Tjolgtjar’s final record ‘Vruguun’ is a drugged and rockin’ descent into Psychedelic Black Metal hades, and a perfect summation of what makes Tjolgtjar so special. An amazing amalgam of influences making for a formidably unique redneck Black Metal record, drunk on potent ‘shine. King Diamond and Speed Metal, Kiss and WASP, raw Darkthrone and Burzum style Black Metal, Country, Bluegrass and Southern (gothic) Rock,13th Floor Elevators and Roky Erikson, Ted Nugent and Charles Manson, little nods to Post Punk, all manner of psychedelia, Goblin, Synths and Organs, raw and reedy Black Metal Guitars with killer riffing, rasping evil vocal mixed with impassioned singing and Metal wails, wailin’ solos over hard rocking anthems, psilocybin-laced Black Rock and Metal of a completely unique formula. Satanic and Occult, raw and obscure. Some tracks adhere to a more traditional Black Metal composition, others hew closer to 70’s Hard Rock or ancient spellbound Heavy Metal, and others still combine these elements into an incredibly heady listening experience. Slight differences or emphases in production across these 24 tracks amount to a very home-made, underground sound, very high concept and low fidelity. Vruguun is an absolute delight of non traditional Black Metal Magick, deftly handling dirt-rune experimentalism and drunk as fukk anthem bangin’ across it’s running time. Crucial.
Step right up, earthlings, as we once again delve into the extraterrestrial escapades of Ahulabrum. Last week, we dissected the second demo of Ahulabrum, and guess what? They cranked up the atmosphere like they were playing at Area 51 at a moonless night. But hold onto your tinfoil hats because, on this demo, they decided to go further and even drop the drums – this is pure perfection. If you’re not equipped with a lightsaber to cut through the thick atmosphere of sonic wizardry, you might get lost in the otherworldly sonic abyss.
And just when you thought it couldn’t get any spookier, there are interspersed ambient tracks featuring spare riffs, bass rumbling, and UFO-themed samples of people talking about their encounters. Because nothing says “out of this world” like a dash of extraterrestrial ambiance.
These tracks presented here aren’t just cooked up in a studio; they’re a concoction of field recordings, electrical effects, feedback experimentation, and the mystical resonance of ancient stereo equipment. It’s like a sonic séance conducted to honor one of the strangest encounters of mid-twentieth century UFO lore.
You heard right, The Phantom of Flatwoods isn’t your run-of-the-mill album; it’s a concept album, a musical odyssey wholly fixated on the Flatwoods incident. According to interviews, the main guy from Ahulabrum even embarked on a field trip to Flatwoods to record some ambience. No close encounters, mind you, but the resulting recordings went right into this demo.
Ahulabrum did it again, dishing out another dose of audio awesomeness with a release that’s so iconic, even your grandma’s hipster neighbor knows about it. Clocking in at only 14 minutes, you’ll be left panting for more.
We’re back, folks, with the intergalactic rock stars of the UFO Black Metal underground: Ahulabrum. So, buckle up your tin foil hats as we continue to delve deep into their discography.
In this thrilling sequel to their first demo, Ahulabrum doesn’t just crank up the atmosphere – they throw a full-blown black-tie Illuminati gala. They’ve finally decided to grace us with the reverb we’ve all been yearning for since their debut effort. It’s like they realized, “Hey, our music is already out of this world; why not add a touch of intergalactic echo to make it even spacier?” Bravo, Ahulabrum, for giving the people what they didn’t know they needed – a sound so ethereal it makes angels (that are in reality aliens – see pt. 1) question their celestial playlist. This whole demo is like a sonic séance in your dingy basement. You’re down there, casually playing with your ham radio (because who needs regular hobbies when you can communicate with beings from beyond?), and after a day of tuning into Russian number stations, you stumble upon this on some forbidden frequency. It’s the kind of musical revelation that makes you question whether your basement has secretly become a portal to the cosmic unknown.
