Send us your promos (streaming links preferred) to: [email protected]. Do not send us promo material via social media.

New Releases 4/21-4/27

Darkthrone — It Beckons Us All…… | Peaceville Records | Black Metal + Heavy Metal | Norway

There’s not much to go on for Darkthrone’s 21st studio album aside from “Black Dawn Affiliation,” which implied a shift away from their recent doom metal projects in favor of classic heavy metal. The thing is, at this point in their careers, the duo seem to follow their noses, meaning there isn’t a ton of evidence one can pull from to decipher where It Beckons Us All…… will go.

–Colin Dempsey

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Inter Arma — New Heaven | Relapse Records | Sludge Metal + Post-Metal + Death Metal | United States (Richmond, Virginia)

From Luke Jackson’s interview:

Putting on an Inter Arma album has always felt like stepping into an extreme music Big Top Circus; above your head a spiraling blackened odyssey balances on the high wire, in the globe of death a prog metal mystery revs its engine, and sitting in the sawdust some vintage blues fretwork crawls to life.

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Amiensus — Reclamation: Part 1 | M-Theory Audio | Progressive Metal + Black Metal | United States

Amiensus plants one foot in progressive metal and hover the other foot above black metal. There are some vestiges of the latter on tracks like “Reverie,” but it’s a tad too clean and professional to feel like more than an influence. Incidentally, this works well for Reclamation: Part 1 by giving it some claws amidst its prettier passages and fantastical structures.

–Colin Dempsey

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Glassing — From the Other Side of the Mirror | Pelagic Records | Doom Metal + Post-Hardcore + Black Metal + Post-Metal | United States (Austin, Texas)

From Colin Dempsey’s premiere:

[Glassing’s] dynamic has never been as accessible as it is on From the Other Side of the Mirror, a more commanding effort than their previous record, 2021’s Twin Dream, with the first three tracks aiming to punch your teeth out. “Circle Down,” the album’s third single, dials down the muscle to writhe in the gaps between post-hardcore, screamo, and black metal, at least at the onset. Halfway through, Glassing can’t help but shovel more of their overpowering riffs into your mouth.

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Pulverised — Master’s Personae | Pulverised Records | Death Metal | Indonesia

You should handle Master’s Personae with gloves because it is scorching. Everything about the Indonesian death metal group’s fourth album is seemingly burning, perhaps because it’s so rough around the edges that it’s generating friction. Nothing on it is operating at less than 100% capacity, and given the end results, nothing should.

–Colin Dempsey

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Fluisteraars — Manifestaties van de Ontworteling | Eisenwald | Black Metal | Netherlands

This Dutch duo’s bracing experiments in black metal now extend to dropping the sub-genre altogether, with Bob Mollema and the splendidly-named Mink Koops pledging themselves here to an immersive arthouse ritual conjured in cahoots with analogue synth ace Simon Claessen. From a viscous sludge of bulging drones surface a surreal flotsam of ceremonial gong chimes, electro-charged bird chorus and wonky arpeggios issued from a hollowbody guitar, absurdly churning in dark ambient abstraction like some Lautréamont-sponsored sound-bath, a bizarro phantasmagoria swimming in freakish sharks.

–Spencer Grady

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Freeways — Dark Sky Sanctuary | Dying Victims Productions | Hard Rock | Canada

If you’re looking for ’70s worship, Freeways’ second record is for you. Like its predecessor (2020’s True Bearings), Dark Sky is throwback ay eff, all the way down to the humid production and boogie-woogie groove. It’s a lotta fun, too: tightly arranged proto-metal filled with catchy melodies and tasteful leadwork. The cover’s all you really need to evaluate—you can practically smell the cigarettes and stale beer. Indeed, Freeways just wanna have a good time, and they’re inviting you along. How perfectly Canadian.

–Steve Lampiris

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ACxDC — G.O.A.T. | Prosthetic Records | Grindcore | United States (Los Angeles, California)

In which the L.A.-based powerviolence/grindcore quartet unleashes another collection of feral rage bashed out with stunning urgency: 17 songs in 23 minutes. Themes from 2014’s self-titled debut—systemic racism in policing, misogyny, troll culture, self-righteousness among the far-left—return here because the problems weren’t fixed in the interim. Hence the seeming nihilism of the record (“I see that nothing’s changed / What could I have ever done / To change the end result?”). In reality, ACxDC are simply expressing the exasperation that these problems still exist. Listening to G.O.A.T. probably won’t solve any of them, but its anger is pretty fucking cathartic.

–Steve Lampiris

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Full of Hell — Coagulated Bliss | Closed Casket Activities | Grindcore + Noise + Death Metal | United States (Ocean City, Maryland)

The latest Full of Hell record has far more going for it than I can fit in a simple blurb, but it’s definitely their strongest record yet. From overlapping noise and experimental moments to heavy, catchy riffs, this is not an album to miss.

–Addison Herron-Wheeler

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Deicide — Banished By Sin | Reigning Phoenix Music | Death Metal | United States (Tampa, Florida)

There has been a lot of hype around this record already, not all of it good. Many are annoyed by the AI art on the cover, but if you actually stop to listen to the music, this is a heavy record and a great summation of their career so far. Make sure not to skip this one if you’re a death metal fan.

–Addison Herron-Wheeler

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Morgul Blade — Heavy Metal Wraiths | No Remorse Records | Heavy + Black Metal | United States (Philadelphia, PA)

What sets Morgul Blade apart is their indifference to genre allegiance — although they’ve dialed up the black metal elements on their latest album, Heavy Metal Wraiths is really just about meshing fantasy and metal together without compromise or pretense.

