Eldjudnir - Eldjudnir [2016]

Black metal's ability to constantly reinvent itself and transcend the sepsis of bland musical conformism has been, for me, one of its key assets. That is not to say every black metal band or album per se capably defies genre conventions to achieve and cultivate sounds or soundscapes that are highly divergent from the next one, but in general I don't think it's a great coincidence that the genre has been able churn out so many harrowing, innovative and effective practitioners on a level that would surpass, if not always dwarf, those produced by other genres' think-tanks. The variety and imaginative stretch, as often grim and nightmarish as it may be, (not necessarily a deficit according to my tastes) is undeniable. Yet this also invites the whole post-metal sub-genre into scrutiny, since the label is so often thrown under the black metal banner, yet features a myriad taxonomies of its own that often constitute great difficulty for the analyst's part to categorize. Boring semi-academic platitudes aside, Danish hopefuls have been one such band to offer such a caveat. While I find myself meddling over the authenticity of the atmospheric black metal tag as bequeathed by the M-A, their unique, desert-like brand of black metal has sold me consistently, spin after spin, giving credibility to my initial statement, to the extent that I no longer give a fuck whether I should term them 'black metal' or 'blackened gonzo avant-garde desert rock'.

Comparisons to the Norwegians avant-garde weirdos are justified. Granted, Eldjudnir does not swerve with the same wacky post-metal antics as The Virus That Shaped the Desert or their latest, Memento Collider, but swerve it does. Rather than the skedaddling waltzes of the Norwegians, Eldjudnir employ slow, intimate, distorted arpeggios and droning chord sequences that all fit into a mid-paced tempo. The bass lines here are fantastic: they gyrate effortlessly underneath the dissonant wave of chords, flowing out with jazzy, serpentine succor. What's unique about the Danes is that they seem to channel a sonic discordance that strikes a balance between the slower, somber undertakings of  French bands like Deathspell Omega, Merrimack and Blut Aus Nord and the crepuscular, desert leanings of Virus or DHM with their later, more progressive offerings. The album, coupled with the haunting visual of the cover art, presents this image of some antiquated train running across a lone rail track in the midst of a nocturnal, desert landscape, with derelict buildings or scraps of human development peeping about the ghost train. The Danes are certainly not industrial, but the mournful jangles of the guitars evoke such an atmosphere, leaving a trail of abandoned sickness as the tracks groove along.

Another obvious selling point for me are the vocals: they come in a scree of varieties. The more traditional, raspy black metal rasps, which are delivered with great accord to the harrowing aura of the record, are prominent, but more than those I loved the absolutely haunting cleans, these ritualistic timbers stretching across the illimitable atmosphere the Danes have constructed. The title track employs a healthy portion of both, with titillating melodies accompanying the rasps and the choruses ballasted by a choir of harrowing cleans. This goes on to show how much and how successfully Eldjudnir enjoy experimenting vocally, even when their bizarre but consistent riff fodder retains a stylistic cohesion throughout. The cleans, as on ''Mimer'', are not unlike Opeth at their best, and pull at the listener's heart's strings as though with a pair of mechanized phantom hands. On top of that, the band is brazen enough to boast a series of female vocals, like on the excellent ''Skade'', and yet their delivery does not loosen at the seams, actually proving to amplify the crippling, strange dolor of the record.

Clocking at a mere 36 minutes, Eldjudnir is an album I've found hard to break my jones for. Consistent, funereal and never really a drag; there are some sequences in some tracks where I wasn't wholly enamored, but certainly given the the brevity of each track (of which there are 7) there isn't ground aplenty to commit a lot of faults here. My biggest gripe, therefore, may simply be that I could not sink my teeth sufficiently into the plateau of ideas and musical desertification which they rather wonderfully shaped, however well it was construed, both in terms of atmosphere and production. The Danes' style is such that it can merely puncture a highly marginal niche even inside the black metal market, a small place alongside the likes of Virus, Hail Spirit Noir, DHM, Voivod, and maybe the more sophisticated dissonance of the French black metal school, but that quaint eccentricity which they espouse is precisely why I've grown to enjoy this record so much. Being so close to penning their own scripture, one that exists outside of the generic borders of black metal, I can merely wear out the humdingers on this on repeat until a third album pops into existence, out from the jarring and solemn womb of the Danes' imagination, and stamp this record as one of the finer yields of a crop that has already proved 2016 to be a blessed harvest.


Highlights:
Skade
Yggdrassil
Eldjudnir
Hræsvelgr

Rating: 85%

Phobocosm - Bringer of Drought [2016]

Although the relentless 'cavern-core' trend of the past few years has quelled in the absence of convincing riffs and atmospheric dynamics that we associate with this murky, spelunking sub-genre, there is still plenty of chaos to be had around, Canada's Phobocosm being one of them, with influences of anything from Blasphemy to Ulcerate running amok through their thick, mired veins. Their debut, 2014's Deprived, was one of the reasons (alongside the creme de la creme output of pioneering mavericks like Antediluvian, Mitochondrion  and Portal) that, despite its blooding excess of unruly brutality and sluggish Incantation-worship, I still keep my faith in this niche of music, and it was inevitable that through the conduit of one Dark Descent Records the group would continue to expand its retinue as a budding entity of this formula. Granted, whatever genre it is we're talking about, it's a perpetual labor to patronize and renew your sound; not only that, but to execute the newfound divisiveness in a coherent manner... none of which Phobocosm have quite attempted on their sophomore, Bringer of Drought, leaving, perhaps, something more to be desired.

Yet when I say the Canadians have not upped or refined their cavernous repository at all, I am not instinctively correct, but rather reflecting on the paucity of fresh elements that would render the music as immersive and punishing as the debut. The Canadians, unsurprisingly, have brought their huge, lumbering, even slightly granular guitars to the fore, such that songs like bombastic, crushing ''Ordeal'' reveal they haven't at all kept their cutlery dusty, delivering astonishingly heavy and smoldering waves of low-end chugs and sludge-like ruptures. Still, the song is probably my favorite among the bunch, (we're talking 4 tracks stretching between 8-12 minutes) so the rest of the songs hardly exhibit the same level of tactile destructiveness and pulverizing force, or, if anything, allure. Throughout the other three songs, we're exposed to a lot of contemplative post-metal, limping, desolate arpeggios that burst into cloudy swathes of distortion and titular chords in an almost Neurosis-esque fashion, sans the experimental tribalism of the California giants, sinewy impulses of fairly 'straightforward' old school death metal tremolos joined up by loose aural sections that make up for plenty of emotional resonance, occasional drum fills daunting and intimidating on the way.

The picture you get isn't a whole lot different from what Deprived had to offer, although a sludge/post-metal leaning is apparent, almost as though the Canadians are morphing into something in the mode of Mouth of the Architect or Holland's Sistere. However, there is a aridity to the riffs that just makes them too dry, lacking in intricacy, to be paired with Ulcerate, Deathspell Omega, or their fellow countrymen Gorguts, who possess an immovable vocation for balancing the cataracts of brutality and unearthly technical deceptiveness in a storm of highly refined wizardry. Not that any band has to be enormously technical to evoke satisfying, even stunning music: that much is abundantly clear. Indeed, Bringer of Drought nevertheless destroys within the furrows of its neanderthal regime: penalizing walls of sound and magnitude. The vocals are trenchant and great, highly claustrophobic and monstrous, just as you'd want them to be, looming over the instrumentation like an overfed cyclops out of hell, sending the listener's tranquility into a grating spiral of falling dominoes. My gripe is that by and large this isn't the most innovative thing I've heard, and even though its kills in its own standards, there's a point where it ceases to offer the listener anything more. I, too, am content that new bands are still channeling this atavistic and visceral sound that the new generation of old school death metal fanboys seem so enamored by, but without refurbishing their style, bands like Phobocosm don't have plenty of space to grow into. Solid stuff, gets a passing verdict, though I'd still vie for their debut.

Highlights:
Ordeal
Fallen

Rating: 70%

Terra Tenebrosa - The Reverses [2016]

There is something distinctly unnerving about Terra Tenebrosa even as you glance at their various cover arts. Slanting, oblique figures in masks that look like they were stolen from a hellish carnival around the whereabouts of Chernobyl, set against a grainy, black-and-white bucolic landscape as though something out of a modern indie horror movie. But even the cover of their albums - among which their third, The Reverses, I find the most visually frightening - does not begin to encompass the integument of the aural and parasitic trance which these Swedish obscures have no offer, a kind of digestible, if not lacking experimentation, configuration of grating, otherworldly senses which seems to liaise between highly industrialized, bogged down venture, and a more cohesive palette of instrumentation akin to Deathspell Omega, Samael, Neurosis at their most unhinged, Blut Aus Nord, Red Harvest, and the Dutch hopefuls Dodecahedron. While most of the time I'm accustomed to slab the label 'unusual' or 'strange' onto bands, the classification does not help much here. In fact, the only way to rectify the crawling insanity of such a band as Terra Teneborsa should require a deep dissection of the band's style and music.