Walls of tremolo-picked guitars hit you like a sonic tidal wave, a barrage of sound that makes you question whether you’re at a metal concert or caught in the crossfire of an interstellar battle. The drumming? Oh, it’s a delicacy, barely audible, and exclusively composed of low-end non-blastbeat bass drums. Bass licks emerge like unexpected plot twists in an episode of the X-Files, making you wonder if Mulder and Scully are about to pop out from behind the amplifier. Muffled groans, the kind that would make ghosts jealous, serenade you in the background, creating an ambiance that’s part extraterrestrial séance, part black metal opera. And if that isn’t enough to make your auditory senses tingle, radio samples kick in, giving you a front-row seat to the strangest frequencies the universe has to offer. It’s like tuning into the cosmic equivalent of a pirate radio station. In case you were skeptical about the authenticity of these sonic escapades, fear not! According to interviews (because even extraterrestrial musicians do press), Ahulabrum took it a step further. They threw in some childhood tape recordings they made with deconstructed radios.
So, strap in, fellow truth-seekers, because “The Transitivity of Strangeness” isn’t just rich in atmosphere; it can be considered a conceptual journey into the heart of UFO incidents, with every track named after dates and locations of UFO encounters like “September 12th, 1952, Flatwoods, WV.” It’s like Ahulabrum giving you a crash course in extraterrestrial history, with the syllabus including encounters that are semi-famous, almost famous, and maybe famous if you squint a little. After the brief runtime of 12 minutes, you will question if the guy next door is actually an alien spider in disguise. Spoiler alert: he probably is.
Jay Tichy of SIDETRACKED infamy conjures a torrid steely stomp of Black Punk Metal, deeply indebted to Bone Awl and Ildjarn’s bastard lineage but with a myopic locus of influence within Hardcore – searing bleached white Black Metal scaffolded by very reductive stiff stomper beats, slashes of fuzzed, crumpled Guitars form ugly, brooding angles across the eyes, bellowed brooding vocal exhalations atop. Vicious and wicked. Like a foul bilious conjuration of influence between Negative FX, Tinner and Sump. I do feel that the devotional brevity for which Jay is known in his various projects is a little misplayed here, some of these ideas might work slightly better or land harder with a bit more room to breathe, but no matter. This is still a total starching.
Step aside, plebeians! It is time to explore the outer reaches of refined black metal tastes. The UFO Black Metal subgenre crash-landed on Earth somewhere around the 2000s and quickly became one of my latest obsessions with its otherworldly mix of cryptids, UFOs, and government shadiness. It’s like the Illuminati decided to form a band, but with questionable production values and fewer secret handshakes.
One band that can be considered a cornerstone of this micro-genre is Ahulabrum – a West Virginia black metal anomaly as mysterious as a cat burglar with a PhD in quantum physics. The lineup reads like a guest list for an intergalactic soiree – Indrid Cold on guitars and vocals, and Vadig keeping the beat like a cosmic metronome. Back in the glory days of 2005 to 2006, Ahulabrum cranked out demos and an EP, all while trying to establish a direct hotline to E.T. Fast forward to the present, where Ahulabrum is making a comeback just in time for the U.S. government to finally admit, “Yeah, we’ve been seeing some weird stuff in the sky.” Coincidence? I think not. It’s almost as if Ahulabrum predicted the government’s U-turn on UFO acknowledgments and decided to ride the extraterrestrial wave.
In this cheeky retrospective, we dive into Ahulabrum’s discography like paranormal investigators searching for the holy grail of black metal. Are their tunes the key to unlocking the secrets of Area 51, or just a soundtrack for alien dance parties? Could they be a psyop run by the CIA to corrupt the most powerful black metal elitists? Join us as we sift through their releases and see if we strike gold or get anal probed
Ahulabrum – Magonia [Demo 2005]
Their debut effort, “Magonia,” from 2005 is the sonic equivalent of a UFO abduction, but with more charm and less probing. This lo-fi black metal gem takes us on a quirky rollercoaster through the unexplored corners of musical oddities. Throughout the brief running time of 21 minutes, a mysterious atmosphere hangs in the air like a UFO over Roswell, and the music is charmingly unbalanced and strange. Their peculiar brand of black metal offered here is almost drumless, with weird, otherworldly percussive sounds that could make even a Martian tap their three-toed foot. The tremolo-picked guitars boast surprisingly low levels of distortion, creating an auditory experience that’s like finding a black metal album in Area 51 – unexpected and slightly disorienting. The whole thing is topped off with genre-typical screeching and incomprehensible samples, because who needs understandable vocals when you’re communicating with intergalactic beings? Similarly, the lyrics are so elusive they make Bigfoot look like a regular on a daytime talk show.
