Very cool!!! A fresh take on the assouf style we all love. Incredible, raw, overdriven guitar tone that practically dripped with flavor - I really want to know both the amp, the speaker, and the recording technique! Great to hear the Mdou support crew branching off and experimenting. Hope to see yinz at Rhizome on Friday!

In the vein of Darkthrone, a smoldering tome of mystickal black metal strangeness! This is no copy, though: FURZE craft an iconoclastic psychedelic strangeness which infuses strong tones of weirdo 70s doom rock and modern pillars of weirdo doom like Purification. FURZE put it best themselves: “dig into the psych and release the best possible creations of the ultimate eerie magic.” Singular, mysterious, arcane, eerie, diabolical, and leaving me wanting to hear more of what FURZE cooks up!

I finally got on the No Man bandwagon! Hey neighbors and hell yeah to DC heavy music! An absolute barnburner of torching intense rhythms, incendiary melodies, gut-wrenching vocals with equally gut-wrenching lyrical intensity, and overall a dynamic range of hardcore music which knows to deliver the goods and call it quits. Throughout, a really engaging melodic variety to my ears: all hardcore, but some more teeth-kicking and others more mournful and churning. I’ll see you at a show soon!

An eclectic, colorful, and thought-provoking journey! A smooth cruise through the stars and landscapes all the way through. Nick DiSalvo’s linear songwriting style shines in delving, each song taking you on a forward-moving and exploratory adventure! As expected with exploration, not every song will be for everyone. But in all, a worthwhile feast of vibrant rhythm and melody!

Like many people I’m sure, I came to Grinning God via Rope Sect, looking for more of that devastating dark magic. The “blackened” aim to Grinning God has sometimes landed and sometimes missed for me, but they really hit the mark on Kalypsis! It really landed. The influences have organically melded and the stew now in the pot is delicious indeed! Loved every song, but “the Grinning God” to me best shines a (black)light on what sets Grinning God apart. Excellent work, Inmesher/Sardonicus et al.!

This must be what the horns of Armageddon will sound like. The actual brass, coupled with the total foghorn blast of the Lord’s guitarwork and the pad of synth tone, make this feel almost like an entirely brass album, the trumpets of doomsday exploding through the fog and clouds, riven by Marthe’s savage incantations. A very particular and superbly well-executed atmosphere, especially the first song! Well done everyone!

Can't pick a fav! All feel apiece with the whole. A deeply immersive and emotional reflection on endings and extinction, as well as beginnings – watching the end of the world through a kaleidoscope. All elements are extremely well blended and evoke a powerful atmosphere – visions of ashen lands and empty buildings, lit by a beautiful sunset. I love how forward the synthesizers are. This feels like some of the really tender, emotive, contemplative sci-fi music of the Mass Effect franchise.

A ferocious, seething onslaught brimming with the ravenous spirit of black metal! The vocals also reminded me of that diabolic spectral nature of Spirit Possession. Many passages had me imagining claustrophobic battle in the fiery corridors of some medieval demon’s keep. A solid offering in the library of black metal!

Phew! An EP that is seven minutes. A five song EP that is like one song! Hey, always better to understay than overstay your welcome, and God Mother nailed it! In this fierce little offering, they threw eyebrow-burning hardcore my way, battering me with one melodic and rhythmic flavor after another that had me moshing in my workchair, then slammed the door before I even knew what happened and left me wanting more! Love the intense and defiant lyrics and vocal delivery as well.

Like black lightening, Nocturnal Wanderer dazzle and amaze with black metal crackling with the power of heavy metal melodicism, erupting from the dark forest night. For fans of Blackbraid, Rebel Wizard, Alcest. NW has executed a razor sharp vision of blasting rhythms and soaring melodies evoking a strong mood of the nightside eclipse. I will picture this album again when camping in Shenandoah, the great dark closing in around me, and the children of the night taking flight under the cold stars.

What’s better than great music? Great music from your FRIENDS!!! Accidents absolutely knock it out of the park with the snotty, high-energy, high-octane, high? sk8er punk we all know and love. It was hard to pick a favorite song! Rhythms were solid and pounding, melodies were juicy and bopping, vocals slayed delivering great lyrics. What more do you want, people?! Gotta get to the next Accidents show pronto

A wild and twisting ride all the way through! A huge accomplishment of black metal. Diabolic mood, twisting fresh melodies, excellent instrumental tone, driving energetic rhythms, and best of all, WEIRDNESS! Those fresh melodies, bolstered by strange organs and synths, feel like dank and shifting shadows in the opera house, haunted by the phantom. Weirdness percolates everywhere. Every song is great. The best black metal leans into camp! The result is a record with MOOD in spades.

A fierce, scrappy, urgent, urgently needed anthemic entry! Keep up the great work Uprising, the world needs more of this, not less! Get out and help some people, break some glass, and in the words of the late great John Lewis, get in good trouble!

An aptly named record! Liminal Shroud summon a largely cohesive vision of decay and destruction, but remind us that this is not an evil – this is the way of being. This is the way of our universe. An excellent recording for making invisible oranges while staring up at the night sky or the crashing waves. Diverse, adventurous, and “natural” – get these guys on a tour with Blackbraid stat!

A romping and diverse black metal work! Vimur carries the mysterious energies which drew me in with the previous record and infuses some of that most favorite black metal of mine: the ferociously heroic variety, such as Gudsforladt. The cover really evokes this. The unpredictability of this record shines bright in the burning mountain night. Vimur carried me along for their strange journey of arcane chivalry and I know I will be rewarded with new layers on future listens!

Finally checked out Ruby the Hatchet after seeing them with Baroness at Union Stage in DC last year (great seeing you on the stage I’ve played! 😊 ) and very glad I did! Smoky and devilish melodies await within, like the fantastic cover art! Serpentine and engaging melodies, haunting vocals and vocal harmonies, driving grooving rhythms. The whole package. You all put on an excellent set, by the way!

Like the dawn breaking over the land, a tiny bit then all at once, I was not sure about this record at first, and then was nearly in tears by the end. A flood of emotion like the light of day haloing the dark mountains, then piercing night in blazing rays and drowning all in sun. Every song seemed to surpass the previous. A deep well of feeling, meaning, spirituality, yearning, of connecting to the sandy lands of Elsewhere. I will treasure this album as art sculpted from the human soul.

A smoky, swinging affair! All the mentions of Windhand are apt and I won’t repeat them. Daevar effectively conjure that purple cloud of blown out fuzzy doom and hard-hitting rhythm with serpentine vocals atop, but add their own twists and flavors to the mix, resulting in a solid work of what you could indeed call “grunge doom.” Well done, Daevar!

Pyrrhic victory in the biting wind and the dark snowy field – Doedsrit, as many others mention, field an excellent mix of icy bleakness with majestic triumph. Every song stands out as an excellent ballad of holding on to something despite the odds. I like how the melodies and rhythms blend more stately metal and more driving punk elements to communicate different despairing vs. rebellious moments. Defiant, sorrowful, melodious, heavy – this album brings something we all need right now.

What more could you want in your old skool first wave black metal?! Fierce, scrappy, shadowy yet sleazy, frequently close to flying off the rails. All tied together by tendrils of fire with love. Cool rhythms, cool melodies, cool riffs, cool vocals. Hail to Japanese heavy metal! Heavy metal worldwide!