Visions of Yokai

Thirty minutes of lo-fi dungeon murk that is so completely washed out sounding that when I initially threw it on I thought that one of my speakers had blown... Seriously, imagine Abruptum, Wold, Tangerine Dream, and Trollman Av Ildtoppberg competing for volume on a derelict stereo system located a quarter mile down an abandoned silver mine and you're still not even close to how mangled this sounds.

Put another way: If you dug that Funereal Moon track I posted you're probably gonna lose your fucking mind over this.

Funereal Moon

Imagine Abruptum, Jesus Chrust (the really fucked sounding one from MA, not the pre-Disassociate one from NYC, though they're cool too), or Black Mass of Absu jamming with a completely acid-damaged low-budget approximation of early Dead Can Dance and you have a pretty good idea where these Mexican weirdos are coming from.

Fragda

I once described Fragda as sounding like the Doom 2016 soundtrack as played by Anaal Nathrakh and I'm sticking with that for this newest album... Monstrous industrialized chugs meets million-MPH blackened blasts meets an inorganic sheen equal parts Meshuggah, Fear Factory, and Red Harvest.

And yeah, it's pretty "modern sounding" or whatever, but if you avoid this one due to a slight whiff of "deathcore" that's on you for being a moron.

One of my favorite albums of this year so far.

Beherit

Just found out my uncle passed away. Too bummed to write anything coherent today. I'll be back eventually. Until then: Just listen to Beherit.

Barbara

Referencing both Darkthrone and Lietterschpich in last night's roundup wound up reminding me of Barbara... A totally whacked-out Israeli Bass/ Drums dirge duo that kinda sounded like Man is the Bastard stomping their way through primitive ugly Scandinavian blackthrash.

Jouissance

Pretty interesting combo of New Wave-y synth, and ultra blown out bedroom recorded black metal... Definitely recommended if you dig stuff like Lonesummer, Planning For Burial, Dunnock, etc. etc.

Highlight of the album for me was the third track that sounded almost like a 60's girl-pop group smashed through a bunch of those orange boss distortion pedals with dismal blackened wraith shrieks lurking in the background.

Truly weird and wonderful... Man, stuff like this always makes me really miss aQuarius RecOrds.

Terzij de Horde

Blazing fast black metal filtered through screechy/ chaotic late 90's metallic hardcore and moments of monolithic riff-churn that bring to mind "Enemy of the Sun" era Neurosis.

Put another way: This sounds like the album Mork Gryning would have recorded after listening to a fuck-ton of Orchid, Shai Hulud, and Counterblast.

Killer stuff.

Absu

Man, I was never all that into Absu back in the day but goddamn if they're not 1000x better than I remembered. 

Wound up listening to the entirety of their "Tara" album while I was deep down a late 90's/ early 00's USBM rabbit hole this past week and it absolutely fucking floored me... Blistering fast (seriously, there are moments where they get into straight up insane early Cryptopsy, Krisiun tempos) with just enough dissonant melody and frosty blackened "grimness" to hold it all together.

Can't friggin' believe their drummer sang on this stuff... Like, doing vox in the studio is one thing, but how the hell did he pull it off live?! Shrieking out their ultra complex mystical-word-salad lyrics while ripping blastbeats at that speed? You've gotta be fucking kidding me.

Mork Gryning

Uh, anyway, here's something less weepy and emotional than that last post: Ripshit Swedish black metal blasted out at speeds that sometimes border on full-on grind.

This was probably my favorite album circa 1997-98 but I honestly hadn't thought about it in a looong fucking time before it randomly popped into my head the other day and threw it on for a hit of nostalgia.

Definitely one of those albums that is inextricably linked with a very particular time/ place in my life, and a whole lot of memories... Mostly being 17 years old and riding my bike through middle of nowhere MA as the leaves started to change.

Ok I guess this is getting weepy and emotional after all. I'll see myself out.

Somnolent

A swirling maelstrom of dissonant/ abstract black metal, dark ambient, drone doom, and noise being inexorably drawn toward the light-devouring maw of a supermassive black hole... I totally missed this album when it was released right at the ass end of last year, but I've been listening non-stop since I stumbled across it about a month ago.

Manierisme

Super raw and completely fucking zonked (yet somehow still haunting and melodic) black metal from Japan. I remember being pretty stoked on this band back around 2010, but I honestly hadn't listened to them in almost a decade before I pulled this CD out on a whim the other day.

Musically "The Past And Sorrow" kinda feels like the album someone like Nagelfar or The Ruins of Beverast would have recorded after a Nic Blinko/ Syd Barrett style LSD-fueled break from reality, and that's something I'm pretty much always in the mood to hear.

Khthoniik Cerviiks

Ok. Back in the saddle after being sick with an absolutely hideous stomach thing… It was no fun whatsoever and neither is this album of totally fukked war-metal dissonance that comes roaring out the speakers like a cross between Voivod, Nuclear Death, and Sadistik Exekution.