What sets “Magonia” apart is its clever avoidance of black metal clichés. The tracks, appropriately titled after UFO sightings, take inspiration from encounters with entities that have been haunting humanity since the fae were the hot gossip in town. And let’s not forget the name drop – “Magonia” takes its moniker from Jacques Vallee’s “Passport To Magonia,” a must-read for anyone who wants to upgrade their UFO knowledge beyond the typical “little green men” trope. Vallee lays down some truth bombs about UFOs masquerading as faeries and angels throughout history, and Ahulabrum transforms it into a musical séance.
Now, onto the production critique – if “Magonia” had a touch more reverb and delay, it could transport listeners into a dimension where black metal and UFOs waltz together under the celestial disco ball. The dry production, however, gives it an experimental, art-house vibe that screams, “We’re not your standard black metal – we’re the cool kids at the UFO convention.” In the grand scheme of alien encounters, “Magonia” is a cosmic ride worth taking. Ahulabrum’s fusion of black metal and UFO lore is done with such finesse that even skeptics might find themselves checking the sky for flying saucers.
Shadowy, fiendish and chaotic Noise Black Metal, reeking black incense, rehearsal room ritual provocation ambience, echo-laden guttural djinn vocal gibbering, summoned eruption of random guitar solos striking from the dark in obscene and unknowable forms, grinding bass noise, unwieldy blasting drums. Hallucinatory and bizarre. Black Ambient, Harsh Noise and Power Electronics, Noisecore, Black Metal warped into a hideous and incorrigible form of primitivist rite. A merciless, perverse and perplexing black lightning bolt of total chaos maelstrom – otherworldly, extremely disharmonious Black Noisecore to silence the Gods, wielding profane erect phallus and thousands of severed heads.
Tyrannus’ 2018 EP ‘Serpentslayer’, three odes to Summoning and Darrell K Sweet. Prideful, dusky no MIDI/VST Dungeon Synth from the Pagoda Mast sect, now no longer active. Dedicated to heroes lost in bloodshed battling wyverns, I presume. Meditative, rousing Synth patch sounds, sparse beats plodding beneath, mournful yearning for the strength to topple evil and bury it’s seed deep in the heaving earth… iconoclasm and high fantasy balefully rendered in spectral Synths. Pagoda Mast having fallen fallow, Phantom Spire now playing host to Tyrannus Einhorn’s works in Black Metal and Dungeon Synth (I’m not certain he still works with Harsh Noise Walls). Pass these mossy graves and pay respects.
Pyfyxfyru is a solo project from Alcoholonomicon, it of Tjolgtjar, Blood Cult, Ängelust and Xexys infamy, among many other uniquely wyrd bands and projects. 5 tracks of deranged, possessed Black Heavy Metal in lunatic throes of devotion to the dark one, blasphemous to an obsessive, absurd degree, and preserved in a starkly dry and up-front recording quality, hiding none of it’s thrills behind lo-fi fog. Lithe deadly NWOBHM riffs entwined with frosty stabbing Black Metal riff sweeps and luscious lustful lead work, melodious and imperious Bass and alternately minimally hypnotic and severely rockin’ drumming driving the songs forward, with breathless passages of sweeping Black Metal leading around unseen mirrored corners to more psychedelic early-Kiss-channeling Hard Black Rock’n’Roll sections straight from blazing fucking hades, embellished with ecstatic melodic vocal and clean soul-chilling key tones. The Bass playing in particular is stellar, provoking unforseeable melodic textures and galloping rhythm in these orgiastic odes to Satan. This is a seriously addictive, killer sound, reveling in it’s over the top 70’s occult lunacy with a wry wink and a hard on. Gleaming, gloaming, deliciously purple Black Heavy Metal Satanism!
