CTENIZIDAE – ‘HUMENICIDEG I’

Filthy necrotic Black Noise from the obscure Eerie Silence Productions, shadowrealm of projects such as Ärid, Virulent Specter, Astral Tomb of Yearning, and a few others. Groaning minimal noise loops render a Black Ambient shade, spooky crepuscular tones hover above pulsing spectral presences, daring those mortal to provoke their malignant powers! Rueful, broken dirge synth tones appear from the black mists tape and dire throbbing amplifier sounds, the sombre insanity, black mood of the mourner driven mad in hateful despair, glaring pulses and loops build and mount in sweat dripping nightmare tension and insect hate, rhythmic passages thrum and boil, tapes rolling over into the void, aggravating and haunting, eyes rolling back in the head, capillaries bursting with clotted black blood… suffocating Black Noise, bad vibes from beyond life’s domain.

Eerie Silence Productions

TJOLGTJAR – ‘VRUGUUN’

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.

Illinoisan Thunder

Super Sargasso

Bandcamp

TSALAL – ‘צָלַל’

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.

Larval Productions

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WOE – ‘CZERNOBOG’

Emerging from a coven bearing members of such acts as Tarot and The Wizar’d, Woe thunders forth with ‘Czernobog’ ,a distinctive, riff centric, grooving devotional trad Doom affair. Afforded influences from Hard Rock and Roll, Stoner Rock, Heavy Metal and Doom, Woe conjures a breathtaking, muscular, master-crafted Heavy Metal scourge, a dread shade atop a frightful steed weilding radiant black steel, a vengeful hooved beast of power trio sound. The diminished harmonies and sunbaked slinking grooves, the brazen blues sodden riffing and galloping thunderhooved rhythms evoke Kyuss as much as Candlemass and Trouble, in the way the final Reverend Bizarre album evoked these sounds convergently and somehow dogmatically. The stellar Guitar playing carries the weight and sweat of a seasoned vet, generating broadsword swinging power and bursting with barbarian melody, coursing power Bass lopes beneath locked into robust rhythm with the irresistible drumming, and topped with clean soaring dude vocal. Devotional, romantic Heavy Doom Metal, another total banger from that Wizard’s Crypt. Ride to death!

Crypt Of The Wizard

PYFYXFYRU – ‘OCCULT THEOCRASY VOL 1’

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!

Illinoisan Thunder

APARTHIVA RAKTADHARA – ‘আ​দ​্​য​া​প​ী​ঠ ম​র​ণ​স​ং​হ​ি​ত​া​’

Kalikshetra sorcery and black death hate from Aparthiva Raktadhara. Makes good the promise of their demented demo, here presenting an absolutely ruthless scroll of ancient, martial Death Metal heresy. Vicious drumming both in execution and style, the frothing fills and lurching double bass groove warped with irreal essence, dry sulphuric Guitars and Bass sounds coalesce in sorcerous, kris-like blade riffs and molten lightning bolt solos, both unorthodox and fervently devotional to archaic forms, searing and scything as war commanding hissing vocal topples pious bodies and desecrates meek souls. The ossuary-dry production accents the aggression, ignoring spooky reverb trends in favour of monolithic, unavoidable deathcrush. There’s a tangible air of Brutal Death Metal here, in the extremely aggressive arrangement and inert recording atmosphere, making for a particularly cruel, violent listen. Hail Kalikshetra Death Metal Shunyata!

Iron Bonehead Productions

Bandcamp

මහසෝනා – ‘(මහසෝනා​)​* – යන්ත්‍ර​.​මන්ත්‍ර​.​ගුරුකම්!’

