Tales From The Underground
Tales From The Underground
Artist: Smyrtonos Country: Bulgaria Label: Self-Released Formats: Digital Year: 2024 Back in 2022 I reviewed Smyrtonos’ last recordings, as Todorac had carried this project to its grave. Yet, that seemingly was for a short period only as last year the…
Artist: Primitive Warfare Country: USA Label: Godz Ov War Productions / Stygian Black Hand Formats: LP / CD Year: 2024 After a demo and two splits (with Complot! and Bog Body) the duo that is behind Primitive Warfare thought it…
Of course, you can’t keep track of everything, even if you try hard. For instance, out of nowhere I was surprised and completely blown over by ‘Hohenbaden’ by Markgraf, a German band that ingeniously manages to mix unorthodox Black Metal…
Artist: Ancient Guard Country: Australia Label: Iron Bonehead Productions Formats: 12″ EP / CD EP Year: 2024 While ‘Nightfall Enthroned’ might be the debut EP by a new band, the sole member behind Ancient Guard is everything but a rookie.…
Artist: Sabbat Country: Japan Label: Evil Horn Records / Iron Pegasus Records / Nuclear War Now! Productions / Old Library Records Formats: LP / Cassette Tape / CD Year: 2024 As one of the stalwarts of the First Wave of…
The Dutch Heidens Hart Records simultaneously released two strong Pagan Black Metal albums earlier this year, ‘Tir Nan Og’ being one of them: the latest album by the one-man band Drunemeton, originally from Russia. Although the album is overtly based…
Artist: IätönCountry: FinlandLabel: Korpituli ProductionsFormats: Demo tapeYear: 2024 Following the release of their first demo ‘Loitsutulet’ I lauded the Finns in Iätön for delivering harsh and haunting Black Metal in the vein of Barathrum and Korgonthurus mixed with a dash of…
Artist: Profanation Country: France Label: Iron Bonehead Productions Formats: 12″ EP / CD EP Year: 2024 Profanation is a band that sprung from the minds of a number of French musicians who had previously earned their stripes in bands such…
Artist: Messe De Minuit Country: Spain Label: Iron Bonehead Productions Formats: Demo Tape Year: 2024 Born from the spirits of the trinity of Eosforos, Crucifier and Lucifogo, they collectively lay their first feat on the table: ‘Invocation’. A 1-track demo…
Artist: Necromoon Country: Poland Label: Putrid Cult Formats: CD Year: 2024 From the Putrid Cult stables comes this new anonymous Polish act called Necromoon. With no other information available than this, we should just start focussing on the music of…
Artist: Blaze Of Perdition Country: Poland Label: Metal Blade Records Formats: LP / CD Year: 2024 With roots dating as far back as 2004, Blaze Of Perdition can rightfully be called one of the main acts in the Polish Black…
Artist: Adversarial Country: Canada Label: Dark Descent Records Formats: LP / Cassette Tape / CD Year: 2024 Admittedly, after the band’s first few releases I kind of lost track of Adversarial. In the early 10’s I did pick up the…
Artist: Hellbutcher Country: Sweden Label: Metal Blade Records Formats: LP / CD Year: 2024 While Nifelheim’s official status is unclear, it is most likely that the band died a slow death in the past decade. With only the occasional sign…
Artist: Witchflame Country: Finland Label: Werewolf Records Formats: CD Year: 2023 Being released on the 12th of December of 2023, ‘Omen’, the debut album of Finnish Black Metal band Witchflame is not quite the latest of releases from the Werewolf…
Artist: Black Cilice Country: Portugal Label: Iron Bonehead Productions Formats: 12″ EP / CD EP Year: 2024 Founded back somewhere at the end of the 00’s, Black Cilice’s rise to fame (for Black Metal standard at least) came after the…
Everyone of a certain age who reads this has some kind of starting point somewhere, a few months in his or her life that determined the development of musical taste and perspective on the cultural phenomenon of “Extreme Metal”. Mine…
Artist: OerheksCountry: BelgiumLabel: Amor Fati ProductionsFormats: 10″ DemoYear: 2024 In many ways, this review for the fourth demo of Oerheks has been a while coming. Mastermind H. had already mentioned last year that he had recorded five demos for this…