–Ted Nubel

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Black Tusk — The Way Forward | Season of Mist | Sludge Metal | United States (Savannah, GA)

If you like your sludge terminally infested with punk, Black Tusk is still the go-to outlet. Beyond their raging discontent, you’ll also find complex songwriting and some unusual sonic construction — personally, I love the huge yet boxy drums and the weird little synth bits in there.

–Ted Nubel

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Tombstoner — Rot Stink Rip | Redefining Darkness Records | Death Metal | United States (New York City)

From Ted Nubel’s track premiere of “Rot Stink Rip”:

The band’s sonic density — two guitars, two vocals, everything punchy as all hell — thrives in this rancid landscape of far-flung, gore-drenched scenarios and aggravated nihilism. It almost feels like a mathematical constraint: their cranked-up approach to death metal demands similarly exhilarating subject matter. That isn’t to say that this ventures into comedy or pure absurdity — the New York crew offer a hard-to-imitate mix of blood-spattered satire and dead-serious violence.

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The album closes with a Midnight cover that highlights one big difference between Hässlig and some of their peers — they have no interest in melody or dramatics (although the cover highlights that they can nail those when they want). It comes down to intentions: if it’s not raging black metal or raucous, infectious punk riffing, it’s not a part of Apex Predator‘s core vision.

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Apex Predator releases May 3rd via Sentient Ruin,

Send us your promos (streaming links preferred) to: [email protected]. Do not send us promo material via social media.

New Releases 4/14-4/20

Haust — Negative Music | Fysisk Format | Black Metal + Punk | Norway

What an accurate name for Haust’s return album. Negative Music is devoid of any good feelings, instead creeping along the floorboards like a rodent and spewing filthy punk rock for those who only examine reality through worst-case scenarios.

–Colin Dempsey

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Lord Spikeheart — The Adept | Haekalu Records | Industrial + Electronic + Grind | Uganda

One-half of the highly-rated Kenyan electro-grindcore duo Duma launches his Haekalu imprint with this apocalyptic debut solo full-length, a hypnagogic chaos swarm gushing noise, nightmares and post-dancehall dread. Accompanying the always-foreboding ministrations of Lord Spikeheart (Martin Kanja) on this African-futurist hellscape is an impressive coterie of equally radical outriders, among them militant rapper Backxwash and Senyawa chief shaman Rully Shabara, their fiendish invocations feeding the fear throughout The Adept’s frenetic bricolage of mangled cyber-terror synths, corrosive screams and armour-piercing beats.

–Spencer Grady

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Hekseblad — Kaer Mohren | Hypnotic Dirge Records | Black Metal | United States

I dove into The Witcher book series over the past few months and, before long, began searching for the metal that’d best suit their tone. Luckily, Hekseblad have delivered just that with their debut album. They draw from melodic and symphonic black metal to match the sweeping yet emotionally fragile work. Kaer Mohren is epic yet grim without overstepping its boundaries in either direction.

–Colin Dempsey

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Antichrist Siege Machine — Vengeance of Eternal Fire | Profound Lore Records | Black Metal + Death Metal | United States (Richmond, Virginia)

On their third full-length, Antichrist Siege Machine engage in a single-minded pursuit of fury and flames. There’s no sense of taste or subtlety, only war metal. That being said, the duo weaponizes pacing by increasing the tempo over the course of tracks like “Sisera.” The song is less than two-minutes long, but the structure becomes an instrument of destruction in its own right.

–Colin Dempsey

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Nuclear Tomb — Terror Labyrinthian | Everlasting Spew Records | Thrash Metal + Death Metal + Progressive Metal + Noise Rock | United States (Baltimore, Maryland)

An assortment of genres suggests there’s plenty going on that doesn’t mesh on paper, but it certainly does through a speaker. The main motor is death metal of the old-school variety but with a library card that spends all its free time jotting down notes.

–Colin Dempsey

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Engulfed — Unearthly Litanies of Despair | Dark Descent Records | Death Metal | Turkiye (Kadıköy)

The relentless, down-tuned riffs Engulfed drops are a sound for sore ears that have been spending too much time in the spring sun. This is the sort of death metal that makes you want to stay inside and brood with the cookie monster vocals and cartoonishly demonic vibe. Is it a tad overindulgent? Sure, but playing it cool would remove most of the fun.

–Colin Dempsey

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Melvins — Tarantula Heart | Ipecac Recordings | Sludge Metal | United States (Washington)

Always the most prolific band on the planet, Melvins are still at it, and this time, they decided to make sounds first and then turn them into songs. In short, this record was constructed the way an EDM producer writes music. There are moments when it works, and moments when it doesn’t, but overall, it’s a lot of fun to listen to, so give it a spin.

–Addison Herron-Wheeler

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My Dying Bride — A Mortal Binding | Nuclear Blast | Gothic Metal + Doom Metal | United Kingdom

This album proves that the band still have something to say, and with their refreshed lineup, you can tell they have a renewed energy on this one. Melancholic and melodic all the way through, this is a My Dying Bride album for the ages.

–Addison Herron-Wheeler

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Ixion — Extinction | Finisterian Dead End | Atmospheric Doom Metal | France

From Ted Nubel’s full album premiere:

On Extinction, the melancholic chords and dismal growls of death/doom metal are not a constant, but instead a gut-punching eventuality that lurks within sweeping instrumental textures. The combination draws up an especially potent atmosphere where quiet, musing exploration often meets stark, uncomfortable truth in dramatic form. Alongside excellent pacing, Extinction outstrips much of its peers by daring to apply unusual, drastic vocal harmonies in combination with emphatic riffs.