‘මහසෝනා’ (Mahasonā) from this anonymous project from Sri Lanka. Nearly 15 minutes on cassette, Noise Metal dismal ritual hate and occult death to invoke the summoning of Sinhalese folkloric demon. Deathly yakseya evokation of soul-killing Noise and Black Drone of no-riff Doom, minimalist martial drums shimmer in unnatural heat haze, bass frequencies shudder and throb through lo-fi obscured audio, darkly psychedelic and ritualist, pulsing nahash vocal of the insane. Werewolf beast visage looms through the vibrating sonics, you can hear the candles flickering and smell the shitty amplifiers burning like some vile censer. Conjures a similarly mental atmosphere to Abruptum, Nirriti and Black Mass of Absu, being extremely forbidden and haram, harmful and dangerous in it’s esoteric intents and operating outside any specific scene paradigm. The work is an offering to Maha Sona, who will crush your shoulders with four hands, four eyes blazing through your cursed soul, filling your body with choleric pestilence. Be warned!

විරූපි Propaganda

PUTRESCENT FOG – ‘LURKING UNSEEN EVILS’

Putrescent Fog was/is a project of the Insect Hermit, they of a great many bizarre, unique and influential underground Gore projects. I recall searching on soulseek for the first two cassette releases, both excellently ominous, their gruesome covers and promise of a quixotic Gore sound holding a morbid glare of fascination within me. I was unaware this particular project was still operational in any capacity, so it’s a treat to get this collection of unreleased tracks. A sound like death fog creeps out of the speakers, slow lurching Guitar chugs in a haze of odorless mortician’s fog with floating rudimentary beats, slow rolling low fidelity occultism, phantasms approach moaning and weeping in super low vocal horror… chamber music for the poltergeists! Reminds of the excellent and inscrutable Black Mayonnaise, but has an unsettling, lo-fi creepiness all it’s own, and also bears some similarity to projects like Lysergic Rites of Sadopriest, their perverted euro grooves and giallo satanic obsessions here also in spiritus mortis and erect with the same prurient yearnings. Ghastly.

Cat Basket Recordings

VIRULENT SPECTER – ‘EREMITIC SPAWN OF ABJECT DARKNESS AND FILTH’

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.

Esfinge de la Calavera

NECRODEITY / BRAHMASTRIKA SPLIT – ‘PRAETERNATURAL COMMOTIONS FROM KOLKATA MAHA SAMSHANA’

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!

Iron Bonehead Productions

PURIFICATION – ‘DWELL IN THE HOUSE OF THE LORD FOREVER’

Portland, Oregon’s Purification, with their third full length in as many years. Deeply morose, darkly florid psychedelic Doom of a dogmatic yet experimental mode, moldering in a musty stoic trip-state, drawing influence from many corners of psychedelic Rock, Traditional Doom and Old Skul Heavy Metal.  A sort of drugging and muddling of Trad Doom revivalist sounds like Reverend Bizarre, adding shades of psychotic purple and infernal green to an already lurid palette of sound and blurring the audial edges with mouldy production fuzz und drang phantasia  –  foreboding and prosaic psychedelic Doom dripping with pungent atmosphere. Stately Guitars shimmering and swimming, unfurling prideful/mournful melodies and some smoker leads, astride a rather separated armoured Bass low end and dripping slow Drums full of swing interlocking wickedly, topped with demented vocal dramas of the insane clergy, fervent and possessed with the rapture of antitheist irreverence. ‘Dwell In The House Of The Lord Forever’ plays a bit like an EP, soaked as it is with ambient passages and instrumental dirges, and features two exceptional covers from the deep recesses of obscure Doom. This one’s still available on CD from their bandcamp page – dig it, sinner.

Bandcamp

PERIHELION GNOSIS – ‘SYZYGIAL SUMMONING’

Cavernous, pitch-black Lovecraftian Death Metal from one man cult Perihelion Gnosis. Stygian doom-laden riffs trawled from a black anti-cosmos and channeled in tectonic, megalithic Death Metal magnificence with crepuscular atmosphere, stargazing to the dominion of the timeless ones in chugging, churning doomed death ritual – foul necromancer low vocal, miserable leads dripping with prideful despair, grand rhythm arrangements accenting plummeting tempo shifts, conjured astral daemons – super simple and streamlined, considered and magisterial, cultish and doomed! Early Adramelech, Blood Incantation and Burial Invocation may guide your wretched path. I love the wicked rudimentary illustrated demo cover, too. Killer.