How exactly to go about this? The Swedes are frightening, theatrical, capricious and dissonant. Predictability is completely out of question, with the band employing such a rich mixture of dense, broiling industrial guitars, cavernous murmurs intermingling with chants, and the production value is simply off the chain, pummeling and bombastic, it's oddly yet titillatingly loud which gives the parasitical quality of the riffs a great deal of punch and energy. Truly, production is at the helm of the sheer momentum of this music. Had the band opted for a grainier, lo-fi production the aural experience, while no less unnerving, might have come off as underwhelming and appropriately downsized, but the magnitude of sound here enhances the claustrophobia and atmosphere, much like the Swiss Samael, especially after their 1996 masterpiece, Passage, only instead of the cosmic, ethereal aura they manifest so endearingly, the Swedes meticulously fabricate the auditory equivalent of a industrial nightmare doll-house, with charred pieces of plastic and piled masses of doll's heads lying about. Ambient sounds textures and multitudes of creeping voices fill in the almost mindless discomfiture they strew in between tracks or passages, and these as freakish and harrowing as a lengthy shot from a Tarkovsky or Kubric opus, dragging in the listener for several minutes with terrible anticipation until a load of jagged, heavyweight riffs are unburdened.

This is very noticeable with the final, overarching megalith, ''Fire Dances'', some 16 minutes long, which not only has a terrific set of crushing, grooving riffs but a totally immersive center section with long, drudging currents of sound and discord enveloping the listener with minutes at an end. But besides the band's obvious stylistic merit in cultivating such shadowy, implosive chaos, I was surprised at how many of these songs which I felt like coming back to, even with actually memorable riffs and sections I could pick out across the board. ''Ghost at the End of the Rope'' is like a titular, cadaverous Leviathan track, with one guitar chugging out huge rhythms and the other plodding at a terse, repetitive melody; the band's mastery at experimental black metal is apparent from the unusual timing and signatures, the explosive drums and the few, narrow moments of pureblood Scandinavian dynamics which they employ, making for a delicious kind of escape for the bedraggled black metal outlaw. ''The End is Mine to Ride'', with its more traditional structural approach and mid-paced gait, is also very good. Intensity is never a problem for Terra Tenebrosa when they are so apt at picking paces and tempos apart, diverging and converging into varying structures and patterns, which they equally reveal on ''Exuvia'', a forlorn industrial metal piece utilizes a single riff for its entirety, building upon the soundscape around it. Granted, there is some repetition with the riffs but overall the sound sustains itself and the album never yields to musical equanimity, which means I was rarely disinterested throughout. The Swedes have not quite deracinated black metal as others, like, say, Arcturus or Sigh, have. Instead, black metal remains an element of the recipe which in itself is, beyond just 'unusual', mortifying and creepy as fuck. Tribal and nightmare-inducing, this is the kind of album you definitely don't want to give a spin at 2-3 in the morning, not in the least if you're living in a wooden cabin, with the closest scrap of civilization being a petrol station located 20 km away. You've been warned.


Highlights:
Where Shadows Have Teeth
Ghost at the End of the Rope
Fire Dances

Rating: 80%

Qrixkuor - Three Devils Dance (EP) [2016]

One of the most strenuous challenges of the reviewer is, perhaps, beyond arbitrating his/her attention toward so many releases, (black and death metal albums are a dime a dozen these days) to selectively deploy his/her while rummaging from one near-indistinct album to the other. Such has been my travail when it comes to London's Qrixkuor, a quartet going by the rather practically brief pseudonyms R., M., A. and S. Now, while I always give considerable space to bands refurbishing the stylistic chaos and miasma of Blasphemy and Incantation, among a few less-known cults, I find it difficult to keep track of things when whole allure of mind-fuckery and heavy, discordant music turns its own head over itself by providing stale crumbs when the listener is looking forward to a nice, healthy helping of engaging chaos. Barring the caprice of this disappointed reviewer, the band's first EP, cleverly titled Three Devils Dance (there are three songs on it), is canned dissonance at best, but at least it doesn't try to veil the influences from which its malicious barbarity stems.

There isn't so much of a busy flow of ideas and novel sounds on Three Devils Dance as there is this tendency to emulate the sounds emanating from a slaughterhouse full of obnoxious ghouls and fat corpses: compared to renowned arbitrators of the black/death/war metal sounds (think Archgoat, Weregoat, Proclamation, Blasphemy, etc.), Qrixkuor is, to a strong degree, more pure death metal than anything else, a nostalgic manifestation of Incantation, Immolation and Morbid Angel as if there wasn't anything half so delectable to the retro death metal fan. Oozing, disgusting rhythm guitars cavort sluggishly with a tempest of tremolos and barged picking techniques as the drams waddle on in chaotic, yet formulated, disarray. What's interesting to note, perhaps, is that the Brits will employ twitchy, caterwauling leads sequences more often than many other bands in this niche, typically enclosing one riff with a wild flurry of notes and high pitched tremolo wails before cutting into the next riff, in a fashion that would have formed a malicious little grin on Trey Azathoth's face.

However, this EP is just so choked down to a mere three songs, each hovering above and below the bounds of the 10-minute mark, that it feels something is alack, but as the record trudges forward there seems to be no fresh catalyst of tension and furore that could make it more exciting. The guitar is fleshy and grimy enough, and the picking sequences are certainly intricate enough to offer some depth, but the overall trajectory of the album seems frozen in one formulaic engraving that can't seem to break the confines of its limitation. Tangibly, the artistry also freezes over; you just know you're not going to get much more out of this after two spins. Qrixkuor try to dress it up a notch with a lengthy intro full of dramatic buildup and taught violins clawing at your ears before riffs pop up, it's only a shame they can't deliver the same aural tension that's promised at the beginning. The vocals are 'good', to say the least, muffled cookie monster growls fed into a few bouts of treble and feedback that works well with the grisly tonality of the guitars for the first 4 minutes or so, but their venom quickly wanes. Three Devils Dance is not a bad piece, but as long the Brits resume their spelunking without much daring, - and there doesn't seem to be any sign of genuinely unique or ravishing craftsmanship - they have a long way to go, and their material won't entice me beyond the first 1-2 spins.

Highlights:
Serpent's Mirror


Rating: 55%

Zhrine - Unortheta [2016]

To be sure, it is a bit unfair to be labelled 'French black metal' every time you try to put on a little bit of dissonance, but there's still some credibility to that statement when you think of the collective impact of Deathspell Omega and Blut Aus Nord on the black metal scene. But then by nature I've come to expect nothing less from Iceland, home not only to some of the most astounding black/post-black metal acts of the last decade (Sólstafir, Kontinuum, Misþyrming) but also to a veritable breeding ground of pyroclastic destruction and ash, a fitting environment for the country's latest upstart Zhrine to pop out, a force to be reckoned with solely on the grounds of Unortheta's cover: a cavernous concave built within an archaic isle floating with the majesty of a tributary running straight through it, whose origin remains alluringly mysterious. Or so I would have it. And so, even though these gentleman come from the Deathspell Omega school of fucked-upedness, (a poster of Si Monvmentvm Requires, Circvmspice behind the bandstand in one of their early rehearsals evinces my deduction) there must have been a deal of unease when entirely emulating the sound of the famed Frenchmen, and for that reason Zhrine come off as genuine engineers of chaos and tumult in a form that feels both fresh and somewhat familiar, a healthy combination.

The forecast of this record is depravity and lifelessness. The opener ''Utopian Warfare'' aches with terrible beauty and emptiness, but the Icelanders have a wonderful tendency to keep the tracks within a certain range, scarcely mounting the 6-minute mark, which reinforces the tension with considerable brevity. The core of Unortheta, - largely a caustic brew of Gorguts, Ulcerate, Deathspell Omega, some Demilich and some Portal - should certainly appeal to audience toward which the sound is tailored, but this is a record busy with riffs and conscious about chord clarity which sets them apart in one way or another from their notorious benefactors. Songs like the virulent, fantastic ''Spewing Gloom'' are as good as their titles suggest, fleshing out discordant but enticing chord progression and distorted arpeggios, ballasted by frenetic, almost poly-rhythmic drumming that oscillate into slower Meshuggah-like grooves (as on ''Syringe Dance'', my favorite piece on the record) tempered by a slew of cymbal crashes and splashes. The idea is a veined array of cables, taut, snapped, then jangling and jumbling all over the place like a bunch of mechanic eels. The gloomy lows of vocals, to add, are not just great and evenly placed within the tracks, but also stretch into these far raspier, anguished chants that provide the perfect contrast of duality and grimness to the record.

Zhrine are great at building up moods and tensions before imploding with catharsis - hence the cable imagery. They don't take their sweet time with it though, which is good, because who wants to hear hours upon hours of dysfunctional clean guitars drowsed in reverb just to hear a bunch of cool riffs at the end? The mechanism of Unortheta is rewarding in that the build-ups are just long enough for you too feel truly ravished and incited about the upcoming spasm of dissonance, a perfect example being ''World'' with boils into a crushing wave of riffs before plateauing into slower pace once more, after which the listener is greeted with a broiling haunt of pure black metal chords. Rhythmic variations also bring atmospheric sludge mavericks like Mouth of the Architect, Neurosis and Isis to mind, so it's undeniable that Unortheta is keenly probing the boundaries of its norms; what's better is that there seems to be no shortage of good riffs or hooks throughout the record, with humdingers like ''Empire'' and ''The Earth Inhaled'' counterbalancing the rear end of the album. With the exception of a few dull moments here and there Unortheta retains its abysmal aura and dire pallor, mapping out a new gap to be explored by bands performing in accordance to the so called 'French' school of black metal, or just contagious, neanderthal caverncore, which remains surprisingly popular in 2016. All told, unless you were looking for something burlesque or cheerful on this album - and you quite literally have to be a neanderthal to be searching for that - the probability that it will disappoint is low; the probability that will erase all your hopes and yearnings off the face of the earth and turn your ears into honeycombs of tar and ash - much higher.

