The Ruins of Beverast’s last two albums were built on a foundation of dark and oppressive atmospheric black metal. The band’s latest release basically continues along those lines, which makes it easily better than what lots of bands these days are putting out. That said, I’m not sure I like the direction things are going.

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Only minutes into Monolith’s opener, it becomes clear that In Mourning is the type of band I tend not to like, with a genre-bending, progressive style tries that seems like it’s trying to pull numerous metal subgenres into one. ‘For You To Know’ changes constantly, starting off with an soft melody and then abruptly shifting into a start-stop riff with screamed metalcore-like vocals. It moves through a clean guitar passage, some melodic riffing, a middle passage reminiscent of Porcupine Tree, and some clean singing over the chorus.

As the album progresses however, it becomes evident that unlike most bands out there playing this kind of metal, In Mourning actually know what they’re doing.

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Metal illustrator Mike Hrubovcak has managed to get his artwork used in a portion of an upcoming Hollywood movie titled “Dream House.” The film is a thriller starring Daniel Craig and Naomi Watts, and it involves Daniel Craig’s character and his family moving into a new house and eventually discovering that it was the scene of a horrible crime involving some of the former owners. Of course, bad things then start to happen to Daniel Craig and his family.

Hrubovcak’s contribution occurs in a scene where a young ‘metal’ couple share an apartment and have death metal posters all over their walls. Hrubovcak has previously worked with bands like Decrepit Birth, Sinister, Brain Drill, Rumpelstiltskin Grinder, Mortician and Grave, and apparently some of his designs for those bands and others will be shown in the film.

Kudos to Hrubovcak for getting his artwork into the film. Speaking of dark, metal-ish art in films, I’m still trying to figure out who did the awesomely creepy art for the movie Suspect Zero. For those that haven’t seen it, the movie involves Ben Kingsley as a psychotic remote viewer who freaks out a lot and draws pictures of dead children and other cool stuff. I definitely recommend it.

If you’re not familiar with Mike Hrubovcak’s artwork, check out his website at VisualDarkness.com.

I thought I’d throw together a post about the good and not so good that I heard in 2009. Despite attempting to listen to more albums from 2009, I really found only a handful of albums from the past year that I thought were really amazing. And as usual, my want list from 2009 is much longer than my actual ‘best of’ list; I still haven’t gotten around to listening to the new ones from Mistur, Nokturnal Mortum, Arckanum, Nazxul, and Askival among others.

Top 5 Albums from 2009:

Solstafir - Kold
Drudkh - Microcosmos
The Beast of the Apocalypse - A Voice from the Four Horns of the Golden Altar
Katatonia - Night is the New Day
Blut Aus Nord - Memoria Vetusta II: Dialogue With The Stars

Honorable Mention:

Altar of Plagues - White Tomb
Ulcerate - Everything Is Fire
Sun of the Blind - Skullreader
Semen Datura - Einsamkeit
Urfaust - Einsiedler

Most Disappointing:

The Axis of Perdition - Urfe
Brutal Truth - Evolution Through Revolution

Alcest’s new album, the highly-anticipated follow-up to 2007’s Souvenirs D’un Autre Monde, will be titled Écailles De Lune, and will be released March 29th in Europe and April 20th in the US. I enjoyed the last album, but I’m curious to see whether they take a similar approach on the new one or incorporate more black metal into their sound this time around. Here’s a look at the cover art:

Prophecy is also getting set to release Septembre Et Ses Dernières Pensées, the debut album from Les Discrets. Les Discrets is the solo project of Fursy Teyssier, who is also a member of Amesoeurs. It sounds like that album will be on the softer side of things, so if you enjoyed Alcest’s last full-length then this will probably be right up your alley. Here’s the cover art, which was also done by Fursy:

Like the Alcest album, Septembre Et Ses Dernières Pensées comes out March 29th in Europe and April 20th in the US. You can find a track listings and more info about both albums’ releases at the Prophecy Productions site.

Worship or Die, the newest album from Italy’s Hiems, is one of those albums that gets frustrating after awhile. On the one hand, there are some really killer tracks: the first real metal track ‘I’ is a blistering, 7-minute onslaught of midtempo black metal, and several other tracks like ‘Scum Destroyer’ and ‘W.O.F.’ are almost equally good. But then Hiems throws in weird touches that leave you scratching your head.

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At first, a thrashy hardcore band from Seattle, Washington seems like a rather odd fit for Southern Lord, with its eclectic, doom-heavy roster of bands like Earth, Sunn O))), Om and Boris. But one listen to Black Breath’s debut EP Razor To Oblivion, and you’ll realize that label founder Greg Anderson’s finely-tuned nose for underground talent has struck again. This pacific northwest foursome’s music has a maturity and energy that belies their relative inexperience, and this being their debut EP, they will probably only get better from here.

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Romania’s innovative black metal horde Negura Bunget have announced that their latest album Maiestrit will be released in North America on April 6th of this year. Maiestrit is a re-recording/re-interpretation of the band’s classic Maiastru Sfetnic album, which came out in 2000. Negura Bunget is also putting the finishing touches on another new album titled Vîrstele pamîntului, which is expected to come out in March.

In addition to the new releases, Negura Bunget’s back catalog has been gradually getting reissued by Prophecy Productions, and these reissues will be made available in North America this summer. The reissues will feature new artwork and bonus content.

Finally, Negura Bunget is currently planning a full-scale tour of the USA and Canada to coincide with the release of Maiestrit. Tour dates should hopefully be announced soon.

» Negura Bunget on MySpace

Celeste is another amazing band I heard about mainly through various ‘best of 2009′ lists. Hailing from France, these guys combine the raw energy of sludge and hardcore with the dark atmosphere of black metal. Their music is much heavier on the hardcore, but the vocals have a blackened maliciousness to them and the album’s production has a densely suffocating quality to it that separates Celeste from most bands of that genre. Imagine a darker version of Botch or Converge and you’ll be pretty close to Celeste’s sound.

I’m guessing that Celeste’s music a little too hardcore-sounding for some black metal fans to enjoy, but if you’re not one of those people who has to stick closely to a particular genre, these guys are well worth checking out. Their latest album Misanthrope(s) and their 2008 release Nihiliste(s) are both available as free downloads from their label’s site, which to me seems kind of bizarre given how good these guys are. One minor drawback is that both albums sound extremely similar, so despite how ridiculously good the music is it’s easy to get tired of it after awhile. But for the low, low price of free, how can you really complain?

» Download Misanthrope(s) from Denovali Records

German dark metallers Bethlehem have a small free downloads page on their website containing random tracks that fans might find interesting.

Currently there are only two songs offered for download, but both are rather unusual. One is called ‘The 11th Hour…’, which features lyrics written by Nihilist from Seattle black metal band In Memorium. You can check out In Memorium on MySpace at myspace.com/inmemoriummetal.

The other song is actually a Frank Sinatra cover which was originally done as a hidden track for the Mein Weg album.

» Bethlehem downloads page