BLACK METAL DAILY’S LISTCRUSH 2021: The GOS Edition

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 of Pelgrimsoord 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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BLACK METAL DAILY’S LISTCRUSH 2021: The Tom O’Dell Edition

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Man, what a year.  Somehow despite being once again locked inside for half of it, life was busier than ever –  nevertheless, I managed to cobble together a sufficient number of Black Metal Daily pieces to qualify for a Listcrush article, and as such now, whilst you remain on this page, you exist in a realm where my opinions are mighty, trve, and entirely infallible.*  As ever, my disclaimer stands that these are simply the albums this year that kept me coming back for more, as for me that’s the mark of a great album.  Although this time I did have to deploy a colour-coded spreadsheet in order to quantify exactly what the hell was going on.  I digress…

* … you’ve already closed it, haven’t you

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Listen along whilst you read:

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THE BLACK METAL TOP 10:

10. Miasmata – Unlight: Songs of Earth and Atrophy. (Naturmacht Productions)

I love Blind Guardian and I love black metal; this album takes the melodic leads of the former and harshness of the latter to create a blisteringly triumphant record that doesn’t sound quite like anything else out there at the moment.  And to think this is only the debut – I can’t wait to see what else Miasmata has in store. READ MORE 

• Essential tracks: ‘Artifacts‘, ‘Caverns of Malachite‘

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9. Firienholt – By the Waters of Awakening. (Fólkvangr Records, Naturmacht Productions)

Emerging from paths unknown, the epic black metal trio Firienholt knocked it out the park with their debut full length this year.  It’s Caladan Brood worship of the most faithful variety, right down to the >10min track lengths, but it’s magnificently done in all regards from the writing to the production, and it’s well worth a listen for anyone seeking some epic metal feelings; read Dex’s full review HERE.

• Essential tracks: ‘Ruminations by Starlight‘, ‘The Whispering Shadow‘

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8. Praecantator – Obelisk. (Sonic Transmitter Records)

Praecantator are a relatively local band I’ve followed on Facebook for years; I remember their early work being relatively standard second-wave styled black metal, and in all honesty expected Obelisk to be more of the same when I saw it announced on my feed.  Well, I don’t know what the hell happened to these guys in lockdown, but Obelisk blew my head off with an unexpected assault of blackened death metal riffage, and now I’m firmly at the edge of my seat to see what a full length will look like.

• Essential tracks: ‘Ascent‘, ‘Empyrean‘

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7. Cân Bardd – Devoured by the Oak. (Northern Silence Productions)

Cân Bardd’s story is one of success.  Their first album was exceptionally composed and released to a wave of adoring fans; since that album they’ve only grown and grown, and Devoured by the Oak continues that trend.  Main man Malo Civelli’s writing skills are on top form, as he effortlessly blends layers upon layers of harmony and countermelody.  I’ve critiqued his clean vocals in the past, but on Oak Civelli shows clear signs of improvement that are wonderful to hear.  Cân Bardd are truly titans of the atmoblack world now, and everyone should be paying them due attention.

• Essential tracks: ‘Une couronne de branches‘, ‘Devoured by the Oak‘ 

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6. Mesarthim – CLG J02182-05102. (Avantgarde Music)

Oh boy, this album.  My experience with Mesarthim this year was one of those rare moments where music is discovered at the perfect time.  I’ve not gone back to it as often in the latter months of the year, but there was a time where I simply could not stop listening; such was the moment.  Sticking it on again now whilst writing up this list reminds me of every emotion that inspired the artiest article I’ve ever written, and I stand by it as a heartfelt recommendation to anyone who loves synths and space. 

• Essential tracks: ‘Tidal Warping‘, ‘A Generation of Star Birth, Part 1‘ 

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5. Këkht Aräkh – Pale Swordsman. (Livor Mortis)

Riding straight from one emotional heavyweight to another, Këkht Aräkh’s Pale Swordsman was another album that floored me from the first listen.  I’m used to raw black metal incorporating dungeon synth elements, but usually those synths are used to create creeping horror or a sense of fantastic scale – in contrast, the instrumental elements of Pale Swordsman that fall outside the standard metal curriculum are haunting by way of sadness and solitude.  It’s not angry, but simply mournful and incredibly personal.  And damn, that last track… 

• Essential tracks: ‘Thorns‘, ‘Swordsman‘ 

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4. Ancient Mastery – Chapter One: Across the Mountains of the Drämmarskol. (Ad Victoriam, Pest Productions, Death Kvlt Productions)

Lying somewhere between raw black metal and Summoning-worship, Ancient Mastery’s first chapter is, quite simply, magnificent.  All of it is expertly constructed for the style, but the real showstopper is the synth and keyboard work.  I dare you to listen to 4:35 in “The Passage” without raising a fist to the sky;  you can’t.  Epic stuff. 

• Essential tracks: ‘The Passage‘, ‘The Majesty of Aztara‘ 

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3. Stormkeep – Tales of Othertime. (Ván Records)

I’ve heard this album described as 2021’s Emperor tribute, but in reality it’s so much more than that.  It’s an album every bit as captivating as its majestic cover artwork, spinning tales of classic dungeons and dragons fantasy.  The production is 90s symphonic black perfected and spun through modernity, with magnificent synths, gorgeous interludes adorning the grim black metal core.  Clean vocals by Visigoth’s Jake Rogers rear their head throughout the record too, and, as anyone who knows me can attest, I can never resist anything touched by his perfect baritone.  Tales of Othertime is just so much fun; simply put, it reminds me of everything I loved about black metal when I first discovered the second wave classics in times past. 

• Essential tracks: ‘The Serpent’s Stone‘, ‘Eternal Majesty Manifest‘ 

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2. Wormwood – Arkivet. (Black Lodge Records)

Wormwood’s transition from the folky black’n’roll exhibited on Ghostlands to gloomy Scandinavian atmoblack has never been more prevalent than on Arkivet.  The subject matter is haunting, the melodies are heart wrenching, and the result is a monolith of atmospheric tragedy.  It’s no one trick pony either, with catchy riffs, solos, and ambient instrumentation scattered throughout to keep the listener engaged and immersed in the peaks and troughs of the journey.  Every time I listen, I’m staggered.   

• Essential tracks: ‘Overgrowth‘, ‘End of Message‘ 

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1. Vvilderness – As Above, So Below. (Vvilderness Records)

My initial reaction to this album was that it was more The Witcher 3 soundtrack than metal album.  As a huge Witcher fan, this presents very little issue, and I’ve spun As Above, So Below countless times since it’s November release.  Perhaps controversially for my Black Metal list, it’s not the blackened elements that keep me coming back for more; it’s the expertly constructed folk sections with instruments and layers I can’t even name, it’s the melodies that call the high points of The Jester Race to mind… and it’s the raw feeling of nature that perfectly places the listener in some vast forest in the heart of the Continent.  Of course the blackness is there, used throughout as a required burst of ferocity, but also used with remarkable, expertly crafted restraint.  If you want the most emotive metal album of 2021, this is it.  

• Essential tracks: ‘As Above, So Below‘, ‘All Fires Die Out‘ 

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HONOURABLE MENTIONS: Windfaerer; Grima; Genune; Kauan; Decline of the I; Hulder; Belore; Carathis.

