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Noircure is the musical endeavor of multi-instrumentalist Raffaele Galasso from Apulia, Southern Italy. Albeit born in 2021, Noircure comes after years of experience and hard work in a number of different underground projects, managing to be both something completely new and perfectly self-aware as well.

Galasso describes his latest one-man band as follows: “Noircure was born in 2021 as the result of blending two of my great passions: atmospheric black metal and certain shoegaze and new wave sounds. I recorded, mixed and mastered Kyrie inspired by these musical atmospheres, favoring improvisation in the recording phase, preferring "natural" sounds over production editing and trying to limitate effects as much as possible. I wanted Kyrie to personify a living entity capable of communicating a wide range of emotions in the most direct way possible. In order to do this, I tried to recreate all the sounds that I had figured out in my head only with my guitar and without the use of synths”.

The result is an honest, breathtaking album, plunging into the depths of blackgaze, where guitars are paramount, accompanied by a wide range of vocal styles, adding some Mediterranean vibes which make Klimt 1918 come to mind. If the likes of Alcest, Lantlôs and Sadness are part of your everyday music digest, Noircure will surely leave its mark.

PLEASE NOTE: this item will be included in label Circle of Wax initiative/series (Bundle #4 - March/April 2022). If you subscribed to it or simply plan to purchase the current bundle please restrain from ordering a single copy here!

For the last two decades, Portuguese Black Metal have been carving its unhallowed dagger in the heart of the Underground with a myriad of entities devoted to the darkest, most ignominious edges of such Sacred Art. One of the most emblematic and infamous hordes spawned from that cluster of void were satanic mercenaries Infernüs. Handling its heinous path for almost 20 years, the group have summoned an array of demos dating back to the early 2000s, vicious onslaughts that hatched a cult status to the band and left a trail of chaos and destruction in the cauldron of the Underground of said times. After a last 2007 recording and a series of memorable live rites, Infernüs vanished towards an unfathomable slumber, a silence which left a cloud of uncertainty on the minds of devotees of the group’s malignant fire and one which in 2016 ceased to persist after an astounding return, on a special occasion. Emerging from the infernal pits of Hell, Infernüs engraved its trail of blood and putrid flesh at the Invicta Requiem Mass I, a distinct ritual with fellow Portuguese nefarious ensemble Mons Veneris. Recorded for posterity, the ceremony cast on a bleak October night in 2016 was a memorable primeval assault which presented the band in full strength with its imperial blast of madness and diabolical fervor for delight of a pack of rabid adherents under the spell of its infernal hounds. During the 45-minute strike, the Portuguese titans have gathered a roast of new anthems of satanic fanaticism and dreadful hymns from the dark past that painted the walls in blood and brought forth the fire and death worship of pure unprecedented sacrilegious might. The blast of every expelled word endorsed a frenzy of devilish and chaotic possession from the blazing crowd, a reaction and assent that attested the charisma of the arrangements, combined with a rhythmic display of power and skill, the dynamic backbone to such psalms’ strain and potent edge and one which is here captured with outright power and vibrancy. The ungodly hymn Cristo em Chamas stands as a highlight of an infernal performance and evening of boundless, blasphemous Black Metal, a profane sermon attesting the strength and craft of the Portuguese scenery and one of its most charismatic forces. Released on a joint conspiracy between Harvest of Death and Purodium Rekords on a 12” LP edition, limited to 300 copies (100 white vinyl, 200 black vinyl), Live at Requiem Mass I stands as an uncanny testament to the revenge of the bloodlust behemoth Infernüs, a night of absolute worship to the Black Arts, carved for the next thousand years of darkness and ruin.

Hailing from the Basque country of Spain, the wretched entity called SEPULCHRAL crawled out of the coffin in 2016. Main composer, Dusk, gathered some ghouls to deliver an unrelentless form of putrid metal of death in the form of 2 demos and one EP. Now SEPULCHRAL arise from the tomb with their first full-length, packed with catchy, putrid, crusty death metal that will make you jump from your coffin!

Digipak CD with 12 pages booklet

Ysyry Mollvün is a conceptual project created by Zupai Ulen in 2012. In November 2015, Antonio Sanna (Downfall Of Nur) met Zupai and offered to be the producer. As time passed by, Sanna got involved in the crating of this project, composing arrangements for acoustic guitars and native instruments such as the charango, sikus, flutes and percussions. The band’s name comes from the words “river” in the Guaraní language, indigenous people from South America (Ysyry) and “blood” in the language of Selk'nam people, the indigenous tribe from southern Argentina (Mollvün).

Ysyry Mollvün tells the story of K'aux, a being that was once a human who was educated by the Selk’nam gods to teach the tribe what was necessary to outlive in the harsh conditions of the extreme south of the world. K'aux betrayed his oath and did not pass on what he learned, and for this reason he was condemned to lie forever, neither dead nor alive, in the center of the earth.

A thousand years later Espíritu del Monte, the god who punished K'aux couldn't understand what happened to the other deities since, except for the god of death (San la Muerte), they were no longer on this earth. All had changed, the people who lived on this earth were more, the flora and fauna that had inhabited no longer existed and everything that was for thousands of years was longer as it had been. Because of this, el Espíritu del Monte decides to wake up K'aux so that he can see with his human's eyes what happened and what must be done so that everything goes back to what once was.

It is never easy to follow up with another album, especially considering the impact made by the complex wild flight of musical fantasy of "La Masquerade Infernale". ARCTURUS elegantly solved this conundrum by releasing the comparatively more straightforward third full-length, "The Sham Mirrors" in 2002. This does not mean that the Norwegians had lost their appetite for experiments. The vocals by Garm (ULVER) are more soaring and wide-ranging than ever on this release, while main man Steinar "Sverd" Johnsen keeps adding classic prog rock excursions to his repertoire. Yet, the guitars are more often set to a more conventional metal mode on "The Sham Mirrors". Still complex, still avant-garde, ARCTURUS clearly consolidated their compositions on "The Sham Mirrors" and while still using many sonic elements, those rather serve each individual song than try to stick out.

Following their early EPs "My Angel" (1991) and "Constellation" (1994), ARCTURUS finally released their debut album "Aspera Hiems Symfonia" in 1996. The Norwegians derived their name from the brightest star of the Northern hemisphere and were obviously influenced by the massively expanding black metal scene of their homeland. Already featuring such well-known protagonists as ULVER's Garm and MAYHEM's Hellhammer, the line-up on "Aspera Hiems Symfonia" saw Samoth replaced by excellent guitarist Carl August Tidemann and outstanding ULVER bass player Hugh "Skoll" Mingay also joining the band. Despite their audible black roots, ARCTURUS clearly begged to differ by daring to experiment and adding an avant-garde twist with strange sonorous vocals complementing those piercing shrieks, Sverd's cinematic keyboards, the technical guitar solos, and more elements that to this day mark the band from Oslo as progressive innovators.