Now here’s a metal band who know what the hell they’re doing. Ænigma, the third album by Norwegian sextet In Vain, is practically an advertisement for my personal principle that savvy songwriters make genre conventions work for them and not the other way around. There are a thousand and one other bands I might name […]

In the modern age, the music industry is truly an unfathomable anomaly in every sense of the word. Artists, bands, and smaller projects surface as quickly as they disappear, completely submerged in the vortex  of ether, dissolving into clouds populated with copious amount of others. Sadly, many of these so-called pop artists are the ones […]

There aren’t many ghastly dwellers within the black metal realm whom can bring themselves to deny the fact that Greece has long been a reliable mecca for quality, yet consistently underrated, epic black metal, ranging from the most well-known of the bunch in Rotting Christ to the depths of the Pagan underground with Macabre Omen […]

Although this is a split release by two different artists, it hangs together perfectly as a whole. This is not surprising: James Woodhead (At the Head of the Woods) and Chet W. Scott (Blood of the Black Owl) have a strong history of collaboration (e.g. The Elemental Chrysalis, and Blood of the Black Owl’s third […]

Blood of the Black Owl’s fourth full length album, Light the Fires! represents an inexorable flight into the arms of dark, heavy, animist perfection. Blood of the Black Owl’s early albums were founded almost entirely in a blackened doom metal aesthetic, with crushing guitars and hair-raising vocals. Yet the project’s mastermind, Chet W. Scott, is […]

I don’t know specifically when the tides turned in extreme metal, but it seems increasingly clear that the larger labels are intent on releasing a staggering array of garbage whilst ignoring the incredible wealth of impressive and inspired new music that is currently spread out around the globe. Of course that can be expected, they […]

It might be bad form to admit this, but when I discovered Australia’s Ne Obliviscaris just a couple of weeks ago at time of writing, I wanted to be blown away. Their band name is a Latin phrase meaning “lest we forget,” although the meaning itself is less significant than the fact that I felt […]

The landscape of the metal underground is littered with stillborn projects; bands who showed promise on a single album or on a few demos and EPs but who ended up splitting before that promise could be fulfilled, often due to reasons outside their control. Such is the way of the world of course; much as […]

Sigh is a band, or should I call it an experiment, as hard to nail down as they are to rate in any rational or sensible way. From the first time I heard Sigh with the introduction of the album “Hail Horror Hail” I have never really grasped what fuels the engine behind this jury-rigged […]

Inquisitor (LIT) is a new progressive black metal project with Avant tendencies from Lithuania.  I refrain from flat-out calling them “avant-garde black metal” because the term has been overused as of late and this project isn’t all that unusual in sound, but rather in theme.  The name of the project itself suggests a philosophical mind […]