Drudkh announce new album, release new track - 'Nakryta Neba Burym Dakhom'

     Ukraine's Drudkh, unanimously considered the forerunners of the atmospheric black metal subgenre, have had a long and storied career. From their legendary first albums - the sublime Autumn Aurora, and the blisteringly frigid Blood in Our Wells and the Swan Road - to their more recent outings (including a one-off with Alcest's Neige), Drudkh have long stood as a bastion of the style even as their stylistic descendents brought the genre into the forefront of the black metal consciousness. 

      Today, Season of Mist announced a new outing from the reclusive project, imposingly titled Їм часто сниться капіж (They Often See Dreams in the Spring), appropriately set for release on March 9th. The band also released a new single - 'Nakryta Neba Burym Dakhom', which my limited Ukrainian and google translate-fu seem to hint means 'the Sky was Covered by a Roof'.

      Regardless, as with other Drudkh outings, 'Nakryta Neba Burym Dakhom' is patient, hypnotic, but unerringly restive, eschewing the yawning synths and plodding pace of their kin in Summoning for tribal, folk-tinged blast beats, relentless guitar leads that conjure up golden sunsets on the steppe, and Roman Saenko's signature roars that rush like a gael of wind along the corridors of the song. 

Їм часто сниться капіж will be released on March 9th through Season of Mist. You can listen to 'Nakryta Neba Burym Dakhom' below:

Watain - Trident Wolf Eclipse REVIEW

       2018 sees Sweden's Watain in an awkward position. Their lukewarm previous release, 2013's The Wild Hunt, debuted to head-scratching confusion due to some artistic choices that fell flat; namely, the bizarre decision to include an 80s power ballad, some Avenged Sevenfold-lite songs, and the band's signature dedication to the aesthetic earning them the somewhat disparaging moniker of 'black metal Rob Zombie' in more kvlt circles. The black metal faithful, ever mercurial, immediately turned their backs on the group, who, indeed, went on to carry the torch (metaphorically and literally, for anyone who's seen their live shows) as one of the most recognizable acts in black metal for most of the five-year interim. Watain toured with Mayhem twice, cementing their place as a heavyweight in the scene, even as the hype and controversy around The Wild Hunt slowly evaporated. 

      Five years later, it was with no undue amount of trepidation that I placed the needle on the band's newest offering Trident Wolf Eclipse. Forerunning single 'Nuclear Alchemy' was promising, delivering the signature blistering style of Watain's strongest modern material with none of the theatric silliness that had made prior outings fall flat, but ultimately, Trident Wolf Eclipse transcends the carnival goofiness of the Wild Hunt and, five days into the new year, stands unopposed as the year's finest black metal outing so far. 

     Black metal, for all of its fixation on isolation, is inherently an incredibly theatrical genre. Its signature subject matter - unspeakable rituals, the depths of self-loathing, crystalline, hivernal forests - are all presented with a flair for the dramatic, and always have been since the days of Bathory and Celtic Frost (This is heavy metal, after all!). 

      But this, in turn, begs the question - how much melodrama is too much? 

      Big-name Swedish black metal, for some reason, always seems to have an issue nailing what I'm going to call 'tasteful aesthetics', and has a tendency to embrace the already-over-the-top black metal aesthetic so profoundly that the music loses all sense of legitimacy and becomes just silly to watch. Watain, with their pig's-blood-drenched live show resplendent with candelabras and skulls, have always been notable for taking this to a new extreme, but this aesthetic choice, more often than not, crept into their music over the years, to mixed results. 

       In this regard, Trident Wolf Eclipse sees the band reigning in their theatrics, while nevertheless unleashing nine tracks of frenetic, furious, depraved black metal. Even more laudably, Watain bring the songwriting chops they had on the Wild Hunt - undebatably the best part of eye-rollers like 'Outlaw' - to bear with a classical black metal bent. 'Furor Diabolicus', which opens with a furious riff, buttressed by an incendiary guitar lead and vocalist Erik Danielsson's signature roar, is a perfect example of this, and flows between sections effortlessly, even throwing in a quick solo for good measure. 'Towards the Sanctuary', some three tracks later, features some of the tightest Watain guitar playing this side of Casus Luciferi, and immediately sees the crushing guitar enter a frenzied back-and-forth with Danielsson's eerie whispers. Watain balances these frenzied, riff-led tracks with several eerie, atmospheric outings, such as 'the Fire of Power' and 'A Throne Below', which eschew the fire-and-brimstone of the former for more nebulous, yawning textures. 

         In a sense, this is the band's return-to-form. Trident Wolf Eclipse has Watain return to their roots, to great success, and is a worthwhile listen for anyone who enjoys excellent songwriting and unrestrained fury in their black metal.  

     

January 2018 belongs to...Austria?

...And we're back.

Happy new year! Welcome to 2018, where we all realize we really are in 'the late 2010s' and the crushing existential weight of the years gone by swells in magnitude...but, never fear! 

With the inevitable changing of calendars has come an absolute flurry of new album releases. Over the past five days, we've gotten teasers from the likes of Panopticon, A Forest of Stars, Soft Kill, Destroyer 666, Hellripper, Urfaust, Lebanon Hanover, and potentially even Nachtmystium, and that's mostly just metal bands! This week in particular, two great new metal albums from the homeland of Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Sound of Music, and schnitzel.

Most people don't really tend to associate Austria with heavy metal. Metallum claims that the early 90s saw some kind of 'Austrian black metal syndicate' a handful of demo-only projects took part in, but as a whole the country has remained largely unrecognized on the worldwide stage, with the obvious exceptions of Summoning, the legendary atmoblack duo that single handedly invented a new
genre of black metal in the late 90s.

Summoning need no introduction - Silenius and Protector have been purveying synth-driven, epic, Tolkien-inspired black metal for two decades, and today released their newest offering With Doom We Come in what may possibly be Nuclear Blast's only worthwhile release for 2018. With Doom We Come wastes no time, and commences with the bombastic 'Tar-Calion'. Fuzzed-out guitar lines dance in the misty gloom, buttressing symphonic synth leads and the endless, plodding drum machine Summoning are known for. Together, the quintessential Summoning sound materializes for eight long-form tracks, and leads the listener on an epic journey into the heart of Middle-Earth.

Stream With Doom We Come on Spotify here.

On the other hand, Abigor are one of Austria's best-kept black metal secrets. Since the early 90s, mastermind Peter Kubik has been quietly releasing a veritable library of albums, EPs, splits, and more, even as the band has largely evaded widespread recognition. Abigor's newest full length, Höllenzwang (Chronicles of Perdition), continues the band's evolution, mixing frenetic black metal with off-kilter, layered guitars and some of the project's finest vocals ever into a schizophrenic, pulsating, evil mass. The result, which sounds like a fine-tuned mix of Blacklodge, Mayhem, and even a little Deathspell Omega thrown in for good measure, is an absolute beast to listen to.

You can Höllenzwang here.