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Bongripper — Empty | The Great Barrier Records | Doom Metal | United States (Chicago, IL)

Slow, loud, incredibly long, and the song titles run together into a gloomy phrase — yes, Bongripper is back, and just in time for 4/20 (obviously). It’s been six years since their last full-length, but Empty spews forth like it’s barely been a day, picking up where the band left off in delivering some of the mightiest riffs ever put to tape.

–Ted Nubel

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Dvne — Voidkind | Metal Blade Records | Progressive Sludge + Post-Metal | United Kingdom

Highly agile, Dvne switches between melodic fragility and metallic killing edge with stunning grace on this new album. The Dune-inspired progressive sludge group strikes out at the bleeding edge of the genre, but with a surprising amount of retro charm balancing out their progressive technicality.

–Ted Nubel

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High on Fire — Cometh the Storm | MNRK Heavy | Stoner + Sludge + Doom Metal | United States (Oakland, CA)

It’s the High on Fire you know and love — ripping heavy metal that feels like someone ran it through seventy-five fattener pedals. While not exploring all that new sonic territory, Cometh the Storm has done its homework in terms of figuring out how to beat your ass.

–Ted Nubel

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Red Mesa — Partial Distortions | Desert Records | Stoner Rock + Doom Metal | United States (New Mexico)

Don’t let the title fool you – I would label this as ‘full distortions,’ personally. More seriously, Red Mesa keeps things hazy and sun-bleached on their new record, weaving melodic threads that run between glacial, plodding riffs and hefty stomps. They’re not a band afraid to get a bit weird while keeping it heavy.

–Ted Nubel

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We spoke at length with drummer and songwriter T.J. Childers about the challenges of creating New Heaven, Inter Arma’s surprising collaboration with a Canadian military photographer, and which Nine Inch Nails samples hit the hardest.

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It seems as though the band went through real adversity in the making of New Heaven. As a result, people might expect it to point inwards, and see you focus on yourselves and focus on that period. But the lyrics are much more outward looking, there’s this real focus on empathy and understanding, how did that come to be?

The more personal underlyings of the meaning of the lyrics is going to be for Mike to answer but on the broader scale of things, our records always tend to be pretty pretty dark and pretty bleak. I mean it’s just how it comes out you know, we’re not trying to write the heaviest music of all time, I think Nile cornered the market on that a long time ago, or Six Feet Under probably actually is a more appropriate band for that. But it is heavy and dark and bleak and oppressive as it may be and even the lyrics deal with, you know, loss and depression and just kind of all the blanket shit that human beings deal with on a regular basis. We always try to – whether it’s lyrically or musically, even though it is bleak and oppressive, it’s nice to have tangents of hope in there, so even when you are looking inward and thinking about the complex range of emotions that human beings are.. there’s anger, there’s joy, all the emotions. We always try to convey even though things are shit, things will work out, hopefully!

That touches on something that aggressive music doesn’t get enough credit for; the presumption that it is largely one note, just purely dealing with unpleasantness or hatred or anger, so to touch upon those brighter aspects of the music is cool. I was interested to hear a little bit about having your passports stolen in Europe, what’s the background there?

We were supposed to play Russia, back in like…fuck, what was it, like 2018, something like that. In order to get a visa to play in Russia, you have to mail your physical passports to Russia. And then they actually glue the visa in on the page and your passports and then send them back to you. So in the process of them being sent back, I don’t know how in the fuck this happened, but FedEx sent them to our buddy’s house, the guy who put out the first Inter Arma record before we were even on fucking Relapse, they sent them to his old house that he’d not been living in for two or three years at that point. So Steven, the guitar player was able to some way or another figure out that they had been sent there, so I went over there on two or three occasions, and basically the people that were renting the house at that point were fucking crackheads. I mean, full blown crackheads. I didn’t see the inside of their house. But judging by everything that was going on, on the outside of the house, I could tell that it was just it was fucking dark. I went over there on a couple separate occasions. And finally, the last time I went over there, I knocked on the door, and I actually started rummaging through their trash to see if they had, like, thrown our passports away or something. And as I’m getting ready to leave, this woman opens the door and goes ‘hey, what are you doing going through our trash?’ And I’m like, I’m looking for our passports, that I know were sent to this address. Do you have them? Have you seen them? And she said something to the effect of ‘we told so and so that we didn’t have them’. And, you know, me looking the way I look, walking up the sidewalk through their front door, saying please, if you have them if you know where they are.. and she just slammed the door. I knocked again, and she never came back out. And it was just it was like, a fucking episode of Breaking Bad or something.

Ugh, passports are the highest stakes of mail.

Yeah, and at this point, it’s two weeks before the tour was supposed to start and we’d already bought plane tickets. You know, we’ve we’ve spent thousands of dollars on tickets and merch, and in the United States, even if you expedite it, it takes two or three weeks to get your passport so there’s no fucking way that we’re going to be able to get them in time and we just had to eat the cost and and call up the other bands and the tour manager and be like, hey, this happened and we can’t fucking make it.

On a more positive note, how good did it feel when you finally landed Joe’s position in the band? There was a heavy churn of bass players in the run up to recording the new album: how did it feel accelerating through all that change without an album or a tour to show for it? And then how did it feel to find Joel?

