The metal thread

[Richpa]

For Goths with tall hats

Perphaps, but this one is more on the black metal side, unlike the most tracks from the Wolfheart

[aliendna99]

I would like to recommend the album

 

Soilwork - The Living Infinite

 

 

it is the best metal album in a very long time

[Richpa]

Yeah, very good one

[GagaISM]

The new Watain album is finally out.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sD1cuA1w64

[Richpa]

Waitan always was classy in black metal scene, not into their music that much but i love the way they're presenting their music.

Anyway, I can't get enough of new Amon Amarth album, proper viking melodic-death metal with awesome production:

 

*goosebumps*

 

Since I was born they have kept me down,
They have forced me to conform.
I will tear down their holy crown in a vengeful thunder storm,

I loathe their bloody righteous ways
It fills me with despise,
Fuelling flames of violent rage,
I will be their world's demise.

[Chorus:]
Asgård's always been my home
But I'm of different blood
I will overthrow the throne
Deceiver!
Deceiver of the gods!

All this rage, and all this hate,
It burns me deep inside,
And still it is, the only thing, keeping me alive.
Dark ambition within my heart and it's aching to break free
The one true nature of my soul, the giant lives in me.

Kneel!
You all shall kneel to me!
Or death will set you free!
You all shall kneel to me!

Fall!
You all shall fall to me!
Vengeance will be sweet!
You all shall fall to me!

[Chorus:]
Asgård's always been my home
But I'm of different blood
I will overthrow the throne
Deceiver of the gods!

[Chorus:]
Asgård's always been my home
I'm born of different blood
I've come to overthrow the throne
Deceiver!
Deceiver of the gods!

[Richpa]

Geez, a lot of posts in this thread are deleted

Anyway, let's keep it updated. One of the latest discoveries, pure beauty.

 

TORTORUM - Beyond the Earth and Air and Sun (Katabasis, 2014)

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlPikahuvfM

Seeking the black stone, beneath the inverted flood
With claws in the wet soil, submerged fingers blind
Hold me no funeral, but baptise my corpse in lightning

Where is my black stone beneath the waters?
Where is the illuminating light buried in the dark?
Where the indestructible bolt of wisdom blazes
The stone to crush phenomena, the weight upon all ephemera

Only one shall know
That it is knowledge, knower and known
Pierce my heart with fire, and bury me in longing
So swallowed be the final breath, before the ritual death
Celebrate the end of the cosmos and he will turn into dust

For it was already nothing but ashes...

Considering black metal's reputation as one of the more 'evil' strains of music humanity has yet conceived, it's often surprisingly just how many albums fail to threaten or unnerve me in the slightest, and this is largely a symptom of the massive derivation and redundancy found within this medium. Granted, there are a lot of bands who have carved out their own identities within the expanded style, but too few can adhere to the base aesthetics and still evoke a chill. Thankfully, Norway's Tortorum, comprised of veterans from another of other acts (Aeternus, Dead to This World, Spearhead, Gorgoroth, etc) are one of this diminishing number, and their sophomore Katabasis is a fine example of malevolent black metal which capitalizes both on its conservative genre techniques and atmospheric embellishments to haunt the listener well past the midnight hour.

Yes, eerie atonal guitar passages picked through both tremolo progressions, spine-tingling melodies and even cleaner guitar tones; slathered in sustained, nihilistic rasps and not exactly something you haven't heard in the past...but written well enough that I must have busted through this not-insubstantial 53+ minutes of material four times before I even thought of what I could say about it. That's not to say there isn't a little extra padding or unnecessary repetition in a few places, but Tortorum generally reign in their tunes around the 5 minute mark and really only go overboard on the closer "Beyond the Earth and Air and Sun", a tune with a more spacious construction to it that allows for some malignant night-wind segues into whispers and moonlit guitars instead of just an endless loop of content. Add to this the general quality of the riffs, which are not entirely unique sounding but generally on the more memorable side...bluesy, mourning leads...tight drums on both the more prevalent double-bass/blasting extreme and the sparser moments...and last but not least, the great grooves manifest by the bassist that bind the entire experience into one shadowy stroll into the subconscious, and you've got one opaque plunge into sinister obscurity that won't soon evade your conscience.

