Listen “Blackjazz” on a cold and dark morning in 2010 was love at first listen and it was one of the best albums of 2010 while Shining became one of my favorite bands. Although 2011 bring “Live Blackjazz”, a killer and consistent live recording, the awaiting seems longer than it actually was.
“One One One” pick up where “Blackjazz” left off, eventually Jørgen Munkeby and his bandmates get further darker, harder and more intense than ever before. The sixth album by the Norwegian Shining it’s a contorted mixture of black metal, industrial rock and jazz reminiscences, it’s blackjazz. Read more Shining – One One One (2013)
Life and Living
black metal
Terra Tenebrosa – The Purging (2013)
Dark metal could not get darker and further into the hidden and tenebrous conscience and sub-conscience of the sick and twisted human soul and mind.
“The Purging” continues where the critically acclaimed and Manifest Award nominated debut album, “The Tunnels” left off in 2011. Eventually this is going more wicked and gloomy that its predecessor.
Terra Tenebrosa it’s definitively one of the most experimental and most bold metal acts of Sweden, but also one of the most interesting avant-garde acts that pushing the envelope and widening the horizon. Not an easy listening, not really friendly and definitively not for everybody, but once you get into the atmosphere of it, reveals unexpected dimensions and colors. Read more Terra Tenebrosa – The Purging (2013)
Vuyvr – Eiskalt (2013)
Über brutality – total aggression. But it feels good and sounds murderous. Raw, unpolished, furious and totally grinding into the ground type of black metal with well determined roots back to the traditional Nordic sound, but simultaneously looking boldly into the future and exploring yet virgin outer limits of the genre. Vuyvr are the new Swiss challengers and they are definitively the most devilish offspring of some glorious predecessors as Hellhammer, Celtic Frost, Samael or Coroner.
My favorite butcheries are “War Of 100 000 Centuries”, “Idolatry”, “Dead Trees Are Wandering At” and the epic “The Wyvern”. Read more Vuyvr – Eiskalt (2013)
Hate – Solarflesh (2013)
Considered as one of the leading extreme metal acts coming from Poland, Hate are back with their 8th – and probably deadliest – studio album. This is a masterpiece of dark power and absolute aggression, a perfect blending of their ambient and industrial fueled black metal and the chainsaw ferocious death/thrash metal. “Solarflesh” seems conceived and inspired by the same wicked God who breathed life into monsters like “South of Heaven” and “Seasons in the Abyss”. This album it’s brilliant and brutal just like those pillars of metal delivered by Slayer. “Solarflesh” it’s merciless, atmospheric, brutal, hypnotizing and addictive like any other vice or joyful sin.
After the atmospheric, incantation-like intro of “Watchful Eye Of Doom”, “Eternal Might” it’s intense, brutally grinding and memorable like any of the Slayer anthems from the South/Season era. The guitar riffs and solos are impeccable while the vocals are blood spitting deadly growls. Just a perfect way to rip your head off right from the beginning!! Read more Hate – Solarflesh (2013)
Cowards – Shooting Blanks And Pills (2012) Free download!
Gathering current and ex-members of Sickbag, Death Mercedes, Hangman’s Chair, Eibon, Glorior Belli, Dacast, Colossus of Destiny, the Parisian Cowards delivered their 38 minutes of raging fury and filth, merging Hardcore, Sludge/Doom and Black Metal into their debut effort entitled “Shooting Blanks And Pills”. The album will be officially co-released on 30 June 2012 by Throatruinner Records and Hellbound Records. The digital version is already available for free download (name your price) on the official Bandcamp page of the record label, while the 12” LP will be out in late june and limited to 300 copies on black vinyl.
Disturbing, twisted, dark and intense, the 6 tracks of the album are still impressively musical, melodious, Cowards sounds like a mixture of Black Sabbath and Motorhead with Eyehategod and Deathspell Omega, the perfect combination of heaviness and rawness with classic approach, riffing and contorted dark vibe. Read more Cowards – Shooting Blanks And Pills (2012) Free download!