Although the band itself does not like to be categorised very much by their origins, their Kyrgyz ancestry does play a big role in the way Darkestrah shapes their music. Not only in the music itself does their Central Asian…
Artist: WitchfukkerCountry: The NetherlandsLabel: De Pankraker Records / Destruktion RecordsFormats: LP / Cassette tapeYear: 2024 Off the back of the excellent ‘Deathaemorrhage’ demo, Witchfukker returns with the first full-length of the band’s career. On ‘Tapestry of Unspeakable Horrors’, they look…
Artist: Vomit Messiah Country: Spain Label: In Pulverem Mortis Productions Formats: Demo Tape Year: 2024 Last autumn, Spain’s Vomit Messiah had already caught my attention with their self-titled demo tape that was brimming with unbridled savage barbarism. Deliciously unoriginal and…
Artist: Sotherion Country: France Label: W.T.C. Productions Formats: LP / CD Year: 2024 With the 2022 released two-track ‘Schwarmgeist’-demo we already had a bit of a sneak peak into what we could expect from Sotherion, a Paris, France based one-man band founded by BST.…
Artist: NachtheemCountry: The NetherlandsLabel: Self-releasedFormats: Digital EPYear: 2024 Nachtheem is a mysterious new entity hailing from The Netherlands that released their debut EP ‘Nacht, Zij met Ons…’ at the dawn of 2024. While that release initially passed me by unnoticed,…
Artist: They Came From Visions Country: Ukraine Label: Eisenwald Formats: CD Year: 2024 Drudkh’s immense influence on contemporary Black Metal is beyond any dispute, echoes of its elongated riffs based on the grandeur of nature can be heard in more…
Formed in 2021, Hekseblad have used their first few years to flesh out and further perfect their musical formula of melodic and even symphonic Black Metal. While perhaps not all initial recordings have turned out equally well, it is clear…
Artist: HæksenhamerCountry: GermanyLabel: Death RevelationsFormats: Cassette EPYear: 2024 ‘Heimat (Foul Folk Crusade)’, a title that seems awfully fitting with the music that’s presented by Hæksenhamer. On their first release (although technically the EP was first released as an advance demo),…
Artist: Triumphal VengeanceCountry: Chile / GermanyLabel: Death RevelationsFormats: Cassette EPYear: 2024 With the coming of the band’s second EP, Triumphal Vengeance has turned quite a few things around. While the band, consisting of sole member Nebel, still plays Pagan Black…
Artist: Svrm Country: Ukraine Label: Self-Released Formats: Digital EP Year: 2024 Almost immediately after the band’s conception back in the early 00’s Drudkh has gained a big following. Not only in people who found something new in the sort of…
Artist: Drunemeton Country: Russia Label: Heidens Hart Records Formats: CD Year: 2024 The man behind Drunemeton, who is from Russian origin but currently resides in Serbia, Europe, has had all of his previous releases done by a wide range of…
Artist: Kawir Country: Greece Label: Soulseller Records Formats: LP / CD Year: 2024 Although we were already offered a sneak peak with the digital-only EP ‘War Of The Giants’ from 2022, mainly a fundraiser for the treatment of Kawir main…
Artist: Diocletian Country: New Zealand Label: Nuclear War Now! Productions Formats: LP / Cassette Tape / CD Year: 2024 Diocletian’s ‘Gesundrian’ from 2014, released by the French Osmose Productions label, is commonly seen as one of the absolute cornerstones of…
Artist: KråbølCountry: NorwayLabel: Terratur PossessionsFormats: LP / CDYear: 2024 Families devoting their lives to Black Metal is hardly new. Quorthon and Boss, Mika and Kimmo Luttinen, LRH and Spellgoth: just a few examples of fathers/sons or siblings ending up in…
Artist: Markgraf Country: Germany Label: Blutrausch Propaganda / AbArt Corruption Formats: LP / Cassette Tape Year: 2024 Although this German band already released a 12” EP back in 2020, with even a demo a year earlier, Markgraf went completely under…
Artist: ParfaxitasCountry: Iceland / Norway / USALabel: Terratur PossesionsFormats: LP / CDYear: 2024 Parfaxitas, the archdemon that rules over astral thunderstorms. Ruler of wrath, fevers, vengeance and atavism. That who can gives rise to chaos, destruction and death through acts…
