Vorpal Sword - Pain (2016)

Rising Beast is out there busting its ass making every single mother out there with six children look like they are caught relishing a languorous work ethic. A DIY label to its core ran by a dude named James Brown aka 'Horus' – who I only just discovered plays in both Harassor and Moonknight, which are both bands I've been supporting through Rising Beast since I found Moonknight's 2012 release Ligeia. Rising Beast is the cream that is rising to the top in the realms of seedy underground black metal and death metal, keep up.

Vorpal Sword is the labels latest release, and I have Bandcamp to thank for turning me on to this one. I'm not sure why it matters, but the intro to the noisy deluge that is Pain is something to behold; No wide birth is given in building atmosphere, instead the crowing begins with a heavily distorted garbled sound that sounds like the disgruntled radio transmission from another life-form upon entry into earths atmosphere, it's overbearingly loud and feels like water hitting your eardrums. This noise is then pierced with the warm coursing of a black metal riff played at 25% speed and the shared duty of the snare and bass drum, if any symbols are being pounded, it's lost in the fray. The result is something I'm really into right now.

The entire 16 minutes is a whirlwind of tone, noise, reverb, delay, gain and hell with no discernible start and end to the tracks within the track, but take note at the 04:40 mark how this shit rips into itself with a stripped down punk and black metal ethos and the vocal layering resembling a tenacious howling wind. I am reminded of the 'Just Fuck off' era of Malveillance (posted here six years ago) with the bleak tonal accuracy of later Lunar Aurora despite the blatancy of a synth.

You can support this at bandcamp with a minimum purchase of $1 or if you're really feeling that Canadian dollar struggle input $0 for a free download and the intention of supporting these releases  at a later date when you're not too busy justifying why you vastly over-tip the pretty bar maiden rather than support underground music.

Vorpal Sword - Pain (bandcamp, name your price)

Algor - Úder pohanského hnevu (2003)

I have posted Úder Pohanského Hnevu on SHOM before, but this was over a half decade ago (which is my way of saying 6 years) and I'm resurrecting it to follow-up the Infernal Slave album I just posted. Go get that one now.

This album remains to be one of the best examples of frigid puritan black metal. The name Algor is Latin for 'frost' but the band is of Slovakian descent, which is befitting to mention because Slavonic black metal has forever maintained this different type of cold atmosphere to their sound, inexplicably different than the archetypal Norwegian black metal style let's say. Both styles are rife in cold imagery, albeit a different sense of cold; The Slavonic way has always felt more barren, bereft of hope, like a torpid winter with no fucking end in sight.


Algor's sound is stripped down and stark with a different emotional breadth than the more familiar Slavic bands like Drudkh, Kroda, Nokturnal Mortum, Hate Forest, etc.

Úder Pohanského Hnevu has some of the best mixing of drums I've ever heard on a black metal album, the snare and toms are some of thee most savagely crude around which resonates well with the many rolls, fills and blasts on this record. I'm sure I can go into detail as to how the vocal shrill is different than the Norwegian vocal shrill typically emulated, but what would be the point? And the riffs are cold enough to turn your day into complete shit.

If anyone knows of any albums similar in sound please name drop in comments.

blackest black

Infernal Slave - Oppressed By Inferior (2013)

Again, I have Haxan over at Forever Cursed to thank for turning me on to this heap of black metal filth. 

Every sound bows its allegiance towards the progeny of black metal coming out in the early 90's of Norway; ice cold riffs battered to hell by crudely sounding drums, with drum fills showing absolutely no regard for refinement and the vocal screech of a diseased wolverine shouting its blasphemous cacophony with a putrid charm. The production is shit, and it's exactly what I want.

SHOM has always been about supporting this type of underground, DIY filth to the bitter end, and if I can help guide others to support it then it's all worth the 20 minutes it took out of my mushroom foraging study's to do.



Inferal Slave bandcamp (name your price)