Black metal fans have been spoilt for choice of late, with no shortage of suitably grim records to match the sub-zero temperatures we’ve been plunged into. Swiss trio Aara’s sixth album Eiger is perhaps their most harrowing yet, a concept album exploring the death of four mountaineers, up against the elements as they attempt to scale one of the most treacherous summits in the Bernese Alps. While the band’s keen ear for melody is still felt throughout, overall the music here is as harsh and unforgiving as the subject matter’s icy winds, with astonishingly swift blastbeats and a crisp guitar tone ensuring the record retains its intensity even during its most mournful passages.
En Garde, the debut EP from Washington’s Runeblade sounds even colder – a collaboration between Ebony Pendant’s Simon Coseboom and Iron Firmament drummer Krieger, it’s a perfect blend of early Darkthrone riffing and raw punk vitriol. It’s convincingly aggressive, but there’s also a strange, mystical atmosphere lurking just under the surface that comes into clearer focus the more you listen. For a warmer take on black metal, RABM legends Skagos returned after over a decade of silence this winter solstice, with their new album Chariot Sun Blazing presenting a curious blend of their trademark Cascadian black metal sound with pastoral chamber folk. With yearning tremolo riffs gradually giving way to Godspeed-esque vistas (complete with strings, tuba and French horn), the whole album flows nicely as one piece, feeling like a more compact (and much more introspective) counterpart to their last record, 2013’s sprawling, fiery Anarchic.
Scarborough’s Ante-Inferno continue to get better and better, with third album Death’s Soliloquy feeling like their most personal and haunting release so far. Simultaneously their most ferocious and melodic, there’s a wounded, almost Agalloch-esque grandiosity to some of these riffs (like that huge yearning peak towards the end of opener ‘The Cavernous Black Of Night’), albeit belted out with a blistering fury more akin to a band like Spectral Wound. Guitarist Kai’s impassioned howls sound more expressive than ever too, bringing a painfully human touch to fourteen minute epic ‘An Axe. A Broadsword. A Bullet.’
The vocals on French solo outfit Time Lurker’s second album Emprise, meanwhile, sound downright inhuman at points, like an eerie banshee’s wail wafting through thick forest. Much like their debut, it’s a genuinely cathartic experience, plunging into murky, truly depressive dirges before reaching out into more cosmic, psychedelic pastures, as ethereal vocals courtesy of Sarah L. Kerrigan gradually entwine with that endearingly hideous shriek like someone being lured off into the woods by some ghastly spectre.
If you’re after some caustic sludge metal to see you through the winter instead, New Jersey sludge quintet Sunrot have been busy lately, releasing a split with like-minded riff aficionados Body Void back in November, alongside a fresh EP Passages due at the end of this month. The split finds both bands contributing a thick, sludgy banger alongside a noise track, with Sunrot’s ‘Shape Shifter’ feeling like the band’s most anthemic statement of intent so far, as vocalist Lex Alex Nihilum leads the band in a call-and-response chant of “When one of us is under attack, when we are in duress, when we are being pushed to the limit, we must stand for each other. All of us. Who protects us? We protect us” atop churning distorted grooves. Body Void, meanwhile, continue to get even nastier and more abrasive, with the eight minute ‘Assimilation System’ courting Godflesh-ian density as sickening squeals of noise blast through the trio’s increasingly industrial tinged sludge.
Sunrot’s Passages ups the band’s noise influence too, with guest electronics from both Full Of Hell’s Dylan Walker and Cloud Rat’s Brandon Hill seeping in to their dense morass. Both releases are brisk enough to feel like a tease, but it really does feel like Sunrot have come into their own here and are currently releasing their heaviest music to date – here’s hoping they can channel this energy into a full-length soon!
Electric WizardBlack Magic Rituals & Perversions Vol. 1Spinefarm / Witchfinder
Apologies for making you feel incredibly old right at the start of this year’s first column, but it’s somehow been eight years since the last Electric Wizard album, 2017’s Wizard Bloody Wizard. From their recent interview with It’s Psychedelic Baby Magazine, it sounds like the band were ready to record in early 2020 but were heavily derailed by Covid, spinning out into paranoid, drug fueled isolation and instead holing themselves up in their practice space to prepare for the end of the world – classic Wizard, right? Luckily they left the tape rolling to capture this ‘live in the studio’ record, which, even if it is a “contractual obligation” as frontman Jus Oborn jokes in the same interview, is a damn good one.
A lot of Covid-era almost-live albums have a cautiously optimistic quality to them, a sense of bringing people together in dark times but (somewhat refreshingly), there’s absolutely none of that here – it really does feel like this was something the band did for themselves rather than general release, unflinchingly capturing the spiraling cabin fever many of us were trying our best to ignore at the time. You can hear the desperation and despair dripping off Jus’ strung out vocals, making this feel like a much more cathartic statement of intent than a simple blast through some old favourites to keep couch-locked fans happy for another identical lockdown afternoon. Whilst I do wish the Wiz would mix up their setlist a bit more these days (there’s no surprises here for anyone who’s caught them live over the last decade – imagine them dusting off something like ‘Doom-mantia’ or ‘Devil’s Bride’ with the new line-up, or, if they’re going to focus so heavily on Witchcult Today, swap ‘The Chosen Few’ for something like ‘Dunwich’ every now and again), there’s no doubting the raw power of this recording, or the way they jam out these road-worn bangers into ecstatic oblivion. The perennially apocalyptic ‘Funeralopolis’ sounds downright feral here, with the band bringing an unhinged energy to its final coda, descending into full-blown speaking bursting noise as Jus’ iconic chant of “nuclear warheads ready to strike/this world is so fucked, let’s end it tonight” rings out with palpable venom.
