Between the years 1718 and 1820 Italian composer Antonio Vivaldi wrote four violin concertos, each of which was thematically expressive of one the four seasons of the year. Known as The Four Seasons, this collection of concerti became the most well known of Vivaldi‘s works and is still used in film, theater, opera, video games, ballet and many other art forms to this day. It was perhaps the first known example of music with a narrative element, and is widely considered to be a masterpiece.
Fast forward to present day: between the years of 2020 and 2022 the multinational quadrumvirate of DISMALIMERENCE, NUREZ, OLIM and THE WOLF GARDEN have written four atmospheric, melodic and post-black metal tracks, each of which is also thematically expressive of one of the four seasons of the year. Known as Recurrence, this split release arguably represents the best of each artist’s work to date, and may, with time, become considered to be a masterpiece.
Huge call? Just a liiiiiiittle bit of hyperbole there? Perhaps, but it is a top quality split. Right off the bat Dismalimerence‘s ‘Vernal Musings’ drops the listener into a lush world of carefully considered, overwhelmingly emotional metal with a blackened edge and sets the standard for the rest of the experience – this thing is just sopretty, and so well put together (both the song and the entire split). Across twelve minutes of stunning melodicism, fantastic arrangements and powerful progressions the US crew enchant and enthrall, but perhaps the biggest surprise of the whole shebang comes next: ‘Sommer’, by Nurez.
Taking a similar-ish but more folky and “prog” approach than Dismalimerence that’s no less astonishing in craftsmanship, ‘Sommer’ is the longest track of the bunch but never wears out its welcome. I couldn’t possibly comment on the lyrics as they’re penned in main man Moritz‘s native German (although it’s a safe bet they’re summer themed, obviously), but it’s the delivery of them that matters – and holy shit does he knock it out of the park, especially with his cleans. Add in a total blindside of a midsection comprised of messing with time signatures and rhythmic tricksterism and one’s jaw will surely be on the floor. ‘Sommer’ is hands-down the best work I’ve ever heard from him by a long shot, and has fully converted me to a fan of the project.
Much like Dismalimerence before, despite intense blasting passages and the searing harsh vocals, it would be doing Nurez a disservice to assume or label their offering “black metal”. Both stretch leagues outside of any of the boundaries that typically enclose the genre in every conceivable way. But never fear, less adventurous blacksters (I can’t believe I actually wrote that, I may kill myself after finishing this review) – Canadian solo project Olim brings things right back to a more outright black metal realm with ‘An Autumnal Passage’.
I wrote up Olim‘s debut album A Mighty Dispositionquite favourably a short time ago and opined that it was almost structureless by design, instead unfolding more along the lines of enveloping walls of miraculous and metaphysical sound. Well, ‘An Autumnal Passage’ brings something else to the table when it comes to the Olim approach: solidifying focus. For this composition JC descends from the firmament and paints in the more clearly defined brush-strokes of more earthen tones. The soaring post/atmoblack of the debut is still there, it’s just more anchored in the world around us this time – instead of lifting you up into the heavens, you’ll be suspended in ecstasy mere metres above the ground, embraced by the breathtaking, iridescent beauty of nature’s cycle, decaying into rebirth. Oh, and there’s a fantastic solo in the middle, too.
Then, rounding out this so-far impressive turn of the year are longtime BMD favourites and black English roses The Wolf Garden, ending on the bleakest of seasons with ‘Wintersong’. Spending the most time in traditional atmospheric black metal territory out of all four acts, they do what they do best; their gnarled expressions of darkness traversing turbulent realms of light and shadow. But not too light, which leads me to mention the only real qualm I have with the split – the track sequence. ‘Wintersong’ is naturally more sedate than other offerings, from the rolling composition to the slightly muted (in comparison to the opening offerings) production; I know it likely makes the intended narrative sense to finish on winter, but I can’t help but feel a different energy would have been a more memorable note to end on, and the variance in production is mildly distracting after the vivid opening of it all. It’s still a fantastic song on its own, though – an absolute stormer when the lads hit their stride late in the second act, fucking hell.
Overall – this split sounds alive. It breathes like nature itself; it shimmers with vitality and reverberates with the Earth’s hum. Frequently breathtaking and always at the very least enjoyable, that “masterpiece” quote above may be a little over the top and they’ll likely never reach the worldwide acclaim of the maestro Vivaldi – but for those whom lush, naturalistic black metal is the spirit that makes their soul sing, Recurrence will surely be equally as appreciated. Highly recommended.
Well folks, it’s been a helluva year in black metal. Just like last year. And the one before that… and the one prior, and so on. Seems like a damn near impossible task at this point to keep up with all of the amazing music produced on a weekly basis in our obsidian corner of the metal world, let alone try to sift through and pick out those gems which, for each of us, really stand out and shine with that blackened light. Yet, here we are. End of the year list time again. Aside from borrowing from a handful of reviews I’ve already done this year, I’m just gonna start writing about the shit that I liked. Let’s call it … a memoir. My black metal top 50 memoir of 2021, ready? Here we go.
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ALBUM OF THE YEAR
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CÂN BARDD (Switzerland). My word, do I love that Devoured By The Oak album, currently listening on a daily basis! Came out towards the end of the year (November), but by my third playthrough I knew that it was in serious danger of usurping WINDFAERER for the number one spot of the year, a band which had laid claim to that position since like July or so. And I think it has done that. Not only did Devoured By The Oak manage, to some extent, to shove aside all other 2021 considerations, it also fuckkkking annihilates the previous CÂN BARDD discography, by a considerable degree IMO, reaching the grandiose folky realms already occupied by kings like SAOR, BORKNAGAR and WINTERSUN… and this somewhat sounds like a combination of those bands. Every song is a goddamn epic, and everything is perfectly timed and placed, all the somewhat awkward, clunky aspects of previous albums (which I never really got into at all) completely streamlined, cleaned up, and dialed in, particularly the drums. On top of that, it was released at the perfect time for me, the turn of the season into winter, right when I am in the mood to listen to exactly this sort of thing. It’s. Goddamn. Beautiful.
