While it contains occasional passages reminiscent of the immersive, shoegaze-influenced sound of Souvenirs d’un Autre Monde, Alcest’s latest release Écailles de Lune feels more like a fusion of Neige’s styles in Alcest and other projects. Taking inspiration from the mysteriousness and expansiveness of the seas, Neige has crafted another emotional musical journey, but this one feels much colder and more ethereal than its predecessor.
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At first listen, it may seem like with Drifting Through the Void, Svarti Loghin are attempting to jump on the bandwagon of bands like Alcest, Amesoeurs or Lantlôs with their blend of black metal and elements of shoegaze and indie rock. And while certainly there are stylistic similarities between Svarti Loghin and those bands, this Swedish group have clearly carved out their own sound and are pushing the boundaries of black metal in a direction that is all their own.
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Aldaaron is yet another example of France’s ability to produce excellent black metal bands seemingly out of nowhere. Hailing from Grenoble in southeastern France near the French alps, Aldaaron mostly adheres to a formula that numerous other bands like Dissection or Belenos have used with much success, but instead of focusing on darkness or outright aggression, debut album Nous Reviendrons Immortels is infused with a melancholic sense of melody and a certain spiritual feel that differentiates it somewhat from other bands playing this style.
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Ptahil’s debut EP Ortus is close to 30 minutes of ritualistic, emotionally-scarring black metal dissonance fueled by Satanic Gnosticism. In other words, definitely something you wouldn’t expect to originate from the Midwestern United States. This trio from Fort Wayne, Indiana combines lyrics from ancient medieval sources with hypnotic black noise, the combined effect of which is to beat the listener’s consciousness into a state of meditative appreciation.
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Russian one-man black metal band Stielas Storhett returns nearly three years after releasing their excellent debut album Vandrer… with the new two-song EP Skd. Having been so long since the last release, it’s expected that Stielas Storhett’s sound would have gone through some changes and improvements, but I was definitely not prepared for how different this EP sounds from the debut.
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Lately, Season of Mist has been putting out some pretty sweet box sets for releases like Drudkh and Cynic’s latest offerings. The latest box set for Rotting Christ’s new album Aealo is no exception, coming packaged in a metal container that looks like a shield. Aside from the CD/DVD version of the album, the set includes an exclusive shirt, a belt buckle, a leather bracelet, and a bumper sticker. Not too shabby.
» Buy the Aealo box set from Season of Mist
» Buy the Aealo box set from Amazon.com
Mithras guitarist Leon Macey has transcribed official guitar tabulatures for two of the band’s songs, ‘Under The Three Spheres’ from 2007’s Behind The Shadows Lie Madness and ‘Wrath Of God’ from the 2002 debut Forever Advancing…… Legions.
» Wrath of God
» Under The Three Spheres
In order to play the songs, you’ll need to either have a 7-string guitar or tune your 6-string down to A#. You’ll also need some major chops to play along with Macey’s compositions.
Check out this post on Mithras’s MySpace for more info as well as links to discussions about the tabs on the band’s official forum.
Finland’s Azaghal have been around for quite awhile, Teraphim being their eighth full-length album. Founding member Narqath, who handles contributes guitars and vocals, also later went on to form pagan black metal band Wyrd. On Teraphim the band displays a refined style of black metal that isn’t overly raw, aggressive or melodic, but contains a good balance of these elements.
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Finally a metal band woke up and used a painting from one of my favorite artists, Francis Bacon. Seriously, how can an artist who did a series of paintings of popes screaming in agony not have his art used in some fashion by the underground metal scene?
Francis Bacon was a highly successful Irish figurative painter in the 20th century. His artwork is known for its abtract, distorted figures and tortured imagery. He painted a series of works depicting screaming Papal heads or torsos, and other themes included crucifixions and grotesque self portraits or portraits of friends. H.R. Geiger has stated that Bacon’s work was a strong inspirational force behind his creations for the film Alien.
Anyway, the winner (unless there are other bands using Bacon’s work that I’m not aware of) is Prosanctus Inferi, a death metal band who will be releasing their first album Pandemonic Ululations of Vesperic Palpitation later this year. Their album cover uses a portion of Bacon’s Head I painting. Check out the cover art below.
You can learn more about Francis Bacon on Wikipedia, and check out a couple galleries containing some of his work here and here.
Death Obsession is the second full-length from Austin, Texas’s Brown Jenkins. These guys play black metal only in the loosest sense of the word, creating suffocating and entrancing atmospheric music that morphs and evolves organically without any semblance of structure. There is no warmth at all in Brown Jenkins’s sound on this album; the effect is one of utter hopelessness and paranoia, like dark forces swirling around you that are beyond your control.
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