PainkillersamsaraTzadik
There was no shortage of unexpected band reunions in 2024, but the sudden reconvening of the original Painkiller line-up may have been the most surprising of them all. Of course, thirty years after their last studio album together (the dubbed out, boundary pushing and still bafflingly underrated Execution Ground), the trio have all moved on to explore different sonic pastures, making this incarnation a very different beast. The biggest difference, perhaps, is percussionist Mick Harris’ move from a physical drum kit to thumping electronic beats, which lends the album more than a hint of latter-day Scorn or his recent techno project Fret, with brash industrial grooves replacing the frenetic blasting of Guts Of A Virgin. The tense, deconstructed drum’n’bass rhythms rubbing up against Bill Laswell’s pulsating bass loops on ‘Samsara II’ feel closer in spirit to the alien electronica of Techno Animal’s Re-Entry than anything from Painkiller’s original run, especially as John Zorn’s sax floats atop it all with a curiously subdued elegance. It’s not long until he really lets rip however, with the wild, animalistic bleating on ‘Samsara III’ feeling like classic Zorn through and through, his raw, earthy tones providing an interesting contrast to some of Harris’ most uncharacteristically airy production, an atmospheric reprieve from some of the heavier, more seismic beats elsewhere on the record.
Samsara certainly suffers from being a long-distance collaboration, missing the chaotic chemistry that comes from these three improvising together in the same room, but it’s still a pretty fascinating addition to their discography, presenting an even more deranged continuation of the spacious sound of Execution Ground. They’ve already announced a follow-up too (The Equinox is supposedly dropping on Tzadik on February 21), so I for one am stoked to see where these three are able to take the Painkiller sound in 2025 – if they can recapture the focused live energy of their classic era whilst pushing this nightmarish industrial vibe even further, they’ll be onto something special.
BedsoreDreaming The Strife For Love20 Buck Spin
This Italian quartet’s 2020 debut Hypnagogic Hallucinations was a promising slab of weird, proggy death metal, even if it felt like the band hadn’t quite grown into their sound yet. That makes this adventurous second record’s self-assured ascent into full-blown prog madness even more surprising, however – it feels like Bedsore have skipped several record’s worth of growth and delved straight into the deep end. It’s almost tempting to liken it to Blood Incantation’s Absolute Elsewhere, being the other obvious example of a death metal band throwing caution to the wind and fully embracing progressive whimsy and elaborate, unconventional song structures in 2024, but that’s where the comparisons end really; whilst Absolute Elsewhere took its cues from Morbid Angel, Pink Floyd and Tangerine Dream, Dreaming The Strife For Love instead draws from Edge Of Sanity, Goblin and Giallo movie soundtracks, creating a substantially different atmosphere.
The harrowing psychedelia of Morbus Chron’s Sweven is probably a better reference point – guitarist Jacopo Gianmaria Pepe’s chillingly emotive shriek sounds uncannily close to that band’s frontman Robert Andersson on the rambunctious ‘Scars Of Light’, one of the most straightforwardly deathly cuts on offer here – but even then, Bedsore push further out into unchartered waters. The prominent use of mellotron and organ from multi-instrumentalist Stefano Allegretti lends the album an authentic 1970s flavour without encroaching on the band’s dark, morbid sound at all – especially on head-spinning twelve minute centrepiece ‘A Colossus, An Elephant, A Winged Horse, The Dragon Rendezvous’, a miniature rock-opera that traverses floaty jazz-fusion soundscapes, corrosive Watain style blasting, delicate classical guitar suites and soaring saxophone powered freakouts. This could have easily sounded like a complete mess in practice, but Bedsore really ham up the theatricality of it all to such an exuberant degree that it’s impossible not to get swept along for the ride.
Lifeless DarkForces Of Nature’s TransformationSide Two
Six years after the release of their Who Will Be The Victims? demo, Boston crust quintet Lifeless Dark returned from out of nowhere in the depths of December to finally release their long-awaited full-length. With their furiously thrashy riffs, gloomy atmosphere and vocalist Elaine’s piercing, reverb-smothered shout, the obvious influence here is early Sacrilege, but Lifeless Dark bring enough energy and vitality to that classic Behind The Realms Of Madness sound to really make it their own. The absolutely crushing, full-bodied guitar tone certainly helps too, almost capturing the same raw density as Slaughter’s legendary Strappado – tell me that flattening chug that bursts through at the climax of ‘Cryptic Remains’ doesn’t remind you of the first time ‘F.O.D. (Fuck Of Death)’ caved your skull in.