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TIER ONE
[five creations of black art]
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And WINDFAERER’s (US, New Jersey) Breaths of Elder Dawns? It is excellent as well, right up there and by far my most listened to album of the year. Kudos to them for damn near achieving, with only violin (and a few extras here and there), the epic levels for which many other bands require an entire orchestra. They went from being a pretty good black metal band with good violin to really taking it to the next level in terms of composition and complexity and weaving it all together. They still very clearly have a black metal foundation, but there’s a lot of artistic, avant-garde elements which really make it massive, make it a masterpiece, yet without getting too off track. I think that with this album they have really broken free and reached a new pinnacle, not only in comparison to their own previous work but in comparison to any relevant subgenres of extreme metal in general: melodic black metal, post black metal, progressive metal, et cetera, with comparisons also to SAOR but additionally acts like NE OBLIVISCARIS, HARAKIRI FOR THE SKY, and PANOPTICON.
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FUNERAL MIST (Sweden). Can’t fuck with FUNERAL MIST. Surprise release with Deiform at the end of the year, but no surprise at all that it takes a top spot for me. Filled with blazing, unhinged riffs, unparalleled vocal variety, infernal blasting on all aspects of the drum kit, and a healthy dose of the religiously macabre, Mortuus delivers exactly what we would expect of black metal orthodoxy. Perhaps not as hellish as Devilry, not as blasphemous as Salvation, not as twisted and grotesque as Maranatha, not quite as contemplative as Hekatomb. Closest to sound to the previous two, but Deiform is darker and with more fire. It overtakes them on the speed/aggression factor and ultimately probably stands above Salvation as well. You cannot fuck with FUNERAL MIST.
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The atmospheric/symphonic subgenre, like the folk/pagan selections (overtaken by CAN BARDD), was the victim of a late coupe. While ANGUIS DEI had hung on since the beginning of the year, right at the end I became completely infatuated with the complex epic / symphonic / progressive / atmospheric project ETHEREAL SHROUD (England). Trisagion is made up of three massive tracks (four on the physical releases) which total out to almost 65 minutes (closer to 80 on the physical), each of which are comprised of three movements. It is beautiful and powerful, bright and melancholic, creative and devastating, contemplative and expansive all at once. Incredible release that I am just starting to scrape the surface of.
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ANGUIS DEI’s (Japan) Angeist is a goddamn masterpiece. Man there is a LOT going on. A ton of variety within an orthodoxically satanic, symphonic, avant-garde scaffold, successfully managing to combine, intentionally or unintentionally, many of the attributes of the very best sounds that symphonic black metal has ever had to offer. It sounds “classic” within the SBM vein, but the staggering amount of variability within that scaffold and overall cohesion is what really makes it a force to be reckoned with. It’s like… when the fucking five Power Rangers come together to make that big fucking robot? This is that robot, the rangers are CRADLE OF FILTH, EMPEROR, VESANIA, ANOREXIA NERVOSA and ROTTING CHRIST and if you are a fan of those bands then this album is essential. Every instrument is masterfully utilized and the vocals are just maniacal.
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MAQUAHUITL (US, Tennessee) – Con Su Pistola en La Mano [ep] is hard-hitting, galloping, cutthroat southwestern bandido black metal. It’s practically impossible to not fall back on WAYFARER, but best as a contrast instead of a comparison: MAQUAHUITL is faster, dirtier, more focused, more aggressive, and more capital-B-and-M-Black-Metal, and would be better compared in sound to DARK WATCHER or VITAL SPIRIT or, even better, something more orthodox like SKAN or GLORIOR BELLI, yet allowing an even more cross-cultural elements to permeate the music, with Latin guitars, wind instrumentation, and cumbia percussion. The album revolves around the legend of Mexican outlaw and folk hero Gregorio Cortez attacking, killing, and evading American Texas Rangers on the Mexican-American border, June of 1901.
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TIER TWO
[ten creations of black art]
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FERRITERIUM (France) gave us a fucking excellent second album entitled Calvaire, which is very straightforward and clean, but not particularly innovative, original, raw, or any other extreme. Nonetheless, in some sort of way this album is… -perfect-. No frills classic melodic black metal with riffs that literally do not quit, there’s not a single thing about it that I do not like.
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A new discovery for me was the post/progressive WOMAN IS THE EARTH (US, Minnesota), with new album Dust of Forever, which manages to be surprisingly rabid, dynamic, and exalted all at once, achieving a breathtaking level of beauty without using any synth at all, as far as I can tell. The ever-soaring, unrelentingly dynamic nature of it somewhat reminds me of stuff like SUHNOPFER or AORLAC possibly, although WITE is a bit more… ‘post-black’? At any rate, the melody and somewhat lighter aspect of it helps me keep up with the twists and turns.
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VORTEX OF END’s (France) Abhorrent Fervor is a slightly death-tinged, powerful, rabid yet artistic orthodox black metal album with an array of exciting elements, not least of which the goddamn vocals (handled by no less than three members) accounting for the insane variety of screams, roars, growls, yells, chants, whispers, and cleans. FFOs include other French acts like AOSOTH, ANTAEUS, TEMPLE OF BAAL, and (definitely) ARKHON INFAUSTUS, but also (and maybe even more so) the unabashed horns-in-the-air rocking-fucking-black metal of MISÞYRMING’s Algleymi, a more muscular evolution of ASCENSION (particularly the auditory occult mysticism of Consolamentum), and the infernal, grinding-riff ferocity of Gaahl/King era GORGOROTH.
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Gonna admit that although I am (still!) having a bit of trouble absorbing it fully, I’m pretty damn intrigued by FYRNASK’s (Germany) new opus VII – Kenoma, which for me falls right in with the likes of the heavily meditative SCHAMMASCH and vividly ritualistic MEPHORASH, although it is more dissonant, dense and abstract than both.
