An Oi/RAC hybrid with primitive black metal, Absurd brought necessary primitivism into a genre which was rapidly being assimilated by the progressive rock side of metal.
You can read more about Absurd in our current death metal news and reviews feed.
No CommentsTags: absurd, Black Metal
Absu hammers out fast American black metal band in the old school style like Slayer or Sodom, with added varying clean vocals and different types of song structures.
No CommentsTags: absu, Black Metal
Related to sweeping atmospheric dungeon black metal band Summoning, working within a more traditional black metal style Abigor crafts fast melodic black metal within idiosyncratic song structures.
You can read more about Abigor in our current death metal news and reviews feed.
No CommentsTags: Abigor, Black Metal
Sammath creates vicious but melodic black metal in its own take on Norwegian, Finnish, and German influences. With Dutch and German members, Sammath continues the old school style of black metal with the intensity of newer genres in terms of speed, aggression, and distinct framing of themes.
No CommentsTags: Black Metal, sammath
Serbian black metal band Zloslut has created some of the more interesting music to emerge from the underground of late and stand on the verge of releasin their second album, U Transu Sa Nepoznatim Siluetama in spring 2015. Main composer Utvara took some time to talk with us about the upcoming album and future of this innovative act…
What first attracted you to black metal music?
I would say it’s atmosphere, and its attitude toward all opposition.
What does black metal music communicate, represent or have as a value?
This depend from person to person, band to band and from era to era of the genre itself.
For me black metal represents all negation that “normal” people can’t stand. Primitivism with a way and a goal.
Its value was lost long ago. There are some good bands today of course! Even if I didn’t have the chance to experience black metal in the 90s, I can feel that it is not now what it was intended to be, judging by people who been through it, interviews and some well-documented movies.
Are you the sole creator of Zloslut? How did you decide to go ahead with this “lineup”?
Yes, Zloslut is me, Utvara.
The faithful individuals that follow me on shows are live session members.
You write and sing in your native language. Why did you make the choice to do this and not just use English, German and Norwegian like most black metal now?
I do this because I live in Serbia currently and I think it is an opportunity to know another language than English.
Many bands sing in English; I think it’s more original to sing in your native language, other then English if you have that privilege.
For those who don’t know that language, it will give them an esoteric feeling. As it gives me too when I listen to some Norwegian, Polish, German bands…
Zloslut have songs in English (three on the demo, one of them was re-recorded, it’s “Abyss of Eternal Deception” the track that closed the EP “Pustoš i prevare izgubljenih duša”) and two in French (one on the demo, and one other that was on the split “Anti-Human Manifest” with the song “Le Tonneau De La Haine,” with the text of Charles Baudelaire from Les Fleurs du Mals).
But I’m pretty sure that a musician who speaks several languages will agree with me that it depends from song to song.
Some sound better in English, but some must be in their native language because of its uniqueness.
Are you self-releasing your work as Dark Chants productions? Why this route and not another label?
Yes. Why? Because today anyone can be a label and many of them don’t take this work seriously. I have a problem with trusting a guy who runs a label on the other side of the planet. I don’t want someone to release my work and make a mistake. So I prefer to carry that burden myself.
I feel more safer when I do the work. I would rather support a mistake made by myself than by somebody else. The day I would let someone do that work is the day I will sign to a serious label who knows how things must be, but I have not had that chance yet.
What would you say inspires your songwriting, as in topics or emotions?
It depends; I guess that the lifestyle has a big impact in the work of a one man band.
The majority of my days are passed in reading, listening to music, and playing instruments. I’m not an “evil misanthropic” guy… It’s just that I enjoy times of loneliness. The feeling of melancholy gives me a lot of inspiration to write lyrics, music…
Or I let the intuition guide me. More people should try that, it’s amazing!
Too many bands today want to be like their idol, or for example the Disney band Watain. This brings us back to the second question, haha.
You’re about to release a new album, U Transu Sa Nepoznatim Siluetama available in 2015. How will this differ from your past work?
A lot. I think that this album is what I wanted to make since the creation of Zloslut, but couldn’t because of many obstacles, such as maturity, money, time and countless other factors.
Basically, everything is how I imagined it, so I think this album is the stamp of Zloslut, until further work.
This is definitely the most mature album and songs I’ve ever made.
