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Formed in 2020, VAMPYRIC TYRANT are a Teutonic black metal duo forged in the fires of old. The band is helmed by ex-Grabunhold member Graf Nekromant, joined by drummer Akatash. As foretold by their moniker, VAMPYRIC TYRANT indeed offer an iteration of vampiric black metal, but one locked in the dungeon of the '90s, as well as equally pursuing the epic ruminations of the legendary Moonblood.
Now joined under the banner of PURITY THROUGH FIRE and with the addition of bassist König Grausamkeit, VAMPYRIC TYRANT enter their next epoch with a four-song/19-minute EP fittingly titled Zorn und Hass. Grim yet stately, raw yet refined, the ghoulishness they offer here is as ethereal as it is insistent. More than that, each of the four tracks offers its own labyrinth of nostalgia and despair, perhaps hitting its sorrowful peak with the crying-orc instrumental "Ein Traum." Then, Zorn und Hass concludes in mesmerizingly hooligan fashion with the six-minute, organ-led "Totschlag."
The work of one Alexis Chiambretto, with drums provided by Nicolas Muller, UNHOLDUN's style of black metal is simple but sublime. Although the band hails from France, the sweepingly melodic surge which pushes this self-titled record forward favorably recalls the Québec scene that's made waves in the underground for the past decade-plus. Melancholic yet triumphant, faintly folky but never mawkish, its ever-insistent propulsion taking dynamic twists and turns, and even some commanding lead work cropping up, Unholdun retains a certain timelessness: looking to the past, UNHOLDUN nevertheless feel very NOW.
"I didn't try to revolutionize black metal with this EP," says Alexis. "It's more like 'a tribute' to the good, old black metal. So, I would like to feel a little bit the 90's vibe, even in the artwork." Expanding on that latter element, he says, "The devil on the front cover plays a 'carnyx,' a French trumpet used by Gauls before a war to frighten enemies." Sound that trumpet, then, for the arrival of UNHOLDUN!
The name VERMINEUX should not be unknown to those who follow the crimes of PURITY THROUGH FIRE, for the band's two demos to date have been reissued by the label. Likewise, VERMINEUX is the work of Spectre, erstwhile found of the esteemed Minenwerfer. However, whereas that band focuses on World War I, with VERMINEUX does Spectre focus on the 14th Century, particularly the plagues and warfare rampant during those times. Here, he delivers a surging seven-minute epic titled "Ashes" and then a reverential cover of Vlad Tepes' "In Holocaust to the Natural Darkness." But those expecting the Black Legions to loom large over split-mates PRIEURÉ, who indeed hail from France, will be in for a surprise with their primary track here. Following its brief but stage-setting "Intro" flowing into it, "Le Sang" is a wild 'n' wanderlusting epic, alternately invigorating and sorrowful. Mainman Sans-Visage (the English translation says everything) exhibits trademarks of much millennial French black metal - be it the undulating medievalism of the post-Sühnopfer school or the more recent wave of "elevated hooliganism" - but the ever-unfolding track is staggering in its stand-alone vision.
Matt Inside-Out Cover / 180g Vinyl
One sided
The varied song structures on their debut, coupled with instrumental dungeon synth passages, capture the magic of what was once the Black Metal art of the past, without sounding like a copy of those artists in any second. This independence runs like a thread through this record and proves that Vampyric Tyrant’s »Schwarze Schwingen« will definitely establish itself as a future classic in (German) Black Metal music.
One of the most imposing and revered bands in black metal's underground for the past decade, BEKËTH NEXËHMÜ have built a literally towering body of work. The band is yet another creative vehicle of Ancient Records linchpin Swartadauþuz (Azelisassath, Digerdöden, Gnipahålan, Musmahhu, Mystik, Summum, Trolldom, Daudadagr, as well as current labelmates GREVE and MUVITIUM), but it's largely BEKËTH NEXËHMÜ where the man has most built his legacy. To date, three official albums have been released - 2010's de dunkla herrarna, 2019's De fördolda klangorna, and last year's literally massive De Fornas Likgaldrar double-album, which featured over two hours of re-recorded material, recast as a whole new experience - and a literal bounty of demos, each one arguably greater and grander than most band's actual albums, that have equally put a frightening new(er) face on Swedish black metal, by turns becoming the nowadays face of the form.
