures the feel of a band making music together. Here is a great indepth review by BadWolf from No Clean Singing.

Krallice also have their own Bandcamp. Here you can find a free download of Orphan of Sickness, a new EP of Orphan covers.