Think for example of the song “New Heaven,” this is a great starting point, I  had the first handful of riffs for that song kicking around for a couple of years. And the previous bass player I mean, even him joining the band is a whole other story, but I knew that he wasn’t going to be able to play those riffs. I just knew they’re going to be beyond his skill set, and so that was discouraging. And then as I’m coming up with other riffs and thinking I don’t know if he’s going to be able to play this, that was discouraging also. And it just came to a point over time, then he left the band, and we were in limbo for six months, or however long it was. And at that point, everybody in Inter Arma lives in Richmond so we practice two or three times a week, but we’re missing the fifth limb, so to speak, it’s and we’re in this fucking purgatory of what the fuck are we going to do? It’s not conducive to trying to be creative and write songs without a full band. And so it was a fucking bummer to say the least there for a little while. And then.. I knew that Joel was a guitar player, so I never even considered asking him to play bass because most guitar players don’t want to fucking play bass in a band because their egos are so goddamn big (laughs) you know, that sort of thing wont allow them. But Joel hadn’t been in a band in like five years or something like that, and Steven asked him and he was like, fuck yeah. And immediately it was like the fucking the skies parted for us and the sun beams shone down right away, because I already knew Joel, I knew he’s a great engineer, I knew he’s a fucking killer guitar player, I knew he’s a killer songwriter. He’s an incredibly intelligent dude. He understands music on a more theoretical level, I can speak the language to him much more clearly. Whereas before, I’d have to say okay, so now put your finger on the first fret. Now I can just say the song’s in C, you can probably figure it out from there. So just being able to communicate with him in that way – the whole fucking experience was like night and day.

Three practices a week is good going!

I mean Nirvana used to practice like five days a week for six hours a day. Lynyrd Skynyrd used to practice for eight hours a day, five days a week.

You touched on the process of writing riffs and taking them to the other band members. With your chosen discipline within the band being the drums, where do you tend to begin with your writing? Does it depend on the needs of the song?

It’s different from song to song. One example is “The Children The Bombs Overlooked”. The drum patterns came first, I was just practising by myself one day, fucking around, and I started playing those patterns. I was like, Okay, this is cool. It’s kind of a polyrhythmic shift, but it’s just keeping steady time through all of it. So I think this could be something and then the riffs came afterwards. But then something like “New Heaven” the song, I’d worked on those riffs like I said, they’d been kicking around since 2020 or something like that. “Gardens In The Dark” started with the drum pattern, and then I was like okay, this sounds like a weird industrial Nine Inch Nails sort of thing, what would Trent Reznor do? So I came up with a chord progression that I thought sounded kind of fucked up and outside the box and just went from there.

I would buy a shirt that said ‘What would Trent Reznor do?’ on it for sure. So you’re going to be playing New Heaven in full at Roadburn festival,  how are rehearsals going? When you commit to a full album set like this are there any songs that might not have made it into a typical set because they’re tricky to arrange for live performance?

Well, rehearsals have been going great. When I’m done here, I’m going to go straight over to where we practice about 10 minutes away, and we’re going to run through everything. Most of the songs on New Heaven would probably make it into a live set, maybe not “Endless Gray” because it’s an instrumental, although it’s not off the table. But generally, especially if it’s like a support slot, we’ve only got 40 minutes, and you kind of just want to put banger banger banger in there. Then there’s “Forest Service Road Blues” because it’s a quiet acoustic thing, maybe if we were playing a headlining set, we might do that, but most of the time I’d say no, we probably wouldn’t play that one. That one’s cool, because I’m actually going to be playing keys on that one. I’m doing a full Tommy Lee at Roadburn, where I have the keyboard set up right next to me behind the kit. And I’ve never played piano or keyboards in front of a large audience, so I’m gonna have to make sure I’ve got that one well rehearsed before we go play in front of people (laughs).

The ongoing genre classification of Inter Arma is one of everyone’s favorite discussions, and in 2024 it’s a real pleasure to hear how at ease and unapologetic you seem with the range that the band is capable of. On New Heaven I hear black and death metal, I hear country, I hear prog. Does the fact that most of the band members only play in Inter Arma mean we’re getting everyone’s creative impulses in one vessel?

I guess maybe nowadays that has a little bit to do with it. Because in the past, that wasn’t true. I used to be a total band whore, I used to be in like, four or five, six bands at a time, which I’m fucking glad I don’t do anymore. And then Mike, Steven and Trey used to be in Bastard Sapling, the black metal band. But even since the beginning of the band, it’s always been like that, and maybe it seems like we can’t decide what we want to do, but that’s not really true. I like listening to bands and records that are kind of all over the place. Like don’t get me wrong, AC/DC is like one of my top five favourite bands of all time, and I fucking love Nile and I love tons of bands like Cannibal Corpse – you buy a Cannibal Corpse record and you know exactly what the fuck you’re getting, and I don’t mean that as a knock at all, last record fucking rips. But that said, the records that I tend to gravitate to the most are records that are pretty varied, whether it’s Neil Young, or The Beatles, or Queens of the Stone Age, or Zeppelin, or any of the upper echelon. Not that Six Feet Under isn’t upper echelon, but you know what I mean? I just love the classic fucking records that everybody goes back to. And even like Death’s Symbolic has “Crystal Mountain” and there’s acoustic guitars, it’s not just as fast as they can go, blast beat double bass the entire fucking time, there’s still a lot of variation. Even Morbid Angel records have the weird instrumental songs on them and shit like that. So to me, those are always the most fascinating and interesting records to listen to.

It’s wild to hear that Mike’s joining Artificial Brain.

Oh, yeah, I keep forgetting that (laughs)

Is it going to be a big pull on his time?