Highlights:
Spewing Gloom
The Syringe Dance
Empire

Rating: 83%

The Cream of the Crop: Arthalos Picks His Best of 2015

Overall I felt this was quite a strong terms of both quality and quantity across all genres of metal, but that has always been the case so I doubt 2015 surpassed annual mean scores by a great deal. In another sort of Murphy's Rule for yearly releases, the bulk of the quality was concentrated in the first and last couple of months, at least for me, and the pool of better releases in between was spread out a little more thinly. Still, that may also have to do with the fact that much of my own lack of research during these months was due to a combination of slight disinterest in and reluctance to pick up newer recordings at the time, which I managed to rectify somewhat by the end of the year. In terms of reviews I did start strong but my writing dwindled as lots of real life issues started filtering in, and unfortunately I had to conclude the year on a low-ish note in terms of reviews. Towards the end of the year I pushed to listen to as many new albums as possible, thus molding the current shape of my lists, but of course a good deal of albums went below my radars. I hope to make up as much as I can for those in the initial months of 2016.

Nonetheless, there was an excellent scree of releases all around, with France and Norway sticking out more than usual, beyond the usual suspects like USA and Sweden. France may not have made the top 20 cut, but it produced metric tons of great, caustic black and death metal in its national brew, fitting selections at a time when Deathspell Omega have remained idle for a good long while (seriously, new album better be in the work, guys). And Norway just trumped with an unprecedented triplet of gold from its three avantgarde mavericks Solefald, Arcturus and Dodheimsgard (though the latter did not make the cut) who assuredly produced enduring masterpieces to enrich the legacy of their discographies. But of course the Enslaved album, being more 'black metal' than its gonzo counterparts, perhaps one of the safer records they've done in the last decade, is also fantastic. 2015 is perhaps most surprising considering the wealth of releases that either belong to long-time masters (Sigh, Raven, Motorhead, Saxon, Solefald, Angra, Satan, Killing Joke, Enslaved, Arcturus, even Iron Maiden, etc.) or newer entrants and banner-carriers who had already won my heart from a few years hence (Horrendous, Sulphur Aeon, Tribulation, etc.).

As always, I avoided or just downright disliked many of these uber-hyped mainstream metal records, not to mention the mass of stoner/sludge material promulgated by media-friendly review sites and communities. But downsizing that pool in its entirety is also risky, as several of the year's best turned out to be some of the most 'overrated', like the Ghost or Enslaved records.

I have also compiled an extensive list of my 100 favorite releases, in non-hierarchical order, so as to provide a little more mileage on the density of worthwhile recordings for the year. You can take a look here

YouTube links have been embedded in the lists below.

Edit: After numerous listens the new Leprous record has earned my heart's fondness with exponentially high returns, hence acquiring a spot in the top 10. Pushed back the Katavasia album and replaced the Enforcer album with the new Nechochwen record.


Top 20 Metal Albums of 2015 ****

21) Lychgate - An Antidote for the Glass Pill (Blood Music)
20) Nechochwen - Heart of Akamon (Bindrune Recordings)
19) Crypt Sermon - Out of the Garden (Dark Descent Records)
18) Kontinuum - Kyrr (Candlelight Records)
17) Black Trip - Shadowline (Steamhammer)
16) Tribulation - Children of the Night (Century Media Records)
15) Ghost - Meliora (Loma Vista Recordings)
14) Sulphur Aeon - Gateway to the Antisphere (Imperium Productions)
13) Trial - Vessel (High Roller Records)
12) A Forest of Stars - Beware the Sword You Cannot See (Lupus Lounge)
11) Sadist - Hyaena (Scarlet Records)
10) Horrendous - Anareta (Dark Descent Records)
09) Soilwork - The Ride Majestic (Nuclear Blast Records)
08) Leprous - The Congregation (InsideOut Music)
07) Killing Joke - Pylon (Spinefarm Records)
06) Satan - Atom by Atom (Listenable Records)
05) Year of the Goat - The Unspeakable (Napalm Records)
04) Enslaved - In Times (Nuclear Blast Records)
03) Zierler - ESC (Vanity Music)
02) Arcturus - Arcturian (Prophecy Productions)
01) Solefald - World Metal. Kosmopolis Sud (Indie Recordings) ****


Top 10 Non-Metal Albums of 2015 **

10) Sammal - Myrskyvaroitus (Progressive Rock/Folk)
09) Julia Holter - Have You in My Wilderness (Dream Pop)
08) Grimes - Art Angels (Pop)
07) Grave Pleasures - Dreamcrash (Post-Punk/Goth)
06) Mew - +- (Progressive Pop/Rock)
05) Squarepusher - Damogen Furies (Electronic/IDM)
04) Purity Ring - Another Eternity (Pop)

03) John Carpenter - Lost Themes (Electronic)

02) Susanne Sundfør - Ten Love Songs (Synthpop)
01) Everything Everything - Get to Heaven (Progressive Pop/Rock) **

Honorable mentions:

Hot Chip - Why Make Sense? (Electronic/Synthpop)
Zombi - Shape Shift (Electronic)
Steven Wilson - Hand Cannot Erase (Progressive Rock)
Django Django - Born Under Saturn (Progressive/Indie Rock)
Carpenter Brut - Trilogy (Compilation) (Synthwave/Electronic)
Braids - Deep in the Iris (Indie Rock)
Knife City - Star Versus (EP) (8-Bit/Chiptune)

A little addendum on my non-metal choices. Of course my auditory leisure time generally circulates around the realms of metal, but these albums reflect part of my interests outside of those realms, and as you may have noticed this year supported a wealth of wonderful pop albums with scarcer electronic music, rounded by a selection of rock albums of varying style and contour. Every album on this list is compulsive and I enjoyed them immensely, but I have to say the Everything Everything album earned its plaudits by far, a record I listened to more than any other album, in any genre. That may be partially because the songs are fairly short, but I also found myself in entranced with the Brits' ability energize with song after song, amazing falsetto vocals, synthesizers and other electronic influences popping in - just fantastic. I cannot recommend it enough, even though it has some minor flaws. But the Susanne Sundfor record comes close, despite the simplicity of the compositions. The John Carpenter album of 'lost' film scores is also extremely noteworthy, and should come as no surprise for someone who adores the man's backlog of 80's horror flicks. The oddest ball of the bunch is arguably the Sammal record, which not only restored my faith in modern prog rock outfits but strengthens Finland's hand as one of leading conduits of 60's-70's worship. Points for Svart Records (which also released the new Seremonia album this year).


And Now... Listmania: A List of Lists * 

Of course during the course of over 4 years of blogging here, I've kept tabs on MANY blogs, and I've always had an inexplicable sympathy for fellow bloggers and reviewers alike. This year has been no exception. Therefore I've decided to make a compilation of all the notable year-end lists I could muster, since the idea is to make the music as widely known and accessible to people as possible. Granted, I may have my own little grudges about these lists, but rest assured it's nothing personal, in fact differentiation between choices is always welcome, so long as the list isn't a big, fat, cock-swallowing ape of Pitchfork's Top 10 albums of 2015. What follows is a comprehensive list of all the year-end lists I could find, although obviously with that excuse the curious reader is also encouraged to read through the other articles and reviews in the respective blogs. Some of the blogs I've linked can also be found on my blog roll column.

Autothrall's Execution Through Listification: The 2015 Edition -- The best of the best. His lists amaze me for their depth, range and also for the sheer fact that I tend to enjoy almost every record in the top 20-25 unanimously. There's also a very extensive bonus section comprised of top-lists for books, non-metal and various games. Simply mandatory for metal music nerds.

The AMG Staff Picks the Top Ten Records o’ 2015: There’s No Accounting for Anything Anymore -- I love AMG's brash, in-your-face attitude when it comes to reviewing, and I certainly feel most of the time that their high scores are justified, plus they seem to be seated in some kind of independent twilight zone between the 'poorer' bloggers such as myself and the more mainstream milieu of music reviewers, in their own social commune which is just awesome. The end of the year lists are always great and exuberant, with so many different staff members with different tastes. Be sure to check out the individual lists as well.

Skull Fracturing Metal's Top 30 of 2015 -- Perhaps a bit too high on modern power and traditional heavy metal but SFM has nonetheless been one of the very first blogs I've been acquainted with since my initiation and consequently I can't help but promote this list.

Listmania 2015 (No Clean Singing) -- These guys have a freaking open sale of awesome lists every year, from so many different users and with different labels that I can hardly keep track of all them. This is just a link to one of those individual lists, be sure them to give them all a decent look.