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VVILDERNESS (Hungary). Significantly more of a banger than previous releases, As Above, So Below nonetheless manages to maintain the sublime Hungarian folk sounds which are completely unique to this band and meld them with a heightened momentum and aggression for a really cohesive listen. Although it is hard to beat the serene natural harmony of Devour the Sun (2018), I do think that I am enjoying this new one even more than 2020’s Dark Waters.
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You know who else got heavier? PANOPTICON (US, Minnesota). Fantastic right? Austin has always had that amazing Americana folk aspect and it’s in full effect with …And Again Into The Light, but as a whole the album is way heavier than I thought it would be, bringing in some doom and death elements, and so massive that I still feel like I’m just beginning to scrape the surface of that one. Fucking huge, and I love it.
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The INHERITS THE VOID (France) album Monolith of Light is stellar cosmic black metal. I absolutely love the cinematic, epic melodies on top of that speedy percussion, the chaotic swirling on the guitar layers, and the sheer immensity of everything that’s going on, all of the different simultaneous tracks and layers. There’s so many things about this that sound atmospheric, from the keyboards to multiple guitar tracks to the drums… I want to get to know this album well, to find all of those intricacies and nuances that I can tell are there but can’t possibly absorb without more playthroughs. FFO: MARE COGNITUM
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ARISTARCHOS (Scotland) gave us an excellent self-titled debut which, harnessing blackened stormwinds, is more terrestrial but no less catastrophic. Although unrelated, ARISTARCHOS’ sound is directly in line with that perfected by Naas Alcemeth’s projects, specifically NIGHTBRINGER, with a similar layering of falsetto guitar lead, although somewhat less massive and overwhelming in general. Nonetheless, I fucking LOVE the sound and I knew that this album was placing somewhere on my year-end list on the first listen.
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Kudos to NULL (US, Virginia). I’m actually a little surprised I like Hiraeth so much, considering its immense diversity. It has a black pagan/folk scaffold but that structure is filled in with damn near everything: neofolk, thrash, epic melodeath, rock, spaghetti western, pop punk, humppa, American folk… the list just goes on and on, and every time I listen to it, it seems like I find something else. The double-CD album allows for a ton of FFOs (including FALKENBACH, FINNTROLL, SAOR, WINTERSUN, ELUVEITIE, UNREQVITED, CATAMENIA… shit, even old OFFSPRING!) with 18 tracks and a runtime of about 110 minutes, it’s honestly good fortune that the entire thing is as great as it is.
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Since I already have so many FFOs flying around here, I might as well get into another fairly obvious parsing together of amazing elements from black metal history and talk about the STORMKEEP (US, Colorado) album Tales of Othertime. Between 90’s era EMPEROR, DIMMU BORGIR, BURZUM, SATYRICON, and WINDIR, there isn’t really much that hasn’t already been done here, but goddamn they put it together SO fucking well and have such masterful songwriting, that this debut LP was born an instant classic.
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TIER THREE
[twelve creations of black art]
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Near the top of the ‘orthodox’ list is a close-to-my-heart Order ov the Black Arts-born debut which features elements of both cosmic and industrial black metal, but still manages to emit a distinctly demonic air: PALUS SOMNI’s (US/England) Monarch of Dark Matter. Comprised of members of ANCIENT HOSTILITY / ALUDRA, DECOHERENCE, and AKHLYS, it is a debut which is industrialized but raw, vast but dense, measured but chaotic, and progressively driving with increased conviction towards inevitable galactic annihilation. I had the honor of facilitating a bit of networking for the creation of this project, and also the honor of contributing the sigil logo.
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Also hellish but in an entirely different way, MORGAL (Finland) came out of nowhere, amirite?! Nightmare Lord is blazing, beer-drinking black metal combined with a nostalgic NWOBHM classicism… it’s like if you took the ‘Hallowed Be Thy Name’ (Iron Maiden) cover by CRADLE OF FILTH, cranked up the ferocity factor a bit, gave it a bunch of cocaine, and then made an entire album out of it. There’s also a sort of more belligerent thrash or almost punky aspect to it, and some parts remind me of TSJUDER or RAVENCULT.
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THERMOHALINE’s (Brazil/Portugal, Belgium, Argentina) mind-blowing avant-garde, ocean-themed album Maelström was the first album that I reviewed this year and it set the bar high. It has a massive, multilayered array of complexity and depth as well as almost baffling progression, disparate approaches, and seamless melding of many different styles and details, including industrial elements. This is avant-garde extreme metal at its best, and it could certainly claim black metal as a central core, but what is being presented with Maelström (apt title) goes way beyond that.
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Moving from outer realms towards inner depths, we have the particularly hellish and subterranean Paradeigma: Phosphenes of Aphotic Eternity from the ever-evolving INFERNO (Czechia). Notable with this latest and highly anticipated album is the truly cavernous and oppressive direction, not least of which is exemplified by the buried vocals and hallucinatory, esoteric crush of doom-laden black delirium.
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Then, on to AULD RIDGE (France) and his latest offering of venomous Consanguineous Tales of Bloodshed and Treachery, featuring fantastic fiery riffing, galloping percussion, spiteful vocals, excellent use of menacing, epic synth, folky acoustics, and even some twang once in a while. Think the riff / vocal savagery of GORGOROTH’s Under the Sign of Hell, combined with the bombastic synth grandiosity of LIMBONIC ART’s The Ultimate Death Worship… with some pagan influences thrown in. Somewhat arbitrary to include this album (released in May) or December’s Consanguineous Tales of Faith and Famine.
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MALIGNAMENT’s (Finland) debut album Hypocrisis Absolution, was released in September, but is officially the last album I found which made the list, not discovered until the first week of January, 2022 and sneaking into placement on the last edit. I wish I had found it sooner! It forgoes the typical Finnish top-of-the-mix vocal abrasion for some more subdued and slightly deathened style which includes what comes close to chanting yells at times. Somewhat like PANZERFAUST. Musically it has a similar groove at times but with fiery riffing appropriate for the country, and Viking elements thrown in. Thanks to Hells Headbangers for advertising this one for purchase… don’t mind if I do!