Caligari Records

WURDULAC – ‘LURKING HAND OF FATE’

Wurdulac is one-man Black Metal from Canada, accursed in immortal absolution. A lurking terror of uniquely paced, ritualistic noisy raw Black Metal from beyond mortality and morality, utterly deranged and erect in languageless occultism. Magisterially buzzing, dissonant Guitars and wyrd sludgy Bass, brute noise riffing in minimal dismal arrangements with broken synthesizers croaking half melodies, largely mid-paced hammerhanded drumming of a distinctly lurching and hypnotizing rote clattering within the din of strings,  pandemonium of bells and atonal purcussion, an aura of muddy grotesque distortion like a heat haze beaming off of unconsumed flesh rotting in a dank cave, adorned in hissing, sulfuric, drooling lunar vocal gurgling in delay – there’s absolutely no romantic becloaked necropervert to be seduced and succored by, but a stinking, insane beast of total lycanthropic noise and bloodthirst to rend you in half in the crude, cruel process of feeding itself, undead in animalistic vampirism and anti-human thanatology. ‘Lurking Hand of Fate’ bears some vestigial semblance to Ride for Revenge, Beherit, Profanatica and Perverted Ceremony – a filthy reeking curse of ritual vampiric Black Metal, staring with yellow-eyed frenzy and dull, base misanthropy straight through your worthless soul!

Bandcamp

CULT OF THE DAMNED – ‘THE CHURCH OF’

The nights are lengthening, autumn’s detritus chokes the moonlit streets and the legions of Blah have assembled in readiness for their triennial assault on Fortress Rap … is that a swagger I see before me? Like Bristolian reprobates Split Prophets and Manchester’s mighty Levelz, Cult Of The Damned are eternal margin walkers, a loose conglomerate of misfits and malefactors less likely to genuflect before hip-hop tradition than shoot it in the head and dump its still-twitching corpse in a slate quarry. The follow-up to 2018’s improbably brilliant ‘Part Deux: Brick Pelican Posse Crew Gang Syndicate’, ‘The Church Of’ distils the Cult’s blurred vision to the potency of bathtub poteen. Expect no deference to clichéd notions of ‘authenticity’ and ‘consciousness’ here; this is rhyme without reason, tall tales of low life direct from the estates, where cognac doubles as mouthwash and weed is sold by the shovelful. Helmed as ever by Blah panjandrum, the reliably modest Lee Scott (“my greatness isn’t self-proclaimed, they forced it upon me / I’d rather be a normal mortal than godly”), the Cult’s ranks have swelled significantly since their last outing, a fact underlined by the spectacular display of competitive luridness that forms ‘The Church Of’’s lyrical backbone. Way too much wonder to unpack here of course, but suffice it to say, if Tony Broke’s lager-lashed invective and the aliens in Blackburn schtick of Bill Shakes don’t snare you, whatever the fuck Stinkin Slumrok is gibbering on about surely will. Its madness enhanced by a production spiked with aural psilocybin, this is the sacrilegious flipside to Kanye’s insufferable sanctimony. Cult Of The Damned: saving kids from the clergy since 2015.

Bandcamp

ANATOMY OF THE HEADS – ‘EXORCISME LANGSUNG DI DATARAN MINAHASA’

Bizarro shamanist Drone/Noise collage, a psycho-actively potent, aggressive, portentous swirl of maligned psychedelia from the deep jungles of the sub conscious, tape decay layers and screeds of samples from impossible sources stitched into the sound, operating in impenetrable high concept and shadowy secrecy, conjuring a world of retributive curses and offerings to obscure deistic forms – two long tracks drift from malignant amplifier Drone to crushing Noise to mosquito-ridden Musique Concrete, sweltering dense palettes of hissing caustics, science fiction effluvia, B Movie absurdisms… disorientating blind alleys of melody obscured in the morass… undefinable, sorcerous sounds from far outside the perimeter fence of Harsh Noise, Industrial and Musique Concrete…