Best of all, the production sounds absolutely ravishing, with an eloquent balance of airiness and meatiness relished with guitar lines that spring right out at you, angrier thrashing components which send the neck into strain-city, and just an overall seamless quality between tracks that takes into account a good deal of variation. There are moments where I felt the black metallic vocals could grow a little monotonous, and something even more psychotic might have made for an improvement, but Barghest is certainly adequate in terms of just meting out the traditional black metal vocal, and inserts a handful of lower pitched guttural growls so that it's not entirely one-sided. I guess I just wanted wails and screams over this shit, to enhance my own nightmarish investment in the proceedings. Otherwise, while not incredibly imaginative or too far outside the norm, Katabasis is a beast, a fully negative affirmation of its genre and just one of those black metal records which reminds you why you shunned society and started listening to the style in the first place. Fans of anything from Mayhem to Ondskapt to Shining to the members' other offerings would be wise to spend some time with this ghoulish drinking partner. Spite given musical flesh. Absinthe helpful but not required.

-autothrall
http://www.fromthedustreturned.com

 

[Richpa]

 

 

A brilliant scarlet dawn has conquered the night
In elegant mystery it swallows the sky

Crudely blemishing the ivory clouds
Encasing daylight in savage grandeur

This aurora fills my lungs and takes me to another time
Into the memory of a dream never dreamed

Senses blurred into a mesh of cacophonic disarray
Free of mind, I am a crashing wave

Into the passing of time I become
The birth of aeons passes through me

Heliotropic manifestations
Omnipresent revelations

 

01 - Weaving the Thread of Transcendence (13:04)
02 - Entropic Hallucinations (08:12)
03 - Noumenon (13:07)
04 - Ephemeral Eternities (15:16)

 

Where a band like Darkspace explores the 'cosmic' aspects of black metal through sheer nihilism and oppression, there are others who approach the subject matter with a little more elegance and dynamic range. Chief among these atmospheric astronauts is Californian Jacob Buczarski, aka Mare Cognitum, who has lain somewhere beneath the radar only in so much that he's drifting so far beyond the satellite range that it's often difficult to pick his signal out among the stars. That's not to say he's advocating the most unique or experimental brand of black metal, for a lot of his writing has traits in common with the melodic European sect that went viral in the mid 90s...but like label mate Ayloss and Spectral Lore, he gifts us with a more colorful and balanced glimpse at the universe, at the colors of fields of celestial bodies burning and inert, at the nebulas unleashing a spectrum of beauty across the universe. No wonder the two bands chose to release their split album Sol together, a recording that had me primed for Jacob's next full-length solo offering...which has arrived in the autumn of 2014.

 

Four tracks of fulfilling, melodic black metal saturated with resonant rasps, intense drum patterns and enough tempo and rift-shifting moments to fill out their oft-staggering durations, generally beyond the 13 minute mark. At once, there is little 'new' to how he puts these progressions together: floods of tremolo picked, somber riffs layered together to create an intense, often desperate sense of beauty, like an expedition through space which encounters periods of turbulence and danger; in particular captured through the speed of "Entropic Hallucinations", the album's shorter, 8 minute piece. Against these we are presented with more solemn, introspective passages where the frenzy of the beats drops to a steadier, magnificent pace and the individual strings of the guitars are slung into lavishly picked harmonies that flesh out the slower overall rhythm ("Noumenon"), and there are also some periods of lush interstellar ambiance like the excellent intro to the 15+ minute finale "Ephemeral Eternities" which absolutely feel like one beholden to an alien landscape...a cerebral scoring that generated images of an astronaut on some lifeless moon staring unto infinity, so good that I wish there had been a higher ratio of the pure ambient tinkering measured against the metallic material. Fortunately, the songwriting is scripted well enough that Buczarski never dwells on any one riffing structure or tempo for them to ever wear out their welcome...