Artist: Nächtlich Country: Canada Label: Deathful Lust Productions Formats: Cassette Tape / CD Year: 2024 The Canadian Black Metal entity that is Nächtlich has been quite prolific throughout their entire career that started back in 2016. With a lot short…
Artist: Whoredom RifeCountry: NorwayLabel: Terratur PossessionsFormats: LP / CDYear: 2024 In my review of ‘Winds of Wrath’ I had concluded that it was a logical continuation of what Whoredom Rife has stood for ever since they were conceived. At the…
Artist: Perversion / Pyromancer Country: USA Label: Godz Ov War Productions Formats: Split 7″ EP Year: 2024 This new split 7” EP combines two Black/Death Metal bands from the USA. Perversion on the A-side has already released a significant amount…
Artist: Yxxan Country: Sweden Label: Nuclear War Now! Productions Formats: LP / CD Year: 2023 In 2019 and 2020 the world was treated to two demos of an obscure one-woman act from Sweden. Yxxan presented itself in a total savage…
Artist: Depressive Witches Country: France Label: Self-Released Formats: CD Year: 2024 On the band’s first two albums, ‘Bad Flask’ (2021) and ‘Distant Kingdoms’ (2022) the two French brothers of Depressive Witches already tried to prepare humanity for something seriously different.…
Artist: Horn Country: Germany Label: Northern Silence Productions Formats: LP / CD Year: 2024 Although I ran into the name of the German Pagan Black Metal band Horn a few times before, I only really first heard the band with…
Artist: Night Shall Drape UsCountry: FinlandLabel: Season of Mist Underground ActivistsFormats: LP / CDYear: 2024 Night Shall Drape Us certainly managed to garner some interest as soon as the project was announced. Combining artists known for their work in Horna,…
Artist: Drengskapur / Häxenzijrkell Country: Germany Label: Amor Fati Productions / The Cosmic Pillars Formats: Split LP / Split Tape / Split CD Year: 2024 On this split release, presented by Amor Fati Productions (with The Cosmic Pillars taking care…
Artist: Sarcasm Country: Sweden Label: Hammerheart Records Formats: LP / CD Year: 2024 While the musical transition from a more or less standard Swedish Death Metal in the band’s embryonical stages to the more Black Metal-infused sound after Sarcasm’s 2015…
Artist: Nebiros Country: Colombia Label: Nuclear War Now! Productions Formats: LP Year: 2024 Ever since the genre’s earliest beginnings, the bands from South America has been contributing significally to the development of the phenomenon of Black Metal. Most notably, of…
Artist: Mütiilation Country: France Label: Osmose Productions Formats: LP / CD Year: 2024 With the trumpeting words “This entity, buried but not dead, whose return you hoped for but no longer expected…” the great return of Mütiilation was made announced.…
Artist: Drevorod Country: Russia Label: Heidens Hart Records Formats: CD Year: 2024 Over the last twenty or so years, the Eastern regions of Europe and Russia have increasingly developed itself as a true hotbed for Pagan Black Metal. Maybe not…
Artist: Funeral Storm Country: Greece Label: Hells Headbangers Formats: LP / Cassette Tape / CD Year: 2024 Although the band already released two splits and a compilation that brought those tracks together, I only ran into Funeral Storm with their…
Artist: Arbor Country: USA Label: Blood And Crescent Productions Formats: 7″ EP Year: 2024 One of those alluring new names of contemporary Black Metal is the much praised Arbor from the USA. With a handful of great demos and the 2023-released debut…
Artist: Black Lycanthropy Country: USA Label: Self-Released Formats: Digital EP Year: 2024 In the past two years the American one-man Black Metal band Black Lycanthropy has already delivered two EP’s and a demo of which especially the last two releases…
Artist: LifvsledaCountry: SwedenLabel: Norma Evangelium DiaboliFormats: LP / CDYear: 2024 In 2022 we were forewarned that a new Lifvsleda album was incoming with the release of the 7” EP ‘Lifvspänn’, a prelude to the band’s second album ‘Sepulkral Dedikation’. This…
Overall, when you talk about Finnish Black Metal, you are always in for a surprise. It can be as regressive as Azazel or Barathrum, but also as progressive as …And Oceans or genre-defining as Beherit or Horna. But then you…