Um, no, they don’t really take too much of his time. And I mean, obviously, if he has a string of, like, you know, two or three shows with with Arty-B, and then we get offered some crazy fucking tour, h’s gonna have to tell those guys – and he’s already said to them, that Inter Arma is still my priority. But the likelihood of that happening isn’t super high, either. We’re definitely more selective nowadays about what we do. I mean, I’m not leaving the house unless I can make at least like $10,000 so… I’m just kidding (laughs).

(laughs) I was doing some quick tour arithmetic

I should have put a much higher number in there. $100,000!

You’re getting those keyboard performance royalties now! So you’ve mentioned Lynyrd Skynyrd and Neil Young and famously you’re a big ZZ Top fan as well; you guys are from Virginia, which has some cowboy history, and you’ve worked with Garrett from Windhand in the past as well. Just wondering what kind of role Richmond and its history plays in Inter Arma and how you get inspired by it?

Well, we’re all from Virginia, but we’re all from different parts. Except for Joel, Joel is from South Carolina, which is even more southern than Virginia. And it’s funny, it plays a part, I would say in a more subconscious kind of way. And definitely for me, because I fucking love country music, an old old blues, like Sun House, and old Albert King and shit like that. So that kind of southern redneck thing I can’t really escape is no matter how hard I try, it’s just fucking in me. But that said I’ve lived in Richmond for almost 20 years now, Richmond is a very eclectic little city. The music scene is great, there’s tons of great bands here, which definitely plays a bit of the role, just as much as the whole rural side of things. When you listen to the records you can kind of hear it, it is kind of rural, but then there is a more harsher city element to it as well. So it’s kind of a combination of those things and, you know, drugs and other things thrown in there as well.

So is Richmond kind of the contemporary face of Virginia, the urban place people gravitate towards?

Absolutely. The fact that in the past few elections Virginia went Democrat, except for this past one, is pretty much because of Richmond and the Richmond metro area. Because outside of here there’s a couple of other colleges and if you see it on a map, that’s where all the liberal minded types are, but pretty much the rest of Virginia is very old school, redneck conservative Donald Trump loving motherfuckers.

Good luck with that news cycle this year.

Dude, it’s a fucking nightmare.

Inter Arma’s music deals with a bunch of conceptual ideas from the past, like atavists, and Sky Burial rites, it seems like there’s an interest in things that are lost to time, or traditional ways of being.

It’s kind of saying that, maybe the good old days weren’t so good. But also, it’s good to reflect on the past to learn from your mistakes. Even the way our records sound, and even the way our music is, it’s not like old old timey but it’s not like cutting edge tech death modern sounding either, there’s definitely still a bit of a vintage rock and roll swing in there which again, I think that just sort of goes back to my redneck roots, and everybody in the band’s redneck roots. It just I guess it’s fucking inescapable. Yeah, definitely it’s just like a lot of facets of our music: it’s not really there by design, but because of who we are.

The album cover for New Heaven feels really candid and cold. It’s a simple photo, there’s no illustration draped over it, it’s quite different from some of your previous albums. What’s the concept? Is there more in the gatefold that tells a story?

We’ve definitely leaned more towards photography for the last couple of records. Just because.. talking about well tread territory, how many more fucking skulls and occult shit can you put on a fucking record? So tired of that, so yeah, photography is what we’ve been leaning towards. And it just so happened that a fan of ours came to our show in DC last year. And goes hey, I love you guys. I’m a photographer and your music has really got me through some tough times. CWe come to find out he is a Pulitzer Prize winning photographer and is part of the Guggenheim Association. He’s shot in Guantanamo Bay, in Iraq and all over Antarctica, like every crazy ass exotic location in the universe, you can think about this motherfucker’s been there. His name is Louie Palu, and he is a photographer for the Canadian Army, I can never fucking remember what the actual that branch is called for Canada but he’s, like super, super top secret clearance, he knows things, and has been to places, it’s pretty wild. So he says look through my portfolio, and Mike was looking through it and found that picture, right after we were done recording, and we were still mixing and figuring out sequencing and all that shit and Mike texted to say check this out, I think this could be potentially the album cover and I saw it and was like, God damn, that’s pretty fucking cool. If you don’t know what’s going on in the photo, to me, it looked like this guy was in a snowy abyss in darkness, lost, meandering, doing who the fuck knows what. And then he stumbles upon this blue portal into another dimension or into Hell or into New Heaven? Who the fuck knows where it goes to. So after showing it to everybody and discussing it and then I think right around that time, we decided the album was going to be called New Heaven, so it all seemed to be working out very smoothly, which never happens (laughs,) but the actual photograph is of a Canadian Ranger who’s up in the Arctic Circle, and he’s ice fishing at night for food, not just to for leisure but to survive. He’s wearing a headlamp so that’s what the blue light is. And then the kind of backlighting is a truck’s headlights. There’s snow on the ground and there’s a little bit of snow coming down, that’s what it is. It looks like it could be on the moon or something.

That’s a very powerful friend you have there, I’ve no idea what the acoustics would be like in the Guggenheim but that would be a sick show. I wanted to shout out a couple of the songs on the album specifically. First off “Concrete Cliffs” because it sounds like it must be incredibly fun to play, and the range that Mike has on that song is wild.

