Cold Northern Vengeance - Domination & Servitude

Enjoy a little extra bitterness on this the coldest goddamn day of the brand new year courtesy of the always excellent Bindrune Recordings.

Cold

Mortuary Drape - Tolling 13 Knell

I posted this one waaaaay back when I first started this blog, but it is one I keep coming back to and for the past couple weeks I haven't been able to listen to too much besides it. The riffs awesome, vocals awesome, atmosphere amazing....and the drummer is the guy that drummed on Janvs's Vega album, goddamn! This is the very essence of Italian SpookProg. How many black metal bands can get away with singing "La la la La la la la la" for a chorus in one of their songs (Winged Priestess)?

Only one

Tolling 13 Knell

Neglektum - Beyond The Frozen Mist

Raw and true.

Beyond The Frozen Mist

Light Shall Prevail - Unearthen Hymns Of Revolt

Another EEE freakout releaase, much more classic black metal than Agathothodion, but don't fret cuz there's still plenty of moanin' and dronin' goin' down on this one I promise.

Unearthen Hymns Of Revolt

Borgazur - 2P3: Alchemists Earth of Aeon A. C

Hyperblazingtechnical Symphonic Christian "black" metal. Yeah, go ahead and call it white metal if you dare...white metal christian anarchy actually. This is some really bizarre stuff, coming across like a lo-fi Diabolical Masquerade mixed with a drunken Aletheian. Is it any wonder that they're Dutch?? I found this over at an extreme christian metal blog of which there are a quite a few. There truly are blogs for everything I suppose! Even if a lot of the good ones are going under RIP.

2P3

Klabautamann - Our Journey Through The Woods

Boy that Zeitgeister, they really can do no wrong, can they? Be it Island or Valborg, Ekpyrosis or Woburn House, everything they put out is of high quality. On this debut from '03, the Klabautaboyz do a great job at updating the epic sound of vintage Enslaved (Frost and Vikingligr in particular) with just enough tasteful Maidenesque guitar flourishes to keep thing interesting. Definitely one of my favorite Zeitgeister releases, and sure to become one of yours too.

Take A Journey

Semen Datura - Einsamkeit

Dissonance is a tricky thing in black metal, play your cards right and you end up sounding like Semen Datura's 2009 opus Einsamkeit (play em wrong and you end up sounding like any of a number of weak ass LLN imitators). Never content to stay in one register, SD mix it up between atonal thrash riffs, dissonant blasting sections and major chord progressions (sometimes a folk sound will creep in), similar to how Sculptured operated on their last few albums. A strange, creepy, technically proficient album that will keep you coming back for more.

Einsamkeit

Nagelfar - Srontgorrth

Hands down the best German black metal album ever made...may sound like hyperbole, but just listen to this immense sucker.

Srontgorrth

Urizen - 8-Bit Universe

Texas's favorite fun-loving Neo-Prog-Tech-Blacksters cum OuterSpace popstars put their latest tunes through the chiptune meat grinder...the end result is a fun little romp. Get your NES on.

8-BIT FUN

Blackdeath - Jesus Wept

God I loved Blackdeath's last album (I described it as a black metal take on !T.O.O.H!’s origami death and I still stand by that comparison). this little ep is about the same in terms of quality if not quantity hehe..If anything a more textured Mendhelsshonholical journey into twisting amazing black metal and a real fucking cool cover of Jesus Tod to boot! I think I actually like this better than the Burzum original guys…it just has this slightly more death metal, dare I say “teched-out” feel to it. I can’t wait for a new full-length from these nutterz.

Jesus Wept

Desalin/S.A.P.

Well, I mentioned Desalin in my Lunatic Invasion post so I figured I might as well put them up here; and while I'm at it, their sister band Satan's Almighty Penis. Both bands are great technical black metal; Desalin more on the thrash side, S.A.P. more on the epic mysterious side. Mastermind Lord Sardonyx is a master of the riff, and I can't quite help but think that there is a very twisted sense of humor here...Into The Cunt Of Chaos is a total play off a Manilla Road album title (a band with which they share many songwriting characteristics believe it or not), not to mention their hilariously offensive band name, eat your heart out Rotting Christ. Still, it's the music that matters, and on that front both Desalin and S.A.P. are as serious as they are bizarre. Hat's off to you Sardonyx.

Desalin Demo'97

Into The Cunt Of Chaos

Pulsing Feral Spire

Apophis - Heliopolis

An unheralded classick that accomplishes the enviable feat of being simultaneously brutal, melodic, atmospheric, epic and catchy. How many other albums can do that?? Heliopolis is now on my short list of favored albums including Mork Gryning, Varathron's Crowsreign and Monstrosity's In Dark Purity. If you are familiar with any of these albums you probably already know how special they are...unique voices that don't so much step outside the boundaries of death/black metal, but rather transcend them with both feet still firmly in the genre.

