Demon Bitch - Hellfriends (2016) 🇺🇸 | Skol Records

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‘Hellfriends’ is spastic and raw plummet through the obsidian archways of early heavy metal, albeit completely jagged with a very limited reverence for conventional structure, sounding something between early Slough Feg in need of a Ritalin shot and a sloppier Mercyful Fate in full chain mail. There's a resounding energy flowing through every song, as if it were floor recorded and off the cuff. It's a stark and welcomed contrast to the overly produced and mechanically prepared acoustics typical within newer heavy metal…

Despite Fenriz shouting these guys out every chance he gets, the 530 Monthly Spotify listeners is no indication of the galactic supremacy they very well deserve… hopefully after this post it will go up to 532 monthly Spotify listeners?

“There are no words, just rock n' roll.
Keeping me stranger, and keeping me loud!”

Demon Bitch - Hellfriends (bandcamp)

Antichrist - Forbidden World (2011) 🇸🇪 | High Roller Records

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One of the best modern-day approaches to an old worn-out genre, beaten to death with bad production and style and a swath of copycats who have totally missed the fucking point. Not Antichrist from Sweden though, these guys understand the sound of the 80’s and shove it up your ass. Sodomy through sonic annihilation!

It’s like the first time I heard ‘Show No Mercy’ front to back—The sheer amount of force and ferocity blew me away. This is primitive thrash that taps into that same well, do yourself a kindness and listen to this in full.

Antichrist - Forbidden World (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)

MORTUUS INFRADAEMONI - Inmortuos Sum (2022)

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This record came out a few days ago through the always promising Iron Bonehead Productions, and since then, I have been listening to it every day picking it apart in my head. At first I thought this was going to be another black/death record with a penchant for the avant-garde, but upon the 4 minute mark of the first song (excluding intro) it was clear to me that this album was going to wonder around in some weird musical territory. Which it does. It lives there.

After over a decade deep sleep, MORTUUS INFRADAEMONI return with a third album and its fucking banner is already hanging in the halls of great black metal records! Inmortuos Sum exists as a strong pastiche to 90's black metal, with a sound that nods to all the progenitors and early adopters but not without heavy experimentation—Obscure sonic landscapes are painted with bubbling atmospheres thick with angular and bubbling guitars building upon that putrid energy of the past but not withholding the nuances of influences that come from the newer legions like Funereal Presence, Cultes Des Ghoules, Spirit Possession or Warloghe. With the added experience from their early days in Germany's Lunar Aurora. Great band with a great track record, in my opinion. 

An off-balance freneticism often found in these newer acts permeates each track, moving feverishly between blistering, cold and garish into something slow, gurgling and decaying. It's a balance often failed by over zealous bands who don't take the time to understand the how and why of these sounds. Anyone around long enough can tell the difference. Thankfully the drums on this record are mixed perfectly, sounding as drums should, primitive and trance inducing…As is the whole production, murky, raw and potent!

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If you're a fan of both old and new Darkthrone I can see no good reason you can't get into Inmortuos Sum. It has the entire wide-range of influence both Fenriz and Nocturno Culto cultivate and utilize. 

MORTUUS INFRADAEMONI - Inmortuos Sum (bandcamp)

Druid Lord - Relics of the Dead (2022)

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I've been meaning to have this new Druid Lord album up on here since it came out in late January but got distracted somewhere along the way. Relics of the Dead is a perfectly executed pastiche of old school death metal a la Immolation with the mid-tempo execution of Disma flanked by the THC soaked doom of Acid Witch with less vintage horror campiness, albeit Relics of the Dead leans into the retro horror atmospherics with just the right amount of profanation—A small example of this can be heard 03:05 into  'Mangled as the Hideous Feed' as that 2-cent Casio chord of gothic organ emanate around a heavily down-tuned and slow doom section breaks through for the remainder of the track.