It’s funny you bring up Mike on that song, because I knew he was going to do something melodic, especially for the chorus sections. But I didn’t know what he was going to do because that chord progression is slightly unusual. It’s not like a normal one four five, where it’s super easy to sing over like – it could be tough to sing over, but he knocked it out of the park. I mean the first time we heard him singing it was the first time he started singing it in the studio. But yeah, Trey wrote the main chord progression in that song, and the chorus chord progression, even though when he brought it in, it was faster, and I suggested slowing it down. And then there’s like a part where it goes from seven four to seven eight, I suggested that and a couple other little things. And then I wrote the verse riff and bridge lead section riffs. Immediately, as soon as we slowed it down, it kind of clicked and it created a vibe. And I thought, because the the main chorus sounds so like, airy and liquid to me kinda, we said okay, what if we juxtaposition that with like, just a fucking knuckle dragger? And as soon as we did that, we’re like, okay, that’s where that needs to go. So, yeah, that song’s a lot of fun to play.

The second song I wanted to mention was “Forest Service Road Blues”. It’s not new for Inter Arma to include acoustic guitars, but in the past they’ve felt very large and looming, whereas this song feels like it’s really zooming in on something smaller and specific, and the title is part of that as well. So I’d love to know more about it.

Well, it’s like you said, it’s similar to things we’ve done in the past, but it’s not really specifically something that we’d done before where it’s pretty much a singer songwriter setup. So the genesis of that was, I had that chord progression for like 10 years, it was 2010 or 11 or something when I wrote that. And I planned on it being this other bigger thing where it got faster, and it was more black metal and whatever. And like a year ago, I was just playing that on my acoustic and thought, this works well by itself, and I think this could be a thing and did some demos. And immediately, we all kind of got the Neil Young vibe, and I actually was the one that said let’s not have any electricity on this song, so it’s all acoustic piano, violin, upright bass. Which I thought was a cool thing that we’d never really done before, where there’s no electricity at all. It’s another example where I didn’t really know what Mike was going to do with it melodically until we got to the studio. And again, if what you hear on the record isn’t the first take, it’s like the second take, like maybe he flubbed a word or something. And everybody was just like yeah, that’s it, it’s fucking great. That song lyrically really hits home because we could hear everything he was saying and the song is so quiet. All of us were in the control room and he walked in after and we were all like, god damn.

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Quickfire question: say the second Inter Arma covers album launches tomorrow, what are the first three songs that you’re putting on there?

Oh my god, first three songs on the next cover record Jesus Christ. There’s so many. I want to say some things but I don’t want to give some stuff away. We’ve covered “Creeping Death” by Metallica, and when we did it, we just played it pretty much like the record, it was for a benefit so.. but I would love to figure out a way to do that in our own way. I don’t know if that would be possible at all because that song is so fucking iconic. At least in my mind. I’ve always wanted to do “Happiness is a Warm Gun” by The Beatles, that would be sick and another Nine Inch Nails song like “Reptile”… I’ve always thought that we could do “Reptile” off of The Downward Spiral and really fuck it up and make it our own.

“Reptile” is such a good song. What the hell is that sample like a camera or something?

It’s a fucking Polaroid which is sick! I bought The Downward Spiral when it was new on tape when I was 11 years old. But yeah Mike told me recently that’s what that sound is and it fucking blew my mind for multiple reasons. One of which being as soon as he said it I went oh my god, that’s exactly what that is. We heard that a million fucking times. Number two: who in the fuck would think to hear that sound and go that sounds sick, I’m gonna put it on a fucking record and use it in a song. Yeah, that’s how you know Trent Reznor is a fucking genius.

That adds a further layer of sinister dirt to it as well, given the content of that song. The fact that it’s a Polaroid makes it even more Nine Inch Nails to me.

Yeah, and I mean, it totally sounds sinister. I remember listening to that with on a Walkman when I was a kid and thinking it sounds like a cyborg and it’s getting ready to fucking kill you or something. There’s a bunch of sounds on that record that I very specifically remember hearing when I was a kid and thinking what in the fuck is that? And to know that now 20 plus? Goddamn.. 25? Whatever, a billion years later it still blows my mind and also just like the work he had to go through to put that on a sampler, like it wasn’t on a fucking desktop or a laptop sitting right next to him, that motherfucker had to work to get that sound. He’s a madman. He’s a fucking genius.

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New Heaven is available to pre order digitally before it releases on April 26th and can be purchased here.

Murk Rider is everything you don’t expect from black metal, or if you have been listening to black metal for any amount of time, everything you could come to expect. Sure there are tons of traditional aesthetic exemplified by bands just as much as unorthodox. Black metal is less about challenging the old guard as much as it is about bands having the freedom to do whatever they want.  From cover to logo, to themes, Murk Rider have forged their own path and upon footstones such as 30 minute songs, cosmic synth, and now covers of Uriah Heep. The Murk Rider is a new scrapbook which highlights the band’s patchwork of influence. You can preview it right now:

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The Murk Rider is a collection of new material and covers which is mechanically material left over and in production between albums. While this period can easily be a stopgap between albums, Murk Rider has zero reason to do anything else besides what they want. This is why the centerpiece “Go into the Magic Darkness” is around 15 minutes with the closing Berlin school style synth track “The Fires of Creation” around the same time. What lies between is a handful of covers, poetry, and sound collages which are like posters tacked on the walls of a basement bedroom. The covers of Uriah Heep’s “Rainbow Demon” and Sodom’s “Outbreak of Evil” are the best example of showcasing the genealogical roots of this band as progressive hard rock and first wave black metal is the type of aesthetic mashup we have all been secretly wanting. 

