Gone, it seems, are the days when metal was about alcohol and Satan. One can hardly move now without tripping over bands whose lyrics read like cosmological theses crossed with metaphysical poetry, whose imagery consists of abstract nouns and verbs which imply a larger context while simultaneously bewildering any guess at what it may be. […]

It may have been inevitable that I would find myself talking about Xanthochroid’s debut album. The Californian five-piece act’s Blessed He with Boils is an ambitious conceptual work spanning an hour of epic symphonic black metal, based on an original fantasy storyline penned by keyboardist Sam Meador. The digital download copy goes so far as to […]

Agalloch are a name that I find tends to crop up a lot in my reviews, such is the influence their brand of landscape-fascinated post-black metal and its derivations have had in the last decade. With reference to Dustwalker, the newest outing from London’s Fen, however, the comparison is more than usually apt. Clear parallels with Pale Folklore and Ashes […]

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 […]