Artist: Occult Mountain
Country: USA
Label: Self-Released
Formats: Digital Demo
Year: 2025
It could be a very good slogan to sell more copies of your demo: “so good, it’s not allowed on Metal-Archives”. While many of the unfathomable choices of Metal-Archives are based on pure hypocrisy and a shocking lack of knowledge and skill, there is some form consistency in their policy that if you use a bit too much keyboards, you’re out. But they have no problem including many other keyboard driven bands or even acts like Alice In Chains or Soundgarden, which frankly has nothing to do with whatever form of metal at all. Occult Mountain is an obscure one-man project from the USA that falls in the “too many keyboards” category, but that shouldn’t stop you from checking out this nice little first demo of the mysterious Black Metal project.
In well under ten minutes we are indeed served with a synth-heavy sort of Black Metal that bears obvious resemblances with the many bands currently flooding the scene. Yet, Occult Mountain doesn’t purely rely on those thick layers of Jean-Michelle Jarre-like Casio keyboards, but it is the complete package of harsh vocals, the blazing drums and the prominent synthesizers that makes for a rather interesting musical setting. The rather amateurish overall sound, probably Fallen Warrior, the person behind the project, pieced it all together in his bedroom. But that doesn’t matter, the ramshackle “production” fits the music and actually adds much to the overall atmosphere and experience. Raw? Lo-Fi? Dungeon Synth? Black Metal? 70’s synthesizer music? Yes on all five accounts, and even if there weren’t any guitars in here at all, Occult Mountain is still very much on par with the majority of contemporary underground Raw Back Metal of the new generation, mainly coming from the USA. If I had the chance to grab a copy on cassette tape, I would do so. This could just be material that would fit the Narbentage Produktionen/Occultes Blut rosters; Black Metal for those who dare to listen further than the shameful gatekeeping of the Metal-Archives “gods”.