Murk Rider is much of a place of escape as it is creation and The Murk Rider is an avatar of collage. It is sometimes a devil, at others a samurai, or even sometimes an interstellar heroine descending from the skies with a giant glowing sword. It is 2024 and listening to black metal can be anything you really want it to be and many times can be everything. You can be spooky if you want to or be a space shaman from some 1980’s VHS tape no one has heard of. Whatever it is, it is done from a place of excitement which lies at the core. I’m glad this band reached out but to be honest we might have already known each other in some past life reading Conan comics surrounded by “water vases” in some smoky garage. I’m glad to have met you again, space travelers. 

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The Murk Rider releases on April 19th. Tapes will be available via Fiadh Productions and digital pre-orders can be found on Murk Rider’s Bandcamp.

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In recent times, Neseblod has become more of a museum than a shop, though there were plenty of records to dig through and buy. The basement of the building, with its infamous wall with the graffiti “black metal” sprayed across it, appears in thousands of photographs from people passing through. Even the more “serious” black metal fans succumbed to it. Hell, if I ever made it to Norway, I would have done the same. Sadly, no one in Norway would have us, so my opportunity is lost.

Just because I’ve never been there doesn’t mean that I haven’t read about it fanatically since I first was introduced to black metal 30 years ago. It seems to be the blueprint which almost any metal-themed record store tries to follow. In the intersection where my love of black metal and of record shopping collide, plus with the continual decline of physical media into intangible and unownable (If that’s a word … there’s no red line under it, so I guess it is.) bits of data, I can’t help but feel a deep sadness when something like this occurs, doubly so because of the amount of artifacts (that’s the word I’m sticking with, fuck you if you don’t like it) that are completely lost, leaving much of the historical items that are left in the hands of private collectors.  

But all is not lost. Darren Toms, whom I think is who signed me to Candelight but I could be fucking mistaken there, and who has long been entrenched in black metal culture, has started a GoFundMe to assist in the owners’ financial issues as well as, hopefully, an eventual return to business as usual. I’ve got it linked at the bottom of the next few messy paragraphs.

My contribution to the whole thing is a list of a few Norwegian black metal records that, while not necessarily “obscure” as my title would lead you to believe, don’t really get the attention (I feel) they deserve. Plus it seemed more interesting than writing another piece about Mayhem/Emperor/Burzum/etc. I’m sure there are those of you who will disagree with both of those points, and guess what? You can write a fucking article on Medium or do a Youtube video about what an asshole I am. I’m pretty sure other people have done those better, though. 

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In Times Before the Light landed around the time I was starting to write my first record, and I was immediately struck by how great the drums were, how much of an earworm the hook in the first song was, and how I thought I could somehow do that as well. History has obviously proved me wrong there, but 27 years (Jesus Christ) later I still get that same feeling from listening to this record. This was right before a lot of the atmospheric black metal bands either went overly symphonic (boo) or, as journalists love to say, “went weird.” In Times Before the Light preceded Covenant doing both and stands as one of the greatest black metal records of the 1990s. 

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While I have no idea what prompted Shagrath to call his label “Hot Records,” I do fondly remember it not only for some of the best records out of Norway in that era but also The Rape of the Holy Trinity compilation, which is where I first heard the title track from Ode to the Nightsky. Excellent atmospheric black metal of the time and one of the most promising demos/EPs that came out that year. 

Then they signed to Nuclear Blast and released a prog metal record with Hammerfall vocals which absolutely shit the bed for me and I didn’t give them any thought until I was writing this piece. Revisiting the EP, though, is a totally worthwhile use of your listening time. Also of note, on the Discogs page for them in the history section it talks about how they formed in 1994 but “finally broke up” in 1998, meaning whoever wrote that was also sick of their shit by then. 

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Looking back on things I listened to in the mid 90s, you’d think I would have either created an atmospheric black metal band or, at the very fucking least, tried to learn how to play my instruments. Dismal Euphony are a band whom, after their debut, I lost track of, outside of hearing stories about the fucked up lives of some of their members or that they were the benchmark for what Napalm Records would eventually be known for releasing nonstop. But their early material? Gloomy, synth drenched black metal with clean vocals. Think the first Gehenna EP but with operatic (I guess?) vocals, one of the earliest examples in the (sub)genre that I can remember. 

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Sure, In the Woods are very well known, but it seems mostly for their prog records after Heart of the Ages. LIke I said, “obscure” might have been clickbait, but it sounded nice. Isle of Men was the first black metal demo I ever bought, probably from the Relapse catalog, The whole thing just dirges along (that’s an adjective now) with a lumbering guitar tone that almost sounds out of tune but captures an atmosphere that no other recording had before or since for me. Soulseller Records reissued this on vinyl a while back and still has copies in stock. One of my favorite demos of all time, both for quality and for the sentimental significance. 

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Second entry featuring Nagash on here, Drep de Kristne was highly anticipated for me after the excellent Trollstorm over Nidingjuv saw a CD release via the excellent Head Not Found a year or so earlier. And it did not disappoint at all. Theatrical in nature and extremely Norwegian (yeah, no shit) this record embodied everything I wanted out of the (sub)genre at the time. I still revisit this one frequently.

As a side note, when I had a radio show I interviewed Nagash when the first The Kovenant record was making the rounds and, outside of him being interesting during a radio interview, the thing I remember most was talking about “The Phantom Menace” with him and how we’d both seen it multiple times in the theater. I’m sure this is interesting to you, dear reader, and you’re welcome for it.  

