While still retaining some of the aesthetic elements of 2016’s sleeper-hit Aṇaṅku, Serpent Ascending has adopted a flowing form of riffing on this latest album comparable to some Norwegian black metal. This has both an upside and a downside, in that the longer melodies can reach a greater degree of intensity at times, but there is also less contrast within individual songs.
5 CommentsTags: Black Metal, Serpent Ascending
Hessians were always searching for anything heavy back in the eighties. Digging deep into the import section or buying blindly from catalogs or zines were the only ways to hear anything that could be heavier outside of rarely engaged in underground tape trading. Slayer was the heaviest mainstream metal ever got. Sepultura was one heavier.
18 CommentsTags: ananku, article, beneath the remains, Brazil, death, death metal, demigod, Dismember, influences, Like an Ever Flowing Stream, massacra, sepultura, Serpent Ascending, Speed Metal
Underground occult metal blog Praefuscus Ferrum recently posted a piece entitled “Underground turned Funderground, and the Obscurantist Elite” proposing that what killed underground metal was widespress consumer access to new technologies such as the internet. These and the increased exposure to fans led artistically successful underground metal bands to pursue raw consumerism at the expense of writing transcendent music. D.A.R.G. points out that “the truest artists purposefully hide away from the profane eye” as the communication mediums the underground metal utilized (physical mail, tape trading, and BBSes) have been usurped by ones more accessible to laymen. He states the underground became the “funderground” in the blink of an eye as mainstream rock and pop fans who felt adventurous wanted rock and pop music with “black” and “death” “metal” production aesthetics, not actual death, black, or even heavy metal. Now the musicians actually writing novel underground metal compositions hide unbeknownst to the typical beer metaller in plain sight.
11 CommentsTags: Black Metal, consumeriam, death metal, demoncy, desecresy, funderground, hidden metal, infamous, metal underground, praefuscus ferrum, sammath, Serpent Ascending, underground, underground metal, underground music, underground never dies
Right now, above the metal underground there is what was coined, I believe originally by Pogrom from Arghoslent, the “Funderground”. The funderground consists of independent labels, sometimes mainstream distributed, releasing thousands of albums each year full of rehashed material or rebranded three-chord hardcore with different superficial aesthetics to fuel a bar show audience’s drunken moshing or make hipsters feel smart for liking an indie rock release with a dirty production. One can see this divide in most of the popular “underground” web forums such as those of Nuclear War Now! and Full Moon Productions. The most popular “underground” “metal” releases of each year are all older metal rehashed into pop-rock structures or rebranded hardcore. This divide is similar to what is felt in mainstream Western culture with the leftist “elites”‘ constant Marxist virtue signaling and branding freethinkers with various epithets for refusing to chant the praises of socialism mandated by the vanguard party.
32 CommentsTags: ananku, best of, Black Metal, death metal, elitism, funderground, Godless Arrogance, Heavy Metal, hipster invasion, james hetfield, kaeck, metallica, sammath, Serpent Ascending, Stormkult, underground, underground metal, underground music
2016 is over. The funderground mentality continued spreading forth, infesting metal over the last year just the same as it had in the decades past the genre’s artistic high-point in the early nineties. Rehashes of past greats pandering to a lowest common denominator audience continue to dominate the release schedules of metal labels all too willing to please the lemmings with music fit to safely ignore during drunken socializing. Ever-flowing streams of posers are desperate to be rock stars, pumping out plagiarism, and paying their way to record deals. File sharing and streaming reducing the cost of hearing new music to essentially nothing has led fans to constantly consume whatever is new regardless of quality. However the purging is at last at hand. The day of doom is here. The filth who have lied and corrupted the underground must be cleansed while the commendable elite few will remain.
145 CommentsTags: 2016, ananku, best of, Black Metal, crossover thrash, dawning, dead congregation, death metal, Grindcore, Harley Flanagan, infamous, Jarno Nurmi, Kshatriya, mortalized, ripper, Serpent Ascending, sorcier des glaces, steve cefala, Takafumi Matsubara, tarnkappe
Ananku is a term from the Tamil language describing the otherworldly and awesome power of sublime natural places and objects to overwhelm mankind into submission to their will by merely the perception of them. Jarno Nurmi of Serpent Ascending accomplishes this musically on his album of the same name by composing harmonized heavy and black metal style leads atop a death metal rhythmic basic into occult blackened narratives. Riffs are phrased and repeat to numerologically unfold, revealing profound and novel melodic leads as if the petals of a flower gradually blooming into gnostic truth when bathed in unconquered light.
24 CommentsTags: 2016, ananku, Black Metal, death metal, Finland, Heavy Metal, i voidhanger records, Jarno Nurmi, review, Serpent Ascending
Jarno Nurmi was interviewed by black metal blog Raw War to promote his one man band Serpent Ascending‘s new album, Ananku. Jarno reveals he has left Desecresy and discusses the Finnish black and death metal scenes along with the mythological, occult, and esoteric motivations behind his latest work, Ananku.
6 CommentsAṇaṅku is a different concept from ancient Tamil language and the word was chosen because it is widely unused and unknown, in many senses, but also because of it’s meanings of course. This is a nod to my earlier interests towards Indian and Asian esoteric traditions from where the process began though it ended up in something quite different.
The album turned out to have emphasis mostly on Northern European culture and identity from which it seeks to find the hidden sacred force that the word Aṇaṅku symbolises in the context. The album is adoration to Earth’s and Nature’s holiness, soil, blood and death.
Tags: ananku, Black Metal, death metal, desecresy, Finland, interview, Jarno Nurmi, raw war, Serpent Ascending, The Enigma Unsettled
Serpent Ascending‘s Ananku came out on CD recently courtesy of I, Voidhanger Records. The solo project of Jarno Nurmi of Desecresy, Serpent Ascending compose heavy and speed metal riffs into occult narratives of blackened death metal. Ananku is limited to 300 copies and may be purchased from Jarno Nurmi himself at the Serpent Ascending bandcamp page.
No CommentsTags: ananku, Black Metal, compact disc, death metal, Finland, Finnish Black Metal, Finnish Death Metal, Heavy Metal, i voidhanger records, Jarno Nurmi, Serpent Ascending
Humans are by nature delusional. They overestimate their importance and demand that reality fit their simple expectations. And yet, they are very good at mastering known skills, so they are highly proficient, but void of purpose. This hollowness is the left side of the metal Bell Curve, and to separate it from the good stuff, we have Sadistic Metal Reviews!
12 CommentsTags: ananku, autokrator, Cortege, meterosexuality, sadistic metal reviews, Serpent Ascending, todenlebend
Article by Lance Viggiano.
Ananku is random stereotypical sentimentality in terms of both pseudo climactic release and legacy nostalgia underscored by the crooning of its capricious composer. One may skip to any moment of this record and find a passable to competent riff which invites the listener to further explore its contents. Yet to sit through the work in succession, the order – or lack thereof- is much akin to a dreamlike state. Waking life is a comedic but rationally apprehensive continuity; whereas the experience of dreaming is much like thumbing through to one’s favorite moments in no particular order and therefore as a whole Ananku betrays its efforts at thematic unity. The forces behind Serpent Ascending make a noticed use of genre firmament however indecisive haste fashioned for itself a fallen world.
17 CommentsTags: 2016, ananku, Black Metal, i voidhanger records, Jarno Nurmi, metal art, Philosophy, Serpent Ascending