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THE NON BLACK METAL TOP 12:

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12. Knife – Knife. (Dying Victims Productions) 

This was the year I got into fun, dumb speed metal, and whilst most of this was homework on essential listening from earlier years, (looking at you, Bütcher), Knife took the crown for 2021’s trvest speed.  It’s exactly what you want from the genre, with cutting vocals, snarling riffs, and hooks you’ll have stuck in your head for days.  All of it done with absolutely no subtlety, and zero fucks given.  

• Essential tracks: ‘Black Leather Hounds‘, ‘K.N.I.F.E.’ 

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11. Stormtide – A Throne of Hollow Fire. (Metal Hell Records)

Melodic death metal has been around for a hell of a long time now, so it’s vital that new bands seeking to make their name in the genre find some way to keep it fresh.  Stormtide go for the epic approach, implementing eastern instrumentation alongside symphonics and blastbeats to generate a sense of wonder and mystery that pervades through the record.  The vocal delivery leaves a bit to be desired by way of diversity, but there are true moments of excellence where the vocals line up with the instruments – and when Stormtide do hit the mark, it’s damn enjoyable stuff.   

• Essential tracks: ‘Eternal Fire‘, ‘Awakening‘ 

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10. Inferi – Vile Genesis. (The Artisan Era)

Technical death metal had a phenomenal 2021.  Every band in the genre seemed to up their game, and so competition was fierce for spots on this list.  Vile Genesis shows Inferi honing their melodic ability whilst retaining their fearsome technicality, crafting an altogether more digestible but no less impressive album than 2018’s Revenant.  It falls down a little bit in terms of memorability when compared to some later entries in the same genre, but it’s an achievement to be proud of and absolutely worth a listen. 

• Essential tracks: ‘Simian Hive‘, ‘Mesmeric Horror‘ 

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9. Blood Red Throne – Imperial Congregation. (Nuclear Blast)

A pretty late discovery from a band I wasn’t familiar with at all, Imperial Congregation is modern death metal done properly.  As one would expect, it’s filled with sledgehammer riffs that beat you into relentless headbanging, but it’s also got sufficient depth and memorability to keep you wanting to come back for more.  The production is crisp and the songwriting is concise, making it eminently replayable, and the beating it delivers on the tenth play is just as massive as the first. 

• Essential tracks: ‘Conquered Malevolence‘, ‘Transparent Existence‘ 

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8. Ravenous E.H. – Hubris. (Feast Beast Records)

Power metal by way of the American school of heavy metal, Ravenous E.H.’s Hubris is carried largely by a phenomenal vocal talent in R. A. Voltaire, whose mighty baritone is one of my favourite discoveries of the year.  Bolstered by a luscious mix, Hubris is suitably grandiose and theatrical to be the strongest power metal album of 2021.  I’m not sure how it would contend against other North American power/heavyweights – say, if Visigoth, Eternal Champion and Judicator all released in 2021 too.  But I’m excited to see what the future has in store for Ravenous, and if the fortunes of metal are kind, we may see such a contest in the future, and bask in the inevitable trve glory. 

• Essential tracks: ‘Son of Storms‘, ‘Die 1,000 Deaths‘
• https://ravenouseternalhunger.bandcamp.com/album/hubris 

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7. Mental Cruelty – A Hill to Die Upon. (Unique Leader Records)

Anyone who doesn’t think deathcore is one of the most exciting genres in metal at the moment is kidding themselves, and that is a hill I will indeed die upon.  Mental Cruelty take the blackened and symphonic elements utilised by peers like Lorna Shore and craft one of the biggest albums I’ve heard in a while.  The symphonics are majestic, and perfectly offset and compliment the sheer brutality of the riffs and vocals.  My only desire is for an occasional moment of clean vocals, as showcased by bands like Shadow of Intent and Fit For An Autopsy, just to add a touch of diversity in the otherwise mostly relentless assault.  

• Essential tracks: ‘Ultima Hypocrita‘, ‘Abadon‘ 

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6. Interloper – Search Party. (Nuclear Blast)

A surprising entry for my list, Interloper’s brand of progressive metalcore really stuck with me.  Impressively technical yet not to the point of limited accessibility, lead vocalist Andrew Virrueta’s clean tone bears a remarkable similarity to Chester Bennington, which suits the material perfectly.  The hooks are massive, and the progressive songwriting is effective and driving; in many ways, it’s not something I feel I know how to write about, but I cannot recommend Search Party enough.  

• Essential tracks: ‘Idle Years‘, ‘Pathkeeper‘

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5. Rivers of Nihil – The Work. (Metal Blade Records)

A deeply surprising album considering my expectations, The Work falls very much in the category of works that should be listened to in order, in one sitting.  Shuffle play can’t capture the balance between ambient calm and intense deathened fury that the album juxtaposes, and it’s that balance that feels like the record’s greatest strength.  It’s a fairly long album, but if you stick with it, you’ll be rewarded with a journey unlike any other this year. 

• Essential tracks: ‘Terrestria IV: The Work’, ‘The Void from Which No Sound Escapes‘

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4. Ephemerald – Between the Glimpses of Hope. (Inverse Records)

Equal parts modern melodeath and atmospheric metal, Ephemerald struck a chord with me instantly through their songwriting.  It’s an epic album without question, and displays a flair for balancing driving melodeath with synthy ambience.  But it’s not just that I enjoy it; it’s that large parts of it feel like material I would write, and so it feels intimately familiar.  Everything from the synth choices, to the song structures and clean harmonies had me nodding, thinking “yes, they’ve made the right decision there”.  A wonderful album. 

• Essential tracks: ‘Reborn‘, ‘All There Is‘

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3. Archspire – Bleed the Future. (Season Of Mist)

Quite frankly, it’s ridiculous how Archspire are able to write music that’s so inconceivably technical and yet undeniably catchy.  They show off to no end, yet fit it into a concisely edited 30 minute album, clearly knowing that 30 minutes is about the perfect length for this level of intense yet enjoyable audio assault – half the time I don’t have any idea what’s happening, but I know I’m loving it.  Bleed the Future doesn’t quite take the techdeath crown for 2021 for me, but it’s an essential listen regardless.  

• Essential tracks: ‘Drone Corpse Aviator‘, ‘Golden Mouth of Ruin‘ 

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2. Obscura – A Valediction. (Nuclear Blast)

Man, this was an album.  Obscura were the first techdeath band I really got into, with 2009’s Cosmogenesis and 2018’s Diluvium being particular highlights.  With another dramatic lineup change in the build up to A Valediction, I was a little uncertain what to expect.  Would it lean towards the spacey prog, or the overtly technical side of the band’s previous efforts?  The answer – neither.  A Valediction is technical yes, but primarily melodic and furious, and even thrashy.  It’s like if Slaughter of the Soul was delivered by a tech band, and it absolutely rips.  Monster riffs and grooves are layered throughout, and the vocals are delivered with positive rabidness, and it’s just irresistible – I think the ending of “In Adversity” could even be classed as a beatdown.  Obscura haven’t just made the best tech death album of the year, they’ve potentially made the best album of their career. 