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FRIISK’s (Germany) new album …un torügg bleev blot Sand seems to skate that line between being orthodox but also melodic and atmospheric. What it really reminds me of is the defunct ANTLERS (also from Germany), to the point that I thought it was a continuation of that project, expertly incorporating grandiose melancholy, somewhat subdued vocals, highlighted epic lead guitar, pensive plodding intermixed with driving aggression, and even the use of somewhat martial percussion (ie. compare ‘Mauern aus Nebel’ with ANTLERS’ ‘Hundreds’). Even the logos are similar. At any rate, fantastic stuff.
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One-man monster KRVNA (Australia), gave us a blasting, stylized, subtly symphonic and precise black metal assault which boasts amazing drums and lead guitar. Dubbed ‘vampyric’ by its creator, Sempinfernus seems to be such in concept alone, and really seems to have sonic roots in 3rd/4th wave clean aggression, sitting somewhere in between turn-of-the-millennium DIMMU BORGIR, DARK FUNERAL, and BEHEMOTH, but the best of all three.
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Another marine-based album which came to the surface only in the last few weeks of 2021 was LHAÄD’s (Belgium) release. Inspired by the depths of the sea, Below ended up being much heavier than I initially assumed it would be, almost death-metalish in some parts, crushing in its fluidity. This surprise (along with the more deathy PANOPTICON), really helped to fill a void for me this year, since there ended up being relatively very little death metal which really caught my ear.
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CRYPTOSPITAL (Belarus)! Damn… Scythe of the Black Death caught me off guard. Fast-paced, unpolished, aggressive, melodic atmospheric black metal with cool as fuck vocals. Takes a minute to get going, but once that first track hits around 2 minutes and 15 seconds, it hits pretty damn hard. Then holy FUCK! Listen to that part at 6:25 and then even more so at like 6:50, THEN AT 7:10 !!!! This is classic melodic black metal PERFECTION, no joke! And that’s just the first track!
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Man, the new OSSAERT (Netherlands) also kicks ass. Though not described as such, it almost makes sense to think ofPelgrimsoord as a sequel to the debut album Bedenhuis (2020), a surprisingly coherent mix of raw / melodic / progressive / punkened black metal, and exceptional songwriting. Track two, ‘De Val en de Beroering’ is particularly fantastic and contains one of the best progressions of the year, with a ludicrously badass driving progression, intoxicating lead riff, and a repeatedly thrashing, convulsing bassline that I can’t even really begin to describe.
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AVDAGADA (Sweden) – Damnatio Cursus [ep] is well-produced, aggressive riff-based deathened black metal with nuanced synth and fantastic vocals. FFO GLORIA MORTI, KRYPTAN (see below). Not to get off topic, but GLORIA MORTI happens to be probably my all-time favorite band from Finland, so a comparison is definitely saying something.
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TIER FOUR
[twenty creations of black art]
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THE WOLF GARDEN (England) was a close-to-the-last minute addition that had initially escaped me in the oversaturation of the final months of 2021. It was my brother-in-arms Naph (co-conspirator in our conversational FERVUS CONJUNCTUM reviews at Black Metal Daily) who pointed out the verifiable virtues of Woven of Serpent’s Spines. Almost equal parts nature-inspired emotive atmosphere and driving, elevating post-black melody, I couldn’t help but notice a similarity between it and the also excellent WINDFAERER release (sans violin). An excellent album.
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For FELLED (US, Oregon) the expected Pacific Northwest, Cascadian folk tag is right on target with fantastic melodic passages, soaring guitars, tumbling drums, and an organic mix. The Intimate Earth also wields imperfection well and embraces a certain looseness, a natural imprecision and unpolished quality which produces an unparalleled sense of grounded earnestness and honesty.
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KRYPTAN (Sweden) – Kryptan [ep] Is classic ‘third wave’ melodic Swedish badassery with a dash of synth and a good dose of excellent vocals. Another band (read: NORDJEVEL, HORDE OV HEL, AVSLUT) which is doing DARK FUNERAL way better than they are doing it themselves. Also FFO: NAGLFAR, TRIUMPHATOR.
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The release which is more black metal than black metal, from a band which takes orthodoxy quite literally and manages to be often exponentially more demonic sounding than 99% of the scene at any given point of time… despite being devout Roman Catholic: REVERORUM IB MALACHT (Sweden). Though two albums were released at the end of summer simultaneously, it is the more aggressive and grinding Not Here which really caught my attention with its continual percussive battery, massively down tuned bass, terrifying and sublime vocals, and insidious industrial grind. I’ve said it before and it is still relevant: With this project, for me the end result is not *enjoyment* but *awe* instead.
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SUMERIAN TOMBS (Germany) – As Sumer Thrones At Night [ep]. Far from the romantic or historical vampiric sound of current BM trends, what we have here is a connection to a bloodthirsty source which is more ancient, primitive, pervasive, and infernal… and this is reflected in a more orthodox and demonic sound.
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RÜBEZHAL’s (US, Alaska) Remnants of Grief & Glory consists of exalted, triumphant black metal melodies gust over layers of deathened, burly vocals, and a harnessing percussion and overall songwriting. Expect fiery riffing, brief but effective guitar hooks and well-placed cascades of irresistible, driving blasting, and tempered sections which build and overflow into more commanding, groovy progressions. Each song provides its own take on this fantastic resonance of exaltation and brutality, utilizing a classic, melodic black metal approach with a weighty application of death metal and even doom elements.
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CARATHIS (Austria) – Hymns to the Tower [ep] is blasting, raw(ish), thrashy, and has riffs that smolder in your brain after just a single listen… just straight up unadorned classic black metal! FFO TSJUDER, RAVENCULT, ASAGRAUM
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SALQIU (Brazil) – Urban Post Black [ep] is a short, avant-garde and somewhat industrial black art offering, fantastically resonant and disorienting EP, the sound of which may be translated into the experience of a perfect, brief soundtrack to urban angst.