 

...some new melody is always being woven forth, and thus the album becomes much like that surreal space tunnel which bridges the two (uneven) 'halves' of 2001: A Space Odyssey, a funnel of color through which the unknown-yet-suspiciously-familiar awaits us all. Buczarski's rasps and growls remind us of the eminent, imminent hostility of the emptiness as it presses in on all of us, here on our fragile eggshell of a world, but the Phobos Monolith as a whole serves as a symbol of space's eternal beauty, regardless of how much it is touched by the manifest destiny, or 'stain' of humanity, relative to how you personally view the gradual transmigration of our species. It's not so much that the man has uncovered some entirely new form of language in the genre, which anyone with even a cursory history with black metal will tell you when listening to these riffs, but more that he's taking the quality and integrity of that 90s approach, when the style hadn't yet been victim to endless cycles of derivation, and giving it berth on a rocket ship, hurtling towards some distant galaxy where it might be shared with some other race. Like the ethereal, ascending figures on its covers, it's out of here, man, on a one way trip to the infinite. Would it have left more of an impact with me if it the theme had been imbued with a more distinctly bizarre, left of center musical approach? Absolutely, but Mare Cognitum's third album is nonetheless a thoroughly engaging, memorable sojourn beyond the sky, the product of a consistent and welcome voice in USBM.

 

-autothrall

[Balance]

Loving the new Cannibal Corpse. I mean it's Cannibal Corpse so it's just death etal but man their new video clip is so terrible it's great!!

 

 

Am hoping Obscura, my fav tech death band, have a new album soon!

[Balance]

can't get youtube to work

[Richpa]

A little bit more psychedelic update:

 

 

youtube(dot)com/watch?v=aGN0fEM6jVc

 

Like merchants of the soil turn to green
A catacoffinary blood dead dream
Just like a whisper in the burning trees
Onto the path we turn our heads to lead

Searching the wastelands endlessly
Holding the past inside yourself
Travelling onward for an answer
Forever exiled in this golden maze

 

After years of fronting Orodruin and Blizaro, John Gallo is no stranger to old school doom metal. His eponymous solo debut represents his further ventures into so-called “violet doom metal”, a concept birthed by classic Italian acts such as Death SS, Black Hole, and Paul Chain. Immediately striking in its weirdness, Costin Chioreanu’s dazzling artwork sets the tone for a mystical journey through warped yet wondrous dreamscapes. Handling everything himself means complete creative control, making Violent Dreams a project that is both personal and highly eclectic.

Although he wears his Italian influences on his sleeve, Violet Dreams owes as much to bands like Candlemass and Count Raven as it does to Death SS. Often building up with occult chanting and thunderous choruses, John Gallow is a many-sided concept. Largely improvised by Gallo, the twists and turns are darkly progressive, with unconventional solos and melodic touches at every bend. Traditional doom riffs, slowly and gloomily crawling along, support the Paul Chain-influenced experimental touches and funeral synths.

From the heavy metal shredding of “Purple Room”, to the 70’s synthesizer-instrumentation of “Ancient Tears”, Violet Dreams stands with both legs firmly planted in the childhood years of doom. The vintage aspect is echoed by the suitably muddy production, which serves to strengthen the personal atmosphere of the album. As the sole mind behind the music, Gallo bears his cross with remarkable skill. Although his voice is somewhat lacking, the strained vocals feel like a boon to the singularity of his vision. As with Karl Simon of The Gates Of Slumber, John Gallow has no need for pitch perfect falsettos or a booming soprano. The ever-shifting harmonies sprawling the hour-long album demands more than a surface taste, but ultimately rewards those who stick with it.