• Essential tracks: ‘In Adversity‘, ‘When Stars Collide‘

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1. Lorna Shore – … As I Return to Nothingness. (Century Media)

How can a three track EP be my favourite release of the year, you ask?  Simple – it’s sensational.  Whatever places Lorna Shore went in the short time since 2020’s Immortal must have been imbibed with some kind of magic, as this EP takes every element I loved about that album and dials it to 11.  New vocalist Will Ramos is an exceptional talent, the melodic writing is delicious from the guitar leads to the ever-growing symphonic/blackened influence, and the breakdowns are a whole new level of give-no-fucks fun.  All eyes are on Lorna Shore for the full-length follow up to this, and if the quality is this high again, I can’t see another band coming close to catching them.  

• Essential tracks: All of them, there are only 3! 

HONOURABLE MENTIONS: Words of Farewell; VOLA; Edu Falaschi; Fallensun; Ghosts of Atlantis

I also released music this year!  If you’ve got this far, I’m allowed to blow my own horn a little:

Sojourner – Perennial:

Dwarrowdelf – Cold Lie the Ashes:

 

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Black Metal Daily‘s LISTCRUSH returns with The GOS Edition and Dex‘s full-length album Edition soon.

Follow Black Metal Daily on Facebook, Instagram, Spotify and Bandcamp HERE for more cult sounds and tonal blasphemy.

Annals of Failure and Extinction – A Review of ‘Arkivet’ by WORMWOOD

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By GOS (Order ov the Black Arts)

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It was not without some apprehension, or perhaps purposeful caution, that I pressed play on WORMWOOD’s fourth and latest opus Arkivet. 

You see, the Swedish band has undergone some evolution over the history of its discography, from black’n’roll roots (The Void: Stories from the Whispering Well ep, 2015) to more standard mid-paced melodic black metal (Ghostlands: Wounds from a Bleeding Earth, 2017) to their somewhat segregated mix of fatalistic black-folk and post-black melancholy (Nattarvet, 2019). I’m somewhat a fan of Ghostlands and a good portion of Nattarvet, but what I REALLY like is the lean towards more exclusive post-black hypermelodicism with tracks like Nattarvet’s ‘Arctic Light’, ‘The Achromatic Road’, and especially the concluding track ‘The Isolationist’ (a track so strong that it prompted my massive, “rambling, emotive, abstract accolade” of Nattarvet, available HERE if you want a good head scratch). So, in pressing play on Arkivet (originally titled Vita Arkivet until some Swedish funeral home of the same name got all pissy and threatened to sue the band), what I was hoping is that WORMWOOD had more fully embraced the post-black style similar to acts like Woods Of Desolation, Drawn Into Descent, and Falaise. And… I was not disappointed!

While Nattarvet is generally a 50/50 combination of aforementioned black-folk and post-black, with the two styles split between different tracks, to my ears Arkivet (the thematic subjects of which will be revealed by including a short description of each track from the band), makes a consistent push in the post-black direction with all of the tracks and maintains the black-folk element by weaving it skillfully into them. ‘The Archive’ (“The last story written by the few who survived the apocalypse and what man didn’t do to preserve what we had.”) starts things off with a purposeful blast beat and vocal presence but really blooms when the guitar melody takes over and guides us down the path. Halfway through this first song we somewhat briefly graced with what I consider to be WORMWOOD’s singular strongest asset: a very psychedelic rock lead guitar solo, solidly evocative of the godlike Pink Floyd, which appeared previously in ‘The Isolationist’ and scattered about Ghostlands. This advances into a valorous progression with clean vocal harmonics combined with the more standard black metal snarls, as well some violin work (I think?) joining the guitar. Track two, ‘Overgrowth’ (“When nature topples our skyscrapers and when the warning signs from Earth were not heard.”), follows much the same pattern, acceptable blackened buildup blooming into a delicious interval towards the midpoint of the track. ‘End of Message’ (”The last message sent out to the endless black cosmos before our protagonist dies.”) on the other hand possesses a strong emotive presence from the onset, and meanders a bit before breaking out into a grandiose upswing, followed by a shimmering, synth addled middle section, that sweet trippy guitar lead, and black metal conclusion. 

The aptly titled ‘My Northern Heart’ (“An hymn to our ancestors and our previous unsullied land.”) outdoes even the previous track in terms of initial beauty, beginning with Wardruna-like neofolk instrumentation before proceeding into a now somewhat predictable (but nonetheless awesome) more aggressive black metal epic with some pretty significant upbeat rock elements, particularly in the middle and end with some clean only kinda powermetalish singing. ‘Ensamhetan’ (”The sentimental and romantic view from a Nordic perspective as our lands fall into ruin.”) starts exactly where the song before it left off, a very similar wind-in-your-hair rock feel to it which is presently joined with some rather uplifting violin, folky shouting, and one of those heartfelt guitar solos at the end. ‘The Slow Drown’ (“A slow and hopeless journey through the minds of an old lady with dementia.”) starts off… well… slower, and with a bit more initial emphasis on the lead. Which proves to be the highlight of the track, even more so as it progresses to a more driving pace and trippy outro. 

Alright, ‘The Gentle Touch of Humanity’ (In the wake of humanities’ destruction we follow the afterbirth of man’s collapse.”), the final nine-minute track. Does it stand up to ‘The Isolationist’ as a closer? It’s pretty good, but the short answer is no. Things start off well enough with many of the above elements being utilized in a fantastic auditory mosaic, and that lead gets some good time about three minutes in. Unfortunately, the middle 2.5 minutes consist of doleful keyboard overlayed with a bunch of various short newscast sound bites addressing global warming. Ehhh. I mean, I get the picture, but to put it bluntly the time would have been better spent with (or at least accompanied by) sort of badass psychedelic solo. The rest of the track is par for the course, but as the closer it really seems to lack a final apex or epic climax for the end of such an awesome album. 

Final thoughts? As you have probably ascertained, that Floyd-esque guitar work is absolutely my favorite aspect of their repertoire and therefore I won’t be shy in saying that I positively wish that there was MORE of that. I just want something that will someday overtake Nokturnal Mortum’s Голос сталі (“The Voice of Steel”) album, okay? I don’t see it happening any time soon, but WORMWOOD gets pretty damn close while also offering their own more contemporary post-black flavor. With Arkivet, the band went in the direction that I hoped they would, each song is more in line with what I particularly appreciate from previous works, and each one has nuances that continue to reveal themselves after a few listens, making it somewhat difficult for me to really pick a favorite track or few. Quite literally – I keep going through the tracks, and with each I think that it might be my favorite. In that way, I venture to say that even though Nattarvet’s finish sets the bar for peak WORMWOOD, overall Arkivet is a better album. 

Notes: the title track ‘The Archive’ has a music video available, which will premiere May 21 HERE; whilst the first edition vinyl versions of the album (available in transparent white, silver/white marble, or black) will include a novella by Mikael Strömberg which describes the heartbreaking events in that video, as well as what unfolds subsequently. Arkivet will be released in full July 16th through Black Lodge Records, and is currently available for preorder on WORMWOOD’s Bandcamp site as well as Black Lodge’s Soundpollution storefront. Witness humanity’s tragic end!

RATING: 8.6 / 10

Arkivet releases June 16th via Black Lodge Records. Pre-orders available now.

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Pre-order Arkivet on 2LP, digital and autographed CD via Bandcamp HERE or on 2LP and autographed CD via the Sound Pollution webstore HERE.

