For those that can’t wait for the release of Greek black metal horde Dodsferd’s upcoming full-length, the band has given us a small taste of what’s to come in the form of the Until Your World Go Down split. Dodsferd’s portion contains two unreleased tracks and one live recording, while Mortovatis, a side-project of Dodsferd mainman Wrath, contributes one lengthy track of experimental black metal.

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Of all the main metal instruments - guitar, bass, drums, vocals - the vocal aspect is easily the one I’m the worst at and the most mystified by. I can’t get myself to make anywhere near a menacing metal growl without fucking my throat up, which means I’m clearly doing it wrong.

So I was happy to run across this post by Seattle’s 7 Horns 7 Eyes vocalist Kyle Wood, describing some of the mistakes novice vocalists make, as well as describing the basics of metal vocals. He doesn’t go into too much detail, but he does make it clear what the right approach is. Wood also gives lots of credit to Melissa Cross’s The Zen of Screaming DVDs. Having just seen his band perform, I can definitely vouch for him being at least a pretty competent and fairly versatile vocalist.

Also, if you’re into sludge and/or Meshuggah-type polyrhythmic bands, you should definitely give these guys a listen. They clearly borrow a lot from Meshuggah, doing a lot of ultra-heavy off-time rhythmic stuff coupled with doomy, sludgey riffing. Their rhythm section pulled it off surprisingly well, so their upcoming debut full-length should be an interesting one. Supposedly it will be coming out later this year.

» 7 Horns 7 Eyes on MySpace

Although Vancouver, British Columbia is about the last place I’d expect a traditional, pagan-inspired black metal band to come from, Godless North certainly demonstrate that quality black art can come from Western Canada just as easily as from Europe. Having been around since 1996, Godless North is one of Canada’s most respected black metal bands, and Fimbulvetr serves as a compilation of pretty much their entire body of work. Encompassing one full-length album, two splits and the band’s demo, Fimbulvetr release is something of a mixed bag in terms of quality, but two discs worth of icy, raw Canadian black metal from one of the country’s best is hard to pass up.

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This first post-breakup release from Negura Bunget was bound to suffer some drop of quality, with the band having lost the main songwriting core of the band in founding members Huppogramos and Sol Faur. The band’s new album Vîrstele Pamîntului finally gives a taste of what this new incarnation of Negura Bunget will sound like. As expected, the magic that made the band’s last few albums so potent is not quite there, but the overall quality of this new release came as something of a surprise to me. The new lineup does an impressive job of retaining the band’s basic sound and feel. It almost comes across as an imitation of Negura Bunget’s glory days. But, this being Negura Bunget, a quality approximation of the band still makes for some great music.

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Black Hate has finally released some news regarding Dark Tribe’s long-awaited follow-up to 2004’s In Jeraspunta - Die Rückkehr der Tollwütigen Bestie:

We have some really great news! Just in this moment we are mixing the new Dark Tribe album “Archaic Visons” in our shelter!!! We have the pleasure to have again Angel of Doom in the duty for this task. We have planned to finnish the mixing in the next 3 days. And Angel of Doom will of course also do the the final mastering. So its not that far away anymore.

So it sounds as though Archaic Visions will be released this year, hopefully sooner rather than later.

An Autumn For Crippled Children is an interesting mixture of depressive, atmospheric black metal and some doom and post rock elements. With great recent releases by Svarti Loghin, Semen Datura and now these guys, the ATMF label seems to have a knack for finding creative and unique black metal bands that push the boundaries of the genre.

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The latest slab of black metal from Belgium’s Enthroned is pretty much what you would expect from this band - a crushing, razor-sharp aural assault with excellent songwriting and top-notch musicianship. With Lord Sabathan having left the band a few years ago, Enthroned is now completely devoid of founding members, and while this album may not be quite up to the level of some of their earlier albums, it was certainly a pleasant surprise for me, with some pretty killer tracks.

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French blackened hardcore group Celeste have unleashed their latest assault Morte(s) Nee(s), again on Denovali Records. As with their last few albums, you can download the album for free from the Denovali website, as well as order a physical copy.

» Get Morte(s) Nee(s) from the Denovali Records site

They seem to have dialed up the intensity of the production a bit from last year’s Misanthrope(s), but other than that you can pretty much expect the same level of darkness and brutality as the band’s last few releases.