An ephemeral hum intones over what sounds like water droplets falling in a cavern made of resonant crystal. The hum murmurs and fluctuates. Soft choral vocals drift in the distance, so faintly that you’re not sure if you’ve heard it, or if it was a chorus of human voices at all. Ambience gathers in rippling […]

Brooklyn, New York– it was a late summer sunset and sticky as hell. I was at St. Vitus Bar, an all-black metal dive with a King Diamond poster behind the bar and candelabra on the way to the back room. The evening began with an ambulance. Bain Wolfkind, an apocalyptic bluesman who you might imagine […]

“Long Live Death!” — A battlefield map for black metal ideologists Heavy metal is changing. Liturgy plays the MoMA. Wolves in the Throne Room gets admiring write ups in the New Yorker. National Public Radio consistently spotlights edgier and edgier music, thanks in no small part to people like Lars Gotrich, an assistant producer at […]

Raubzug, (German: Raid) is the latest disc from :ERNTEGANG:, an almost entirely self-released German duo with six full length albums to their credit. It is an interesting (if occasionally overreaching) offering of industrial soundscapes and militant spoken word. The most successful cuts from this album are reminiscent of the more atmospheric explorations of their most […]

The American neofolk ensemble Stone Breath will be a familiar name to many people. With a catalog dating back to 1996, its members have a long and winding history together, which also includes a number of branching detours and assorted side projects. This is at least partially due to the fact that Timothy Renner, the […]

The latest offering from Ô Paradis is anything but new. The aptly named Mi Viejo Trono (Spanish: My Old Throne) is a selection of very early tracks recorded with their ethereal female vocalist, Rosa Solé, between 1997 and 1999. Appearing under the humble appellation “Rosa,” she was the first among a revolving cast of collaborators […]

Nos Cœurs Expulsés, which translates from French as “Our Hearts Expelled,” is the product of a collaboration between the Spanish neofolk ensemble Ô Paradis and the French ambient artist Nature Morte. As one might expect, its sound is varied and eclectic. The album is powered by a churning, atmospheric hum that segues into ocean sounds […]

I hate shallow music. Let me be clear: I don’t just hate the way it sounds, or people who make or listen to it, or the way it always seems to get played in situations where you have no convenient route of escape. These things are of course irritating, but life is full of petty […]