Chasm Shroud - Manna From Heaven (2022)

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You peer into the void. You see nothing, but hear faint sounds in the distance emanating from the yawning maw of black space…

Manna From Heaven came out of nowhere, suddenly appearing (no demos or EP’s prior) and carrying with it some of the most intriguing black metal I’ve heard all year—It’s hard to pin down exactly, but a strange energy circulates here, like it’s been ritually charged and imbued with unknown intent.

The above statement might feel hyperbolic or even trite, but the overall sense is something palpable—An ominous portent of oblique black metal soundscapes reverberating around hypnotic dirges in a hallucinatory haze of frenetic dissonance. NAME YOUR PRICE, don't be a knucklehead!

Chasm Shroud - Manna From Heaven (bandcamp)

Leucosis - Leucosis (2013)

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This is a record that's been put up on here before but it's high-time for a re-up since it's been buried by a swath of posts that have come after. Leucosis' self-titled output from 2013 is the bands pivotal release, in my opinion—Its heft hasn't been dulled by the years one fucking bit! It remains a force of brute and murky doom metal flanked by a raw and oppressive black metal, unpolished to the point of practically having a veneer of patina over every track.

Albums are often over-credited with being monolithic without actually having an over-bearing power or stature. Leucosis' self-titled is a towering monolith, with a running time of something like 75 minutes. It's a weighty vestige to second-wave black metal with a backbone of doom, often serpentining throughout itself with pure dirge, crawling and atmospherically devastating.

This whole album is exemplary but its shining achievements are what puts it above its contemporaries. Those being the way is was produced and mastered—raw and gritty. Moreover, the way the drums sound in particular is unlike anything I've heard before. It sounds improvisational and the timbre of the kick sounds burly and under-produced… which results into something completely unconventional. SOUNDS LIKE A HAMMER FROM HELL!

Leucosis - Leucosis (bandcamp)

Assumption - Hadean Tides (2022)

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In the arenas of doom/death metal, Assumption are a brutish juggernaut of sheer force and gargantuan magnitude, wielding —Hadean Tides was officially uncaged yesterday and its presence is a seismic amalgamation of glacially paced doom with bouts of frenzied death metal peppered throughout.

As I search my skull for fashionable adjectives and pithy aphorisms to describe this I can't help but think of Convocation's debut album "Scars Across". It's equally as crumbling and bulky in its weight, with emphasis on a slow churn and plodding rhythms, albeit with flickers of a gallop but never quite hitting a sprint. Kudos to the artwork being the underbelly version of a Turner painting, bang on!

Assumption - Hadean Tides (bandcamp)

Negative Plane - The Pact [Single] (2022)

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This is a big one! A new Negative Plane release announced and committed to wax is something to be hopeful about—A full decade and one extra trip around the sun later of muted silence, New York's esoteric black metal sweethearts of the underground are back and just as infallible as ever… But I'm rolling my eyes into the back of my skull by all these eager underground zealots professing it to be the album of the decade after a single track has dropped. I'm not immune to conflated statements but it's okay to dial it back a bit.

Negative Plane's vaporous cathedral sound is one of antiquity, drawing from the wells of soundscapes that could be heard from early Mercyful Fate, Mortuary Drape or Cirith Ungol but it's also a sound of something new bubbling and taking shape in the cauldron of metal, and that innovative energy is palpable and exciting to those of us who are looking to latch onto something forward-thinking.

From the first track alone, we can glean Negative Plane are doubling-down on their particular blend of oblique black metal with an ardent zeal, offering that well-honed esoteric sound of reverberating guitars that seem to be wailing from a cavernous depth or from some infernal place of worship. Each tonal flair carries with it the weight and ambiguity of the occult, leaning into a hypnotic atmosphere fit for gothic cathedrals whirling in incense smoke and the sound of the 80's—A faint bell rings in the distance…

Negative Plane - The Pact (bandcamp)

Véhémence - Ordalies (2022)

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Nowadays whenever I see anything that looks like this album (crudely illustrated) or is slapped with a "medieval", "epic" or sometimes even an "atmospheric" black metal tag I approach with the same type of caution Nosferatu might have towards a garlic factory. I used to gobble it up, things of this ilk. But now that I'm a decade older and grumpy it just mostly sounds like overproduced wankery with no real resonance—Aural or otherwise.