Arson Cafe: 2015 Dispirit -- Just a very well composed list that endures no truncation, leading up to 100 entries, all listed hierarchically. All sorts of meritorious extreme metal can be found here, as well some more modern metal records that should accord well with you if you have experimental tastes.

The 2015 End-of-Year List (Heavy Metal Spotlight) -- Just seeing the Slugdge album at #20 makes me happy. I dunno, man, it just does. Plus range and diversity run fairly wide with this list, An opportunistic mash of death, black, doom and traditional heavy with a good focus on the more 'old school' side of things.

Best Albums of 2015 (Metantoine's Magickal Realm) -- Basically your go-to blogspot (along with Slugdelord) when it comes to DOOM. All sorts of great, obscure, retro-related rock and metal here, and the list is pretty sweet to top it off. So much of a 70's stoner reprise in this blog that it practically begs a joint while you're browsing for music.

piotrekmax: Best metal albums of 2015 (Sputnik Music)

2015 End of the Year List (Ghoul's Crypt)

Finally, you can seek here an even larger compilation of RYM lists, if that's your thing, a great, long shelf of worthwhile lists with actual descriptive commentary and out of the ordinary pickings. That rounds the end-of-the-year craze for 2015. You have no excuse not to check out at least a few of these works. Now is a time for rest, which I believe I've earned, shortly before I get on the 2016 bandwagon. Praise Cthulhu and stay metal, my friends.

Vardan - Between the Fog and Shadows [2015]

It would have been a high supposition at any rate to expect Italian one man suicidal black metal hermit Vardan to cast aside the cumbersome simplicity and rawness of his album ''Winter Woods'' and the dozen records which precede it and break mold with his 6th album for the year, ''Between the Fog and Shadows'', since the man has not only failed to mature in his taste for cover art but also to artistically develop and improve upon the quality of the music on way of another, let alone cast a wider net of influences to garner sounds from. Vardan's creative repertoire is quite frankly depleted at this point, but somehow he can still come up with songs of 10+ length by downsizing what the works of Burzum or fellow countrymen Forgotten Tomb into a recalcitrant amalgamation begetting nothing but doom and desolation. My only theory at this point is that he's bulk buying from some low-income producer of depressive bedroom black metal - who, by the way, might currently be strumming the strings of his next bleak piece - and then presenting them in seemingly remote packages for the maximum amount of profit. If not that, the man is working his ass off every hour of the day, crafting these dreary, sleepwalking bevies of desolation and wintry silence, and it's a real shame that the amount of work he's culminated hardly accrues into quality writing, on a par with other prolific modern black metal musicians like Jute Gyte. Quality over quantity, right?

The pastiche is the same; the musical equivalent of being strapped on a crucifix and slowly gliding through an icy fjord by midnight, with owls creaking in their groves and the forest leaves rustling silently behind. This is the kind of immersive experience already channeled by the likes of Midnight Odyssey, but Vardan are far too down-to-earth and never take the aesthetic to its cosmic and astronomical, mesmerizing flights as some other bands do, with raw and perturbed production standards capturing most of that early 90's Burzum/Darkthrone tone. Simplistic riffs in the river of convergence here. There is not even a hugely chord-based, Scandinavian trope to be found, since I found ''Between the Fog and Shadows'' to be even more dolorous than its predecessor, and instead there are loads of stringy open chords and flimsy, distorted arpeggios all over the place: the result is not a mess of whirlwind of intensity, but a pale wave of desolation and distress like ripples in the water. There are moments where Vardan will splash some damp gloss on the sway of the guitars with these odd, slightly inaudible synthesizers that remind me of the ambient mastery of Forest Silence, a Hungarian black metal outlet extraordinaire, but as much as I enjoyed the momentary aural realizations of the synthesizers, they're much too buried in the mix and the frankly poor levels of production to have any sheen. To wit, the songs feel outrageously long at times, and rightfully so, since by cutting down to 3 tracks Vardan is presenting us with songs of 11, 15 and 18 minutes in length, respectively, each another frigid exercise in blatant chord strumming and almost apologetic depression ad nauseam, with few breathing holes existing within their immersive bodies for the listener to take a moment from the monotony.

This seems like some pretty hateful flak here, but in fact there are some fairly 'enjoyable' sequences to be found within the album. ''Solitary Death of a Forest Spirit'' is easily the best among the triplet, with dissonant and angry chord sequences ousting the slower, black/doom moments and a rather excellent, rainy array of ambient synths working their way through the middle of the song, and during one of those rare instances Vardan truly captures the monotonous, dreary bulwark of emotion it needs to synthesize to its entirety. The riffs, limited in their natural disposition of favoring recurring waves rather than slews of unhinged creativity, are nonetheless not too bad, but I don't feel too good for them either. Vardan's vocals, once more, while the possible game changer, become stunted and lethargic as the record passes on, and with all the records pacing in linear currents and motives, vocal duties hardly retain a symbiotic relationship with the other instruments, merely propagating these harsh, unruly, echoing ululations and howls that are quite cold and haunting in their own respect, but fall short of excellent in the long-run. Unfortunately, while all the instruments never dip below the level of 'average', the drums are quite fucking painful. I'm not know to be a complainer of drums as much as I chastise guitars and riff-craft, but even the silent reviewer has to despair the awful stampede of the open hi-hat and the unnecessary loudness of the drums in general. This is a bedroom black metal record, and the drums should traditionally be embedded deep in the mix, way behind the guitars and vocals, but here they're constantly to the fore, without even producing anything besides simple beats. As Fenriz says the drums are only supposed ''to... be there'' - and thus on this one point I will be unabashedly cancel my charitableness. Fuck you, drums.

Beside that little mishap, ''Between the Fog and Shadows'' is not a bad record, and that mournful sameness it breeds would help you with sleep if one day you're in the mood for slashing your wrists open and there aren't any knives to be found in your house. Anti-depressants that come with corpse paint. But heck, we've already been through this, and if you've somehow traced this review from whatever obscure source you found it in, you're probably pretty well-versed in black metal yourself, and know that groups like Burzum, Bethlehem, Forgotten Tomb, Sombres Forets or Austere have long emerged as apostles of this somber, wintry sub-genre, so your chances are probably stronger with them.

Highlights:
Solitary Death of a Forest Spirit

Rating: 55%

Nocternity - Harps of the Ancient Temples [2015]

Choosing from a not-so densely populated backlog of releases, I'd easily vie for Nocternity's 2003 ''Onyx'' and the following EP ''A Fallen Unicorn'' (2004) over any of their other releases since only with these two pieces the Greeks seem to be blessed for cultivating quality, Burzum-esque black metal epics spanning the epochs of grief, glory and crenelated medieval towers which give actually satisfying vibes. In respect to the Greek black metal scene today, Nocternity's choice to plod through a field bearing more resemblance to Burzum, Ulver and Kvist rather than Necromantia and Rotting Christ may be regarded as slightly unnatural, even though they are technically sticking to the norm with this approach, albeit one bedecked with a trademark middle-age warrior clad in silver and chain mail, and an myrmidion helmet. I have to give the band props at any rate even if their music sometimes falls short of the intended majestic effect, especially given my personal knack for pottering with such fantastical, lyrical themes as the ones the Greeks present as their thematic pastiche, with lengthy, almost poetic lyrics not unlike those of Summoning, or the verses of H.P. Lovecraft or Clark Ashton Smith, but as always, this only proves to be a color filter at best, and in cases like ''Harps of the Ancient Temples'', the band's third full-length, fanciful lyricism scarcely enhances the experience.

That's not to say the album's bad, because I've certainly heard worse. Only, between the rigid, almost Hellhammer-esque riffs and the dull atmospherics of an album, despite being 'relatively' short, I found myself looking for plenty of breathing space, or a few moments' escape from drudgery. Nocternity's style is really not hard to determine: they espouse these creaky traditional rasps on top of a fragile expanse of usually doom-y chords and lumbering tremolos and boom - you have pretty much the gist of the album ready. Beckoning of Scandinavia, yet also feeling intimidatingly near to a crude Eastern European counterpart, ''Harps of the Ancient Temples'' is a surprising shock value loss over the band's 2003-4 material with a much less dynamic and visceral guitar, faded ambiance, even though the band still manages to live up to its fantastical imagery through the use of mystifying, if slightly bland, synthesizer work, which feel reminiscent of Summoning's earliest work from the early 90's, and along the way simplistic influences of early Emperor, Burzum, Ulver or Ragnarok are scattered sans bombast. Much like the few Vardan records I listened to (or anything of this vein for that matter) Nocternity does a decent job of charging off into gloomy, melancholy antiquity without careening or giving the guitar a few fickle taps over the fret board, and it's admirable that they can do this with consistency, but when it comes to evocation of dolor and a battlefield abound with the phantasmagoria of fallen armies, this is as dry and as withering as a feast for crows, and appropriately too since they seem to favor the fiction of George R.R. Martin (you gotta admit, Khal Drogo is a sick pseudonym).

