black metal

A journey back to 1992, where cold winds blow.

The Athenian quartet Ravencult‘s third LP cleans and polishes its blackened death thrash without blunting its serrated decimation. Axe demon Stefanos Fakatselis fielded our email.

Recently the band has embarked on a Transylvanian trilogy, meant to explore the various elements of deep traditional life in the band’s homeland.  We asked main man Negru a few questions about the current state of the band and their direction.

Good goddamn is HÄXAN some dark, disquieting, creepy, heavy, seriously avant garde, Hellraiser-esque torment-is-delight nastiness! Composed to serve as a soundtrack for Benjamin Christensen’s 1922 witchcraft n’ Satan heavy silent film of the same title, the latest from EORÐESLAJYR — that’s “earth slayer,” if you dare call their name — has got a Scorn by way of Swans by way of circa Too Dark Park Skinny Puppy vibe and its textures and left turns will fuck with your head.

To celebrate the album’s release — pick up your copy here — we asked the to delve into a few specific moments of inspiration drawn from the film that went on to possess the music…

Nidingr say they were going for a simplified, yet equally as intense sound this time around. 

Black Hole Generator get fast and evil on “Moloch.” 

Czech Republic’s most active, adventurous, and influential band, Root, are almost in their third decade. Formed in 1987, when their country and the world was in a different place, Root nevertheless managed to emanate outward from their industrial home of Brno.

At the onset of metal’s second decade, kult was not a choice. Kult was the by-product of poverty, desperation and isolation.

On this week’s Demo:listen, we make contact with a singular entity, something from Canada unlike aught we’ve ever known before, a thing which calls itself Sorguinazia.

This Saturday (11/12) at the Dark Arts — a Philly-based “collaborative organization made up of like-minded individuals who live and breath all things dark and heavy” — brings a multimedia smorgasbord of malevolence to the City of Brotherly Love with “Black Metal”: In addition to performances by five crazy sick bands — Anicon, Wayfarer, Surgeon, Necroscythe, and Dreadlords — the event will also feature renegade art and readings by dark authors, including current and past Decibel contributors Sean Frasier, Dutch Pearce, and Andrew Bonazelli.

Eternal Deformity fuse genres for a unique and challenging listen on No Way Out. 

Violently aggressive. Atmospheric. Unsettling. What do those words have in common? They could all be used to describe “The Shadow Over Innsmouth,” the first single from The Great Old Ones’ new record, EOD: A Tale Of Dark Legacy. 

We hope you brought your hat and gloves today…. you’ll be needing them for this Tarnkappe premiere, in which hypothermia abounds.  

For the past four years, Tasmanian black metallers Ruins have been working on their fifth album, Undercurrent. Without the pressures of most bands–writing, recording, touring–frontman Alex Pope, drummer Dave Haley, guitarist Joe Haley, and bassist Kai Summers were afforded time and space to realize their latest black metal vision.

The Whole of the Law
Total fucking destruction
dB rating: 8/10

The latest installment of Dayal Patterson’s series on black metal is a paradise for genre obsessives.

Get your fill of Belgian black/death with the new number from Emptiness.

Dive into the Infinity of Thoughts.

Take a listen to a b-side from The Missing while Vaura prepares to enter the studio to record their third LP. 

Belgian black/death cosmonauts Kosmokrator take a giant leap forward on First Step to Supremacy.

Sons of Balour has had a presence in the Norwegian black metal scene since 1992, but it is finally time to hear the band’s debut album. 

Put down the Yellow Goat pressing of the first Bathory album you paid $500 for on eBay, and spend some time with the overlooked gem that is Requiem.

Rheia
Dawn of a different apocalypse
dB rating: 8/10

If Sarcofago, Watain, and Beherit got into a winner-takes-all fist fight, it might end up sounding like Kyy. If chaos, disorder, fervent calls to the Nameless One are our future, then Kyy might be the soundtrack to it all.

Poland’s Arkona, not to be confused with the Russian act of the same name, is one of many great under-recognized bands from black metal second wave. Forming in 1993, the band has spend the ensuing decades creating some of the finest black metal out of eastern Europe (or anywhere else).

Lord! Anagnorisis certainly doesn’t pull any sonic or emotional punches on its majestic, seriously affecting gut-punch sophomore full-length Peripeteia — a powerful blend of forward-thinking, nuanced black metal and excerpts from circa ’82-87 family recordings he found on two cassette tapes after his father’s death. 

Romanian black/folk metal pathfinders Negura Bunget prowl through the woods in the hypnotic video for “Stanciu Gruiul.”

The newest song from Départe is vast and crushing.

Lotus Thief‘s Gramarye is a beautiful album that draws from some of history’s most renowned texts to create an atmospheric journey through time. Listen to it in full now. 

Satyricon may have traded in medieval times for urban discipline in 1999, but that doesn’t mean that you should overlook the power of the controversial Rebel Extravaganza.