I’m generally very negative when I make something. I always think that it should be otherwise, but I didn’t let that feeling overtake me.
What other styles or ideas influence you outside of black metal? How much does the history and current social/political/economic situation in your nation influence your thinking?
Literature (especially poetry), classical music…
I don’t let politics affect me in my musical world. I have some political opinions about Europe which are extreme for some people I believe. But I prefer to keep that for myself.
I don’t want to mix politics with my music, because they don’t have a connecting point. It’s pointless. Even if I love some bands that have some connections with politics.
What bands primarily influenced your basic style, and has this changed for U Transu Sa Nepoznatim Siluetama?
The bands that influenced me for Zloslut have not really changed since I created it.
When it comes to black metal, bands that influenced me the most were Burzum, Judas Iscariot, Taake, Peste Noire, Inquisition, Drudkh, Urfaust…
And I can’t hide my appreciation for the Finnish black metal scene. Almost all of them have something melancholic in their sounds… So Baptism, Sargeist, Noenum, Satanic Warmaster, Nattfog, Horna… I think that today they are the bearers of the “black metal flag.”
But the band that made my path into metal was Iron Maiden, and still today after more than fifteen years, I listen to them everyday at least once.
Classical music is also tied to me since I was a child. I was in music school for seven or eight years as a kid.
I love minimalistic pianist such as Philip Glass, Eric Satie (but just a few composition from him), but also the famous Tchaikovsky, Strauss…
And from time to time I like to put some OI Punk bands in the player, simple riffs, nervous voice with good messages.
Where did you record this latest album, and what techniques did you use? What were your goals for the sound/production of the music?
It was recorded in Belgrade, Serbia. I wanted something between crystal clear and raw sound, how to say, to keep the atmospheric spirit of Black Metal.
I’m not a gearhead, to be honest, I’m more into music creation. Knowledge of technical sound production was never my interest (until recently). I leave that to the producers in general, in this case for this album was Nemanja Krneta (a.k.a. Zlorog). I tell him what I want, and then we together explore all the possibilities.
And I’m very happy with how everything turned out.
How do you compose? Do you start with a riff, an idea, an emotion or something else? How do you link together your riffs?
Oh, this depends from track to track, generally with a riff, then I slowly start to create a text, and then assemble everything until it sounds well-arranged for my taste.
What comes next for Zloslut? Will you tour, or record again?
Well after U Transu Sa Nepoznatim Siluetama will be released around spring 2015 we plan to tour in Europe to promote the new album. We have some offers, but much more details will come after the release see the light… And maybe some summer festivals.
For more recording, definitely I have some ideas, but nothing for 2015, since I really want to promote the album as it should be.
I don’t want to drown the fans with many albums, EPs, splits, singles etc…
Tags: Black Metal, zloslut
William Burroughs often wrote about the “edge,” or the liminal threshold between states. The last real edge year for underground metal was 2009 when strong contenders and new voices united to defend extreme metal against the onslaught of imitators making Potemkin village metal from hipster flair and lite-jazz fireworks but underneath it, nothing but disorganized songwriting and an absence of something to express. As the underground has come back with a vengeance, it has begun to displace the imitators because their music simply does not measure up. This has created a backlash as the hipsters defend their territory with guilt, ostentation, pretense and surface-level novelty. On the other hand, the underground has produced some strong contenders. And so we move forward through the past to the future, remembering that what is true is eternal, and trends, novelties, fads, hipsters and other transient moments pass quickly away…
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Tags: best of, Black Metal, blaspherian, blood urn, cenotaph, conquering dystopia, dead congregation, death metal, Demilich, desecresy, enthroned, entrench, Godless Arrogance, heresiarch, kever, massacra, nausea, nunslaughter, oppression, personal device, ripper, sammath, sorcier des glaces, varathron, witchblood, woodtemple
Black metal has been taken over by cocktail parties. I used to be able to say, “You know, everything but black metal is a copy of a copy at this point,” and the point would drop. Now people start digging out their Prada notepads and Christian Dior iPhone cases and rattle off a list of their favorite new (or is that “nu”?) black metal bands. I dutifully make note and brace myself for disappointment.
