Think about it this way: the fact that Beethoven’s third symphony includes the label “Eroica” (“heroic”) is a useful signpost, but go into it without that knowledge and the music carries the message just as plainly.

On its latest album, the French trio Aluk Todolo reduces the extra-musical clues to a single word: voix (which is French for “voice” or “voices”). And while that might seem like a bit of a knowing wink by this all-instrumental group, it actually invites the listener to consider the properties of speech that each player brings to the album, and to focus on the way in which the dizzying trance of the music is raised, syllable by unspoken syllable, into a constantly shifting conversation between the three instrumental voices.

That conversation is a wide-ranging one, because Voix touches on (but rarely settles down into) krautrock, post-punk, goth, noise, psychedelic rock, free jazz, and the ghostly afterimage of black metal. It’s a head-spinning amount of variety made all the more impressive by the fact that there is no extraneous instrumentation beyond drums, bass, and guitar. Voix is a single, forty-three minute piece split across six tracks, so although each section has something like its own theme, moods and motifs are repeated (or perhaps more accurately warped and reflected) throughout the album to give it a truly unified feeling.

Aluk Todolo has few true peers. Chaos Echoes and Oranssi Pazuzu are likely their closest contemporaries, though Voix is more tightly honed than recent albums from either. Voix is also handily Aluk Todolo’s finest album to date. It echoes much of what made 2012’s Occult Rock so excellent, but by cutting back on the overwhelming sprawl of that double album’s running time, Voix‘s efficiency makes it all the more potent.

Crucially, though, Voix‘s title is suggestive but hardly prescriptive. Depending on how you experience sound, Voix may speak like the hushed and desperate muttering of a seance by the fractal dance of glass-scattered candlelight, summoning the dead to stand near us though they may never report from their country of wakeful silence. It may speak like the electric stillness of a rain-battered city hurrying to shut tight the windows and ride out nature’s attempt to reclaim its primordial wildness from the usurpers. It may speak to you (as it does to me) like the ship’s log of an exploration of deep space, the travelers transfixed by awe and wonder even as they know in their bones it is a journey from which none shall return. Aluk Todolo’s music is both cosmic and firmly grounded, as if each sound is dredged up bodily from the unyielding soil while the player aims it at distances measurable only by parallax.

Genre policing is boring and unproductive, but it shouldn’t be controversial to point out that Voix is much closer to a jazz album than a metal album. In truth, it’s neither, but if ECM Records had an alternate universe psych-goth imprint, Aluk Todolo would be a shoe-in for its flagship act. Voix is taut, brooding, surging, contemplative, twitching, and harrowing, and although often dense it is never exactly difficult.

Knowing full well the risk of hyperbole, Voix is also marked by genius-level input from each of its three players. Not only does each have a startling command of his own instrument, but the sympathetic – nearly telepathic – interaction between the three of them is what produces bristling tension and catharsis throughout the album. The opening track “8:18” flits and swerves in a pulsing 5/8 meter, and when the guitar swells to the front about 5:20 in, it’s as a freakish doppelganger of Nine Inch Nails‘s cover of “Lost Souls.” Although the early momentum in second track “7:54” comes from Antoine Hadjioannou’s irrepressible kick drum, it soon transitions to a subtly searching, not-quite-cyclical guitar lead.

Given that the album is an unbroken composition, it’s a little beside the point to highlight individual moments, but the pacing of Voix is a large part of its success. The opening of the third track “5:01” convulses with disorienting sheets and fragments of guitar noise while Hadjioannou keeps a free but steady pulse with toms and snare rolls, but soon the piece evaporates into openness, slowly built chords hanging in the air like the penumbra of an unseen satellite. The album’s first half reaches a nervy climax near the end of the track, when all three instruments lock in for a few brief moments of high-fret acrobatics in a spindly, nearly uncountable meter.