Bandcamp

SPIRIT POSSESSION SELF TITLED

Spirit Possession’s Self Titled full length delivers the lunatic promise of their excellent demo – shrieking, hysterical Black Metal virulent with Speed/Thrash/Heavy Metal influences, menacing glowering poltergeist energy aura of boundless possessive savagery!  Trill and treble drenched Guitars and killer Bass work form unorthodox, mind bending Thrash tinged riffs in obstinately rocking arrangements, at once angular, dissonant and mindlessly catchy, fiercely conjured Drums display similar unorthodoxy and chaoticism amidst straight forward hammering grooves and rocking the fuck out, a summoning of upheave vocal glossolalia dribbling with madness and dripping with delicious delay decay, haywire synths and noise pieces fomenting madness and weird unsettling auras. Sounds similar to the works of Funereal Presence, Craft, Negative Plane and Aura Noir, for reference, although Spirit Possession’s particular angular edges and incensed vocal delirium are all their own. Excellent.

Vexation Records

Profound Lore Records

 

MEPHISTOFELES – ‘MASTER DOOM’

Two track EP from Argentinian occult Stoner Doom band Mephistofeles, released in 2013. Drugged, mean, lysergic proto-Doom/Stoner Rock, psychedelic and satanically possessed. Track one is a jammin’ procession centred on some very catchy, lurid riffs, winding and shifting in your blazed ears as it lumbers ahead in a cloud of fuzz. There’s a fantastic looseness to this one, floating hazily through it’s downcast sounding hate groove, head nodding in stoned insanity. Then track two drifts further into Planet Caravan’s trill & chill orbit and exahales pensive melody and spectral vocal beneath ghoulish desert boogie jams, riding a lonesome train into a mysterious dusky horizon. Excellently raw fuzz Bass & Guitar tones, very loose and fluid rhythms and playing, stoned as hell, mean as hell. I love this band.

Bandcamp

SLUTET – ‘LOVE & BEAUTY’

Impassioned, possessed outsider Black Metal from a third mind commune in Sweden, frothing with absurd melody and morbidly obsessed with various deitic forms – lysergic ecstatic chaos, bombastic and altogether ‘other’, external to more traditional expressions of Black Metal, a tumult of blazing grandiose Guitars with lithe Bass, opprobrious and intense drums, and storm wind hysteria enveloped shriek vocals, incanting and ululating – reminds me a bit of early Volahn in it’s serpentine riffing and extreme psychedelia. The riffs and arrangements feature a grand sense of scale and majesty, more so than many of those dwelling in the rawer and less generic realms of Black Metal, which I greatly appreciate. Blisteringly loud, fiery and hubrid with righteous irreverence, a sweltering outcry of psychotic Grand Mal Black Metal.

The End Commune

ANCIENT DAYS – ‘THE END’

Ancient Day’s first release. Trad Doom ala Candlemass with a penchant for spooky throwback Hard Rock psychedelia, Italian-Style like something by Paul Chain, or more recently the excellent Python, sombre Occultism, solemn and yet far out as fuck, blues licks and very lo-fi production accents stoic and mournful Doom – killer languid solos, syrupy bass working through mind wreckingly simple and awesome grooves, cheeze vocal excellence. Stargazing, lo-fi Traditional Doom with a high possibility of psychoactive engagement. A foul, hypnotizing sesh jam. Groovy.

Bandcamp

ANTEDILUVIAN – ‘UNDER WING OF ASAEL’

Ancient Death Metal from Canada’s Antediluvian – archaic primitive arrangements, perplexing and riddling base Metal riffs, drenched in an ancient aura of weird sepulchral darkness, heavy as fuck, intonated in strange heaving forms of moldy Death Metal, expressing primeval disgust and howling humanity, encased in wretched flesh! The first two tracks of this EP, in particular, are among my favourite I’ve heard from Antediluvian. Toxic and cascading, plummeting Death Metal riffs, upheaving primitive drums, vocal grunt and roar, skull exalted and smeared in mud and animal blood – the rite is done! Fossilized evil Metal from the Stygia. Check out their label and distro Serpents Head Reprisal.

Bandcamp