Atmospheric Black Metal from Finland! New project of the October Falls mastermind.
silver wax lim. 250
Kroda are back with their 4th full-lenght album.Schwarzpfad is more into Black Metal than before, but it is still Kroda like they are loved or hated.The CD will be released as luxurious Digipak Edition like we did it with Kroda - Kulturkampf before.This time with partial UV-Lack printings and 20page booklet. First orders will also get a A2 Poster for free."All in all, we have here an above-average album that marks a new beginning for Kroda. But it will for sure not disappoint the old fans.
Hailing from Tampere, Finland, LICHT DES URTEILS emerged in 2019 with their first demo, later released on tape by Worship Tapes. Since then, the band have taken to the stage and sharpened their attack, which is simultaneously idiomatic and defiant of traditional Finnish black metal. A reconfigured lineup finalized itself in 2020, with the resultant full-length Uhraamo being the first recorded document of this lineup.
Ghastly and gutted, Uhraamo is pure filth shotgunned into the stratosphere. Heaving and hammering is LICHT DES URTEILS' surge here, with savage low-end anchoring riffing that ably splits the difference between rusty chainsaw and cursed nightsky. Indeed, it's that very real sense of physicality - as in a real band, playing together as one, rather than pieces cut & pasted with a computer - that ever-present DANGER, which renders Uhraamo such a compelling listen. It's pure & proud BLACK METAL, to be sure, but the songwriting's nothing short of electrifying and the production's powerful and punishing: simple pleasures, but sublime ones. And the hysteria only intensifies as the album plays on...
Finnish black metal is surely in no short supply, but only the nastiest banners are united under PURITY THROUGH FIRE. For those who dig among the dungeons for the late/great likes of Impious Havoc, Vitsaus, Catenatum Lucem, and the short-lived Syöpä, then LICHT DES URTEILS' Uhraamo is mandatory listening.
Formed in 2010, HELVELLYN are part of the Cumbrian Black Metal orbiting around the incredibly prolific P.G., who currently numbers labelmates THY DYING LIGHT, NEFARIOUS DUSK, ÚLFARR, and MORTE LUNE among his many endeavors. Joining him in HELVELLYN are other equally prolific members of the UK metal underground whose credits also include THY DYING LIGHT as well as Heathen Deity, Volition, Skiddaw, and Absinthropy among many others.
Now, after a handful of short-length releases, HELVELLYN arrive with their debut album, The Lore of the Cloaked Assembly. No more but definitely no less, The Lore of the Cloaked Assembly is a compact summation of the HELVELLYN aesthetic during the past decade, but sharpened to ice-cold perfection. Theirs is a deliberately (and proudly) traditional style of black metal set somewhere around 1995; the paradigmatic works of earliest Dodheimsgard, Gorgoroth, and especially Darkthrone as well as later gatekeepers like Armagedda and Sweden's Craft keep the parameters pure and cold. Indeed, to say The Lore of the Cloaked Assembly could've come out on Malicious Records back in the mid '90s should be viewed as the highest of compliments, so cryogenically authentic is HELVELLYN's attack here. Those who know, KNOW, for this is The Lore of the Cloaked Assembly!
Black Vinyl
When FLAGG burst from the void in June 2020 with their debut album, Nothing But Death, the veil of secrecy had yet to be lifted. Which mattered not, when presented with black metal of such sterling quality: both ancient and ageless, old yet new. Their attack was immediately intense, exhibiting a restlessness that's roiling and raging, always moving but always with a target in sight. Eventually, it was revealed that FLAGG hailed from Finland and was the work of selfsame multi-instrumentalist Flagg, who was a part of reanimated old Finnish cult Annihilatus, and vocalist Tyrant, whose hordes include the esteemed likes of MALUM, Infernarium, and Kalmankantaja.
With that lineup thus set, FLAGG return little more than a year later with their second full-length, Cosmic Chaos Manifest. An immediately harsher spin than its not-inconsiderable predecessor, Cosmic Chaos Manifest duly lives up to its title through a shapeshifting style of ultraviolence that retains a unique gleam, one that's paradoxically grittier for all its seemingly on-the-surface clarity. As ever, FLAGG's songwriting strikes true through a skillful balance between burning fire and nightsky melodicism, here actually sounding more richly 1990s - specifically, the oft-overlooked late '90s - than the comparatively modernist grime of Nothing But Death. But, just like that bolt-from-the-blue debut, FLAGG understand archaic expressions, the Old Language of Black Metal, where medieval atmosphere and ghostly portent informed even the most straightforward forms, rendering an air of aristocracy to that of belligerent bravado; now, they're just rendered in more restless, dizzying form.