Impious cataclysmic Black Death War Gore Metal from fukk knows where (I’m pretty sure one of these freaks lurks in Flint, Michigan…) glowering with overwhelming outsider hostility. Anti-dogmatic rhythms blast and groove with near-Industrial elements grinding in mid-pace with an anvil-strike snare; mean, ugly, accursed Guitars casting grind, gore and DETH riffs, damned in leaden fires of booming lo-fi production, a raking torment of remorselessly heavy corpse-bloated Bass, adorned with hazardous, hissing, cackling vocal of the fukked up and perverse, tainted with ghastly effects. Heaving, seizured, molten Death Black Metal of violent persecution, dangerous and fukking ravenous. Like Catasexual Urge Motivation, Black Mass of Absu or Bestial Putrefaction, Hematoma operates in a sound that’s difficult to pin down to extant genre tropes, as it pulls every extremity into it’s carbonised black hole vortex to create absolutely VILE, truly impetuous Black Death Metal for the end tymes (hopefully). Pestilential and sordid, prison Satanism, homeless urban occultism, malformed victims crucified upside down… verminous. Be afraid.
Temeritous, unspeakable, anticosmic atomic Noise Metal split from far outside the illusion, released on 10″ wax by Iron Bonehead. Tsalal opens and closes in deliriant deafened noise miasma, impure rudimentary instrumentations obscured by devastating distortion, through this cervical portal opening they burst forth with leaden singularity Black Noise Metal, warped stricken solos rupture vomiting from the broken cosm atop endless blasting and supereon hissing vocal, before collapsing back into the unstable intro/outro vortex. Singular and irreal. Tetragrammacide’s track forges closer to black hole Cybergrinding Black Death, massive coils of meticulous programmed blasts, tumultuous circular riffs and commanding mangled vocal as a complex mandala weapon to strike dead yahweh in a single blow and destroy it’s foetid world of shit for good. A perfect meeting of esoteric outsider aesthete Noise Metal. Smash the Tetragrammaton. Reject the Simulation. Defeat the Demiurge. Delete the Universe.
Blaspheming blasting Death Metal from the States. ‘Strange Customs’ has drawn comparisons to Proclamation and early Deicide, influences amongst others with which Cult Graves harness a savage rite of Death Metal all their own. Riff-centric yet utterly primal, dismal, vile necromantic Death Metal; rabid strangulating riffs and solos with transgressive sort-of grooves, plummeting bombastic drums of death with tempo variations and nuances, full of the erect powerful primality that elevates this sort of ghoulish, slobbering riff feast, and decimating, ear crushing production with squashed ambience and audial clarity. This has a similarly grinding feel and sound to Gravesend or Caustic Wound at times, too, and there’s a blackened edge to some of the more chaotic guitar parts, sometimes coming off like Lucifer’s Hammer in their more demented, heretical throes. Crucial brutal.
Split release between two of Eduardo Rodriguez’ (he of the indelible Volahn et all) Hardcore Punk bands. Zoloa is a long-standing Crust project, having existed in some form concurrently with Rodriguez’ better known Black Twilight Circle activities. Here they deliver 3 tracks of blasting anti-kommunist Crustcore with an aesthetic similarity to War Metal in certain respects. Filthy delay war Vocal command, wailing acid-fried terrorist leads swarming across terminal chords, terrifying storming Bass and smashing, strongarm drumming relying heavily on stiff, stacked War blasts rather than D-Beats, and meltdown synth shockwave interludes. Reminds me equally of Acrostix and Blasphemy’s ‘Gods of War’. On the flipside is Foza Común, ANOTHER of Eduardo’s affiliated projects, dealing in a marauder Blackened Punk/Hardcore sound with a RAC edge. 3 more tracks – stomping Rock ‘n’ Rolling lashings of Guitar dripping with UK ’82 licks, King Kong Bass violence carrying thuggish melody and a fiendish streak of Oi! within the rhythmic stamp and the barked yobbo Vocal assault. Barbaric and arrogant, a black flick knife of aggression and hostility. Killer split.