Truly a renaissance man, John Gallo successfully unearths a classic sound that has been slumbering mostly undisturbed for decades. If you have even a passing interest in the aforementioned Italian groups, or if you have a soft spot for those brilliant early Candlemass-albums, Violet Dreams is essential listening. A mournful monument of doom metal the way it used to be, and with the improvisational side transcending restrictive nostalgia, Violet Dreams is an occasionally bizarre yet entirely beautiful journey.

- Witchfvcker

 

[Richpa]

 

The rays of a red sun ascend across the vast seas
A third star shines down upon a host of mankind
Resurrected shadows once formed a black phase
Dead valleys in time observe all possession
Rain brought forth the tree of benediction
Blessed land emanates dust of the old bones

Gratitude shown deviation flows throughout
Laced with forbidden fruits
Gardens descend upon realities of man
Authoritate disbelief

 

01 - Zealot (12:55)
02 - The Red Sea (13:22)
03 - Peasant of Parthia (08:12)
04 - Omen (14:08)

 

youtube(dot)com/watch?v=vOcbEL2CT_w

 

 

youtube(dot)com/watch?v=CDm4PrjSMZ4

 

The instrumentation is what will immediately draw you in or turn you off from Zaum's capacious aural escapism, because the space in which they operated is entirely limited from a 'riff' perspective. That is to say, the New Brunswick duo puts together incredibly simplistic bass lines with a custom sound rig, slow and flowing beats with a margin of shuffle and groove to them, and then uses synthesizers and sitar sounds to create this greater illusion of depth, which is filled in largely through the listener's imagination. They're not the most minimalistic kids on the block, perhaps, but they clearly mirror the efforts of the phonetically similar Om in crafting drawn out, atmospheric excursions into the primacy of lethargic, heavy fucking music...and if you can shut down any expectations that they're suddenly going to transition into something 'busy' or complex, you'll probably fall in with this camel-back passage to foreign shores, inspired by Middle Eastern culture and lore from thousands of years ago.

 

Four tracks, fifty minutes...you know where this is going, that it will require a personal investment not to fall asleep, but Zaum ensure that it's not such a difficult task. Despite the comparable pacing of most of the material, they offer distinction and variation between tracks through shifting moods. For example, "Zealot" is solemn and drifting, with Kyle Alexander McDonald's vocals capturing their cleanest and most soaring range, to the slow but dreamy weight of the bass riffs. But move on to "The Red Sea", and the layered textures of the chanted vocal and the more crushing note progressions give it less of a psychedelic magnificence, and more of a claustrophobic sense of doom. "Peasant of Parthia" falls between the two, but those fat, molten bass grooves strike a more ominous, Gothic momentum. They're also not above letting the percussion drop off and the guitars ring out with a hazy, hookah-smokescreen resonance ala the intro to the finale ("Omen"), so there's always this constant sense of dramatic rise and fall. The Canadians take their sweet, sweet time, probably inhaling copious amounts of non-medical marijuana and other vices while they keep a mental clock of exactly when to just dump all that deep-rooted sorrow of centuries over your face.

 

There are unquestionably a few moments here where the meandering tendencies trump the common sense they apply so incessantly elsewhere, but thank fuck they keep it from ever becoming so boring that I tune out...a symptom of so much modern of this trippy stoner/doom mentality where 'We Are Heavy Because 20 Minute Songs', 'You Doom Fans Are Suckers And Will Buy Anything With a 60s Fashion Sense Because Like Retro'. The songs top off around 14 minutes at most, and there's very little in any of them which feels arbitrary. The vocals are uniformly mesmerizing, excellent and I would find it hard to believe as a result that McDonald won't be vaulted into the preternatural pantheon in which such front men are harbored...in this case, a well deserved distinction, especially since he's also keeping busy with nearly all the other instruments, establishing that exotic, flavorful vision of shifting, arid sands, long aeons of tradition so rarely transcended by change, a slowly spiraling time machine into times where faith and fire alone set the paths of men. A very well constructed, convincing debut here, and it will be curious to see whether they remain loyal to this particular theme or if they'll explore other aesthetic eras and instruments as they press forward.

