Due via Iron Bonehead Productions, Black Funeral’s The Dust and the Darkness offers a short but stirring paean to forgotten underworld figures, phrased in music that...
Blood of Serpents presents their second full-length, Sulphur Sovereign (Non Serviam Records), and it’s a monster: uncompromising and heavier than a thermos of Mercury, typically Swedish...
Spain’s Empty balance desolation and aggression beautifully on Vacio (Osmose Productions), an album that is at once a pleasure and a torture to listen to.
Skeletonwitch’s Devouring Radiant Light comfortably straddles multiple genres of extreme metal while still effectively retaining appeal to fans within each of those sub-genres; a mature expression...
On Hekatomb, Funeral Mist craft a black metal record that merges multiple styles and techniques without the usual progressive and over-intellectualised trappings that usually accompany such...
Northern Chaos Gods may be a “safe” album, playing purely to the strengths of the Immortal legacy, but don’t take it as a negative criticism: this...
On Ultra-Nihilism, Cape Town’s Skedel have managed to solve a mystery that has plagued many for over two decades: why have no bands ever successfully and...
Lychgate’s ambitious, academic third album, The Contagion in Nine Steps, is a challenging beast that melds abstraction, philosophy and psychology together in a musical interrogation of...
World’s Blood delivers Wayfarer’s most accomplished and evocative atmospheres yet in an intellectual, deeply engaging record.
Prequelle is ten tracks combining Broadway’s camp, Alice Cooper’s grand guignol shtick, The Alan Parsons Project’s concept album approach and ABBA’s songwriting chops, all structured around...
Pathological Rites, a reissue of the early-‘90s demo releases of Finland’s Carnifex provides an amusing diversion into proto-death metal nostalgia.
Ihsahn’s newest release, Ámr, continues his musical journey, delving into rock, electronica, new wave and synthpop influences, resulting in something far transcending mere guitar-driven metal. An...
Dimmu Borgir’s Eonian is a musical journey crafted in hell: a huge, moving and dynamic series of orchestrations, rather than compositions, all cascading around a central...
Icelandic solo project Ljáin delivers a harrowing, lo-fi explorations of abyssal existential angst that combines the rawness of proto-black metal with soaring, enveloping atmospheres on Endasálmar...
True Norwegian Black Metal stalwarts Carpathian Forest return after a decade-long hiatus with Likeim, an EP that screams 90s black metal nostalgia.