Granted, no one was expecting an opulent black metal masterpiece that reaches toward the stars, like those Spectral Lore records, nor some wacky avantgarde tour de force a la Hail Spirit Noir and Transcending Bizarre?, but I had my subtle hopes that this album would have at least been on a par with ''Onyx''. Lurching chords with depressed note patterns and rhythmic sways with the tempo equivalent of a trudging elephant seem suitably grim, for 1984. ''Blood Rite'' contains a few 'diversion', like minimal, meandering melody wisps that cling on to the main hull of cascading chords, and the band even digresses to a few riffs notes instead of chords for a brief instant, but it doesn't save the song. The title song (which was actually introduced back in 2007 as one of two songs in an EP) is perhaps the most memorable tune out the entire archaic grimoire, with tingling synthesizers and an actually impressive guitar solo slightly past the middle, although even that alone doesn't belong in the same league as Katavasia, Spectral Lore or Varathron in my book; whereas ''B.O.D.D'' is marginally more interesting and choral due to its ambient effects and moody sense of embitterment. Ultimately, in a growing market for Greek black metal, I'm glad that Nocternity is joining the bandwagon (sort of) in a party heading to be one of the world's best, but in that case scenario where each of these newsprint Hellenic black metal records are compartmentalized and projected into the stratosphere, you can be sure that ''Harps of the Ancient Temples'' will be among the first to start thawing shortly before disintegrating in the vast spacial expanse. You have the choice to jump back to their previous releases.

Highlights:
Harps of the Ancient Temples
B.O.D.D

Rating: 48%

A Forest of Stars - Beware the Sword You Cannot See [2015]

Lately there's been an ongoing fetish in the black market concerning the dissection and integration of elements derived from 70's psychedelic rock bands, and to be honest, while this does not sound like a favorable coitus of genres at first, a trend which has engendered bands like Hail Spirit Noir and Oranssi Pazuzu can be hardly be chastised for lacking proficiency or being unambitious. Of course, the marriage of 70's psychedelia with black metal does require eccentricities of sorts, which is why even though we dub then as psychedelic black metal, each of these bands, as well as England's A Forest of Stars more or less enjoy a uniqueness under their own roof. A Forest of Stars' fourth offering ''Beware the Sword You Cannot See'' hits all the sweet spots for an eclectic heavy metal listener, a steampunk aficionado, a Victorian gentlemen, a comic Dickensian figure straight out of Bleak House, and a spiritualistic preacher of sorts, since it's likely to be one of the weirdest yet absorbingly idiosyncratic releases I've heard this year along with Solefald's ''World Music'', chock full of kooky inventiveness and immersive musical talent.

If you don't believe me, just have a look at the pseudonyms: one Titus Longbutter or T.S. Kettleburner certainly feels redolent of a Dickens novel, the bizarre parade of folk, autumnal psychedelia and gloomy black metal impressionism doesn't even begin there. From it's melancholy opener ''Drawing Down the Rain'' the band seems to be on the verge of a progressive black metal phantom in the mode of Enslaved with fairly simplistic melodies, but they immediately fill up the empty spaces with folksy flutes which beckons a far more pagan taste, say, similar to one Kroda, Drudkh or Arkona; but I love the fact that the group can shift through their own 7+ minute songs like quicksand, evolving once again into a hazily progressive riff and then into a meteor shower of unfrazed tremolos headed by melodic psychedelia. These Victorians are unhinged but it doesn't stop the music from evocatively drawing up imagery and queer, almost Gothic constellations and fragmentary journeys across the firmament. The opener is by far the most 'atmospheric' advent in the entire album, fostered by somber chords and almost minimalistic melody patterns, but the following two songs, ''Hive Mindless'' and ''A Blaze of Hammers'' are just as consuming pieces, and the group, thankfully does not omit a few pauses in between the marathons by adding a few stringy chords and clean guitar sequences glazed with nearly defunct violins and keyboard scores. They do take some time to get to the point, true, and not everything (especially in the first half of the album) is bound to grab you by your neck and slam you to the ground and leave you agog with sensation, but the material presented is celestial and beautiful to say the least.

Of course it would be a capital offense to exclude the vocalist Mister Curse who practically spearheads the benignly confusing effusion of sounds with his remarkable voice. We're not even talking regular singing here: he feels more as though he's reciting poetry in a remarkably 'English' manner, exquisite oratory that reminds me of Bal-Sagoth and their fantastical vocal shenanigans with similarly cosmic subjects in mind. Katheryne, Queen of Ghosts also handles female vocals here, a soothing and rich fairy-metal vox not unlike Nightwish or the operatic female vocals in Therion's later outings, but what I truly enjoy is that they supplement the harsher, brazen discourse of the male vocals with a maudlin alternative. Mister Curse, of course, engages in a more unruly inflection from time to time to complement fuzzier discharges of fairly straightforward Scandinavian tremolo work, like a well-attuned Victorian gentleman suddenly devolving into beast-mode. The second half of the album, which I probably enjoyed more than the first, is split into numerical parts. Not only are all the songs shorter in this half but they flow in and out of each other like a lengthy piece diced into smaller fragments: ''Part I: Mindslide'' begins with a moving vocal solo by Katheryne, and then into morphs into a haunting, hypnotic orgy of buzzing synthesizers redolent of John Carpenter's solo compositions and horror scores with ''Have You Got A Light, Boy?'', my favorite song on the entire album, which unfolds entirely with the words and there WAS light! before ''Perdurabo'', with its equally Gothic and alienating synthesizer swell, begins. But keep in mind that no single instrument truly steals the show here, ever. While the violins or singular keyboards may be to the fore on some of the rainier moments on the album, and the lapsing, flickering psychedelic guitar riffs during some other sequences, it's a surprisingly healthy balance of a canopy of instruments and endeavors in a rather 'unhealthy' album which makes it such a pleasure to listen to ,without anything running dry.

The sheer scope and autumnal drapery offered by ''Beware the Sword You Cannot See'' is enormous. Picturesque vistas and celestial serpents devouring their own tails. Imaginary soundscapes that could have easily fitted Mervyn Peake's masterpiece Gormenghast. The conceptual enigmas of the record, however, are just the cherry on top as far as the music goes, since this album is bound to be the new best thing for black metal, at least in my book. Not every moment is mesmerizing, and I really felt they could have trimmed the songs a little, - especially those in the first half - but the emotive, paranoid atmosphere offered, both lyrically and musically, is nothing short of delightful when it comes to the few outstanding tracks to be found, and certainly this is far more captivating tapestry of autumn leaves and starry auras than so many other 'atmospheric' black metal bands claim to possess. Instead of bludgeoning us to submission through tired, colorless monotone, these illustrious connoisseurs of the genre are inviting us into the celestial sphere and their mountable worms, alluring from a distance, beckoning with nocturnal beauty. Excellent.

Highlights:
A Blaze of Hammers
Virtus Sola Invicta

Have You Got A Light, Boy?
An Automaton Adrift

Rating: 87%

Destruktor - Opprobrium [2015]

By now everyone's acknowledge that once you begin your foray into the Australian metal scene, purposefully or otherwise, you will unanimously be assailed by some of the most malicious and angry troops in the global black, death and thrash perspective. That doesn't mean that every partisan of the black/death or 'war metal' phenomenon is bound to be a direct offshoot of the country's notoriously quizzical mavericks of chaos (i.e. Portal) who created more buzz along the internet and the spread of the underground than the quivering, sludgy guitar tone which they harness with their album ''Swarth'', because really, relatively more straightforward acts like Assaulter, Destroyer 666, Vomitor and Destruktor are probably more into booze and offensively fun devilry than esoteric imagery and obscure lyrics. Among its band of cult followers, Destruktor's debut ''Nailed'' left quite a lot to be desired, especially since the group leans more toward traditional death metal more than the kind of convoluted profanity conjured by the likes of Bestial Warlust and Blasphemy, so I imagine the same group of drunkards were salivating buckets just to get their hands on this....

And to be frank, I'd say ''Opprobrium'', the groups sophomore, is an improvement over their debut, both in terms of production and overall song writing. This isn't as big a leap as it is from a firecracker to a dynamite, mind you, and it did take the Aussies 6 years to get there, but we have it nonetheless. The LP retains a surprising level of clarity in terms of production, making it far more audible and 'safe' than at least 80% of its peers, but the guitars, while still broiling and grainy, are nowhere as muffled and distorted as Portal of Impetuous Ritual, and like most beer-infused black/death acts there's a greater focus on the dynamics sections with fierce, linear tremolos and eruptive patterns of simmering chords, with occasional black/speed/heavy riffs redolent of Midnight or early Bathory: so it's safe to say there's a fairly wide spectrum of sounds being offered on the plate here. The debut always felt like a hellish garble on most points, but Destruktor have stepped up the influence of filthy black/thrash and Morbid Angel/Angelcorpse here (without amounting to anything technical) and add to that sparse pool of swelling Scandinavian black metal tremolos and you have yourself a genuinely pissed off and visceral plateau of nearly any extreme metal ingredient belonging to 1984-1993 stuffed in one gnarly package.

