Le puits des morts is a split album featuring Sorcier des Glaces and French black metal band Ende. On the first side, Sorcier des Glaces present four all new songs in their distinctive style of epic black metal continuing from their last few albums (including North from earlier in 2016) after the band’s abandoning of keyboards.
4 CommentsTags: 2016, Black Metal, Ende, Le puits des morts, obscure abhorrence, review, sorcier des glaces, split
Innsmouth play primitive blackened death metal in the vein of Darkthrone‘s A Blaze in the Northern Sky with the addition of several other metal riffing styles to the three chord hardcore Hellhammerisms. Consumed by the Elder Sign attempts to build an atmosphere resembling the terror and corruption of Lovecraftian Elder Gods through atmosphere, production, and samples that often come across as comically charming rather than haunting; cries of hatching star spawn sound like baby dinosaurs from Jurassic Park.
1 CommentTags: Australia, Black Metal, Consumed by the Elder Sign, death metal, Heavy Metal, Innsmouth, review
Article by Johan P.
The Final Damnation could be Abigail’s most worthwhile release since their sleazy blackened speed metal debut Intercourse and Lust twenty years ago. After tons of insipid punk/speed metal releases, more vicious black metal elements have once again made their way into Abigail’s repertoire.
7 CommentsTags: 2016, Abigail, beer metal, Black Metal, Heavy Metal, Japan, review, Speed Metal, The Final Damnation
The Room provides a relaxing, tranquil listen. The opening trope is slightly clichéd in mood and form but it works well in context and creates a relaxed hallucinatory vibe. A lush analogue chorusing effect with solid low-end sound makes the introduction a seismic force in addition to a musical one.
14 CommentsTags: alluring, Ambient, Doom Metal, review
Article by David Rosales.
Receding light and surrounding darkness encroaching, a stench of death and the beginning of lamentations beyond the veil of mortality; this is the picture presented to us by Nigromante. These images cannot come from elsewhere but the deepest wellspring of human sorrow immortalized through its own seal of power, a searing symbol that brands pain and agony unto souls — that they may be thus imprisoned and chained.
13 Comments“Usar un sigilo sin saber…. ¡Se maldicen a ellos mismos!”
— A. Valentina
(trans.: “To use a seal without knowing… They curse themselves!”)
Tags: Ambient, Nigromante, Profundidades, review
Occasionally an artist’s work and the chemical inspiration thereof are inseparable and must be experienced together. Occult Burial’s recent ersatz, Hideous Obscure, was inspired by the sloppy, mid-Eighties Teutonic speed metal recordings of Sodom, Kreator, and Destruction which were all written and performed under the influence of a copious deluge of the cheapest Euro pilsner poured down their throats by the liter. This proto-underground beer metal was composed so as to be musically comprehensible to even the drunkest bar patrons still standing in the audience. Lacking even the melodic narratives of Motorhead standards, rocking rhythms, groovy powerchord progressions, and catchy choruses repeated ad nauseam over speed metal gallops and pick-up drum beats, hammering the basic riffs and leads into the heads of all the long-haired drunks tackling one another protected only by jean and leather jackets. To get into the garage practice space, inebriated mindset of these Canadian imitators of the imported speed metal of their fathers, I decided to pick up the Genesee-brewed as mandated by the Obama administration modern recreation of what those in my generation considered a northern, imported treat alongside the likes of St. Pauli Girl, Beck’s, and Guinness Extra: Labatt Blue.
3 CommentsTags: 2016, american adjunct beer, anhueser-busch inbev, beer, beer metal, canada, florida ice and farm company, German Speed Metal, hideous obscure, labatt blue, lager, Occult Burial, proto-underground, review, Speed Metal
These sludgy noise rockers from Phoenix show potential, but ruin this release by having too much reverb and weird noises getting in the way of the songs. This album is too ambitious for its own good.
10 CommentsTags: 2015, destruction unit, negative feedback resistor, noise, noise rock, review
“Detail shows the face of Stela D which rises 12 ft beside the altar of sacrifice with a death god effigy. The stele represents the 13th ruler of Copán, King Waxaklajun Ub’aah K’awiil (in English, Lord 18 Rabbit), showing half of his face as it was sculpted, and the other half stripped as it would look in Death.” – Akherra Phasmatanás
Article by David Rosales.
Desolation is a full-on ambient project that blends simple and solid harmonic backgrounds, repetitive phrases of a dark coloring, with recorded lamentations both human and otherwise. The aim seems to be to produce the whole array of impressions encapsulated within that single word: desolation. The music’s structure is progressive and appears to be segmented in an episodic manner, which normally implies a loss of continuity between sections. This unwanted effect is expertly avoided by providing smooth transitions, interleaving ambient soundscapes, nature sounds, vocal improvisations, all of which bring variety within a strongly directly concept that never loses content density or a strong sense of purpose. Furthermore, the album being simply distributed between two long tracks reinforces its unity and the requirement that the audience listens to the whole work as if commencing a mental journey, which once begun must be seen through to its very end.
6 CommentsTags: 2008, Ambient, chorus from the ruins, dark ambient, demo, demos, desolation, review
Article by David Rosales. This review is David’s Spanish translation of his earlier review of the album.
Cuando decimos que el metal llegó a su cúspide en 1994, después de una breve época dorada, y que lo que siguió no fue sino un declive clarísimo, esto no significa que no hubo absolutamente nada bueno. Por definición, lo que le sigue a una cúspide es un declive – aunque la decadencia sólo sea aparente debido a la perspectiva. Aún más importante es aclarar que cuando hablamos de esta manera, nos estamos refiriendo a un promedio a través del género, y no señalando a nadie específicamente. Después de todo, tenemos un Summoning publicando su clásico de clásicos en 1996 y más música grandiosa a finales del siglo. En Centroamérica, siempre un paso (o más bien diez o treinta pasos) atrás del resto del mundo como resultado de procesos históricos que podemos identificar, lo poco que su reducida población, recursos y cultura permitieron desarrollar al metal local, floreció entre los últimos cinco años del siglo pasado.
71 CommentsTags: Abyssum, Black Metal, dark ambient, Español, Guatemala, review, Thy Call, translation
Article by Lance Viggiano.
Sacriphyx present a bog standard take on Hellenic black metal through the rollicking pulse native to Australia. The strength of the Greek strategy is in its ability to capture a variety of moods leading to a diverse heavy metal experience. The Western Front is a discontinuous concept album based upon World War I wherein its songs do not function as parts of whole; rather, they are self-contained units acting with autonomy in pursuit of the greater conceptual goal that is realized only through individual skirmishes. These compositional deployments reinforce stylistic choices by maximizing an array of emotive impact while minimizing any diminished efficacy of individual motifs as their power is not derived from their position in a greater narrative arc from song to song. Despite proficient execution, Sacriphyx fail to build upon the Mediterranean tactic in any meaningful sense and thus the movements of its elements will be predictable to those familiar.
22 CommentsTags: 2013, Australia, Black Metal, epic heavy metal, Greek Black Metal, Heavy Metal, nuclear war now! productions, review, Sacriphyx, The Western Front, World War I