 

-autothrall

[Rotwang]

There are some sweet covers in the last few posts.

 

can't get youtube to work

You need to tell your browser to stop blocking insecure content.

[Richpa]

SPECTRAL LORE - III (May 2^nd 2014. - I, Voidhanger Records)

 

DISC 1:

1. Omphalos (07:28)
2. The Veiled Garden (16:32)
3. The Cold March Towards Eternal Brightness (14:42)
4. Drifting Through Moss and Ancient Stone (11:26)

DISC 2:

1. The Spiral Fountain (10:46)
2. A Rider Through the Lands of an Infinite Dreamscape (12:45)
3. Cosmic Significance (13:51)

 

O Dream, a painter you are, vivid and exquisite.
Winged and unchained, you lead me into worlds of lightness and magnitude.

But the soil I set my foot on, is the sole I can feel.
And so you return me, dazzled and bewitched, each time to it.
Cold and hard it has turned, unattended.

Where is my Will?
Where is my Persistance?
In my Dreamland I am Strong and Unbending.
Soaring the Skies, defeating Tyrants, facing the Sun.

The soil hides roots that go deep into the earth.
With toil they are kindled, unveiling fruit hidden within.
Slowly I must tender them.

Each fruit is also a Dream.
Of texture harsh, of weight considerable.
If opened, it reveals a world of its own.
Unique and unimaginable.

But, things of Matter are harsh for my hands.
They bleed from the thorns of Struggle and Neccesity.
Their painful embrace triggers rememberance,
Of scornful past and accursed future.

A burning ache in the chest, in the eyes,
The grotesque dance of vermin under the skin
And the fog starts to set back in again.

~

I awake within the forest. It is unusually solemn and contemplative,
Almost sensuous in its near silence of faint gust and rustling.
A drifting presence is felt near the bounds of my senses.

Through the silver pathways of the forest I hunt for it.
I cannot reach but its mirage, which gracefully flees.

A trail with blood on its side appears.
It leads to a deer which had its throat cut open.
Then to a woman, severed in the same manner.
Not with terror, but in inexplicable awe I move on.

The red path ends in a garden surrounded by shadows.
An altar lies inside, besides it, a dark figure.
It holds two severed heads, each one the source of a crimson river.
It turns over to me.

The memory brutally unveils the curtain of "I"
I look, eye to eye, to the concealed Truth of ages past.
It commands me, pointing into the white stone.
The urge to submit is abominable.

I look away and run towards the Sun.
In hope it is real and not part of a scenery that's falling apart.
With every last ounce of strength, I throw myself towards the scorching heat.
Defiant Fire of Judgement, for Now and Forever, measure my Spirit!

 

In 2006-2007, Spectral Lore debuted with their albums ‘I’ and ‘II’ and nearly a decade later have come back to form with the moving and striking new album aptly titled ‘III’. Spectral Lore is not a band, so to speak, but really behind the veil of anonymity is the sole Greek musician nicknamed Ayloss who is some sort of Metal version of the “man behind the curtain” from The Wizard of Oz.

And that would also be saying that Ayloss is a wizard himself. Maybe not of the traditional pop culture interpretation of a wizard who can wield magic at will. No, this is a different kind of sorcerer who can illuminate, decimate and recreate entire worlds within the music he makes. Listening to Spectral Lore for the first time in one sitting is really quite a strange and mystical experience.