The band’s songwriting is on point here, with taut anthems like ‘Chalice Of Vision’ and ‘Radiation Sickness’ (not a Repulsion cover, before you ask) perfectly straddling the distance between soaring metal riffing and boisterous punk energy whilst dishing out hooks galore. The album manages to stay cohesive whilst squeezing a lot of variation out of its sound too; there’s even a hint of mid-period Bathory creeping into epic mid-paced stomper ‘Medusa’. Here’s hoping they make it over here at some point in 2025, as you get the feeling this would absolutely destroy live!
Wyatt E.Zamāru Ultu Qereb Ziqquratu Part 1Heavy Psych Sounds
This Belgian collective are an intriguing proposition, offering up dense, mystical doom metal – think Bong with less guitar feedback and more Middle Eastern folk music, or Om if they traded the weed and religious fascination for opium and Mesopotamian mythology. Now entering their tenth year of existence, this new album is arguably their most effective and well-realised yet. Whilst 2023’s Āl Bēlūti Dārû was comprised of two monolithic long-form pieces, Zamāru Ultu Qereb Ziqquratu Part 1 takes a more diverse and perhaps more accessible approach – the album is still book-ended by two towering ten-minute behemoths, but takes a number of atmospheric, folky detours in the middle.
The double-whammy of ‘Im Leyla’ and ‘The Diviner’s Prayer To The Gods Of The Night’, for example, manages to evoke late-period Dead Can Dance, with vocalist Tomer Damsky lending some truly hypnotic chants to the former’s subtle percussive soundscape, and Lowen’s Nina Saeidi unleashing her soaring, expressive voice atop the latter’s droning strings and distinctly Om-like basslines. At just 35 minutes, this album nonetheless feels incredibly expansive, a sprawling but satisfyingly focused sonic trip. Thrillingly enough, the title suggests we’ll be getting a second instalment too – but even taken on its own, this is an excellent slice of atmospheric, esoteric doom in its own right.
PraetorianPylon CultAPF
Hertfordshire sludge quartet Praetorian have tided us over with a steady stream of EPs since forming in 2015, but none of them have managed to capture the raw power of their live show like debut album Pylon Cult does. Boasting a thick, weighty production courtesy of Wayne Adams at Bear Bites Horse Studio, this is easily the most powerful the band have ever sounded on record, with opener ‘Fear & Loathing In Stevenage’ immediately showing off the album’s disgustingly beefy guitar tone and thunderous drum sound as the band comfortably bridge the gap between boisterous, upbeat sludge like Charger or A Horse Called War with the more harrowing, slow paced dirges of bands like Primitive Man or Grief.
Despite its filthy, rambunctious sound, custom-built to deafen pint-ridden punters at dingy sweatbox venues up and down the isle, Pylon Cult is surprisingly atmospheric once it opens up. There’s a slight blackened edge to cuts like ‘Gutwrenching’, as mid-paced blasts and shrill tremolo picking gradually drop into churning sludgy grooves, whilst ‘Tombs Of The Blind Dregs’ even manages to pull twinkling post rock soundscapes and soaring, Monolord-esque clean vocals into the band’s orbit without diminishing the visceral gut-punch impact once those greasy riffs come crashing back into earshot. At its heart, Pylon Cult is a grotty, no-fucks-given sludge record, but there’s a lot of depth here beneath the molasses thick churn, provided you’re prepared to fully sink yourself into it.
DoedsmaghirdOmniverse ConsciousnessPeaceville
I missed this album’s release last year (in part because I thought I was having a stroke when that name popped up in my inbox and had to have a little lie-down), but if you’ve made the same mistake, now’s the time to rectify it. As you may or may not have gleamed from the band’s moniker, Doedsmaghird is Dødheimsgard’s Vicotnik making even more chaotic and surreal music than his main band, that nonetheless runs parallel to it – like catching a glimpse of an uncannily different version of yourself from an alternate universe. If Dødheimsgard’s 2023 opus Black Medium Current felt like their most mature, grandiose statement to date, Omniverse Consciousness is almost the inverse, as Vicotnik steps back into that same psychedelic soundscape not as a wise and weary traveler, but a mischievous trickster eager to see what shenanigans he can get up to in this unchartered new terrain.
The two records may share a similar palette, but this one has far less restraint, hurling different influences around with almost Mr. Bungle-esque disregard for conventional song structure. There’s much more of an industrial flavour too; before you’re even hallway through opener ‘Heart Of Hell’, you’ll have been assaulted by blackened tremolo riffs, a throbbing four-on-the-floor house beat, rich choral vocals and a squelchy synth line that seems to have wandered in from an Ozric Tentacles record, whilst ‘Endless Distance’ pairs some of the record’s spaciest riffing with bubbling Eurotrance keys and deranged street preacher ranting. After sitting with this one for a while, the decision to release this under a slightly different name makes more and more sense. It’s nowhere near as cohesive or fully-realised as Black Medium Current, but it also doesn’t take itself anywhere near as seriously, adopting a much more playful demeanour that fits well with its anarchic sonic grab-bag approach.