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GRAVENCHALICE (US, Florida) dropped another one! I don’t like Samael quite as much as their previous, it’s a bit more methodical and doomy, but still awesome. A concise description would be elements of the dissonant occult gravity and dynamic atonality of DEATHSPELL OMEGA, perfectly conjoined with the sublimely melodic, intractable momentum of MGLA, but better the most recent offerings from both. Finally, a few that are a bit more ‘old school’.
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NOLTEM (US, Connecticut) I perceive as having a heavily water-based sound overall, and Illusions In The Wake is like a lucid, surreal dreamstate, with meandering acoustic recurrence over nonchalant percussion which seems to unfurl in jazzy eddies, delirious distorted strings, and harsh vocals, often with a faint rush of turmoil, building inertia, and apexes which overflow into an expansive, beautiful cascade. It also boasts one of the most unabashedly colorful album covers in recent memory.
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An act that I did not realize was so melodic until I finally caught up with it was this year’s Dy’th Requiem For The Serpent Telepath was ESOCTRILIHUM (France). Mislead by perhaps a faulty perspective on previous releases, I expect oppressive, harsh, dense heaviness, not the pervasive melodic aspect which is present here. I’m talking real melody, classic black metal melody. Not just thrown in amidst a bunch of oppressive dissonant blasting, but instead a melody with emphasis and space created for it which brings to mind shit like old DIMMU BORGIR (think ‘Mourning Palace’), CALADAN BROOD, LIMBONIC ART, and FALKENBACH.
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DARK WATCHER (US, Arkansas) – Hymns Of A Godless Land [ep] is high energy, horns-in-the-air, spaghetti-western-flavored americana black metal, short and sweet. FFO recent MAQUAHUITL, VOLAHN, and VITAL SPIRIT.
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MORKE’s (US, Minnesota) We Are The River is a must-mention; a very personal, genuine, melancholic, introspective, powerful, beautiful 80-minute release, poignant both from a conceptual and auditory perspective. Truly an ambitious project, which clearly demonstrates that the project needs a good label contract.
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AGRYPNIE (Germany) graced us with Metamorphosis, boasting a fairly heavy symphonic element, and affixing it into an overall style which is altogether more modern and progressive, resulting in some massive, crystalline, and powerful material. Think HARAKIRI FOR THE SKY but more epic arrangements and less irritating vocals, and also FFO BELTEZ, GAEREA, and VUKARI.
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With this year’s Arkivet, WORMWOOD (Sweden) went in the direction that I hoped they would. Each song is more in line with what I particularly appreciate from previous works (specifically the PINK FLOYD-esque guitar lead), and each one has nuances that continue to reveal themselves after a few listens. I venture to say that even though Nattarvet’s finish sets the bar for peak WORMWOOD, overall Arkivet is the better album.
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This would normally be the place I would place the ever-productive UNREQVITED, probably my favorite black ‘post / gaze’ project and a frequent entry on my AOTY lists. However, although it is good (and I still bought it) the ultralite Beautiful Ghosts album didn’t resonate with me as much as the quite similar but darker and more sinister HÆNESY (Hungary). Featuring lush atmospheric delirium, buried and indistinguishable vocals, and excellent black metal drive at times (‘Drowning In The Final Intellect’), Garabontzia certainly put this project on the map for me.
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GRANDEUR (Austria) – Aurea Aetas is unfancy, violent, but melodic black metal with some fiery lead on top and blasting galore, hitting that prototypical black metal sweet spot and hitting it hard with the backing force of some driving crust/punk inertia!
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VUKARI (US, Illinois) – Omnes Nihil [ep] is progressive black metal done perfectly: great focus, great balance, great drive, great production, this time a bit heavier than their last album. This band just gets better and better with every new release. FFO BELTEZ, GAEREA
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KAMPFESWUT (Germany) – Kampfeswut [ep] is stripped down, squealing, punky black metal with an AGALLOCH-ish folky acoustic element.
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DUSK IN SILENCE (Indonesia) also hit a sweet spot with me for reasons which are a little hard to put a finger on other than the fact that Beneath the Great Sky of Solitude’s memorable riffs and outstanding progressions just immediately wormed their way to my mind loop to the point that I grabbed that LP one Bandcamp Friday.
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HONORABLE MENTION
[not black art]
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To round out 2021 with a solid top 50, I’ve got FALLENSUN (Canada) – The Wake of the Fall. Epic progressive melodic death metal at it’s finest. I have a MAJOR weakness for this sort of stuff and my all-time favorite album (ever) would fall into this description (DISILLUSION – The Liberation). FALLENSON do it near perfectly, a gorgeous melding of deeply moving euphonies and deathened extremity, this debut album elevating them to the heights of fellow aeronauts AN ABSTRACT ILLUSION, NE OBLIVISCARIS, ETERNAL STORM, COUNTLESS SKIES, IOTUNN, IAPETUS, and DESSIDERIUM (who’s 2021 album Aria has at least some potential beat out The Wake of the Fall once I give it a fair shake).
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Quality takes time. Sure, anyone can just bash something out in a couple of weeks, throw it up on Bandcamp and forget about it while they move straight on to the next thing – but to create something truly memorable takes dedication. Work. Honing and perfecting of processes; a careful (and sometimes ruthless) hand. Only then will the spark of greatness kindle and burn… and this is what UK atmoblack trio THE WOLF GARDEN have achieved with their debut album, Woven Of Serpent’s Spines.