A song from ‘III’, like “Omphalos”, sweeps in near the end with these incredible, soaring, melodic lead guitars. The infectious rhythms of the other instruments sway underneath and take you to places inside of your imagination lit by the tinges of your emotional experiences of the music as its being played. Then comes in a breathtaking woodwind and string interlude in the middle of “The Veiled Garden” seated side-by-side with a mercilessly raw and twisted Black Metal passage that builds exponentially in fury before expiring on a delicate acoustic guitar passage overdubbing the sounds of a forest at night, crickets, howling wolves and all. And this sixteen minute-long soundscape journey is only the second track on this two disc digipak!

This entire album really is a humungous audible rainbow using sonic colors from the dark murky shades to the bright, shimmering glows. The riffs have distinct and clear characters to them that are as distinguishable as the color yellow to the color purple to the color blue. There is a wealth of variety among the songs and compositional genius of this record to enjoy. The track-lengths may come off as intimidating before your first listen but you will discover that the need for almost all of these songs to need over ten minutes of your time and attention is entirely appropriate. Keep in mind that all this is being made entirely by one single musician.

This album is an odyssey to every extent of the word. If you know anything about ancient world history, odysseys have been long-perfected by Greek artists and poets and Ayloss, in this sense, continues Homer’s regal story-telling tradition with the utmost class and respect on ‘III’.

If Ayloss truly did perform every single instrument on this album, then the man is a genius artist. The musicianship on ‘III’ is world-class with melodies, vocals and rhythms that are haunting and expressive. You can expect to hear flute, cello, fiddle, clarinet, harp and piano on this album interspersed between the long epic song compositions. It’s almost unbelievable that he played it all along with the drums, guitars, bass, keyboards and vocals. That is so amazing!

Despite never hearing any of the band’s previous releases, despite not knowing anything about this band at all, Spectral Lore have made one of the best albums I have listened to in quite a while. This is not a modestly good album, ‘III’ is an album that is easily one of the best releases I have heard so far in the past 4 years. I was completely blown away. If you are into bands like Bel’Akor, Agalloch, Krallice, Opeth or are really into Progressive music (there is so much folk and classical on the record), you will really appreciate this amazing album.

(originally published on Metal-Temple.com - 6-5-2014)

 

[Richpa]

VIAGRA

 

[Richpa]

One of the finest EP's released this year. Highly recommended. Here is trippy trailer below:

 

A Treatise on Resurrection and the Afterlife is the debut relesae from California based blackened doom outfit Bog Oak. Although the band's name would suggest some type of sludge-laden, bottom dredging style of music, the band's sound is more in line with the Finnish psychedelic doom movement of late. It shouldn't be surprising, then, that the band is signed to the linchpin of that movement, Svart Records.

Seemingly infatuated with the occult and dark philosophy, Bog Oak's lyrical themes touch upon the writings of Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa and the doctrines of Satanic extremist groups such as the Order of Nine Angels and the Temple of the Black Light. Even more intriguing, yet, is the group's focus on Islamic mysticism: the existentialism of Mulla Sadra's Causal Nexus; the sage philosophy of Suhrawardi; and the focus on life and death in Al-Ghazali's The Alchemy of Happiness. Surely many bands delve into occult writings and touch upon the imagery of Laveyan Satanism, but few dare to swim the waters that Bog Oak have been stirring. The album's title, A Treatise on Resurrection and the Afterlife, coupled with the mystical cover art, show a band attempting to connect their fuzz-laden, bass heavy doom metal with something greater than mere sound mediums.

The music is heavy and trudging, but Bog Oak manages to keep things rolling along. “The Resurrection of Animals”, for instance, starts off with a punchy and reverberating bass line before fuzzed out, chunky guitars kick in. The music certainly fits with the bass heavy, plodding style of their genre kin, but where Bog Oak stands out is with the stellar vocal performance. That's not saying that the music is lackluster, because it certainly is not, as each track breathes a mystical life all it's own, such as the wall of sound monstrosity that is “Time Drift of Seasons” or the serene atmospherics and rollicking patterns of “A Sea Without Shore”, yet Julie Seymour's versatile vocal performance dwarfs the instrumentation. Effortlessly switching between what sounds like a bellowing inward blackened rasp and a smooth, ethereal cleans, the vocals help to lift Bog Oak shoulders above most of their competition.