Support WORMWOOD:

• Official Facebook
• Official Bandcamp
• Official Instagram
• Official YouTube

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Like Black Metal Daily on Facebook for more cult sounds and tonal blasphemy.

Email: blackmetaldaily@outlook.com

LISTCRUSH 2019: The Ivan Gossage Edition

Hails to Order Ov The Black Arts, Black Metal Daily, and any readers gracious enough to spend time reading what will follow. 2019 has been a hell of a year for extreme metal, and these are my top 57 picks of the year. There’s a hierarchy here, but only by tier… those that fall within a given tier are generally interchangeable and honestly even the margins of each tier are a little arbitrary to some extent, but this seems like the most feasible way to provide some sort of structure.

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FIRST TIER: ALBUM OF THE YEAR

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Disillusion – The Liberation

I could write a short novel about my experience with Disillusion, but that would be boring for you, too personally revealing for me, and marginally inappropriate for this forum since Disillusion isn’t black metal. Sitting midway between progressive epic death metal (think An Abstract Illusion, Ne Obliviscaris, or Eternal Storm [see below]) and progressive modern rock (i.e. Tool), Disillusion can be squarely described as epic progressive metal. Their 2004 album Back To Times of Splendor is THE album I would choose if I could only choose one album to listen to forevermore (except if I were living in the snow, then it would be The Mantle by Agalloch), and The Liberation is a sequel to Back to Times of Splendor. The music?… you will just have to listen for yourself, don’t expect anything too aggressive, and I’m never surprised when other listeners aren’t nearly as hyped about it because so much of my listening experience is wrapped up in subjective contexts. Just listen to ‘In Waking Hours’ and ‘Wintertide’ (songs 1 & 2) with headphones and no distractions… if it doesn’t resonate with you I get it, but I can’t really adequately express how this album resonates with me, and I’m not going to try. Bottom line, it’s probably my favorite thing that has been released since 2015 except for Schammasch’s Maldoror Chants EP. Favorite tracks: ‘Wintertide’, ‘A Shimmer In The Darkest Sea’ [Tool fans should check that one out], and ‘The Liberation’.

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SECOND TIER (six selections)

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Saor – Forgotten Paths

This was probably my most anticipated release coming into 2019 except for Schammasch and Fleshgod Apocalypse. Since it was released early in the year, because it is so short, and because my love of the album was reinforced by seeing Saor live at Fire In The Mountains festival, it almost certainly gets the award for most spin time. Three epic Caledonian tracks and a nice filler outro that I nevertheless bother listening to. Did I mention that it is short? Yeah, that’s my only complaint… the album length, as well as more nuanced details like the physical presence of the vinyl (regular sleeve instead of elaborate gatefold with poster like the previous 3 albums) makes me really want to accuse this release of being an EP. That aside, the music is PHENOMENAL. Three tracks make picking top songs pretty pointless, so I’d like to recommend full volume on the track ‘Forgotten Paths’ at 4:20 (do you hear that crazy rubbing sound that the bass starts doing at 4:28-30?! What the IS that?!) and the chorus’ of ‘Brón’. Saor has since signed to Season of Mist, and Andy is already working on the next album. Yes, please.

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Misþyrming – Algleymi

Unlike Saor and Schammasch, I was completely blindsided by this one. When it went up for preorder I blew it off because there was no preview track. Big mistake, which was almost instantly rectified upon hearing the first minute of the first song. Aggressive, catchy, subtly epic, and with good amount of attention paid to seriously rocking the fuck out… to put it simply, Algleymi has everything that I look for in black metal… not just in timbre, but in attitude as well: “It is our utmost conviction that the artist ought to stand beyond good or evil and that the pursuit of his or her artistic goals should therefore remain untouched by considerations pertaining to critical reception, the sensitivity of a potential audience, or anything that would detract from the full accomplishment of those artistic goals. Taking into creative consideration the very fragile current zeitgeist would render any piece of art absolutely harmless and devoid of worth … let us leave the world of binary thinking for a minute, concentrate solely on the individual of exceptional fabric, and dream aloud.” [D.G., Bardo Methodology interview, 2019]. Full Support. Favorite tracks: I don’t know… fucking… all of them I think.

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Aoratos – Gods Without Name

The prolific output of Naas Alcameth makes it difficult to resist exacting upon Aoratos a bit of comparative analysis against its infernal siblings. What Aoratos projects is a supernatural force which is both external and worldly, and can hence be more easily demarcated from the dread internal psychic nightmare of Akhlys, as well as from the more subterranean hellish inferno of Bestia Arcana. That leaves Nightbringer as Aoratos’ closest relative, but here there are important differences. Lacking the epic keyboards and heightened shrill falsetto guitar lead of Nightbringer and bringing instead a nuanced industrial edge, Aoratos forgoes the immense, sprawling apocalypse of Nightbringer and instead emotes a monstrous haunting; more local, more rural, and more terrestrial. The power of this album is absolutely annihilating. Recommended: ‘Gods Without Name’, ‘Thresher’, ‘Watcher on the Threshold’. See full review HERE.

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Schammasch – Hearts Of No Light

One of my two most anticipated albums of the year, Schammasch (unlike Fleshgod Apocalypse) did not disappoint. Overall, both lyrically and musically, Hearts Of No Light exudes something that is darker, more negative, and more personal than previous albums. Lacking the usual concrete motif, Hearts Of No Light instead consists of multiple tenebrous approaches to a wider and more varied array of areas deep within, where shadowy undercurrents hold sway, where rays of light are glimpsed, and where outward cohesion begins to dissolve. In this way, Hearts Of No Light signifies a progression not only in terms of wider musical variance, but also in the way that the whole is composed… while each track addresses different nebulous aspects of being and tends to individually move from a state of abstraction towards increased emotive cohesion, of the lack of a distinct overarching thesis is itself a statement about the chaos and darkness of inner existential turmoil. Recommended tracks: ‘Ego Sum Omega’, ‘I Burn Within You’, ‘Katabasis’. See full review HERE.

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Asagraum – Dawn of Infinite Fire

If you are looking for straightforward, no frills, epically aggressive familiar Swedish sound (ala Sworn To The Dark / Lawless Darkness and Vobiscum Satanas / Diabolus Interim) complete with persistently satanic themes, casually blazing riffs, relentlessly tasty ballistic percussion, scorching vocals and that horns-in-the-air ‘let’s burn this fucker to the ground’ insolence, look no further than this musical inferno. Everything about this release positively glows with sincere and authentic classic black metal audacity, and they are doing it WAY THE FUCK BETTER than more established contemporary acts (yes, looking right at you, Watain and Dark Funeral). These ladies are fucking DOMINATING right now and if you like that style and you haven’t been paying attention, please get off your ass, because Dawn of Infinite Fire is downright ruthless. Recommended tracks… fuck, same as Misþyrming, this whole thing is amazing.