Virulent Specter’s 3rd demo, the first of two this year, summoned from far outside the cosy Instablack paradigm in seclusion and shadow. Ghoulish US Raw Black Metal of possession and phantasmagoria – disgusting raw fuzz crush Guitars working whirling phasmic chords ripe with off-kilter melody and cruel droning harmony, nightmarishly base and foul Bass frequencies swarm across the rancorous barre chord riff structures, lurching drums with incredibly heavy flam strikes pummeling out tight, heavy mid-paced marauding stomping beats full of wickedness, punctuated with unclear appearance of accursed prowling phantom vocal rotating head, spitting rattling highs and blasphemic scornful lows, shimmering with feculent analogue delay. Bass heavy, lurid, horrid and orgiastic Raw Black Metal, writhing in pestilent sonic frequencies and riddled with demonic presences. If Nature truly is Satan’s church, then Virulent Specter is of the forsaken dirt and soil itself.
Ärid is a one-man Black Metal project from the States, seemingly bent of reducing the current romanticism and Goth leanings of the Raw Black ‘scene’ to greasy cinders and returning the sound to something minimal, ugly, bleak and animal. Melted, necrotic Black Metal grounded in gnostic cadaver worship with extremely intense drumming and dead, thanatologist ambient atmosphere – grinding, rattling and gurgling in lunatic hyperblasting anti-human Black Metal putridity, scathing boiling extra-fill abstruse blasts forming the basis of hypnotising Raw Black Metal of rancorous, scabrous chords in minimal diving drone patterns, bending, warped noise guitar parts scaffolded to horrifically violent atavistic drumming, detailed with clattering fills, with some slower moments to let the pestilence breathe between rictus tom rolls, resplendent with subhuman croaking grotesque goblin vocal. Many of these songs register in a similar fashion to the best Grindcore, careening at inhuman speed through a dirge of chords in demented, frothing abandon before abruptly concluding. This album shimmers with black flames of irradiated necrotic energy and anti-human spite, truly fulfilling a descriptive remit as simple as ‘Raw Black Metal’ with supereon, fevered energy and filthy, phlegmy, necromantic abandon. A scowling masterpiece.
Split 7″ from Necrodeity and Brahmastrika – Insane anti-cosmic DETH Metal from the ever fertile Kolkata underground scene. First up, Necrodeity offers a savage track of blasting Black Death Metal with almost Brutal Death Metal/Grindcore drum dynamics, dry hectic snare blasts front in the mix, merciless riffing cast in ancient obsidian Necrovoric forms of archaic Death Thrash style with babbling, ravenous, devil-tongued hissing vocal delirium, sealed into dry and noisy production. Repugnant, blaspheming. Then Brahmastrika’s contribution to the ritual bombards and saturates with perplexing arrangements of vortex Death Noise Metal, leaning into opprobrious Power Electronics sounds, extra-black carbonisation Noise and irradiated vocal, explosions of coiling percussion with some patches of discernable war riffing. Exceptionally discordant and earbleedingly violent. Killer split – Hail Kalikshetra Raktachakra!
A recent cassette release from Escafismo records in Spain. Forlorn, embattled Black Metal storming forth from some foggy obscurity in the US, nasty with rancorous tremolo picked riffing, shifting tempos and fearsome shrieking frost vocal, the drumming here has a thunderous clattering presence beneath the memorable and simplistic Guitar parts. There are short movements of obscure synths and keys too, working out baroque melodies closer to Summoning’s style of imperious arrangement than your more bargain bucket lo-fi Dungeon Synth offerings choking up the bandcamp tag. Raw and miserable, far-sighted and impressive. I hear the influence of Tomhet and Wulkanaz in the torrid of folkish/punkish melody, and there’s a reverence to essential second wave Black Metal like Darkthrone or Judas Iscariot in there too. A very promising release.