I was not disappointed with Algaion Exthros. That is, my disappointment was not disappointed: this albums is bad beyond terrible. Its worthy contribution can be found on the first track where the band covers one of those Greek melodies that tourists and tour guides alike recognize that a crowd will recognize as Greeky Greek, and they make it into a ripping black metal tune. It was not excellent, but it far surpasses the absolute desert of songs that one could possibly enjoy in “nowadays black metal.” What follows is an abomination of taste and content.
Taking a page from the At the Gates book, this band write melodic hooks for the verses and then have vocal hooks lead the otherwise straightforward and grinding choruses, but they keep the whole thing in rock harmony — including extensive (yawn) pentatonic leads — so that the power of all of this is muted. The vocal hooks are of the Pantera variety, which is the kind of simple song you sing to yourself when doing the laundry or trying to give your pet an enema, infectious but brain-numbing and here taken to new extremes of repetition and sing-song cadence paced with war metal tempi and modern metal style regular open-throat vocals, as distinct from the closed-throat guttural of death metal or open-throated but sonically-shaped vocals of black metal. Excruciating, this is. I weep for the landfills which have already filled or shortly will fill with this terrible, predictable, mind-destroying disc.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLBjef3ze4I
2 CommentsTags: algaion, Black Metal
Normally I refuse to review NSBM because in my view, if your politics must be understood to like the music, the art has failed and we have ventured into propaganda. Nonetheless I attempted to listen to Fanisk because so many people swore by its value, including those I respected.
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Tags: Black Metal, fanisk
In addition to unleashing a re-issue of its classic Joined in Darkness, nocturnal subterranean black metal band Demoncy plans to release a new EP entitled Risen From the Ancient Ruins and a re-issue of its full-length Empire of the Fallen Angel a/k/a Eternal Black Dominion.
Forever Plagued Records intends to release both of these “this year,” according to an announcement on its email newsletter, but this language does not clarify which year this is since 2014 is nearly done. Most likely, this announcement was intended for early 2015 and reflects a 2015 street date for these albums.
Here is the full statement:
3 CommentsForever Plagued Records is also very proud to announce DEMONCY will be releasing a new EP this year entitled “Risen From The Ancient Ruins”, it will include three new tracks and one ambiant. As a follow up, another DEMONCY release FPR has planned for this year, namely, the new rendition of “Empire Of The Fallen Angel aka Eternal Black Dominion”. Both releases will feature IXithra’s voice of unclean spirits.
When something great passes, people stand around wishing for more of those moments of power and beauty that it brought. And so we get the black metal equivalent of Django Wilson and his Electric Band Play the Hits of the Beatles, except that now it is a black metal version which revisits the greatest moments of early Gorgoroth through a filter of Ancient and Graveland. Nothing here is poorly executed but the whole misses the driving spirit of black metal that gave it its profundity and instead works on recombining known tropes that once gave it great intensity.
All of the classic attributes are here: the minor-key trailing melodies, the bombastic resurgent themes, the shifting between riffs conveying a sense of hope and thus returning to a feral despair, but the animating force that holds them together does not appear. Like a musical version of Frankenstein’s monster, The Divination of Antiquity is the most beautiful black metal album ever made from pieces of its best, but it lacks the soul to see beyond the immediate and material and touch the conceptual ground of actual black metal. Winterfylleth make songs with the basic feel and sensation of black metal, but without the intention behind it, they never develop to any conclusion sufficient for black metal and instead detour into the semi-circular wistful feeling that indie-rock and post-metal — both witnesses to the decline of human society in lugubrious ways, but helpless observers and not soul-participants in the counteraction — create that are the artistic equivalent of euthanasia. Like back, watch it happen, relax and let the waves wash over you. It will all be over soon.
As the album progresses, The Divination of Antiquity starts falling back on more rock and jazz tropes to supplement its diminishing store of black metal landmark moments. The result is pleasant to listen to and evokes many of the old feelings, but like uncompleted thoughts they linger in conversation outside the French coffeehouse and dissipate on the car exhaust and cold air of the morning breeze. It would be wonderful to find in this “what once was,” but that would be the equivalent of concluding the recent Star Wars movies will have the impact of the original out of nostalgia, and ignoring the obvious missing elements which, and not its accessories and techniques, made the original so powerful.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6aACrnFMTY
4 CommentsTags: Black Metal, crypto-indie, winterfylleth