This album is at it's strongest when it's moving around between this incredibly drooling mid tempo churn to the almost dead-stop dirge, sounding like an impersonation of Ahab playing Bolt Thrower songs at half speed—I see a lot of comparisons to Hooded Menace being thrown around, but unlike Hooded Menace's last album, Druid Lord got the production right. Absolutely nailed down. I'd say it's more in line with Disma's pace, the grime and mire of Coffins, the horror drenched wooziness of Acid Witch with moments of occasionally dipping into the molasses paced territory of Encoffination… Fuck those guys are slow!

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This comes highly recommended, so get listening. "This album is going to make a big splash in the year-end lists this year." —Nostradamus

Druid Lord - Relics of the Dead (bandcamp)

Cirith Ungol - Half Past Human (2021) [EP]

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Cirith Ungol are very much part of the old guard of metal, having been around for over four decades albeit with a few minor pauses and lapses in activity they returned in 2020 with Forever Black, planting their flag in the ground with some exemplary old-school doom laden heavy metal with tinges plucked from the crossover scenes of back then.

Just recently they released another crop of tunes under the same umbrella of doom/heavy metal and though I winced at the thought of it biting the big one but it never let me down at all, much like Forever Black… Sounds like the good old halcyon days of the genre. Half Past Human is just a fun listen through, and if you don't think so then you're probably taking things too seriously, maaaan.

Cirith Ungol - Half Past Human (bandcamp)

Mountain Witch - Extinct Cults (2020)

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It's hard not to call any band that sounds like Mountain Witch a Black Sabbath worship band, since any band worth their salt probably worships Sabbath anyway, especially when their sound is dripping with that THC soaked doom and tonal psychedelia that Black Sabbath very well created… so I'll resist the urge to do so. Mountain Witch are pure Black Sabbath worship. Fuck.

I'd be remiss to call it there, there's more to Mountain Witch than just another copy-cat band that only wants to play heavy and riff out in a sea of retro doom with flourishes of heavy metal, they do well to explore some refreshing territory with light synth use and the drums sound meaty and varied (no gated snare!) which if done poorly weigh a band like this down to the point that no amount of tight riffing can make up for. Thematically I'm all in too, lyrically dabbling in the esoteric and the occult and a healthy presence in the foothills of campy Horror that you'd expect out of this ilk. Even though I do them from time to time, I dread trying to contrive comparisons, but let's just call this a loose mix of Hour of 13, Captain Beyond, Blood Ceremony, Ghost (early) and Purple Hill Witch.

Extinct Cults (bandcamp)

Spirit Possession - Spirit Possession (2020)

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Here's another album flying under the venerable Profound Lore Records label, a well-oiled machine run by Chris Bruni who always seems to be ahead of the curve, and it's another album that will be heavily listened to by yours truly – The sound and production is exactly what I'm looking for right now, albeit I have only listened to the only two tracks released, I am staunch in knowing that this album nails down primitive sounding black metal.

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A sound that harkens back to the cold and primeval sounds of 90's black metal, with angular riffs, shrill atmosphere, ghostly production at its centre, and on the sonic periphery a torrent of influences takes shape in the form of heavy metal that borrows perfectly from early hardcore, in the same way that Razor did back in the late 80's during the festering metal scene of Toronto until they unfortunately and unceremoniously faded away into obscurity… It was a perfect. This to me is everything going right for forward thinking black metal. Imagine fusing together the best elements that make up Hellhammer, Mercyful Fate, Negative Plane, Razor, mid Darkthrone and Finland's (underrated and under appreciated) Swallowed and you will come up with a sound that is comparable to Spirit Possession's impressive, maybe immaculate, self-titled debut. What a release!

It's also worth noting that the vocalist/guitarist in Spirit Possession is the same vocalist/guitarist that makes up the band KNEEL, of which I posted about a few days ago and another release I think is basically perfect. Some accounting for taste for sure.