A Treatise on Resurrection and the Afterlife is a solid addition to the Svart Records repertoire and should definitely please fans of their doom-laden roster. Bog Oak adds blackened touches and ethereal psychedelia to a heavy handed doom sound and those occult leanings just make it that much more substantial. This EP is supposedly paving the way for the band's full length debut, which is due to drop sometime in 2015.

Written for The Metal Observer.

[Richpa]

I'm so happy and excited since yesterday the new track from the upcoming Melechesh album has been posted on YouTube and it sounds....well it sounds epic :D

Here is the lyrics video (warning some really cool middle-eastern melodies ahead)

[LunaTuna]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qO7mLkupxJM

 

[Balance]

Napalm Death have a new album out end of this month https://play.google.com/store/music/album/Napalm_Death_Apex_Predator_Easy_Meat?id=Bgtmmfyvepe3s3n4mvd2bn54swa

[RTP]

Know Sear Bliss?

Good band...

 

 

[Balance]

Never liked Rotting Christ after meeting the lead singer and hearing his far right and racist ideals. I think sometimes it's best for entertainers to keep their political & racial views to themselves.

[Richpa]

Know Sear Bliss?

Good band...

 

Woah, this is really great, it reminds me a little bit on mixture between Immortal and Mgła with an epic touch.

 

 

 

Gonna check the rest of their stuff, good recommendation RTP, thanks

 

 

[Richpa]

Never liked Rotting Christ after meeting the lead singer and hearing his far right and racist ideals. I think sometimes it's best for entertainers to keep their political & racial views to themselves.

Never heard anything about Sakis being a racist. Can you please give me/us a little bit more informations

[Richpa]

Btw, here is one amazing new band from my country, worth checking. Their name is Pogavranjen (The word "pogavranjen" does not exist in the Croatian language. It was made up by the band in a drunken stupor as a way to describe someone who has morphed into a were-raven like creature).

Ponoćni Lov means Midnight Hunt

 

First of all, I must admit this was by far one of the most punishing black metal experiences I've had in months. It took me like ten full spins of this album to even begin to fathom what the hell is going on here. And what I have found at the end of this pitch black tunnel of spastic lunacy and crushing hysteria was a well hidden gem of pure bred depression. I am well aware the term itself is more than heavily used to describe plenty of black metal releases of the past decade and rise of the sub genre, but this is a solid level above (below) most of it. Few records had such a firm cold grasp on me lately.

The sonic journey itself is divided into five songs that serve as, what I like to believe, 5 stages of sinking to the bottom of the modern cesspool of existence even if I don't understand a word. The feeling of hopelessness is surly the strongest flavor here, with the band trying manically to emphasize it through the entire duration of the album. High or low, fast and slow, it's impossible to shake that feeling off. And it's a very good thing since most of the modern black metal bands leave a rather mild and apathetic aftertaste these days and I'm not feeling like playing an album more than once or twice in general, but this release is far from it.

Atmosphere aside, musicianship is at an extremely high point within the borders of the genre, but bear in mind that it goes out of these borders quite frequently yet never losing the bond with the black metal skeleton underneath. It seems that the band really gives every atom of skill to put it all together and to make it work. And it really shows. This album has a huge heart and balls behind it, and not even a single compromise can be heard within a mile around it. Albums like this rarely get popular for the simple reason of being too good for what they are, in this case a bitter statement from anonymous Croatian guys who refused to even sing in English. That fact holds both advantages and disadvantages. Language itself sounds like a cursing or spell chanting in Orcish and it gives a punishing and angry character to the songs, even occult,but at the same time it felt like I'm missing an entire layer of this album's identity. Luckily, it is a minor thing in the whole picture, since there is a plenty of meat left here, lyrics aside.