Interestingly, The Aussies don't always run on the same track as their rudiments here, as exhibited from the final piece, ''Forever the Blood Shall Flow''. With the morosely pessimistic and lyrical title, huge, looming tremolos and a very 'black metal' melancholia, the track is almost instantly removed from the rest of the record. Of course this kind of monotonous flirt with Scandinavian black metal a la Darkthrone, Ulver or early immortal doesn't keep anyone agog for a very long time, and this applies to the entirety to the album. The drums, for one, pale out with textbook simplicity and a rather annoying tone on the snares, and the vocals are never front, hamstrung by the guitars and scarcely delivering any of the diabolical vocal enjoyment I might glean from a band like Deathhammer or Witchery. There are some good moments, like on songs like ''Besieged'' where the band marries their ravenous speed to a hooking riff, but aside from that, despite the slightly greater sense of fulfillment over the debut, ''Opprobrium'' feels a tad stale, especially when in such a devastating and busy market of zircons dedicated to the devil. For what it is, ribald, inebriated evil, this certainly grinds a good number of poseurs, and if you were taken by their debut ''Nailed'' or any other Australian rabbit hole of filth and unceremonious fun, this is still a good pick. Stay vengeful.

Highlights:
Besieged
Priestiality
Eradication

Rating: 68%

Vardan - Winter Woods [2015]

I've yet to delve into Vardan's tremendous backlog of releases, averaging 3-4 records a year in the last few years, but immediately becomes clear that the man's productivity is no moot point. With so many records already under his belt and a few extra projects like Nostalgic Darkness running smoothly, the man aspires to be the Italian black metal equivalent of one Rogga Johansson, with his own immersive logjam of calculated Swedish death metal carnality. Just about six months into the year, and there are already five albums to his name, each, no doubt, like the one at hand, haunting exercises in rabid, scathing cold and wintry despondency. Of course, haters are gonna hate, and the whole bedroom black metal mentality has over the years acquired such an edge that most bands have seamlessly dissevered themselves from the outside world for the sake of recording in their own forsaken basements and whatnot, usually with mixed results: it can decidedly be hard to adapt any stringent attitude towards the trend, because my one half screams hallelujah at the advent of bands like Darkthrone and Leviathan while the other half yearns to pull out all the hairs on the top of my head in dismay that so many modern black metal have ended up as broken eggs while going for bedroom black metal omelette...

Thankfully, ''Winter Woods'' veers more towards the former camp. If you're familiar at all with your Burzum, Darkthrone or Forgotten Throne, you know what this sounds like, harrowing waves of mourn and broken lines of cruel, frozen melody piercing your eardrums with unruly monotony. Vardan IS a riffs man, with some cool Transilvanian Hunger-esque tremolos cascading with spiking anguish, but the range of riffs on the album are admittedly not too varied: we're definitely not talking about something on par with ''In the Nightside Eclipse'' here. With the rustic/seasonal cover art and the initiation of the opener, ''Winter Woods Pt. 1'', it's certainly not difficult for the listener to have at least some idea of the underlying contents of this disc, that is rustic and depressive black metal solaces being funneled down your ears, yet Vardan somehow manages to capture a few instances of true grief and captivating dolor without sounding too repetitive. The pace certainly me reminds me of their more well-known and notoriously suicidal countrymen Forgotten Tomb at their peak, circa 2002-2004, since Vardan never altogether rushes into gaits of unbridled Norwegian ferocity, like, say Carpathian Forest of 1349. To add, the sense of longing here is magnified by the high proportion of doom-y entanglements and slower moments, bleak sequences of linear clean guitars where that resonant despair of Vardan simply enclosing himself in a toilet and slashing open his wrists while seated in the bathtub becomes all the more vivid. Certainly, I could cite 2-3 instances here where the unfolding of the fuzzed electric guitars after a prelude of cleans eloped me almost entirely with sheer pang and melodious regret, like on ''Cold Night of My Soul'', and indeed those are the best moments in the album.

But let's not entirely be deluded. This obviously isn't the next best Leviathan record, and maintains a startling simplicity. There are moments where ''Winter Woods'' doesn't feel like a far cry from the Hungarian mavens Forest Silence with their lurching, despondent atmospheres, though Vardan at once feel grittier and less bombastic. For one, I wouldn't have minded some ambient effect, because for the most part Vardan's 'eerie' clean guitar sequences drone with too discolored a sound. And this surely isn't the easiest pill to swallow if you're ears aren't trained for the gritty and the ghastly. I also have little appreciation for the drums, which are hardly professional. Granted drums aren't too significant in black metal, but Vardan never lowers their volume too much, and the constant open hi-hat abuse occasionally pangs the consistency of the recurring tremolos and dense ambiance. That said, I can say I've enjoyed Vardan's vocals enough to make 2-3 spins worthwhile, as he howls like a haunted cacodaemon in the shivering cold of the night, echoing with dismay. For sure, Vardan could ramp up his proficiency in the riff department: considering all his other albums follow a similar path to ''Winter Woods'' he must be running short on riff-supplies, and the ones existing here aren't the most inventive ones either, especially with artists like Jute Gyte who can put the grit and creativity of most other black metal musicians to shame. Rawness is key here. Blunt winter tapestry for minimal absorption, with guaranteed lacerated wrists if overdosed. Not the best black metal I've heard recently, but sufficiently engulfing if your tastes lie in Burzum, Darkthrone, Forgotten Tomb, Ulver, or the like.


Highlights:
Cold Night of My Soul
Uroborous Black Circle

Rating: 65%

Malthusian - Below the Hengiform [2015] (EP)

During the steady flow of the last 5-6 years we've accumulated more amorphous or 'cavern-core' death metal then we'd care to listen to: Antediluvian, Ulcerate, Mitochondrion, Impetuous Ritual, Teitanblood and Vassafor are just a handful of the many that come to mind, and Ireland's Malthusian has showed no reluctance in joining ranks with these bands and the ungodly, otherwordly death metal which they've effectively articulated. The band's debut EP and first offering after a rather highly regarded demo speaks in the exact language as the aforementioned giants, with an appeal to the extra-dimensional chaos of Lovecraftian horror and cavernous din espoused by the country of the maple leaf in particular. Make no mistake: Malthusian come (or rather trudge) with a murky expose that promises something far below the straits of 'catchy', 'melodic' or 'assonant', and ensures a permanent place near the bedrock of your iPod, spewing forth lava and bile.

''Below the Hengiform'' is at once cataclysmic and bloated with a disgusting synthesis of impenetrable death/doom motifs and wallowing vortexes of black metal airiness. The Irishmen deserve some credit for begetting the same kind of oozing, cantankerous death metal as some of the peers, but with a few flourishes and twists here and there to render things more unique. To be sure, 'cavernous' seems like a wonderful way to describe the coitus of tempestuous guitars, dowsed in reverb and the overall atmosphere they so successfully forge, but Malthusian gape through a certain level of almost oriental accessibility, with their looming chords balancing more towards an ''Onward to Golgotha'' rather than an ''Obscura'', though fascinatingly enough they employ enough technical skill a and variety in certain riffs to give the squamous slipperiness of the riffs some level of containment. Rather than piercing straight into the helpless soma of listener, the riffs spew a continual discharge of ichor and pustular extravagance, coating, slowly but gradually, as though with incandescent bones and limbs dipped in grime and pus; yet even then there's a level of tension to be suffered through the parade of some more dissonant riffing which Ulcerate or Gorguts fans would appreciate, even though the larger portion of the record is decidedly more loyal to the recipes of the masters of the early 90's than anything.

So this is 'old school', if that's your game, though for either party Malthusian pose unanimous annihilation. The quality of the production certainly works in their favor. Unlike in many records, the drums are clearly audible here, and not only that but they incorporate an abusive percussion through a wealth of cymbals and demented blast beats that suit the matchless chaos of the riffs well. The vocals are arguably the most distinct part of the Ep. As a contrast to the low-end riffing and spelean dive bombs, vocalists PG, AC, and MB (yes, they've got three guys going vox!) implement a mix of denser growls and utterly nightmarish shrieks redolent of Deicide, through at least twice as unnerving. Unfortunately, ''Below the Hengiform'' isn't as viscid to the ear as it is within itself. There are 2-3 riffs which I was utterly engrossed by, like the verse riff on ''Slouching Equinox'', but since the music engenders more artsy atmospheric than anything else, it's probably a safe assumption to say that none of the material here really stands out as mesmerizing, even at its sheer, apocalyptic best. With compositions as long as 9 minutes and just 3 tracks, you're bound to be in some shortage of dynamics, though thankfully the final (and shortest) track ''Forms Without Vapor'' is shattering and memorable enough to stave off the banalities of the other two tunes with its lurching, grooving riff patterns and linear, raspy black metal vocal lines. So like all the bands hailing under the black/death banner, but without providing as colorful a flavor as some others, Malthusian requires immensely concentrated consumption, followed by regurgitation. And then repeat.

Highlights:
Form Becomes Vapor


Rating: 73%

Inculter - Persisting Devolution [2015]

Norway is a fertile harbor for not only its chief export of black metal, but also for a recent upsurge in bands which claim immunity from being stringently pigeonholed into either one of the black, thrash or speed metal genres, and hence exposing themselves to the market shamelessly as 'black/thrash', drawing their influences not just from such antiquarians of primal evil such as Bathory, Venom or Hellhammer but also younger acts like Nekromantheon, Deathhammer and Aura Noir, also haling from Norway. Needless to say, Inculter is another one of Norway's breed of frolicsome evil, a compelling two-piece running on the strength of merely an EP and a demo, with a new record that hardly eschews the kind of rifftastic profanity purists seek in this niche. And to wit, the Norwegians create an infernal expanse of black and thrash metal that doesn't just scream 'Bathory', but actually secures its position as a record with some identity and simmering infernal magnetism.