Their 2018 EP The Yawning Abyss showed great promise and received a warm response when it was released via Naturmacht Productions. Instead of bowing to temptation and rushing out a follow up release, the duo of Omnio and Valtiel (plus new guitarist Exarch) decided to take their time and carefully craft an album that beats that debut EP on all fronts. Lush, almost cinematic ambientscapes and longing, naturalistic black metal entwine to conjure an atmosphere that transports your consciousness to greener realms; if that debut was a sapling, this album has matured into a mighty oak. When you’ve listened through Woven Of Serpent’s Spines once, I guarantee you’ll be listening through it many times over.
Dropping 12th November under the banner of Naturmacht Productions once more, this is a record that fans of Saor, Ovnev, Drudkh and the like will not want to miss – and today we have been privileged to speak for the second time with main composer Omnio, who again takes us deep into the hidden world of The Wolf Garden. So, listen to teaser track ‘The Silence Between The Stars’ below, grab yourself a pre-order (digital now, physicals Oct 22nd) and read on below. Hails.
Greetings, Omnio! It’s a pleasure to chat to you once again for the release of your compelling new album, Woven of Serpent’s Spines. I hope you are well over there in England.
– Thanks for having me back, it’s always a pleasure.
It is. Now, we know The Wolf Garden is a storytelling band, and I believe the themes of Woven of Serpent’s Spines are a direct continuation of the blend of personal expressions and Norse Mythology that swirled within your debut EP The Yawning Abyss. So, tell us – what tales are in store for us this time around?
– The album is a story of a lone wanderer in the aftermath of the world’s end. The story follows the wanderer’s path through life, death, nightmares and a prophecy that they become inexplicably drawn into. But, as in life, the end might not be the end at all.
Rather than a huge leap forward into untrodden territory this album certainly seems like a honing and perfecting of what has come before, with the addition of a few lush and dynamic new elements. Was there anything you decided to focus on or do differently this time around, any specific goals you perhaps had in mind?
– I think for this one we really had to pull out all the stops and go all out to create the album that we wanted, first time. After the first EP (which I consider to still very much be us trying to find our identity), I knew how the sound had evolved, and we settled into that sound quite quickly. I think this record is a lot stronger thematically, as well as musically. We have stayed true to what we know as TWG, and so I have used a lot of nature-based sounds to create that atmosphere. We have always tried to create a mood, something that the listener can get lost in, but without sacrificing the more obviously black metal elements that help the story along.
Your vocals are once again great, honest and powerful – I’m a fan of your spoken word and those female vocals as well. Who is the additional vocalist, and how did you come to work with them? Are there any more guests on the album?
– Marina (Maus) is an old friend and comrade, she’s from Sardinia and has always impressed me with her language skills, being multilingual. She would sometimes message me to ask questions about English phrasing. She speaks the Old Norse (which I think is actually Icelandic) on the first song, because I have no idea on the pronunciation! I hope that she will contribute to our future records too, as I think she has a fantastic voice that suits the music really well.
We are really happy to have had some really great guests on the album, one being Katrina Turk who provides some beautifully spooky vocals at the album’s conclusion, and Moritz Paul (from black metal band Nurez) who played additional keyboards on ‘The Silence Between the Stars’.
Whilst the entire album is fantastic, I’m particularly enamored with the stunning expanse of both bookends – opener ‘The Flood (Seeress)’ and ultimate composition ‘The Drought (Weavess)’. Could you tell us a little about these songs and how they appear to be linked thematically?
– So, ‘The Flood’ and ‘The Drought’ are really the two most important “chapters” in this story, as they serve to explain the beginning of the journey and of course, the conclusion. The Seeress in the first track is a fortune-teller, of sorts, leading our protagonist down a path that they may or may not be meant to tread, and the Weavess is ever-present in the background, spinning fates for the wanderer. The lyrics are sometimes hopeful, sometimes mournful, and I think that the listener will be able to draw a few different possible conclusions from those two songs alone. The other three songs flesh out the story of the journey, but I think it’s safe to assume that what is green and verdant at the beginning of the tale is barren and dead by the end. We are keeping it cheery!
You are a delightful lot! I must say, you’ve nailed it again with the album art – and this time it is not a photograph, but a gorgeous painting (that may as well be a photograph). Who is the artist? Was it painted specifically for this album, or does it have any special significance to you?
– Sadly I wish I could say that the artwork (The Dark Wood) was commissioned for the record, but alas, it was actually painted by Russian artist Ivan Shishkin in 1876! It really fits the theme of the album though, and so when I saw it I knew it was going to be perfect for the cover art. I went through a number of other covers that ultimately never came to anything, but maybe if there’s a reissue one day we may use one of the alternate ones.
When we last spoke after the release of The Yawning Abyss, you said you had to make the next record even better than that one. Do you feel like you have achieved that?
– Oh definitely. This record is a lot more mature and succinct in its sound than the EP, as I mentioned earlier we were still very much finding the sound of TWG, and I think that we have settled into what is “our sound” now. We aren’t trying to be overtly black metal, or death or doom, it’s just the sound that we are happy with. The onus is very much on the atmosphere and the stories that we can create. Having said that, the album was never intended to be a concept album, it just sort of happened!
I asked this question of JC from Burden Of Ymir quite recently, and although you don’t deal in the subject as deeply as he, I shall also pose it to you. Largely due to unfortunate co-opting of certain aspects by certain idiots, Norse Mythology has been copping a bit of a bad rap in black metal circles of late – if you speak of the old gods or throw some runes on your artwork, it’s often automatically assumed that you’re cryptofash or have supremacist leanings. What are your thoughts on all of this?
– Honestly, I find the use of Norse mythology as a fascist thing quite bizarre. But people will try to shoehorn in anything to be edgy these days, and because of the NSBM scene we now have bands trying to use Paganism and old Norse as a supremacist thing. For the record, racism is something I do not agree with or condone at all. We have never used Norse mythology in a way that could be construed as racist or fascist, and we flatly refuse to indulge in any extreme political, racial or religious topics. Music is an artform, not a weapon, despite what others say.
Whilst you clearly know your way around an instrument and have been playing for some time, I don’t believe I’ve ever enquired as to your beginnings. When did you first learn to play, and what led you to eventually explore the darkened pathways of black metal?