Sound is for the most part very clean and audible, but it does sink from time to time into a murky blur of over saturation. Some might find this a bad thing, others might approve of these moments of dementia very much. The record, being really guitar driven, never fails to deliver, keeping even the longest, repeating parts interesting. Defined and pointed out, chords intertwine with great sense and taste for dissonance, synchronizing harsh distorted rhythm to dripping with reverb lead parts, creating a unique body of strings.

The guitar tone remains clean and sharp even at the mellow parts, which can be heard in the epic closing track "Strigoi" which serves as a completely new take on the black metal songwriting formulas. And speaking about formulas, this album is pretty much free of those more and more pop sounding structures that are slowly becoming dominant in the metal world today, keeping itself very distinctive on my favorite genre shelf.

What I really like about this record is the thing that it takes bass to a level of presence where it should be - wide and strong, bringing the extra juice and melody. It must have something to do with a guy behind it, since he is the same guy who is also credited as one of three guitar players, main composer and co-producer on this album, who apparently works his way around low end with lot of respect towards it, not only bringing it to the front line with the rest of the instruments, but also keeping it very interesting and again - distinctive.

Another strong point about this material is very tasteful synth work which reminds me of Fenriz's Neptune Towers but in a more frantic way. It works as a bonding tissue, opening up entire parts, flooding with suspense, giving them extra depth and space ambiance moods making every song here sound basically otherworldly.

The drummer is a beast - to put it mildly. Hard hitting and blasting his way behind the drones, it brings a hyper destructive pulse to the whole picture. Pounds differ in speed, but never in execution. Solid, organic and old school sounding, the drums never cease to keep the entire machine moving ever forward. The intensity of the drumming remains unforgiving even during the ten minutes long blast beat fest of "Jeziva Suša", mesmerizing the listener into a slumber like state.

Peak and apex, a jewel in the crown are definitely the vocals. A work of a madman I'm sure. Tortured to a point where I actually felt sorry for the guy who seems to be fucked up beyond repair. Animal howling - check. Disturbed grunts - check. Insane babbling - check. Incoherent screams - check. Schizophrenic murmur - check. Oh and by the way, there is also a vocal guest appearance on the album by some guy who appears to be just as equally ill in the head. I can't really tell them apart, but when spitting words together, the duo sounds like a vortex of voices from hell in a crushing psyche of a madman on acid. The vocals hover at the edge of attention. Sometimes they seem like a throbbing ton of text and sometimes they serve as a deep narrative based below the instrumentals; in both cases they are top class. Unlike any other out there I dare to say.

Trance inducing and hypnotic, bizarre in structure, melancholic, angry and most of all insanely depressive, this album will catapult you towards the shores of longing isolation. So if you feel like home there, you will cherish Sebi Jesi Meni Nisi. Hope there will be more from this guys in the future, they might be on the verge of a fresh hell in the stale waters of black metal. -Voidshaper

[Richpa]

Kostogher by Arckanum has been on the repeat for couple of days, highly recommended!

 

 

Country of origin: Sweden
Location: Mora
Status: Active
Formed in: 1992
Genre: Black Metal
Lyrical themes: Chaos-Gnostic Ideology, Anti-Cosmic Satanism, Pan
Current label: Season of Mist
Years active: 1992-present
Official; http://arckanum.bandcamp.com/

Kostogher - Full-length - 1997

1. Skoghens Minnen Vækks
2. Yvir Min Diupe Marder
3. Øþegarðr
4. Þæn Sum Fran Griften Gangar
5. Et Sorghetog
6. Gamall Uvermark
7. Oþer Trulhøyghda
8. Gangar For Raþan Vinder
9. Bedrøvelse
10. Ir Bister Ensaminhet Iagh Ugla
11. Græmelse ok Væ
12. Kri Til Dødha Daghi

[Veracohr]

So you know the Ozzy Osbourne song "Crazy Train"?