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When I think about wasted potential I first think about how badly I’ve fucked my life (and the lives of others) up. I also think about Frostmoon. Coming about during a time when the term “Norwegian black metal” was pretty used up, and the global scene was becoming more connected and looking in different places, Frostmoon got kind of lost. While they’re obviously viking-themed, what truly sticks out is the clean vocals, which make me think of -and this is probably only me- “Eye in the Sky” by Alan Parsons Project or maybe some of the more soaring backing vocals on mid period Bad Religion records. Sound cool? Fuck you, don’t lie to me. But trust me, this band are special, horribly overlooked, and incredibly overdue for a vinyl release. I would place Tordenkrig in the top 100 black metal records of all time, if that was something I was working on.

I could have written about a slew of bands for this. I considered Forgotten Woods, Strid, Malignant Eternal, Tulus, etc. etc. It took me years after the backlash in American black metal towards anything Norse to realize just how important this scene has been and continues to be to me. And now, with one of the monuments to the genre smoldering, is a perfect time to reflect on these bands, these times and maybe even lend a hand to help.

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Neseblod Records Gofundme

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Number 37 was originally going to be about second chances, and I plan on delivering that one in two weeks. See you then.

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While you’re feeling bad, though, at least you can get some headbanging in. Sundowner pair blues-laced sludge with neck-snapping hardcore punk, delivering chunky emphatic riffs in a blissful dichotomy of both fast and slow. It’s loud, abrasive, and carries itself with no shortage of swing. No matter the state of the world and how terribly your day is going, Sundowner promises one thing: whenever the drummer starts laying into the ride bell, you’re in for a hell of a riff.

The band comments:

This album represents exactly what SUNDOWNER is, straight to the point sludge.

Heavy, bluesy, intoxicated riffs from slow and filthy to hardcore punk speeds.

Lyrically ranging from substance abuse and drugs to serial killings and cults, it’s all around the nastiest side of humanity which reflects the nature of the music perfectly.

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Lysergic Ritual releases April 20th independently and can be pre-ordered on Bandcamp.

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Blood Incantation comments:

Originally conceived as an acoustic interlude in the tradition of ‘Meticulous Soul Devourment’ and ‘(Mirror of the Soul)’, ‘Luminescent Bridge’ quickly became something entirely different upon entering Rocky Mountain Recorders in March 2023. Compelled by a tangible air of creativity, we forwent acoustic instruments entirely and ended up implementing several spur-of-the-moment ideas – such as drums, grand piano and even trombone – to create a vast, dynamic tapestry of textures both alien and familiar, yet remaining quintessentially Blood Incantation in feeling and atmosphere. Drenched in analog and digital synthesizers, multiple tape echoes and soaring electric guitar, this intended outro to a subsequently abandoned 7” EP became a towering landscape of otherworldly sonics, earning its place as the title track for our latest maxi-single release.

With this expansive energy in mind, we knew the eventual music video would similarly have to be something completely new for us, further evolving our imagery and aesthetic into new realms as we make our way towards our imminent third album. Thanks to the masterful VFX and cinematography of our friends Miles Skarin and Alex Pace who also worked on the music videos ‘Inner Paths (to Outer Space)’ and ‘Obliquity of the Ecliptic’, and the ‘Timewave Zero’ live Blu-Ray, respectively  – we are able to present to you the official video for ‘Luminescent Bridge’.

Director and visual effects artist Miles Skarin comments:

When the Stargate Research Society asked us to help visualise a recent extrasolar communication they had received, we knew this would be a project of epic proportion. The data packet they sent to us from Colorado contained footage of Blood Incantation’s interstellar expedition to a distant star system. What we saw after decompressing the video stream blew us away, not only had they captured a beautiful cinematic exploration of the exoplanet’s sand dunes, but we can see their journey across the expanse of space was successful. Alex Pace’s cinematography from this location was stunning and provided us with everything we needed. Due to the solar radiation exposure, the data from the interstellar voyage was difficult to decipher, so we have used our artistic abilities in VFX and 3D animation to reconstruct the visual of crossing the Luminescent Bridge, first depicted by the artist Steve R Dodd.

The band previously released a music video for the A-side of the maxi-single, “Obliquity of the Ecliptic”:

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Blood Incantation’s next live dates are this weekend at Roadburn:

Blood Incantation Live Dates:

Apr 19: Tilburg, NL – Roadburn Festival (performing Timewave Zero) – Tickets
Apr 20: Tilburg, NL – Roadburn Festival (performing from rest of catalog) – Tickets

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Follow the band and get more info on Luminescent Bridge here.

Their newest project is a sort of meta-album, Evolution, that looks at humanity’s fate alongside the rise of androids. The first part of this work, the Extinction EP,  is set to release digitally this Tuesday but is streaming a day early.

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On Extinction, the melancholic chords and dismal growls of death/doom metal are not a constant, but instead a gut-punching eventuality that lurks within sweeping instrumental textures. The combination draws up an especially potent atmosphere where quiet, musing exploration often meets stark, uncomfortable truth in dramatic form. Alongside excellent pacing, Extinction outstrips much of its peers by daring to apply unusual, drastic vocal harmonies in combination with emphatic riffs. It’s extremely contemplative, despite its heaviness, and lends real weight to its thought-provoking concept.

The band comments:

The album is based on a musical and thematic concept in three parts. It speaks about the evolution of humanity, the expansion of androids, and their crossed future, around an atmospheric, melancholic and progressive doom metal, playing with influences, sometimes orchestral, sometimes electronic.

As the first part, EXTINCTION unveils a journey of atmospheric doom filled with symphonic and acoustic soundscapes, both epic and intimate. It will take you into the future, questioning how humanity will struggle with mortality in a world where android technology rises. EXTINCTION will be released tomorrow on all digital platforms. As a whole, the album will also be released physically later this fall.

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Extinction releases April 16th via Finisterian Dead End.