Black Vinyl
Proud and pure, Hänen temppelinsä varjoissa exudes that aura of classic Finnish black metal from the late '90s onward, as laid down by the likes of Horna, Satanic Warmaster, and Azaghal among others. Black metal doesn't need to "be" anything more than what it already IS - or what it should be - and such is the case with AESTHUS. Every element here, from the melancholically melodic riffing to the surging 'n' swirling battery to, the distinctly twisted timbre of the Finnish tongue, of course, is in perfect, precise, PASSIONATE lockstep to create a maelstrom of hypnotic-yet-hummable proportions. Indeed, Hänen temppelinsä varjoissa is the work of a true band - meaning, a group of people playing together rather than a disconnected file-sharing project - with each of these seven songs drench in literal blood and sweat and perhaps alcohol. If there's one trump card that AESTHUS play (and poignantly), it's their dual-guitar lead work; the lead lines explode with memorability and malice in equal measure, underlining the METAL in black metal but never belaboring the point.
Criminally, SHADOW'S MORTUARY are still one of the best-kept secrets in the always-fertile Finnish black metal scene. The quartet formed in 2013, and patiently released two digital-only EPs - Kylmään Hautaan in 2015, and then Tulen Valtakunta in 2018 - before releasing their debut album, also titled Tulen Valtakunta, in 2018. That album was initially released on cassette through the cult Worship Tapes label, but soon did PURITY THROUGH FIRE step in to release it on a wider scale on CD format. A year later came the band's equally strong second album, Kuoleman Portit, also released by PURITY THROUGH FIRE. Across these recordings but especially the two full-lengths, SHADOW'S MORTUARY displayed righteously traditional and ever-fiery Finnish BLACK METAL - no more, but certainly no less - that possessed all the iron-clad trademarks of that idiom.
While things have been relatively quiet on their front since then, SHADOW'S MORTUARY return with a righteous fervor with Unohdettu Maa. Translated into English as "The Forgotten Land," Unohdettu Maa "stands for a vision of a place where no religions reign," the band explain, "Without its effect on human behavior and thinking. With this album, we attack towards Abrahamic religions with full force, carrying the torch of northern heritage and mysticism." Indeed do they accomplish that in a swift-yet-satisfying 32 minutes here, making their point plain and proud: melancholic melodicism, cold-fire execution, a punkish straightforwardness but never primitively so, and simply strong songs, just like the album's two predecessors. But Unohdettu Maa's true trump card comes in SHADOW'S MORTUARY's increasingly effortless ability to span the epic and the rabble-rousing, bringing forth grandeur in less cliched "epic" ways and, similarly, to sound incensed and headbanging without resorting to "party black metal" corniness.
Hailing from the oft-overlooked UK black metal scene, WRITTEN IN TORMENT have been patiently perfecting their craft for nearly 20 years now. A demo and EP followed in quick succession in 2006, followed by a hiatus until 2013, when the debut album Bellum Omnium Contra Omnes was released. WRITTEN IN TORMENT, as ever, is helmed by mainman Leviathan, and he kept apace with a split in 2014, a demo in 2015, and then two full-lengths, Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum and Maledictus Dies Illa, in 2017 and 2019, respectively.
And now, at long last, WRITTEN IN TORMENT deliver their masterwork: Black Command. Presciently titled, Black Command finds Leviathan hitting a fever pitch of creativity, recasting old ghosts of '90s epic/melodic black metal - Throne of Ahaz, Abyssos, Midvinter, Prophanity, and Amsvartner among others - into dazzling new shapes. Rest assured, in word and deed is Black Command BLACK METAL to the hilt, but by no means does it strident traditionalism hinder it in the least. Ripping chops and deft textural layering take center stage across the album's six-song/41-minute runtime, creating a compact canvas that's somehow vast, which is to say nothing of the well-timed incorporation of acoustic guitars and cinematic synths. All this is filtered into a thematic framework focusing on the life and crimes of Jonathan Martin, the infamous arsonist of the Minster Cathedral in York. Joining Leviathan here - and no doubt adding further fuel to the fire - are Prometheus on lead guitars and keyboards and drummer Storm (Blasphemer, ex-Bal-Sagoth, ex-My Dying Bride).