Band names are nothing if not revealing. Coldplay, for example, is a Chaucerian synonym for ‘shite’, and Black Fucking Cancer … well let’s just say, if you’re at all unsure what path this conclave of crueltors is likely to lead you down, you’d be well advised to stop reading now. The follow-up to ‘Boundless Arcane Invokations’, 2019’s shockingly violent split with fellow Californians Gloam, ‘Procreate Inverse’ is black metal as its legendary progenitors originally envisaged; music so hateful, so extreme in its rejection of aestheticism that, to an outsider, it barely even qualifies as such. Not that we’d be here otherwise of course, but christ on a grim and frostbitten bike, this is SAVAGE. Like a pack of starving wolves, Black Fucking Cancer launch their ambush before you’ve even drawn breath, dragging you throat first back to their lair where a clique of black-cowled (psycho)pathologists stand unnervingly close to a dissection table brandishing hacksaws. Unrelenting in its viciousness, the hope-destroying onslaught of pure misanthropic fury BFC unleash may be kissing cousins with the work of their notorious forebears, but even Mayhem in their prime never surged this hard or with such malicious intent. A lightning-struck hypervortex of necrotising riff ravagement, tortured abyssal shrieks and skull-denting blast-beat fusillades, ‘Procreate Inverse’ is one of US black metal’s finest, Ed Sheeran-vaporising hours. The devil is most definitely in the detail.
Perverted sacrosanct Speed/Black/Thrash Metal from New York, a side project of the band Spite. ‘Morbid Lust’ is a liturgical text of ripping speed metal trill-heavy riffing, fat Bass underpinning the eerie ire of drumming, and uproariously demented cackling vocal emanations from the blackened soul dripping with STDs, hellhammering away in strange and vulgar forms with mid-paced motorcycle booted hard rocking, full throttle poserscything thrash and rollicking double bass passages, with crescendos of songs reaching catchy, invasive orgasmic peaks before descending into spent ruin. Dionysian indeed. A whole heap of drunken, sextanic debauchery, uproariously deliciously melodic Black/Speed/Thrash possessed with the Geist of evil!
Morbid split cassette release between two one-man Black Metal projects from the US. Kneipegeist scores a vile sombre tone of impassioned, somewhat complex Black Metal, odiously distorted and hissing in rueful obscurity with lots of Punk influence, particularly in the drumming, a gutter bloated sense of wonky melody through the Guitar and Bass work, gurning wailing necrophile vocal hysteria, storming and frozen cold with lots or clarity in the raw recording and samples woven through the music… Katabasilisk takes the cake with a slow and fear inducing keys-to-tape intro to a long and despondent screed of tormented noisy Black Metal, replete with evil production-obscured riffs working counter melodies and opposing hard rockin’ riff sections and discordant shifts in tempo, majestically distorted fuzzy Bass sound beneath and necrotic vocal emanation, enveloped in a perfectly-pitched hazed production fog. Their sound reminds me of Rhinocervs, particularly their ‘RH-07’ cassette release, and Crepusculo Negro projects like Axeman with their robust corpulent melodicism, Crust Punk and Psychedelic influences, and acid-tinged lead lines. Atmospheric, arcane and prideful, filthy, rotten grave robbery and cosmic corpse molestation, stench of pungent putrefaction on the night’s breeze, idolators of the rotten fukken skull…
Ceremonial Torture’s first full length record, released on Behest. Hellenic Raw Black Metal straight from multicolour hades – Dire, darkly mellifluent keyboard melodies casting long abysmal shadows in bleaching dungeon moonlight, largely mid-paced, Bass centric ravenous sub-symphonic Hellenic Black Metal, rude, raw, furiously melodic and uproariously brash. Tormenter daemonic vocal, deranged key sounds in the red casting runes of folkish dancing melodies, hulking Bass riff foundations and simplistic drum patterns. Hellishly noisy and refreshingly unique amidst the swathe of Raw Black Metal projects out there. Reminds me most of Hail Conjuror in it’s brazen, powerful melody and outsider rawness. Think early Varathron by way of Bone Awl or Ride For Revenge. Mesmerizing and wrong!
GonzoKaraoke 