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Mephorash – Shem Ha Mephorash

Shem Ha Mephorash is a work of massive ambition, and I have to admit that a significant part of the appeal is not just the music (which is fantastic but pointedly contemplative and ecclesial and not necessarily superior to 1557-Rites of Nullification in my opinion) but the sheer developmental advancement and enormity of the album (clocks in at 74 minutes), the stunning artwork of the physical product, and the overall level of ambition and coherence. The lines between the daemonic and theistic blur here as Mephorash seems to obscure such trivial distinctions, the trumpets of both Heaven and Hell harkening a sacred fire to the spirit, casting the listener simultaneously above as crystalized vapors of ethereal perfection and below to infernal ashes of annihilation. Woe to the profane secular flesh and petty ego, gasping and choking on the smoke from a numinous flame. A modern esoteric black metal masterpiece, Shem Ha Mephorash radiates with transcendence, sacramental power, and a terrible, beautiful white flame of holy judgement. See full review HERE.

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THIRD TIER (ten selections)

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Kaleikr – Heart of Lead

This one is a bit of an enigma. There’s a LOT going on here that Kaleikr managed to seam together very well. Starting out very close to the beautiful, utra-melodic, atmospheric black metal sensibility of Saor’s Forgotten Paths (ironic because the albums were released at almost the same time), Heart of Lead quickly evolves in a myriad of different directions, like more menacing progressive black metal, technical death metal, progressive death metal, and prog-rock. It even gets a little bit into that claustrophobic and suffocating Icelandic sound with the short title track… but this is minimal and not overdone. A good thing in my personal opinion.

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Musmahhu – Reign of the Odious

A fucking savage blackdeath offering curtesy of Swartadauþuz, mastermind behind Bekëth Nexëhmü, contributor to Gardsghastr (see below), and a surfeit of other extreme projects. This one ranks as perhaps the most violent of all my year-end picks, and might be compared somewhat to Aoratos as an immediate reference. Reign of the Odious is more death metal-oriented, but similar in terms of unremittent pitch-black maelstrom mixed with subtle industrial(ish) elements and an undercurrent of epic cataclysmic ruin. Completely necessary. 

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Eternal Storm – Come The Tide

I won’t get too into it because it isn’t black metal, but this is a magnificently written, powerful, very melodic opus of beautiful epic artful death metal, which got LOTS of playtime from me. For fans of An Abstract Illusion, Exsickator, and Rivers Of Nihil’s Where Owls Know My Name (but more melodic DM than technical DM). Recommended tracks: ‘Through the Wall of Light Pt. I (The Strand)‘, ‘Through the Wall of Light Pt. II (Immersion)’, ‘The Mountain’.

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Wormwood – Nattarvet

In 20+ years of listening to extreme metal, there has been only ONE time that an initial listening experience was so profound that I was almost brought to tears from the opening minutes of a song… What is crucial about ‘The Isolationist’ (the last song, track 7)  and in a more general sense Nattarvet as a whole, is the ability to capture a profound paradox: It is a journey both within and also beyond, aptly conjoining the psychological tragedy of isolation with the coldness of natural indifference, and achieving a dissolution of the self through immersion in the solitude that pervades reality as a whole. See full review HERE.

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Hath – Of Rot and Ruin

Another death metal album. A fantastic one… a near perfect combination of groove, speed, classiness, melodicism, brutality, progressiveness, and technicality, complete with tasteful acoustic interludes and fantastic vocal variation. For fans of Black Crown Initiate before Black Crown Initiate decided to try to sound like Tool. With vocals kind of like Travis Ryan ala Cattle Decapitation, but without those melodic highs. It’s really just badass in every way.

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Panzerfaust – The Suns of Perdition, Chapter 1: War, Horrid War

Monstrous, crushing, war-themed blackdeath with limited tasteful atonality, overpowering vocals, and some doomish sensibilities (mostly in terms of production and an overall sense of progressive desolating inevitability, not in terms of speed)… what can be said about this album that hasn’t been said before and more elaborately? This is one that just demands a listen in order to get it. It’s difficult for me to describe it in a way that makes the album sound unique, but it IS unique, and its short length and promise of subsequent installments makes it easily digestible, leaving one pining for more. I hope we get it in 2020.

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Totaled – Lament

You ever get those moments when you give your chosen listening device a raised eyebrow because of all of the asskickery that is suddenly occurring? Like it was sort of kicking ass in the first place but then it gets taken to the next level and hits that sweet spot when you are just like ‘fuuuuuck’? Well, Lament has a SHITLOAD of those moments. It’s a fusion of black metal and galloping no-damns-given punk/crust/core/grind/violence/something belligerence. On the BM side of things there’s some classic Swedish melody taking place, not unlike old Dissection or mid-era Watain, etc., but there also some much more aggressive, cutthroat Tsjuder-like ripping which really helps bridge the gap between the epic melody and the whateverthefuckitis in such a way that the tracks can vacillate between the disparate styles and sometimes outright mix them together while always sounding entirely seamless. I managed to pounce on the last fancy LP on Bandcamp and the package came with this really cool set of Tarot cards which match the cover art. Definitely highlights this as a top release for me.

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Vukari – Aevum

With only moderate hype, this album turned a lot of heads when it dropped (at least in my social media circles)… and for good reason. Progressive black metal done perfectly: great focus, great balance, great drive, great production. The sound, while not as “warm” as one would find with many post-black offerings, but it is certainly not “cold” either, and the mix embraces the sort of enveloping, balanced, crystalline density that one can find, for example, with Gaerea’s Unsettling Whispers (2018)  or Beltez’s Exiled, Punished, Rejected (2017) … the sort of mix where you can hear everything, nothing is in excess, and it all sounds terrific. There’s nothing here that isn’t downright tasteful, and it fucking rocks on top of it.

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Vortex of End – Ardens Fvror

Vortex of End definitely gets my most underappreciated band of the year vote. Despite one previous album already under the belt, captivating album artwork, a surprisingly elaborate physical product (I grabbed a gold LP), and my own best efforts, it never really seemed like Ardens Fvror gained much traction as the triumphant black metal monument that I think it is. Musically, this is undeniably compelling: a slightly death-tinged, powerful, ferocious, yet artistic orthodox BM masterwork with an array of exciting elements and plenty of room to breathe. The vocals are particularly noteworthy… varied, interesting, and effective. What it reminds me the most of is a more muscular evolution of Ascension’s acclaimed Consolamentum album, while simultaneously being much better than anything Ascension itself has put out since. PLEASE LISTEN TO THIS. 

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Rorcal – Muladona

Based on a novel of the same name by Eric Stener Carlson, and featuring narration of the story by the author, Muladona is the extreme auditory interpretation of a horrific tale of disease and decay, death, violence and stench, grotesque pubescence and entrenched evil. Heavy to the point of devastating, suffocatingly dense, and with a compressed magnitude which is a bit hard to explain, it is no surprise that Metal Archives inadequately describes the band as “Sludge/Doom Metal/Post-Hardcore” but, I’m somewhat curious that the “Blackened” tag is omitted. I’m not sure about older albums, but this one certainly warrants it. Much like the Reverorum Ib Malacht release last year (but sounding nothing like it) my reaction isn’t really “I like this”, but more like “I am in awe of this”.

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FOURTH TIER (fifteen selections)

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Blut Aus Nord – Hallucinogen

Hallucinogen is a prismatic, spiraling, inspired voyage that intentionally waxes towards both the outer realms of cognition as well as towards the far fringes of an eccentric discography which is already so varied and visionary that Blut Aus Nord holds a categorically exclusive, unique, and unmatched status within black metal at large. See full review HERE.