– I actually picked up a bass when I was eleven, and a guitar by about twelve. I was very into Nirvana and Metallica back then, as I think everyone into metal was, and started off learning their songs. I started my first band called Entropy back in 1992, at school. It took us 4 years to write three songs and to play our first gig! By that point I was getting into the Florida death metal scene with bands like Deicide, Obituary and Cannibal Corpse, so our first few songs were very much like that. The band grew into a more gothic metal thing in the late nineties and we changed our name to Season’s End. We played a lot of Type O Negative and Anathema songs and it slowly started creeping into our sound. After I left the band in 2003 I dabbled in many different genres and bands, including funeral doom, and a short-lived synthwave/chiptune project. Ultimately though I wanted to go back to the harsh, heavy and frenetic black metal that we had all been listening to but never wrote, so The Wolf Garden was born in 2016. And here we are!
And finally – as it’s getting to the end of the year, I’m going to hit you up for some recommendations! Which works have you felt inspired by or you found yourself coming back to over the course of the plague year, 2021?
– There’s really been so much good stuff coming out over the last couple of quarantined years! I’ve been really enjoying the latest Carcass record, and ‘Pristine’ by Morwinyon that came out last year is on a pretty regular rotation. It’s got a really nice warm sound to it, which is refreshing in a sea of “cold, frostbitten” BM!
Sincerest thanks for your time once again, Omnio. Any last words of wisdom you would like to leave us with?
– Thanks for the opportunity to talk about the album! My words of wisdom would be “Failure only happens when you don’t try. Keep going.”
Woven Of Serpent’s Spines releases 12th November via Naturmacht Productions. Digital release and merch pre-orders October 22nd.
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Order Woven Of Serpent’s Spines digitally and pre-order merch from the Naturmacht Productions Bandcamp HERE and The Wolf Garden Bandcamp HERE on October 22nd.
The BMD inbox is a mysterious and often unsettling place. Constantly receiving more submissions than I could ever hope to write about, without a doubt some great releases have unfortunately fallen through the cracks and become lost to the void forever. One, however, that stood out like a beacon in the darkness (and coincidentally possesses a title that might very well be describing said inbox) is The Yawning Abyss, the debut offering from fresh UK naturalistic atmoblack project The Wolf Garden.
If the words ‘naturalistic atmoblack’ made your ears prick up, then yes, this is one that’ll really tickle your bits. Beauty and elemental harshness in equal measure? Check. Authentic, traditional moods? Check. Dynamic, with loads of variety? Check. Just the right amount of ethereal keys? Check. Emotive vocals, both clean and harsh? Check, check. Great songwriting? Massive check. It’s an accomplished debut that over the course of its four tracks immerses you deep into its lore, taking influence from the greats while still doing its own thing and leaving you wanting more of it… so it probably comes as no surprise that it was snapped up post-haste by the splendid folk at Naturmacht Productions for a digipack CD release (which dropped on December 1st last year). I’ve even read reviews where others have said this EP got them through some severely tough times.
Once I’d spent some time with this shining gem I simply had to reach out for an interview. Main composer/vocalist T.H. was more than up for a chat, so settle in and read on below – this band might just be your new light in the dark.
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Hello T.H! Thanks for taking the time to speak with us today, this interview has been quite some time coming as I was first made aware of your great debut EP The Yawning Abyss late last year. Now that the EP has been out for a while, with the benefit of hindsight – how do you feel about both the EP itself and the reception it has had?
– Thanks for featuring us. Yeah we’ve been really blown away by the reception to the EP. I’ve been putting music out online in one form or another for years and getting no real reception at all, but after deciding to go back to what I love writing and playing (black/doom/death metal) it just seemed to click with people. We’re very proud of the way the EP turned out, although now we have to make the next record better!
One thing that seemed to happen fairly quickly after the original release was the EP being picked up by Naturmacht Productions, which you must be incredibly pleased with. How did that come about?
– Yeah that was an odd thing. We released the EP on the 1st December 2018 on a very small label called Zombnambulist Records, owned by a friend of mine. We’d put the EP up on our Bandcamp page and on several websites to try and get some interest, and I was talking to one of the guys over at Order ov the Black Arts, looking for any recommendations on labels or companies who may be interested in promoting the EP, just to get the word out rather than for a record deal. Because he had already listened to the EP and knew the themes of the record, he suggested that I get in contact with Naturmacht, which I did. The next day Rob (Naturmacht) had emailed me back to discuss what we wanted to achieve with them and on the 19th December 2018 we signed up. It really seems to be the perfect fit for us, as the label itself has a strong roster of atmospheric and nature-inspired black metal artists. It seemed like a no-brainer.
I can’t really find much information about you floating around, so let’s dig into some history. Formed back in 2016 the project consists of two members: TH and PB. How did you two meet, and what inspired the creation of The Wolf Garden?
– I met PB probably 15 years ago, I don’t recall how we met actually, it was that long ago! We both lived in the same town then and we played together in a band around 2004. We had some good material but ultimately we didn’t really know what we wanted to do with the bands sound or direction so it fizzled out and we disbanded fairly quickly.
When I decided to start writing a black metal project it was originally going to be myself and Adam Stanley (who you can hear on Seed of a Giant Tree doing the clean vocals, and the guitars on that section), but he is already the drummer in one band, and a session player for a number of others, so it soon became clear that it wasn’t a viable option for us to commit to TWG full-time as a writing partnership. I was using the stock drums in Logic to play along to while recording as I find it easier to keep time to rather than a click, and when I got to the point where the first song was arranged PB immediately popped into my head as the man to ask for drums, and thankfully he agreed. The drums he writes fit so naturally into the songs, everytime I drop his drums into a song for the first time I get blown away, it stops feeling like a small project and feels like the immersive sound we always wanted.
I believe these four songs were slowly birthed over a period of two years. Was this the result of perfectionism, or just the songs naturally coming into bloom at their own pace? What was your creative process like over this time?
