Ketoret are out of Israel and produce a sludge-laden doom. This release has only one track, but it’s a slow, lava-like 10 minutes of heavy rock.
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Ketoret – Delusions
Tag: Black Metal
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Hull of Light – Gilded Liminal Shrines
Here we have Hull of Light, an “…international collective of cosmic cowboys and cowgirls with members from Megason, Suffering Hour, Zeresh (our beloved friends), Underground Spiritual Game & Sleepwalker [夢遊病者].” The music was absolutely not what I was expecting, as a few of these come from a raw, powerful black metal background. Not this EP. This sounds like it would have fit with early 1980s post-punk. There is an aggression, a lo-fi quality to it that screams to be noticed. I thoroughly enjoyed having my ears blasted by this.
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Eyriahrk Nunshkar – Eyriahrk Nunshkar
Eyriahrk Nunshkar is the latest project of a beloved friend of the blog, Amandine Fradejas. The music crosses drone, metal, and even a touch of Zeuhl. Magnificent.
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Harae – Kagura
Words fail to describe the beauty of this release, even if it is an acidic beauty. Harae are a band run by beloved friends, and both innovative musicians in their own right. Combined, however, they have made magic, especially if you like a harsh wall of noise cascading over you like molten steel in an industrial factory. The vocals are frightening, which works seamlessly with the music. It’s a harsh but rewarding listen. I cannot wait to hear more from them!
For those of you who prefer a hard copy of the release, you can order a mini-CDR edition from 999 CUTS by clicking here.
You can click on Bandcamp, Instagram and Facebook to follow the band’s exploits.
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Isiliel – 月虹創聖記
It’s not often that I run into a combination of black metal and shoegaze music (blackgaze), but Japan’s Isiliel is such a beast. For black metal, the vocals are rather elegant and symphonic. Interesting and well done.
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A.M Ferrari Fradejas – Shiarkha
Our beloved friend A.M Ferrari Fradejas has a new album out consisting of six tracks filled with lush, yet quite heavy, progressive rock tinged with black metal if you listen closely. The release features some guitar work by her husband, the inestimable Santiago Fradejas, and the whole album smolders wonderfully.
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noemienours – The Dry Path
It’s hard for me to make out the influences of this album, but I can say with certainty that listening to this rather weird album was a pleasure. From noemienours’ Bandcamp site:
““The Dry Path”, noemienours’ 5th LP, developed around a Gobi Bear narrative of barren edge conditions as an access point to supra-natural realities, is definitely a turning point in the noemienours discography, notably because of its introduction of harpsichord in the noemienours instrumentarium, but also because of its recourse to a widened approach of its lo-fi musical approach, by creating a new musical form somewhere between Swedish post-black metal influences (Hypothermia, Armagedda,…) and the 17th century dislocation of musical forms through the ”Vanitas” topos as developed by Froberger or Louis Couperin, while retaining its magical Scandinavian forest hue. But of course noemienours’ musical approach to genre has never been anything else than a way of submitting apparently meaningless musical forms to the very meaning of its ursidae qualities.”
Wordy, yes, but the music is sparse and, in its own way, sublime.
All proceeds of digital sales are donated to Gobi Bear Project to support the conservation effort of the about 40 remaining Gobi bears. www.gobibearproject.org
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gobi_bear
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gobi_bear
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Nechochwen – Algonkian Mythos
While reading Bandcamp Daily on my feed, I came across a black metal band out of West Virginia called Nechochwen. The article is enlightening, but it got me interested in exploring their music a bit deeper. This particular album, Algonkian Mythos, is technically a ‘metal’ album, but it is so atmospheric that it could almost count as a neofolk album. The instrumentation is sparse and has a spirit of foreboding. This, for my ears, is metal done right.
This was a combination I didn’t expect. It’s not uncommon for, say, black metal musicians to integrate their music into pagan folk and make a good hybrid, but this is something different. Antiq combine soaring traditional Basque and Breton vocals with a proper metal backing, and somehow, by some strange miracle, it all comes together very well. As far as metal goes, this is really quite good.
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虚极 (Bliss-Illusion) – 森罗万象 (Shinrabansho)
虚极 (Bliss-Illusion) are a band based in China who have caused quite a sensation all across the world of Black Metal. The music is a combination of the aforementioned Black Metal but adding a twist by mixing post-rock, straight-ahead metal, elements of doom, shoegaze and what they term to be folk-metal. If you’re sensitive to screaming vocals, you might want to sit this one out, but it works rather well with the music.