Véhémence of France completely deflect any suspicions that this album is just another cookie-cutter black metal record parading around as half-baked pseudo-traditional medieval songs infused with the barbarity of black metal. Ordalies for sure leans heavily into that medieval tone, borrowing chants and melodies that seemingly harken back to the crusades, but it's done with such poise that none of it feels contrived or lame, which is where most of the other battalion of metal bands fail when writing this sort of thing.

Right off the rip this record blasts into a barrage of blistering black metal built upon the back of uncompromisingly frigid tremolo riffs which are layered upon a foundation of equally pummelling drums, both galloping, working eagerly in unison as Hyvermor's vocals scratch some primordial itch. His range (along with the group chants) carry with them a powerful weight. A genuinely antiquated atmosphere permeates every track on this album with absolutely clarity and force, which is really where 95% of the other bands fall short for me. One of the reasons I still like and listen to either Myrkgrav, Windir, Bathory or even old Moonsorrow is that they still strike a chord. No wankery, real fucking resonance.

It's completely negligent to talk about this album without mentioning how defiantly catchy it all is. Catchier than syphilis at the greasy truck stop with a strip-club called "Last Dance at Peeler's". When the first stream came out, I replayed it in full a second time once I made my way through the first listen. I never do that. Now of course that's my experience, but if you disagree you're just wrong man, and that's on you.

This is a mandatory album in 2022, don't sleep on it… Go ahead, play it more than the new Deathspell Omega record… I'd understand!

Véhémence - Ordalies (bandcamp)

Negativa - 04 (2022)

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It's been in black metal's DNA to be dissonant, harsh and cold, but this record takes those fundamentals and beats you over the head with it for 40-straight minutes, which to those of us who beckon punishment, pounce on it like a werewolf.

Spain's Negativa has channeled these characteristics with aplomb throughout their entire discography, and the result of it has amounted to some of the densest black metal around today—Invoking a wall of sound built upon cascading guitar tones that whirr and drone between war hammer drums which favour force over speed and vocals that struggle to penetrate a thick layer of fog and noise.

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It hearkens back to last years output by Voidsphere and Sulpur, both of which released albums in 2021 that were in my top 10—Which might say something about how highly I regard this particular form of black metal, spirit inducing and relentlessly oppressive. Don't sleep on this record, unless you want to be a dummy idiot, then go right ahead.

04 is 'Name your price' on Bandcamp, put that coffee money to something worthwhile and toss these guys (and their label, Mystískaos) a few bucks and help keep the underbelly of metal well lit!

Negativa - 04 (bandcamp)
Download (Zippyshare)

Festung - Der Turm (2022)

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Well articulated raw black metal drawing from a deep well of sonic intentions running the gamut of dungeon synth, ambient black metal, atmospheric black metal and I'd even make the argument for an early black metal/punk inclusion somewhere in the fray as well. This album as a sound is definitely monolithic but the length too is a monolith, standing in at 80 minutes of towering black metal, which only serves to bolster the immensity of it as a whole. This was one of those listens that instantly gripped me and impressed from the start to its billowous end… This comes highly recommended, don't sleep on it!

Festung - Der Turm (bandcamp)

Deathless Void - Deathless Void (2022)

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In the endless sprawl of death metal, a new presence materializes out of The Netherlands thanks to the venerable Iron Bonehead—its form takes shape through a torrent of death metal and black metal which seems to mine from the same ore as bands like Aosoth, Bölzer, Abyssal and even Dephosphorus in the sense that it is as explorative and vacuous as it is frenetically delirious and crushing. 

From the singular track that exists through the Iron Bonehead bandcamp page we can easily take stock of the obtuse intensity that will come from the bands first album, and though I am carefully optimistic, I'm definitely looking forward to its whole release on February 04, 2022.

Deathless Void - Deathless Void (bandcamp)

Abstracter - Abominiom (2021)

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Abstracter are no joke. No whimsy to be found. "Abandon all hope" is the message written on the wall followed by a "Eat dick, shit face" scrawled heinously next to an inverted cross. Abstracter have been quietly making a lot of noise within the cavernous walls of underground death metal, churning out the type of bloated death metal that is uncompromisingly bestial and bleak in its bones but somewhere in its DNA it is much more intelligible than its fully neanderthal counterparts, Canada's Revenge for example are full troglodytic death metal—and all forms are accepted with zeal by me.

In 2018 Abstracter released 'Cinerous Incarnate' and it snuck up on me as one of the better releases that year, its ferocity was unmatched by most riding under the banner of bestial death metal and it became more cohesive over time, when the froth of grime and swirling guitars gave way I understood the only goal is not obliteration, but obliteration through formulation. There's really only one song to preview so far on that albums follow-up, 'Abominiom', but I am optimistic it will be equally as potent.