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Drawn Into Descent – Endless Endeavour

A melancholic and moving combination of DSBM (which I almost never listen to) and post-black warmth. Much like the Wormwood release, the album is full of quality tracks, but there’s one that really caused me to make the investment, and that was “Wither” (track 2), which a peer shrewdly described as “the ‘Sultans of Swing’ of black metal”… can you hear it? Since I do believe that ‘Sultans of Swing’ is probably one of the best 5 rock songs ever written, let’s just say I was convinced.

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Ashbringer – Absolution

Easy Americana-folk infused barelyblackmetal with meandering, woodsy melodies, lightly cascading percussion, straightforward vocals, positive Lennon-esque message, and a very organic, natural, mellow production. Very little distortion or aggression to be found here, this is for times of peace. My only complaint is that the vocals could use some variation, they stick to the Harakiri For The Sky-ish yelling pretty much exclusively. Quite beautiful overall though and probably my most laid-back pick of the year. Great tunes for a wayward northwestern drive amongst the trees, and truly a unique album, musically and visually.

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Akasha – Canticles Of The Sepulchral Deity

Malignant, audacious, and relentlessly abrasive, Akasha is a hybrid of venomous, frenzied raw black metal and savage, necksnapping D-beat driven crustpunk. Unlike Totaled, there is zero melody to found in these tracks, only slight variations of speed which ranges from paced predatorial malevolence to frenetic, driving bloodlust, all the while spearheaded by riffs to rip out your throat and vocals to mar your soul. Shockingly, singularly, and utterly vicious.

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Consummation – The Great Solar Hunter

Pummeling drums drive forward anxious riffing before seamlessly progressing to up-tempo headbanging extravaganza sections. Short but violent guitar solos are dispersed throughout, as downtempo passages featuring ominous chants emerge. Mid-paced groove proves to be one of the more stellar aspects of the album, among many other impressive qualities. Swirling, threatening, almost nauseating guitars atop simple ritualistic beats transition to more doomy, melancholic, and at times quite beautiful measures featuring soaring leads and spoken word. See full review HERE.

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Gardsghastr – Slit Throat Requiem

For me, there’s a lot to not like with about 95% of all modern symphonic black metal. Gardsghastr, essentially a supergroup comprised of Swartadauþuz (Bekëth Nexëhmü, Musmahhu, etc.), Alex Poole (Chaos Moon, Entheogen, Skáphe, etc.), the Blackburn brothers (Chaos Moon, Accursed Aeons, Guðveiki, etc.) and relative newcomer voice Glömd avoids all of those pitfalls, hurling forth an album that is at once grandiose and furious. Symphonic elements accentuate the songs instead of trying to carry them, and the tracks blast forward with surprising aggression and brazen scorn, tempting comparisons to more assaultive works within the subgenre like Anorexia Nervosa’s Drudenhaus (but less reliant on orchestration) and Nightbringer’s faster songs.

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Aihos – Hävityksen Maa

Immediately virulent melodies ala MGLA, Dumal, or Uada… helplessly addictive headbanging-in-traffic grooves… beautiful clean acoustic moments… unabashed black and roll qualities of Instinct / Assassins era Nachtmystium… the folk inspired flavors of Nokturnal Mortum… both the classic magnitude of Sworn / Lawless and the more stripped-down galloping orthodoxy of Casus / Trident Watain… fateful march-for-the-horizon-with-your-head-held-high epic ala Catamenia‘s Winternight Tragedies… and all wrapped up in just the right amount of Finnish fuzz. It might not be breaking any huge molds, but this album interweaves multiple facets of straightforward melodic black metal. An instant classic, second in line for most underappreciated album of the year.

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Ultar – Pantheon MMXIX

A critically underrated release from earlier this year. A soaring and complex melodic post-black Lovecraftian opus with a long list of fine attributes, not least of which is an amazing and varied vocal performance and soul-tugging guitar solos. While the music tends towards epic, bombastic scales, the vocals serve to maintain integration with both more traditional black metal currents as well as loop in some post-rock and black-folk elements (specifically similar to the little-known American one-man act Appalachian Winter). I was midway through the third track on the first playthrough when I found myself going for the Buy Record/Vinyl button.

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Grima – Will of the Primordial

Nature-centered and frost bitten, this Siberian black metal places a heavy emphasis on melancholic inflection, an icy subzero vocal delivery, and shitload of damn appropriate accordion. Not to mention other cool stuff like winter bells, blizzards of furious double kick, and whirling guitar riffs, and frigid synth. As a bonus, when Naturmacht Productions opened up preorders they also made the previous album, Tales of the Enchanted Woods available on vinyl for the first time. Thankyouverymuch.

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Sühnopfer – Hic Regnant Borbonii Manes

It is difficult to describe what takes place across the vast and furious sonic landscape of this album. The music embodies austere medieval granite… yet shimmers with golden empyrean aristocracy; the sound is gritty and hard… yet so clearly of the air and the heavens; belligerent and ruthless… but brimming with a passionate hyper-melodicism; a furious bombardment of harmonized antipodes. It is a shockingly flawless display of weightless chaos and choreographed intensity, breathtaking not only for its sheer aesthetic beauty but also because one can scarcely comprehend how such a beautiful maelstrom of orchestrated complexity is possible. Disorientation almost guaranteed unless full attention is given, and even then, it’s a gamble. See full review HERE.

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Remete – Into Endless Night

Steadily driving, foggy melodic black metal, courtesy of D, mastermind behind post-black prototype Woods of Desolation and the rawer(ish) and folk-energized Forest Mysticism. Synth and probably various other instruments adding heavy doses of melancholic presence make this some perfect wintertime midnight music which gets better with every subsequent listen. Into Endless Night is at the top of my list of albums that I’m willing to get pressed onto vinyl at some point. 

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Dead To A Dying World – Elegy

Sort of an odd pick for me if I’m being honest. Also, hard to categorize with some sludgy elements, progressive aspects, doom pacing, black metal flourishes, and “epic crust” is given a nod on their Bandcamp page. Also, multiple vocal styles of deep roaring, blackish screaming, male and female cleans, and array of interesting instrumentation including viola, hurty gurty, Hammond organ, piano, tubular bells, clarinet, hammer dulcimer, and cello. Forlorn, complex, and heart-wrenchingly beautiful much of the time, the wake of my own personal hype surrounding this release led me to retro-collect their entire catalogue, and I regret nothing. 

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Noctem – The Black Consecration

With The Black Consecration, Noctem have definitively annihilated any preconceived notions of what their 5th studio album should sound like… and it is tremendous. Abandoned are many of the death metal elements, grandiose epic flourishes, crystal clear pristine production, and overall vastness of musical concept. What has been embraced is something significantly more stripped down but not raw, focused but not primitive, and straightforward but not simplistic… something more… black metal, and with a noteworthy compacted production to boot. See full review HERE.

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The Great Old Ones – Cosmicism

Like some immense cosmic horror, tentacles reaching through time and space to spread its monstrous alchemy across the vast universe, Cosmicism is immense, Lovecraftian supernaturalism, carefully layered into ambitious and complex, deep yet expansive melodic black metal. The void’s cold smolder, the frothing of measureless and beautiful empyrean dread emanates from these tracks, not in a relentless explosion, but in a calculated, purposeful, majestic cosmic imperialism, more powerful with every return.