Elizabeth – Where Vultures Land, EP (2012) – free download!
This is the debut EP of this brutally brilliant Swiss band delivered – once again – in its digital format and even FOR FREE by Throatruinner Records and its fully devoted “driver”, Matthias Jungbluth. He’s fan-friendly approach, he’s support of those bands deserves our support and every and each penny counts!
Elizabeth reminds me of Celtic Frost in the best possible sense, actually sounds pretty as a modern, and even future Celtic Frost incorporating along the traditional Black and Thrash Metal heritage all the post-scremo, post-hardcore, post-punk, and post (modern) whatevers, everything what can make the music more louder, more stronger, more extreme. And Elizabeth seems to find just the right path of merging past and future into their own cutting edge Metal. Read more Elizabeth – Where Vultures Land, EP (2012) – free download!
Semargl – Satanic Pop Metal (2012)
Rammstein fans will be definitively delighted, although the story is quite different, this band from Kiev, Ukraine, formed in 1997, grew up from black and death metal roots.
“Satanic Pop Metal” it’s a merging of genres, black’n’roll, death and industrial metal are melted into one and bring back to life, reminds me also of Debauchery’s last album “Germany’s Next Death Metal“, only that Semargl use more intensely, Rammstein likely the synthesizers. Pumping and pounding, heavy, but melodious and catchy, still cutting and intense, Semargl delivered a bloody brutal and modern metal album. Can downlload some of their track for free – including “Tak, Kurwa (Yes Bitch)” – from their MySpace , Facebook and their official web page. Read more Semargl – Satanic Pop Metal (2012)
Hexis – XI (2012)
Two words: death and destruction. I think back in ’86-’87 when I first listen to Kreator’s “Endless Pain” and “Pleasure to Kill” I had that murderous feeling. Back then it was something terrible and shocking, nowadays nothing’s shocking anymore, still, Hexis delivers some brutally good mixture of extreme metal. Slow, doom and black metal grinding moments are ripped away by killer massacres of grindcore and hardcore intensity.
I wasn’t able to dig out too many infos about this Copenhagen (Denmark) based band formed in the beginning of 2010, but it seems they already has released a bunch of different records and toured Europe a few times in countries like Sweden, Germany, Holland, France, Switzerland, Serbia, Hungary, Slovakia and Czech Republic together with bands like Celeste, The Secret and This Gift Is A Curse. Read more Hexis – XI (2012)
Echancrure – Paysage. Octobre. (2011)
This is a dream. Or a trip through some sonic landscapes colored by hopes, dreams, fears, nightmares and eventually some kind of desperate searching and self-searching, ultimately a need for communication and definitively a gloomy, but quite spiritual way to express feelings. And once again, in a world more and more isolated and alienated, feelings and communication are so goddamn rare. This might be a movie without imagines, or just simply a passage to a kind of intimate, hidden place where our ghosts are dancing in some soulful ritual fire. Symbolism melt into mystery, grotesque and vivid melancholy collide into one and the result are eight “Untitled” tracks which overcome and defied genres.
“Yours for free”, or “Pay as much as you want” is the best way to spread this kind of experimental, gloomy, “unfriendly” music. Read more Echancrure – Paysage. Octobre. (2011)
Wistful – Wistful (2011)
I saw the cover and I find it interesting. In this era with trillion releases at day, judging a record by its cover sometimes might help to narrow down the list of what worth a try and what seems to be just waste of time. Blackgaze? For those who love (to collect) boxes, labels, this seems to be a new one. Not so hard to figure out, merging Black Metal with Shoegaze and here we go!
From the sunny Portugal, Wistful is a dark, one-man project grow up from “the hands and mind of A.” as “a second incarnation, or as an evolution of his former project Arges, breaking farther away from typical black metal.”
Born in late April 2010, the self-titled debut album came alive this year and we’ve got 7 gloomy, atmospheric tracks where Black Metal rawness and beautiful, spacy and hazy passages and themes are completing and overlapping each other. Read more Wistful – Wistful (2011)