Spirit Possession (bandcamp)

Vulture - Ghastly Waves & Battered Graves (2019)

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If you're familiar with Vulture's denim dad past you'll know that they are the musical equivalent to microwaveable burritos, The Creep Show and stud laden leather vests all moving at the blurring speed of Satan. This amalgamation of heavy/speed metal with minces of old school thrash and hardcore are right up my alley, especially when it's executed with such Bavarian zeal as Vulture. I wish I went to house parties where the walls dripped sweat of cheap lager, the carpets stunk of cigarettes and Vulture's filth and sleaze was blasting through haggard speakers, and you should too.

Vulture - Ghastly Waves & Battered Graves (bandcamp)

Funereal Presence - Achatius (2019)

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A magnificently articulated sophomore album from the dude behind the skin kit in Negative Plan, aptly self-monikered Bestial Devotion, and he hit the hammer on the fucking nail one-hundred times over, in a musical pool that most don't wade in without drowning in their own shit. Achatius is going to stand out as one of those albums that should blow everyone away but probably won't because it won't reach most people, and I'm oddly at peace with that as a result.

Funereal Presence has managed to nail down a marriage between a myriad of genres; black, speed, heavy, occult, death, avant-garde, etc without coming off as contrived slop, which is often times the case when something tries to be too many things at once – Especially within the elitist walls of black metal – It's a fools errand to try and pigeon-hole this, so don't even try, or you'd sure as shit isn't always solid sound like a dick.

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There's nothing on Achatius I can find fault in, the production is spot on, which is big time important for something of this nature; the drums sound primitive, the guitar tones sound like the gurgling digestive tract of a primordial beast within cathedral walls and the vocals necrotic and have that old-school mix to them. The songs are monolithic both in length and experimentation, cruising through each obscurity with the speed of satan at its back, and not for one fucking second is it dull or tiresome, and those willing to wade through each fetid nuance will be rewarded with one of 2019's most successfully ambitious releases so far, absolutely keeping the underground lit with this blast from the past!

Funereal Presence - Achatius (bandcamp)

Crystal Viper - Crimen Excepta (2012)

Fucking right man, I've been so up my own ass posting filthy bestial blackened death metal that I've been missing out on some metal on the other end of the spectrum. The cheesy, dragon punching, gryphon riding end of power/heavy metal!

It's hard to take seriously, ergo those afraid of being lumped in along with the neck-beards abandon ship and adamantly defend their music collection from power metal, while continually hoarding basement black metal or death metal demo tapes to remain what? True? Real? I don't even fucking know, but I gladly forfeit the moniker of 'metalhead' any day. Metalhead, a connotation that would stereotypically imply long greasy hair, ill-fitting clothes, ugly girlfriends, black t-shirts and bullet belts with a disposition similar to a neanderthal? No thank you.

Crimen Excepta hearkens back to the golden days of power metal, when bands like Angra, Cellador, Helloween, Days of Yore, old White Skull, Warlock, Hammerfall, and especially early Elissa C. Martin Dark Moor days! I really haven't been stumbling on to much power/heavy metal these days that do anything for me, I must not be looking in the right places, because I'm sure they're out there. Pharaoh's Bury The Light rules pretty hard, anything else?

Crimen Excepta (320)

Mercyful Fate - Don't Break The Oath (1984)

Don't Break The Oath, once a staple for black metal party's in Norway during the early 90's with its cult approach and cacophony of King Diamond. Play it loud, play it often.

Grab if you like: Ghost, King Diamond, Portrait

FATE

Midnight - Satanic Royalty (2011)

This has to be the one record that I definitely feel I slipped up on most when not incorporating into my best of 2011 list. I really never gave it a fair fight, but that's to be expected when making those year end lists, so enough of that.  

Satanic Royalty is the real deal, black n' roll from Ohio with a tasteful nod to the oldies, especially Venom. Light the candles in 13.

Grab if you like: Motörhead, Cruel Force, Venom

Satanic Royalty