Heliopolis

Grabnebelfürsten - Dynastie

Noble black metal played with aristocratic/surrealistic panache.

Dynastie

Root - Heritage Of Satan

This is hot off the presses, and is a huge huge deal. If you have read any of my other Root posts you know that they are my favorite band of all time, and any time they release a new album it's time to put all other albums aside and concentrate on Root for a good long while...so I take a little break from my Germanic posts to share the Czech legend's 9th full-length...haven't even listened to it all the way through yet, but rest assured this will be Top 10 material no doubt. Hopefully will be able to go see them at Rites Of Darkness Fest in San Antonio this Dec...still trying to finagle that one out, but so excited that they are playing on U.S. soil!! Big Boss owns ye!!!

Heritage Of Satan

Root - The Temple In The Underworld

I can think of no better album to cap off Czech Madness Month than Root's magnificent 3rd full-length from '92. This is where the band really started branching out of black metal into more classical metal territory. Big Boss crooned as never before...Blackosh slowed things down, sometimes into doom (I don't think a song like Aposiopesis happens without the influence of a band like Citron)...and perhaps most significant was the addition of a crackerjack young drummer name of Rene "Evil" Kostelnak, the drummer from Blackosh's incredibly powerful death/black/atmospheric side project Crux. Evil added such creativity to this squad of visionaries that he just pushed them over the edge into sublime waters. This may not be as complete an album as The Book or Black Seal...but the band were perfecting their craft by that point...here they are still young and hungry, biting at the chain. Hell, Big Boss still had hair!!
P.S. I've included the bonus song Prohibition in this link...one of the most kick-ass Root songs ever!!

The Temple In The Underworld

Todtgelichter - Angst

Probably the best black metal album released in the last few years…I know I said that about Rossomahaar and MGLA but these Krauts have them beat. Imagine Nagelfar’s Srontgorrth combined with The Postman Syndrome’s Terraforming the result is so awesome that if I would’ve known about it sooner Angst would’ve topped my Beast of List for last year no questions asked. So many key tracks on this album but I guess it says something that Subway is the number one played song in my itunes. Addictive, depressive, enlightening, stupendous!

Angst

Beelzeb - Misanthropes Aurora

As an addendum to that Shroud post I offer up Mr. Lug Beelzeb's solo onslaught (joined on drums by Phaul Bokrug).  Sometimes mystical sometimes furious, always fucked up, this is a pretty great album.

From their website: "An identification with BEELZEB's prose means that "you are really in trouble", -to the effect that this art compels the listener to the recreation and enjoy with different forms of sinking-. So there is no middle point - or it's meant to be so-.
Sites and dimensions which one is driven to, run in the manner of a seducement towards a point of no return; - one won't be back being the same, for will have fed his soul with visions and evocations whose nature impregnates the self in such a way )perhaps like an intimate whisper) that the focussing on emotional universe is deeply altered-."

Oh and come on these glamour shots, goddamn!

Misanthropes Aurora

Saros - Acrid Plains

Techy folky black metal from San Fran.  These boys and girl have taken a big chunk of inspiration from old school Metallica, y'know back when they could write a song that was worth a damn.  Leads are tasteful and emotive bringing to mind the beautiful woodsy feeling that Agalloch used to play on Pale Folklore... there are even Schuldineresque moments that arouse a wave of nostalgia to the late Death masterpieces Perseverance and Symbolic.  In short, Acrid Plains has a little bit of everything for the discerning metalhead.

Acrid Plains

Mork Gryning - Mork Gryning

Mork Gryning's eponymous record is slowly but surely making it's way into my favorite black metal albums of all time.  I'm not sure how this band, and this album in particular have flown under the radar for as long as they have.  Hopefully that'll change, although it matters not for the band, cuz they broke up right after releasing this in '05...but what a swansong!
The centrepiece of Mork are the riffs which vary between tech thrash, punishing polyrhythmic death, and epic melodic black metal. The melodies are not your typical Swedish black metal fare, but are clearly Nordic...folk without being aggressively folky if you catch my drift. Definitely epic in a subtle way.  Songwriting is akin to being dropped from Valhalla to find yourself plummeting ever faster into the waiting maw of a fiery hell only to be snapped from certain annihilation by some sort of giant flying creature...maybe that giant fucking dog from Neverending Story.  So in a word the songwriting is exhilarating. Special mention has to be given to the drumming which is some of the most inventively tight I have ever heard...a black metal Jarzombek.
Mork Gryning is a rousing success that combines the tastefulness of Dark Tranquility circa Damage Done, the ravishness of Keep of Kalessin circa their Reclaim ep, the funky obtuseness of Atrocity circa Hallucinations, and the distinct baroque choral sensibility of Gentle Giant circa anytime.  Highly Highly Highly recommended.

Mork 

Darvulia - Mysticisme Macabre

French Dissonant Black metal stalwarts return to the fray with unabashed ugliness and decrepitude.
Makes me wanna shoop.

Mysticisme Macabre