Abstracter - Abominiom (bandcamp)

Qrixkuor - Poison Palinopsia (2021)

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Qrixkuor have had what some might call a tumultuous upbringing, with a forced hiatus in activity  spurred on by multiple changes in cast and location, a debut album has been long on the horizon of the abyssal plane… but that debut album, Poison Palinopsia, is finally upon the altar. For us to play judge and juror. Appreciator and benefactor.

In lieu of being too verbose, Qrixkuor's changes have seemed to irrefutably benefit the overarching sound and direction of the band, and with the addition of New Zealand's revered V. Kusabs (of Vassafor, Irkallian Oracle, Temple Nightshade, etc.) at the helm of song-writing you would sure as shit have to bet on the sonic scope of Poison Palinopsia to be a downward spiralling mix of cavernous death metal and black metal with tinges of doom and other various forms of entropy.

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This is some seriously heavy shit. A 50-minute, two track plunge into a hallucinatory ether of mangling guitar chords, bestial drums that punish every inch of cymbal and skin with a sadistic, schizophrenic like fervour, and a vocal delivery by S that has its own personality crisis, matching the same intensity and barbarity as Teitanblood or Swallowed. Since there are only two monolithic tracks, each song has ample room to explore atmospherics and space, in way of tempo shifts or fugacious ambient passages (none of which are sampled but individually conjured and recorded) that explore sepulchral like tones.

The production isn't as overall murky as others of this ilk, but suffice it to say it completely evades that plastic like shit with no dynamic range and maintains an overall sound that is both utterly bestial, yet coherent. It's a welcomed and perfectly delivered execution. With no shortage of letdowns, missteps, nice tries and copycats, Poison Palinopsia delivers a breath of fresh air in a genre that has seen a recent resurgence! Fans of Mitochondrion, Teitanblood, Bestia Arcana, Grave Upheaval, Spirit Possession, etc. will find much to appreciate on here, so get towards the bands bandcamp page and do your thing.

Qrixkuor - Poison Palinopsia (bandcamp)

Failure Ritual - Total Weakness (2015)

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A while back I posted 'Apathy' which is only 1 out of the 5 records the absolutely ambiguous Failure Ritual put out in 2015, this is just another one of the 5 records released suddenly by Failure Ritual on the 19th of October. 

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A harrowing downward spiral of experimental black metal that places heavy emphasis on repetition and the exploration of aural space—weaving dense fogs of crude riffing and drumming overtop mesmerizing ambient passages that tread into weird territory, inducing a hallucinatory trance like state. I don't think I could put this side by side up against anything else and claim similarities, there's nothing that sounds like this. This comes highly recommended!

Failure Ritual - Total Weakness (bandcamp)

Big Brave - Vital (2021)

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This monolithic slab of drone came out a mini aeon ago and for some reason I have been sleeping on its dedicated post. It was never not going to be posted here. I have listened to this record a lot… It's a hefty listen, permeated throughout is Big Brave's signature lofty guitar chords buzzing around in a trance like state as reverb and feedback collide into each other creating waves of mollifying noise modus operandi. If you're at all familiar with Big Brave, which you should be, then you know what to expect in Robin's inspired vocal croon—Incantation like, ritualistic and poignant with a whole heap of heft and energy behind it. Still on Southern Lord after all these years too, I like it.

Big Brave - Vital (2021)

Sulpur - Embracing Hatred and Beckoning Darkness (2021)

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Here's another Amor Fati Productions release that is cold as hell and well worth your attention! Embracing Hatred and Beckoning Darkness is the debut album from Sulpur, which (as of now) has no known information about the band, further bolstering its obscurity. Second wave black metal that hearkens back to the early 90's in a lot of ways but feels much less influenced by the early sounds of thrash and speed metal that the earlier progenitors latched onto—Instead Sulpur drinks from the same well as MGLA, Algor, Lluvia, and many of the Icelandic black metal bands (to name a region) wholly dedicated to this style built on a blistering tempo and a dense, frigid soundscape.

The songwriting here is essentially without any flaws—the riffs come in fast and cold as a witch tit, the drums are mixed perfectly down to the splash cymbal and even the pickup on the bell is right where it's supposed to be. The same can be said about the vocal work, which makes use of some nice versatility. No single track dips below the 7-minute mark and there isn't a single moment on this album that I could reasonably consider filler, nothing stale here, just blistering black metal that has done everything right. One of the best I've heard this year so far.