''Persisting Devolution'' definitely moves a fraction beyond the 'stock' black/thrash offering as offered through the various records of Force of Darkness, Destroyer 666, Witchburner and the like, owing to the skippy, fraudulent quality of the riffs, at times sounding like a blackened version of Death Breath's ''Stinking Up The Night'' with frenetic, lashing chords and fantastic speed/thrash cutlery, always campy yet also genuinely disturbing. The tone and pace of the album are perfect; it's sufficiently lo-fi, rugged enough cook skewed human flesh on, if you're into some analogy, but still clear enough as to hearing the excellent slew of riffs which the Norwegians propagate, reaching paces fast enough to keep up with one ''Reign in Hell'' or ''Horrified''. Make no mistake folks: this as 80's as you're going to get. The promise of denim, leather, spikes, motorbikes and auditory grime is just the cherry on top of the huge rotten cake of festering flesh and gnarly awesomeness, but unlike so many gimmicks undergoing a similar trajectory Inculter are abstrusely efficient with nearly not one second spared from the the album's razor-sharp array of riff-works and fanaticism. Remi's vocals are serpentine and gruesome to the bone with a clear nod pretty much any other band operating in this niche, but his inflection is ghastly enough to accrue frilly 80's anger and infernal fire at the same time.

Inculter's subscription to the art and literature of the black/thrash niche is more than convincing. The songs are all boisterous, fast and fleshy, from the choppy ''Mist of the Night'', to blistering speed metal rampage of  ''Diabolical Forest'' to the simply excellent ''Traducers Attack''; each track does not necessarily promulgate an entirely original or separate sense of evil or blasphemous delight, but there's so much fun to be had among the jumpy cascade of riffs, mutes, pluggy bass lines and cramped drum fills that one really cannot care all to much, especially with the existence of 2-3 outstanding pieces in the entire compendium. The closest thing I can cite to ''Persisting Devolution'' besides the regulars is probably Deathhammer's ''Onward to the Pits'' or Nekromantheon's ''Rise, Vulcan Specter'', although the former was more engrossed in heavy/black than anything else, and the latter was indefinitely heavier. It only goes on to show that the album is another great addition to the black/thrash vernacular. Even at the finale, ''Envision of Horror'', the dynamic evil is there. There's still plenty of space for Inculter to develop, but ''Persisting Devolution'' brims with youthful, daemonic energy; ignore at your own risk.

Highlights:
Persisting Devolution
Traducers Attack
Diabolical Forest
Mist of the Night

Rating: 80%

Solefald - World Metal. Kosmopolis Sud [2015]

If some kind of annual award for musical wackiness would have existed, Solefald would have trumped its competitors each year it put out a new album. While Sigh would have no difficulty competing against their Norse counterparts, the duo's latest, ''World Metal.'' achieves such levels of imaginative finesse, surrealistic progression, folksiness and unprecedented eccentricities, that it even tops their 2010 opus ''Norrøn Livskunst'' which was already one of the most superior bizarreries I had heard (it still keeps its position). Five years later, with nothing keep the masses appeased in between records besides an EP which struck me as far more mediocre and lethargic than it ought to be, Cornelius and Lazare reassemble for what might be the most astonishing afflatus the year has to offer, abandoning the traditionally 'Norse' aesthetics of their previous Icelandic Trilogy, a veritable amalgamation of epic Scandinavian black metal and the residual avantgarde,  and delving straight into the foliage global music complete with all its oddities.

That's not to say they've entirely abandoned their sound - certainly not - since the dispersion of the band's older niche is far more than piecemeal. You know it's Solefald. Lazare' indispensable cleans are there with all their epic, hovering gloss, interwoven with simplistic, heavy black metal riffing and grandiose synthesizers or organs that beckon such greats such as ''Song Til Stormen'' or ''Norrøn Livskunst''; and Cornelius' inflection is still there, maybe not as indecipherable or raspy as before, but certainly plump with force and carnal power. The echoes of the band's sound yawn and  reverberate with the majestic force of northern waves and huge, pallid Icelandic mountains. Yet there's caveat to it all, one that's all to absorbingly delicious. In retrospect, I remember maybe 2-3 real black metal riffs (aside from the swelling tremolos and richer chord progressions) and the guitars aren't so protean as, say, Dream Theater, nor as significant to the mix even though there are some marvelous, grooving anchorages on the record which owe themselves to Kornelius' riffcraft, so the guitars have given themselves up to other sounds populating the mix. Pianos, synthesizers, saxes, organs, all typical of the Solefald cannon. But this time the Norsemen have integrated even more, from Congolese toms to electronic inclusions that range far beyond the safer medium of samples and minute samples. We're talking multi-layered servings of mind-fuckage and, yes - I hesitate to say - even dubstep if that's what you want to call it. The opener, ''World Music With Black Edges'' is one that completely lives up to its name with entirely unpredictable sequences of oddly euphoric pianos to straight dance/disco scores. This is a rave, and the DJ's are two of Norway's busiest, most ingenious composers.

As much as I hate to admitting the apparent overtones of electronic music, ''World Metal.'' certainly never overlooks the fact that this is still a metal record (albeit one which purists will start to exorcise the moment they hear it) and Solefald seamlessly incorporate electronics - without overcrowding - into their smorgasbord of calculated cultural and musical diversity. There's also a twist to Cornelius' vocals in that they're far more mercurial. He keeps his gnarly guttural inflection, but he does an excellent job of channeling George Corpsegrinder-esque lows into such tracks like ''The Germanic Entity'' which sizzle with irresistible, crushing groove, as well cleaner moments, as in ''Future Universal Histories'' where he speaks through radio broadcast. At any rate, his timbre matches the diversity of sounds that envelope him, capable of modifying the changing environment. And if that piece didn't freak you out there's still ''Bububu Bad Beuys'', where Cornelius' minimalist, almost Darkthrone-ish riff patterns mold with tribal African beats and drums: it's sure to win the award for the most ridiculous song of the year. Yet these Norsemen are certainly not fucking around. ''String The Bow of Sorrow'' is a splendorous and uplifting tune with gigantic choral and instrumental overtures, a Scandinavian avantgarde response to Carl Orff's ''Carmina Burana'', and it's equally angry as it is somber.

It's a grand emotional crescendo, mounting to the moody finale, ''Oslo Melancholy''. I did miss tracks like the superb blackened rockabilly ''Blackabilly'' from the previous record, and I was mildly disappointed for the absence of something in the vein of ''Eukalyptustreet'', but the duo's ability to avoid dullness, interchangeability and nadirs is unbelievable. There are indeed very few artists in today's metal market who could hold up to such levels of consistency, change and originality as these two pariahs. ''World Music.'' is more emotionally gripping than any of the other records in their backlog, not for its sheer epic excellence but because it also feels like the folksiest of their offerings. Indeed, tracks like ''String the Bows of Sorrow'' are good enough to be sung by exiled Scandinavian sailors during long, troublesome voyages. So here's to another album that justifies why Cornelius and Lazare oughtn't acquire any other pastimes besides music, because when they make it, it's simply sublime, and with already some twenty spins I'm salivating at the thought an equally masterful, eccentric follow-up.

Highlights:
Future Universal Histories
World Music With Black Edges
The Germanic Entity
2011, or a Knight of the Fail

Rating: 93%

Perdition Temple - The Tempter's Victorious [2015]

Armed with the cutlery of ungodly riffs and production values that hearken back to the mid-early 90's, Perdition Temple is another band who channels the vainglory of Angelcorpse, Morbid Angel, Impiety and the like. More than adhering to the now antiquated cavern-core aesthetics of Antediluvian, Motichondrion, Impetuous Ritual or Vasaeleth, there's a more dynamic sound to be sought here and one that can definitely garner some attention. I'd been hesitant enough to dismiss the recent EP, ''Sovereign of the Desolate'', of this Florida five-piece, but the sophomore ensures that any mistakes made in the past (i.e. laziness/trepidation) have a chance of being redeemed through the musical purgatory which they have to offer, and while I do think my actions can be partially justified with the blandness of the band's initial image of pentagrams and blazing temples, there's some truth saying that no matter what, you can't judge a book by its cover, especially if it's Angelcorpse on hold.

That being said, ''The Tempter's Victorious'' is not necessarily the superb splash of profane originality you were probably betting on, but it's still superlatively more distinguished and dynamic than at least a handful of other albums you'll hear of its quotient. Acrobatic and unholy, the riffs are flung endlessly, like charred limbs and body bits being catapulted from the crenelations of some darkly fortress, with beautifully gnarly, serpentine tremolos crawling apace, and while this record does not sound as devastating as anything derived from Angelcorpse's body work, there's a certain, infinitesimal creep to it which I've frankly grown very fond, such that it might easily appeal to fans of a more broad circulation of contemporary death metal a la Putrevore, or if you like your death metal really old school, Funebre, Morpheus Descends or even Demilich. The overgrowth of the death metal portion of this record makes you crave some of the black metal that was promised by the esteemed Metal Archives tag, but in truth the only thing 'black' about this is Impurath's sepelean rasp which adds a rather enjoyable contrast to the seeming transparency of the riffs... and that's fact, because the guitars are hardly doused in any sort of reverb or overripe thickness, which even makes the album strangely technical.

