Haxen – Haxen (Eternal Death records)

Haxen have apparently been around since 2000, releasing a steady (if a bit sparse) stream of demo releases, yet it took some 16 years in order for their eponymous debut full-length to be finalised. Though hailing from the west coast of the Atlantic, the band seems to be wholeheartedly devoted to European scenes of yore, …

Sun Worship – Pale Dawn (Golden Antenna Records)

The lone and wandering riff is perhaps the quintessential black metal music-component figure. Dismal yet passionate, adventurous, trying to break the shackles of time and history, a candlelight gliding through perennial corridors. It is ideally without beginning and end, just fading in and out of our perception, yet eternally there. And if the riff is …

Isolert – No Hope, No Light…Only Death (Ogmios Underground)

Besides the genre's name, there are albums of the black metal variety, that are not prone to being transmitters of utter-darkness soundscapes. Even some of the 90s masters' albums are testimonies of this; for in albums such as “Battles In The North” or “Frost” darkness is a distant second entity being evoked, majestic frigidness being …

Præternatura – Symmetry Of The Void

There is, inside the black metal edifice, a certain niche, down there, at the basement or dungeon level, which borders on the space of two particular sub-genres: namely the catacombs of depressive black metal and the etheric thunderbolts of the kind of black/death that was showcased by Bölzer. It is this marginal space that hosts …