Sulpur - Embracing Hatred and Beckoning Darkness (bandcamp)

Drown - Subaqueous (2020)

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Here's an album I could hardly find a flaw in even if I were to be truly vicious, truly picky and up my own ass in a tizzy of pretentious elitism. It's very well devoid of any faults as it sets out to do one thing and to do that thing very well: To create a sonic representation of what it would feel like to be crushed by the oceans weight through virtue of glacially placed funeral

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It's heavy and it's bleak despite its penchant for dipping into very thoughtful and melodic passages, but alas never quite sacrificing any of its crushing weight, a death grip of floating guitars bounce around a vast expanse of atmosphere created through plodding drums, the space between and a bellowing vocal delivery as heavy and desperate as the music itself. It's production is bang on, so thanks for that. I don't know if I've cared this much about a straight funeral doom record since Ahab's 'The Call of the Wretched Seas' and I commend its ability to simultaneously pacify and stimulate. Get into it or just flounder, punk!

Subaqueous (bandcamp)

Jorge Elbrecht - Coral Cross 002 (2019)

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Congratulations to August for being a month in where I didn't make a single contribution to SHOM. Evidentially all that August brings - The sun is singing, the birds are shining, the people are filled with sidewalks and parks are marinating in cheap lager - doesn't bode well for my writing commitments. But cut me some slack, I'm a one-man team, a single mother in the arena of bedroom bloggers and this whole things is and will always be a thankless gig. But I love it like a son (or daughter) and will carry on as best as I know how. I don't know how.

Starting September off will be the enigmatic Jorge Elbrecht and his newest offering to reverb-soaked black metal in all of its warm, lo-fi angular glory. Coral Cross 002 is something to be consumed slowly, with no distractions, probably with lots of cancer inducing incense burning so the nuances can be appreciated as a whole. Blink your ears and you just might miss it…

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I was turned onto Jorge Elbrecht by Harassor/Vorpal Sword/Moonknight/Pray For Snow music machine James Brown III aka Horus aka Roach (and mind behind the infallible Rising Beast label) during a slow burn interview him and I had over the course of July/August - The dude is well versed in the underground musical scene and we're all forever in his debt for his contribution to the international reverb society. * I'll be posting up that interview soon as well as digging a bit deeper into his other projects

Coral Cross 002 paints unknown landscapes, of worlds ethereal and dripping with a weird colourful muck, and a undecipherable stench pervades amidst the wonky wall of music. I am hard-pressed to pinpoint this to any specific genre nor would I like to. It sounds the way it sounds and you will either like it or hate it. As for me, I'm lapping up this weird soup.

Jorge Elbrecht - Coral Cross 002 (bandcamp)

Obscuring Veil - Fleshvoid to Naught (2019)

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This album has me floored currently. A monolithic slab of avant-garde black metal with a personality crisis and a gargantuan amount of enigma wafting around itself. Obscuring Veil is wholly comprised of venerable musicians from around Europe all cut from varying fabrics of musical cloth, and the musicianship is starkly reflected on each harrowingly twisting track. Obscuring Veil combined is the minds of Wormlust, Death Fetichist, Gnaw Their Tongues, Nattsol, Ævangelist, Ljáin, Craft, Chaos Moon, etc. etc. There is notably some accounting for taste to be made, and yet something created that is bigger than the sum of its parts.

I can throw a bunch of adjectives your way, but I'll distill it all down to this, Fleshvoid to Naught is suffocatingly abrasive, tragically heavy, magnificently eerie, devastatingly hard to digest and devoid of all commonality. I'm all in.

Obscuring Veil - Fleshvoid to Naught (bandcamp)

Kaleikr - Heart of Lead (2019)

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Icelandic metal has garnered the attention and reverence of many, predominantly in the underground bestial arenas–most likely, I would imagine, due to the intellectually impetuous execution of the sound and the brazen Icelandic ethos when it comes to writing music (I've had my ear to the ground with Icelandic music since my visit in 2010 and have attended multiple Iceland Airwaves festival since) and their unmatched ability to amalgamate between sounds and influences in a way that remains true to its purist form while pushing boundaries in a way that fails to be contrived.

Let's quickly pay heed to all of Iceland's impressive successes within the last few years;

Sinmara, Svartidauði, Misþyrming, Kaleikr, Wormlust, Ljáin, Carpe Noctem, Naðra, Zhrine, Mannveira, Örmagna, Almyrkvi, Auðn, Skáphe (partially)

Notable company for a windswept country of only 300, 000.