You can even hear plodding, almost psychedelic bass lines grooving behind the systematic tremolo patterns which usually sound like they were ripped out of the cortex of some technical death metal piece and then run through the bowels of Baphomet. Chaos galore. The drumming is spot on, though it largely doesn't stay out of the norm's of this style. Tracks like title track and ''Extinction Synagogue'' are paragons of the album's unmitigated force, sprawling panoplies of black/thrashing and intensity in case you needed any more, and ''Chambers of Predation'' has a great set of chug-oriented riffs which I quite enjoy; ''The Tempter's Victorious'' is clearly not a far shout any Morbid Angel or Angelcorpse record, but its capacity to disturb and penalize are realized well, with suitably heretical apparel to make a name for themselves in the underground. 8 tracks prepared to drill your mind with manic fervor. In the end, the tempter is victorious, and its victory lap revolves around the pillars of a crumbling church, where hopefully, an inquisitive reader would be interested enough to exhume this disc from the debris afterwards, and indulging in all morbid and malicious details it keeps within. Not a terrific record, but as solid as they'll fucking come.

Highlights:
The Tempter's Victorious
Extinction Synagogue
Chambers of Predation

Rating: 75%

Melechesh - Enki [2015]

Ex-Israel black/thrash pundits Melechesh have managed to create some of the more unique recordings of the 21st century with records like ''Emissaries'' and ''Sphynx'' which sought the desert for a predominantly oriental sound with flavors of occult mysticism and panoplies of preposterously busy guitars, ultimately boiling down to their so-called 'Sumerian Metal': the larger part of the metal community is bound to either gravel a heap full of praise on the enormity of the music, or just simply refer to them whenever the concepts of heavy metal and the Middle-East intertwine. Yet  so much more than simply cramming your head with Middle-Eastern folksiness just for the whole 'Sumerian' effect, these desert roamers make their oblique preferences form an integral part of the ferocious black thrashing frenzy which has always been their main premise... With ''Enki'' the Sumerians conjured another incantatory experience that comes close to the band's peak around the mid-2000's, but unlike the more divisive attitude of those records, it plays out a little closer to the belt.

One of the two philosophies that comprise this album is the image of hookah smoke drizzling slowly into hazy Eastern sky with richly textured ottomans, keffiyehs and Turkish rugs galore, with oriental dancers moving softly, seductively across the sand to tunes of ouds and piping flutes... the other one is an unabashed parade of gigantic riffs thrashing on a ground of uncircumcised black metal, with masterful grooves conducted as effortlessly as spreading wildfire. ''Enki'' is the sort of record which, like its forebears, retains a relatively primal splendor through the manifestation of bands like Absu, Watain, Impaled Nazarene, and even some traditional Swedish black metal (although the clinical force of this record in huge compared to the likes of Arckanum) and of course there is the folk metal texture akin to Orphaned Land and even Austria' masterful Hollenthon. At any rate, Melechesh is providing us with a suitably more atmospheric detachment from Nile's Egyptian brutal death metal hypnosis, and there's certainly nothing that fails to stagger with the percussive power of this album. Ashmedi and his henchmen have more than enough riffs stocked underneath their shoals, be it grooving Arabic death/thrash rhythms, some more technically wrought pieces or straightforward black metal tremolos penned and played with uncanny precision; this is a record which doesn't shy away from pounding the listener with obtuse riffing for a moment (except on the bizarrely folksy ''Doorways to Irkala''). There are traces of death metal here and there, like the chugging mania of ''Multiple Truths'' which remind of some riff borrowed from a Polish death metal outfit but ''Enki'' remains loyal to its blackened thrash roots throughout the majority of the run time, like myriad knives and daggers concealed under the band members' cloaks, ready to be flung.

For a record of its brutality, the figments of melody served in ''Enki'' certainly make one desirous for more, especially like those on ''The Pendulum Speaks'', one of the best which the album has to offer, or the more swerving and pungent innuendos on ''Lost Tribes'', and swaying rhythms portrays a balance between chords and singular notes which make up for perfect devilish arabesques. The drumming and crisp production levels ensure that none of the riffs go amiss, and as long as they have sufficient variation, most of them are memorable enough to elude becoming undone in a pallid sandstorm. Ashmedi's vocals, upfront and granular as ever, emerge as the epitome of what I would hesitantly dub as 'black/thrash' vocals, raw unflinching, yet vigorous enough to appeal to aficionados of both ends of string, so you really can't go wrong with it. In the end, all told, ''Enki'' gives way to 2-3 humdingers in terms of sheer songwriting excellence, and imprints itself into the listener's mind more effectively than other bands who would continue to make new records without challenging the norms of their previous outings, and so while it's true that this is an album that suffers from creative drought, it still kicks ass, it doesn't the keep the band tied to the ground. Of the levels of musical conformity challenged with mystifying, somber choral reverberations the endless philippic slew of riffs, I am a fan. Not to mention the 8-minute oriental instrumental ''Doorways To Irkala'' which is one of the most well-crafted Middle-Eastern pieces I've heard from any artist, a haunting desert swansong to accompany desolate Bedouins and their laden camels... Sometimes the songs dragged for too long, and this may not be the best they have to offer as a whole, but it's clearly one of the finer efforts I've heard thus far from 2015, and one that'll stay with me for a good while. The Mespotamian lyric goodness is just the cherry on top.

Highlights:
Metatron and Man
The Pendulum Speaks
Tempest Temper Enlil Enraged

Rating: 82%

Délétère - Les Heures de la Peste [2015]

Canada is in no shortage of bile-spewing, frigid, grisly French black metal, and Deletere is yet another one of Quebec's presents to the global scene via Montreal's very own black metal entrapment camp, Sepulchral Productions. The label has consistently delivered some of the most minimalist yet enjoyable black metal records of the past 2-3 years, ranging from the folksy atmospherics of Gris, the frostbitten winter tapestry of Neige Eternelle or the harrowing tides of despair which Sombres Forets emulate; and all these bands produced rather excellent works which appealed to the reductionist quotient of second wave traditionalism, making them one of the main reasons I continue to listen to contemporary black metal. Quebec itself has engendered so many of these primal practitioners of rabid evil that it's almost as through it broke out of Canada to be united with its linguistic homeland far across the Atlantic. Deletere's work on ''Les Heures de la Peste'' (that's ''the hours the plague'' for you, though my French is shaky) is not a far cry from any of the aforementioned bands as it does not try to expand upon its genre parameters as such revolutionary acts like Peste Noire or Blut Aus Nord, but carves a simpler wall of grief, mourning and iciness.

The names of the tracks correspond to various depictions of the plague, and with song titles like ''Une Gartre Venale'' (A Venal Bitch) I'm bound to compensate a few points for the duo's fresh (relatively) take on themes. The frills aside, though, this is a truly uncompromising experience of gritty, grimy guitars, cramped production values and the kind of nocturnal synergy we all look forward to in our Quebecois/French black metal, though there isn't a huge amount of eccentricities here (Darkthrone-worshiping has long lost its hipness) like the kind of folk-induced mysticism of Gris or vibrant acoustic interludes of Sombres Forets, in fact I've found this record to be mostly a stripped down version of what bands like Austere or Drudkh would have produced. Of course the band does move beyond the simplistic barrage of redundant tremolos: it's abound with dissonant torturous notes, like blood running down the walls of an ancient forest cavern under a moonlit sky... not only that but the duo occasionally employs medieval choral chants here and there to espouse the thematic ghastliness of death and disease. The vocals are harrowing, as one may imagine; though they reverberate with satisfactory howling, they're nothing out of the ordinary, I can tell you that. 

Unfortunately the dynamic range of this album is about as comprehensive as its armory of riffs and progressions, which is pretty meager in supply. There are genuinely haunting moments on the album - songs like ''Vepres - '' justify this with shifting tempos and riveting discordance - but this is not exactly on par with Monarque, Gris, or some of the other Quebecois outfits, nor is it as cold as the eponymous Neige Eternelle disc. There was an almost oddly psychedelic take on the songs at times, but they never lasted long enough to establish a proper basis of miasma or spiritual oblivion - Deletere misses out on both the din of winter frost which I would naturally expect from a band of their image to grasp, and on the more heavily bolstered brand of black metal which would have been a fair flee from the woods for the duo, at any rate. It's stuck somewhere in between, and though it has its moments, it didn't encapsulate me the way I'd want a musical grimoire to. So you get the idea. It's still some drowning, pestilential music, if you're into that stuff at all. Fostered by the Bubonic Plague. Can you imagine people's reactions to this if it was released in the middle ages? They'd be receiving all kinds of piss... literally. But enough of that: if you're enamored by any of the classic Scandinavian nasties, this one's for you, a gush of woeful malady, and don't sat I didn't warn you.

Highlights:

Vepres - Architects de la Pes

Laudes - Credo II

None - Le Lait de l'essaim

Rating: 70%