Drohm - The Oracles of Darkend Time

Here's a re-up of some good old-fashioned blackened death metal from Maine's Drohm...also featuring a member of the excellent Cold Northern Vengeance.

The Oracles of Darkened Time

Bloodslaughter - Cannibalistic Massacre

German perversion of the nastiest persuasion, rude, crude and fucking brutal for 1987.

Cannibalistic Massacre

Snowfall

Bestial Summoning - Sodomistic Rituals Demo '92

One of the originators...a classick not just of Dutch black metal, but of black metal as a whole. Raw, primal....the total package.

Sodomisticism

Galgeras - Reliekrover

Leave me alooooooooone

Reliekrover

Vortex - Open The Gate

Some good ol' fashioned Dutch heavy metal full off swagger and idiosyncracies. The crooner especially has a lot of charimsa.

Open The Gate

Neglektum - Beyond The Frozen Mist

Raw and true.

Beyond The Frozen Mist

Schismatic - Circle Of Evolution

Feral primeval athropormorphic death metal that will leave you in a bloody heap...Schismatic just drips with atmosphere...riffs of destruction seethe and hiss like billous fluids pussing from a stuck hog. You really can't expect any less from a Polish death metal band circa '93, now can you?

Circle Of Evilution

W.C. Fields - Temperance Lectures

I've been in a major W.C. Field's mode lately, which jogged my memory to the fact that I had this fun little album squirreled away on my HD. Enjoy ol'Bill's libidinous rants and raves....what's your stalling er I mean calling?

Temperance Lectures

Ixion - In Hoc Signs Vinces

Bestial French black metal from 1986! Holy shit, this is so intense and crazy especially for the mid 80's when all was cool!!

In Hoc Signs Vinces

Graf Spee - Reincarnation

Damn this blog is right at 100,000 views, so I'm gonna celebrate with some incredibly malicious, shredding proto-black metal from Uruguay circa 1989!! Put this one right up there with Parabellum or Hadez or Reencaracion. This ain't some Venom Hellhammer worship, this is from some otherrelm where shredding and overall craziness reign supreme. Underground, dangerous, '80's and South American....quite a dangerous proposition. Includes the Mother Fucker ep, so there ya go.

Reincarnation

Masacre - Cancer De Nuestros Dias Colombia Imperio Del Terror

The finest of old school Columbian death metal.

CDNDCIDT

Shinjuku Thief - The Witch Haven

Bombastic ambiance that borders on martial industrial at times, but retains just enough of the drone influence to keep everybody happy. I've been cranking this when I've been doing P90X...strangely good workout musick.

The Witch Haven

Comus - First Utterance

Definitely one of the darkest hippy albums ever made and definitely a personal fav. Check out these AMAZING lyrics:
Hymen hunter, hands of steel, crack you open and your red flesh peel
Pain procurer, eyes of fire pierce your womb and push still higher
Comus rape, Comus break sweet young virgin's virtue take
Naked flesh flowing hair her terror screams they cut the air
...nice, huh?

First Utterance

Ornament of Disgrace

I think if this demo would've come out nowadays it would go over huge. OOD's brand of technical murky Incantation/Portal type death metal is on the uprise, but back at the turn of the century, it was definitely not de rigueur. These 5 songs are actually pretty great, interesting riffs with a trebly guitar tone and drumming that at times can get super abstract (really cool cymbal work), which helps give everything an avant-garde ritualistic type of vibe. I actually designed a logo for this band.  It was fuckin' tight with lots of spikes and snakes, but they went with this lame ass logo instead. No accounting for taste I suppose.
PS this is not the demo listed on Metal Archives...I got this in 2001 or thereabouts.

Ornament of Disgrace

Undor - s/t

Czech out this insane German black "metal". Very much in the vein of the last RALF Projekt (vox-wise at least).

Undo(r)

Water Borders - Harbored Mantras

One of the biggest surprises for me this year was finding out about this album and being absolutely floored by it.

Harbored Mantras

Bethlehem - Sardonischer Untergang im Zeichen irreligiöser Darbietung

Bethlehem's self-described "dark metal" fits most uncomfortably between the cold Norse black metal stylings of a Ved Buens Ende or a Dodheimsgard...and some of the outsider Italian Spookprog doom of a Paul Chain or even the darkwave inspired band Monumentum, and well...I'll stop making comparisons because Bethlehem (at least on their first few albums) were forging their own sound, a totally unique entity that focused not on evil but on pain...musick as thee outlet for pain that was otherwise unresolveable, and that might never be resolved. Complete mental darkness.
S.U.i.Z.i.D (and it's predecessors) did much to influence the depressive black metal genre, first with their disturbed imagery and secondly with their unwholesome avant-garde vibes..the razor sharp, tortured vocals..the desolate uncompromising ring of solemn notes..the cascading gothic melodies..all creating a sound that is simply mesmerizing and uncompromisingly grim. You may feel like killing yourself after listening to this, but then you would just be depriving yourself of the sheer pleasure of listening to it again and again and again and...

S.U.i.Z.i.D

Varghkoghargasmal - Drowned In Lakes

Clumsy folkfuck clean-channelled acoustical black metal...utterly charming in it's incompetence and enthralling in it's mystical savant approach.

Drowned In Lakes

Pyogenesis - Ode To The Churning Seas Of Nar-Mataru

Subterranean gurgling doooom complete with frog vocals, phased primitive guitar and a beautiful swinging ride cymbal. This band later went pop-punk, and I actually have not checked out those albums...they don't sound too promising.

Ode To The Churning Seas Of Nar-Mataru