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Kaleikr were instantly interesting for me, being that they are another metal band from the quiver of Iceland, a new metal band to sink my teeth into and digest and judge, to enjoy or condemn, etc. In summation, once I noticed the progressive tag slapped to the pigeon-holing process of applying genre tags to music, I winced and cringed, mostly because most pieces of progressive music I'm turned onto never really strike any chord with me or are too farcical to take seriously. That being said, I am still no stranger to the genre so I kept my closed-mind open-minded.

Kaleikr's take on fusing death metal, doom, black and flourishes of the grandiosity of atmospheric pagan metal with the tumbling structure of progressive metal has been thoroughly enjoyable. Heart of Lead manages this concoction with an expertly ease, an acumen in genre melding; At times i'm reminded of something like Panopticon and Saor (mostly akin to the drumming nature), to Be'lakor and the psychedelic tinged moments of Wormlust, etc, etc.

Before I get to verbose with my keyboard fingers, I'll leave this post with this and only this; Though things of this sonic nature are slightly under my own personal radar these days, I dig almost everything in and around Heart of lead, a very tight debut, at the very least. 

Kaleikr - Heart of Lead (bandcamp)

MARE - Ebony Tower (2018)

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Trondheim, Norway is a cold, desolate and unrelenting place in the winter season, I have been there in the early onset of winter and in my brief time spent, I was left bereft and frigid to the bone. MARE come from Trondheim, Norway, so you'd be a dummy ignoramus to expect anything other than icy black metal; icicle tremolo picking layered over a galloping drum force while some forest druid recites incantations atop some mountain through chants and shrieks of desperation and pity. The Bandcamp page has further details on the enigma;

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Forged in the early 2000's, MARE has become quite the mysterious gem for underground fanatics across the globe. Rarely playing live and with hard to get releases, the band has become, for many, one of the few 'real' Black Metal bands out there left in todays oversaturated scene. To many they have seemed to do so on purpose, but for us working closely with the band it is simply in their nature not to bother. They make music for themselves, they do this for themselves, and rest assured MARE will genuinely keep going down their own path never caring about hypes, fashion, trends or fame. They arrogantly named their own music 'Nidrosian Black Sorcerous Art' which defines who they are, on stage and off stage. 

This isn't a show, this isn't a gimmick. 

This is real Black Metal how it always was meant to be. 

Ebony Tower (bandcamp)

Sun Worship - Elder Giants (2014)

Ever since Sun Worship got in touch with me to review their EP Surpass Eclipse I have been a huge fan, watching their every move, which consisted of a split with German country-mates UNRU, whom I'm also completely and unequivocally a fan of, obtain all their shit!

I digress, Sun Worship are one of my favorite bands circling this big blue ball we're stuck upon. What the fuck is there not to love? They play an incredibly poised blend of ambient black metal with notes of other musical subtleties that could range from shoegaze, drone, noise, to a post-rock atmosphere. They are independent and fuel their own music in a DIY way and they put their albums on bandcamp for a "name your price" option so you can pay what you can afford.

Elder Giants is a giant itself, and one of the best this year. Climb out from under that rock and buy it.

Elder Giants on Bandcamp (name your price)
Here is the review for Surpass Eclipse

Lluvia - Premonicion De Guerra (2013)

Fallen Empire is a label that has both my attention and my respect as it is a DIY distro that focuses on unearthing black metal in all it's uncharted territory, keep your ear to the ground, I'm expecting/hoping that the label's catalogue increases with truly bleak black metal.

Lluvia released Premonicion De Guerra in late 2013, and it's likely that it has been flying under the goddamn radars ever since, why? Well it's definitely not because it doesn't hold true to black metal and all it's traditional idiosyncrasies…  Nay, this album will turn your veins black with its blistering nod to black metal, mega cold riffs, galloping drums, piercing anguished howls all swallowed up in a aphotic atmosphere. If you ever have valued my opinion, heed my advice and grab this album, whether you decide to buy the vinyl OR throw in a couple dollars at the bandcamp page under the 'name your price' option. Though if money is super tight, input $0 and download it for free and be sure to give a thank you to the dudes at Fallen Empire, don't be a thankless neanderthal, bad karma.

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I have no doubts this shit sounds so cold and foggy on vinyl (Thumbs up for how Fallen Empire set's up their vinyl displays, it's the little things man…)

Go here to buy it on vinyl
Download on Bandcamp