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Nihilism – Obscurite Noir

Jet-black and insidious, this album makes use of addictive, needling riffing (including something that sounds, awesomely, almost identical to parts of the anxiety-inducing film score in 28 Days Later [track 2]) and blistering percussion. It was one of the earliest albums I found this year that really resonated with me (Veldes being the only one of note that I discovered prior to it), and thus it has gotten a lot of periodic listens over the last 12 months, each time reminding me just how fucking solid it is. I would certainly buy this on vinyl, were it available.

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FIFTH TIER (twenty-five selections)

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Veldes – Flameless

This one has the benefit of being the very first album that resonated with me in 2019… earnest, verdant, nature-based melodic post-black luxuriance with prominent (if slightly overbearing) vocals. FFO Woods of Desolation etc. etc.

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Ancient Hostility – Ancient Hostility

Vitriolic black metal with scornful, torturous, and pensive mid-to-slow paced music and absolutely caustic, scathing vocal delivery courtesy of Imber (ex Synodic, Aludra, and hopefully more TBA!).

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Decoherence – Ekpyrosis

Unnerving dissonance, mechanized inertia, catastrophic atmosphere, and ominous spirit, this is Blut Aus Nord worship of the highest order, managing, like Almyrkvi (Umbra, 2017), to surpass the master.

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Qayin Regis – Doctrine

Excellent occult black metal, reminiscent of a more stripped down variation of Naas Alcameth’s various projects (mostly due to the vocals, but also due to a palpable sense of authenticity) with Schammasch-like meditative pacing and even DSO Si Monvmentvm Reqvires Circvmspice style riffing at times.

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Beorn’s Hall – In His Granite Realm

American Viking/black, surprisingly pleasing despite (or maybe because of?) a particular looseness and rudimentary approach with timing, tempo, and production.

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Falaise – A Place I Don’t Belong

Urban, isolative, and despondent, this is warm post-black featuring a particular song that is heroin-level addictive (‘Leaves in the Wind’).

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Fleshgod Apocalypse – Veleno

FA will always have a place in my heart, at the very least due to at one point being an all-time favorite band. They’ve changed a lot. Veleno is good, but I hope this album grows on me more than it has so far.

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Misertus – Daydream

Lush, atmospheric post-black melodies absolutely drenched in an almost blinding distortion and featuring a vicious vocal approach, very cool combination of beauty and malice.

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Temple of Perdition – Homage to the Dead (EP)

Religiocritical hymns saturated in warm, heavy cathedralic aesthetics, and featuring choirs, celestial instrumentation, grandiose movements, blasting percussion, and transcendental nods towards ego dissolution and ascension. See review HERE.

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Worsen – Cursed to Witness Life

Hard-hitting melodic, misanthropic American black metal with thrashy flavors and hints of melancholy.

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Sulphura – Voidpulse

Instrumental atmospheric meditative ambient ritualistic drone side project of CSR (Schammasch). If you are familiar with the ambient bits of Triangle, Maldoror Chants, and Hearts Of No Light, then you know exactly what you are in for. 

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MGLA – Age of Excuse

Polish masters of melody return with exactly what you would expect: infectious riffs and absurdly complex percussion that only MGLA delivers.

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Heilung – Futha

Massive neo-folk tour-de-force in a style similar to Wardruna, with a profound live show, fusing tribal beats with a plethora of instrumentation highlights and a vague ritualistic dance quality.

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Haxandraok – Ki Si Kil Ud Da Kar Ra

Occult black metal managing to blend ritual and melody, featuring guitarist of Acherontas and primarily semi-clean pseudo-chanting vocals, similar to what Schammasch does on the regular.

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Imha Tarikat – Kara Ihlas

Unique and candid black metal with back ‘n’ roll sensibilities, a particular shouting vocal approach, and fiery solos.

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Meszaroth – Caro Data Vermibus

Caught up with this one earlier in the year and it did the trick keeping me tuned in and primed for that Mephorash / Schammasch sound before either of the latter dropped their new albums. 

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Thormesis – The Sixth

Very solid melodic progressive black metal, which sounds a lot like Harakiri For The Sky or 2019 Saor (except with keyboards instead of the Scottish instruments and more typical vocals). 

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Minenwerfer – Alpenpässe

A strange but alluring combination of almost Agalloch-esque woodsy atmospherics, raw BM primitivism, war-metal callousness, and World War motifs. 

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Stillness – Hermit

Warm, folky and fanciful with lots of synth, bagpipes, violin, piano, acoustic guitar, clean vocals etc. makes this damn near appropriate to make the family listen to during the holidays. Except when it’s not.

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Gorgon – Elegy

Polished, well-produced, epic, muscular, fully modern symphonic death metal with touches of industrial elements, fits snugly alongside bands like Dawn of Ashes, Empyrean Throne, Shade Empire, The Monolith Deathcult, and Septicflesh.

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Decarabia – Ancestral Kingdoms

Medieval black metal drenched in ghastly, murky, and archaic dungeon/dark ambience; also, vocals are quite submerged in the mix, which I have been appreciating lately, at times evoking a sense of ancient suffocating dread, despite being fairly easy to listen to.

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This Gift Is A Curse – A Throne of Ash

Blackened crust/grind/noise-core, surprisingly sophisticated and actually a bit epic at times, while yet exhibiting an unrestrained, almost hysterical barrage of white-hot hatred.

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Frostnatt – Rimfrost

A short melodic blackish instrumental featuring guitar / percussion (particularly cymbal) reciprocation and precision not unlike MGLA, except with a more synth heavy folky trajectory… think MGLA + maybe Falkenbach or Windir or something like that.

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Iapetus – The Body Cosmic

Aspiring and brilliant progressive death metal, flaunting a constellation of great approaches and talents, including percussion from Dan Presland (of Ne Obliviscaris, a reasonable comparison). Not a huge fan of some of the vocals but this album is a bit of a masterpiece in the progdeath world.

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Cult of Erinyes – Æstivation

The placement of this release is based almost entirely on how late it came to the game and the fact that it is still vying for position amongst everything above… a wild, occult auditory assailment, which, like Vortex Of End above, benefits heavily from fucking insane vocal performance and which, like Rorcal above, is almost supernatural in its ravening violence.

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And here, with Cult of Erinyes, an end-of-of year decimator which adequately represents the imminent black and extreme metal excellence that we will continue to see in the year(s) to come, seems like an appropriate place to stop and bid farewell to 2019. I want to give a humble salute to all purveyors of extreme music that I have interacted with this year, the fellow admins and superior members of Order ov the Black Arts, and Dex with Black Metal Daily and Rick with MoshPitNation for giving me the opportunity to ignite the flame with all reviews this year.

Forward, and may thy will be done. 

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Email: blackmetaldaily@outlook.com

The Night’s Heritage – A Review of Wormwood’s ‘Nattarvet’

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By Ivan Gossage (Order ov the Black Arts)

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In 37 years of listening to music and 20+ years of listening to extreme metal, there has been only ONE time that an initial listening experience was so profound that I was almost brought to tears from the opening minutes of a song… and this album did it. But before embarking on the rambling, emotive, abstract accolade that this review was, I think, always destined to be – let’s get some important information on the table.