– It was a number of things really. I record in a small studio in my house, so I need time on my own to record, Paul lives in a different part of the South to me, so arranging the drums to be recorded takes time, there’s perfectionism as far as the mixing goes, and there was definitely some laziness on my part in the beginning. It probably took a long time because of things happening in both of our lives at the time, meaning that we couldn’t always get the time to record. For example, finding time to get Adam down to do his clean vocals took ages as he lives the other side of London to me and I had to collar him when he was playing a gig near me one weekend. We did about 8 layers of vocals for that section with a load of different harmonies, it turned out great in my opinion. If you listen hard enough you can hear him screaming his lungs out under that section too.
Seed of a Giant Tree was the first track to be finished, then A Snake in the Roots Strangles the World, Winter’s Father and Ginnungagap. Incidentally that was going to be the original tracklisting for the EP but having listened to everything in that order I wanted the natural fade-out on Winter to close the record out. I’ve never tried to limit myself with my writing, I never wanted to impose a four-minute rule for a track or anything like that. I stop writing the song when it sounds finished to me, and it’s nearly always music first and lyrics second, so that possible restraint is pretty non-existent as well.
The album is very naturalistic and deals heavily with themes of Norse Mythology – Seed of a Giant Tree references the formation of the Earth from Ymir’s flesh, for example. Given that you’re from England’s south which has a notable history with Vikings, how important are the tales of the Old Norse to you and why did they inspire you so much during the creation of The Yawning Abyss?
– The plan for the band’s theme was to tell stories, and England and the Norse mythos are packed to the brim with stories. I wanted to stay clear of the more traditional black metal trappings of Satan, hatred, WWII etc and focus more on nature. There’s nothing more powerful to me than the force of nature, and my feelings towards the Earth is that we have basically ruined it, which makes me very concerned. A friend of mine has dubbed it ‘ecological grief’ which I thought was a beautiful way of describing it. So Seed of a Giant Tree deals with what I believe will inevitably happen when mankind kills itself off and nature reclaims the earth. I suppose I’ve contradicted myself a little there because that song is definitely misanthropic, but it’s telling the story of what happens to the world next. The Norse mythos has always fascinated me, I have relatives from Finland and I grew up hearing stories about trolls and giant wolves and monsters, and the Norse pantheon. It just so happens that there’s some excellent descriptions of the earth’s formation in the Poetic Edda, it seemed natural to use some of the prose from that in the lyrics. It’s not an original idea by any standard, but it fits so well. If anyone knows where the song title comes from you get internet points from me too haha!
Sticking with the lyrical themes for a moment, Ginnungagap speaks of the primordial void ‘Ginnungagap’… but on this track in particular the lyrics also seem able to be interpreted by the listener as a more personal story. Was that your intention here?
– Yes and no. The name Ginnungagap is only used to tie into the lyrics, rather than describing the actual abyss from the Edda. It’s definitely the most personal song on the EP for me, because it’s the only one that’s telling a story from my personal perspective. Although it’s the most morose song on the record, it also has an element of rebirth near the end – just not for all parties involved. It’s always good if the listener can relate to lyrics and songs personally, but it’s a story for me really. I needed to write that song to get it out there finally.
Winter’s Fatheris a killer closing track, containing some of the most violent work of the entire EP – and is possibly my personal favourite. It really immerses the listener in the story you’re telling with it. Do you have a favourite piece on the record, or a section you’re particularly happy with writing?
– Winter’s Father was probably my favourite song to work on because it’s so frenetic, and the most angry haha! My throat was raw by the end of recording that. For me though, I think the middle section of Ginnungagap is my favourite, and although it’s probably more doom than BM, it’s got a great flow. That and the last section of Winter, that’s a fun section to play.
I quite like the cover art; it seems like it could be a photograph taken by you. Who is the photographer, and does the image have any special significance?
– The cover photo is “Forest Trail” by a photographer called Spencer Selover, he’s from California I believe. It could easily have been taken here in England; in the autumn and winter we certainly have a bleak and atmospheric landscape in the rural areas, similar to where I live. When I was looking for a suitable cover for the record I wanted something that covered all the bases that we’d spent two years crafting, so something that shows nature, something lonely, but also something that shows a cyclical death/rebirth theme too. So having a desolate landscape on the brink of growing again was an easy choice. We’ve had a lot of positive comments about the cover, so we’re happy. Thanks Spencer!
In my opinion this material would go down a treat in a live setting. Have you considered finding a full lineup and playing some shows? Is that something that’s likely to happen in future?
– Well, there’s no plans for any live shows at the moment, but never say never. I’ve been toying with the idea of possible live shows, we have a number of good local extreme metal festivals here so it could be something to look at in the future. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
So… what’s next from here? Any more The Wolf Garden on the way?
– Plenty more on the way, yes. We’ve already started writing the next record, this will be our first full-length album, and so far it’s turning out really well. I think that now we are in the natural swing of things it will progress more quickly than the EP. Although the perfectionism has already crept in, which can only be a good thing. I scrapped a load of early material, it may get revisited along the way to see if it was just a bad recording day, or if it needs chucking away completely.
In the meantime we are still promoting The Yawning Abyss on Bandcamp, social media and streaming sites (Spotify, Google Play, Amazon Music etc), so people can always find it there. There’s a plan to do a music video for one of the tracks from the EP, most likely Winter or Snake. We are building our website, which will keep the address that currently redirects to Bandcamp (www.thewolfgarden.co.uk), and I think there’s a possibility of tees on the way at some point too.
Sincerest thanks once again for your time, and for the wonderful The Yawning Abyss. All power to you and I’m looking forward to more. Any final words you’d like to leave us with?
– Thanks for having me, and thanks to all of you who have supported The Wolf Garden. Cheers!
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Purchase The Wolf Garden‘s The Yawning Abyss on CD or digital from the artist’s Bandcamp here, or from Naturmacht Productionshere.
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