From the desolate Scandinavian wilderness emerges Nattarvet, the highly anticipated second full-length release from Sweden’s mighty Wormwood. Assembled in 2014, Wormwood unveiled itself to the extreme metal world with the strong black’n’roll EP entitled Void: Stories from the Whispering Well in 2015. This was followed with the acclaimed full-length album Ghostlands: Wounds From a Bleeding Earth in 2017. Expansive and epic, Ghostlands was an expression of nature and the cosmos, which evolved the band’s sound in to more melodic and progressive territory while remaining, quite definitively, black metal. Nattarvet (which translates to “The Night’s Heritage”), embracing motifs of isolation, suffering and death, is in contrast a work of the Earth and individual rather than the horizon and stars; a journey inward rather than outward. Yet… it is by way of Earth’s entropy of life and the individual that a connection to the cosmos emerges … but wait, again I am getting a bit ahead of myself. First the music.

To this reviewer’s ear, there are two distinct styles in play with Nattarvet, two discrete sounds which interweave with one another to varying degrees throughout the album and that are girded together with a substructure and scaffolding of black metal.

The first is the grooved drive of a volk heroism; a pagan nobility, projecting the energy of a grounded fatalism which is at once bound to tradition, bound to the (home)land, bound to the soil and elements of the earth. Yet there is a subtle darkness to Wormwood’s presentation, achieved primarily with doleful guitar riffing that is not often found in comparable efforts from the likes of Finntroll, Catamenia, Månegarm, and Ensiferum. The boundedness to the land in Nattarvet, sonically cemented with folk progressions and instrumentation, is less a matter of pride or honor or valor… and instead a matter of struggle, woe, and heartrending tragedy. Such is the sobering illustration of tracks ‘Av Lie och Börda’ (“Of Scythe and Burden”) which tells of farmers who froze and perished in the Swedish famine of the late 1860’s, ‘I Bottenlös Ävja’ (“In Bottomless Mud”, featuring guest vocals from Mika Kive of Paara), a tale of a woman who slowly drowned in a bog and subsequently haunted it, ‘Sunnas Hädanfärd’ (“Sunna’s [Sun’s] Death”, featuring guest vocals from Erik Grawsio of Månegarm), addressing the pallid death of the sun goddess depicted on the album cover, and ‘Tvehunger’ (“Double/Twine Hunger”) which depicts the horror that a village suffers after being decimated by lycanthropy.

Enmeshed in the above tracks (particularly ‘Sunnas Hädanfärd’) and fully dominant in the tracks that remain, is an enveloping current of ludicrously beautiful post-black hypermelodicism, not unlike lofty mournful triumphs from bands like Woods of Desolation, Alcest, Lantlôs, Drawn Into Descent, and Falaise. Interestingly, and (I would like to think) not coincidentally, the titles and lyrics of these tracks are presented in English and not Swedish. ‘Arctic Light’, (based on the Hampton Sides novel In the Kingdome of Ice: The Grand and Terrible Polar Voyage of the USS Jeanette), tells the story of a man whom, having been shipwrecked in the arctic, gradually approaches insanity and death. Appropriately the song begins with an energetic tempo and aggressive riffing before settling into dejected yet bright post-black harmonies mingled with crystalline, detached solos. ‘The Achromatic Road’ (based on the Cormac McCarthy novel The Road), depicts the world in a gray post-apocalyptic ruin, drenched in terror and dismay. The music is more despondent from the start, with brief pensive Burzum-esque synth transitioning to a slower, plodding pace; the sound evoking a hopeless delirium, again highlighted by a moving and anguished guitar lead.

… And then we have ‘The Isolationist’, which brings us full circle to the initial remarks of this review. My god. Absolutely worth the price of this entire album and clocking in at nearly 12 minutes in length, ‘The Isolationist’ is in the running for best singular song released in the last couple of years, as well as possibly the best song EVER written within the general post-black subgenre. This opus, the last song and magnificent climax of Nattarvet, again refers to the Swedish famine of 1867-1869 but instead of a general discourse, this one is much more personal. Focusing on the harrowing plight of a particular individual it tells of a man who, ignoring the plea of his devoted wife Sueonia, refuses to leave his land and home deep within the desolate Scandinavian mountains. She remains loyally by his side and vulnerable to nature, disease, and an unresponsive God. He must witness Sueonia waste away and die of cold and starvation before he himself submits to the freezing darkness.

The music of ‘The Isolationist’ is a pristine melancholic masterpiece, the first guitar notes tenderly and exquisitely evoking the deepest grief, a heartache that is at once unbearable and precious, simultaneously breathtaking with beauty and suffocated with sorrow. By the two minute mark, the intro progresses into an artful mid-paced post-black epic, the drums steadily pushing the listener towards bleak inevitability, the bass guitar providing the ground as a platform for that methodical, futile walk, and the guitars swirling and soaring above the scene like the merciless jagged flakes of a final, definitive snowfall. As if this weren’t poignant enough, the closing of the fourth minute transitions into a boundless acoustic/electric solo, a sonic psychedelic mystical attainment not unlike the pinnacles of the unfuckwithable Pink Floyd. This fades out near the 8-minute mark, and the listener is treated to a continued deluge of unadulterated emotion before the sprawling, intense, epic closure and fade to black.

What is crucial about ‘The Isolationist’, and in a more general sense Nattarvet as a whole, is the ability to capture a profound paradox: It is a journey both within and also beyond, aptly conjoining the psychological tragedy of isolation with the coldness of natural indifference, and achieving a dissolution of the self through immersion in the solitude that pervades reality as a whole. The existential loneliness of the individual is reflected in the unfeeling hostility of the wilderness and the massive darkness between the stars, the Nattarvet, the night’s heritage. It is a rendition of life purified through burden and loss, an embrace of adriftedness, expressing an agony so pure and exhaustive that it casts aside prosaic decadence, and cuts through life’s illusion to reveal isolation as one of the basic ontological conditions of existence, not just for man, but for everything. It is, in this way, through isolation that we may come to understand connection, as the coldness of the vacuum embracing the psyche corresponds to coldness of the dark winter mountains, constantly seeking to negate the warm breath of life and bring it to a still, silent homogeny.

Let us not be so naïve as to think that this connection provides some sort of respite from the deafening loneliness. Only on the rarest of occasions may one chance upon enlightenment by this route. For the most part, and for many, there is just suffering… suffering and death. For the vicarious listener, through the expression of suffering Nattarvet offers is an experience of transcendence by musically connecting the personal void to the isolation that is inherent in reality. And in the end, resolution is achieved… not by overcoming isolation, but by the ultimate loss of illusory hope and the acceptance of that fate.

Favorite Tracks: ‘Arctic Light’, ‘The Achromatic Road’, ‘Sunnas Hädanfärd’, and of course, ‘The Isolationist’.

For fans of, as one would expect, those bands mentioned above. Additionally, one would be remiss in failing to point out that a number of the elements described here (but, importantly, not the lush post-black element) are also present in Nokturnal Mortum’s Golos Stali (Voice of Steel).

Nattarvet releases July 26th via Black Lodge Records. Pre-orders available now.

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Purchase Nattarvet from Black Lodge Records here or from Bandcamp here.

Support Wormwood:

• Official Facebook
• Official Bandcamp
• Official Instagram

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