After that great cresting wave of the third movement, the fourth section of the album pulls way back, letting the bass frame an eight-bar minor chord motif against a backdrop of lightly skittering cymbal work. In fact, nearly all of the fourth track’s seven minutes are scene-setting: Shantidas Riedacker’s guitar tosses off quietly unnerving, effects-laden demonstrations while Matthieu Canagueir’s bass stalks patiently, waiting for its cue about a minute from the end to break that pattern and dig waaaaaay in for a thickly elastic riff that locks in with Hadjioannou’s snare to cage the guitar in a prism.

For the first two minutes of “5:34,” the band is both locked in and fighting with itself, the tumbling bass line egging Riedacker’s guitar on into tighter, choked-off phrases that eventually fracture and spill into the most outright surf black metal riffing of the album. But it’s Canagueir’s bass that truly carries the piece, reprising the third movement’s theme to shepherd the album into its final shape. For the last movement, the bass and drums take their cues from each other, with Hadjioannou’s accents tagging Canagueir’s insistent bass in a manner reminiscent of Miles Davis‘s Nefertiti while Riedacker plays a slowly unfolding drone symphony like an iron sun cresting the horizon. And the final coup is the mark that the whole band hits at 4:57. It’s the sort of thing that sounds small on its own, but in the context of the album it’s a huge, world-ending landing.

I’ve been listening to this album fairly obsessively for the last couple months, and I still don’t know exactly what it’s about. But each time I listen I’m pulled in a different direction, and each time I hear new detail, new nuance, new shading in what could have been a monochromatic exercise. But then again, maybe this is an exercise after all: an interlocking set of etudes written in a shadow clef; the mapping of an uncharted territory where compasses fail and the cartographer resorts to a dark geometry; the recitation of a story in a language no one speaks for an audience no one remembers.

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To put it most simply, Funereal Presence is a more identifiably black metal version of Negative Plane. While there are still heaps of twists, slithers, swirls, and trills, The Archer Takes Aim feels notably less free form than an album such as Stained Glass Revelations. It brings plenty of rockier passages by galloping away or taking on a bit of a Ludicra vibe, ups the neo-classicism by going a tad Dissection, offers the occasional thrash, and shows a serious knack for layering intertwining melodies. There is also the fact that the album is loaded to the gills with killer, irresistible riffage, ranging from the playful leads to the absolutely cutting tremolo lines heard throughout. The latter dominate the title track, helping to make it the most exciting of the bunch.

From well-placed chimes and bells to variations in the guitar tone for clean passages, The Archer Takes Aim boasts a stout attention to detail. One such detail is the varied, always fitting drum performance, featuring blasts, gallops, and an old school love for the hi-hat (the 6/8 passages in “Gestalt des Endes” are beyond cool). But perhaps no single element stands out more than the wailing clean vocals. When they come over a period of sustained gloom, they give off more than the slightest Attila Csihar feel (think “Life Eternal”), and when they are coupled with the harsh vocals, they are yet another example of how this album really nails its layering. These wails are also the last piece of the slightly theatrical puzzle that Funereal Presence has put together.

If one had to pick a nit, one might say that the three main songs here don’t quite justify their immense lengths (two over 12 minutes, one over 16). But one could also make the point that by filling every minute with cool material, Funereal Presence has indeed justified the epic approach. Even closing instrumental “Dämmerlicht” – the type of song that could easily be construed as an afterthought – is loaded with enough pure radness to prove a fitting finish. It all adds up to make The Archer Take Aim an album that ought to get more than a couple serious looks from black metal fans. For those already into Negative Plane, it should be downright addictive.

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I can certainly understand why plenty would fall into the latter category: Listening to this sort of burning, unholy mess feels a bit like the sonic equivalent of having your face pulled apart by ghoulish meat hooks after opening Lemarchand’s box. Opener “Anteinfierno,” for example, fires from the gate like 10,000 pissed devils with 10,000 pounds of explosives keastered and ready to blow, and each tune that follows features extensive measures of similarly crackling, chaotic, swirling maelstrom crammed to agonizing excess through generous use of wriggling, maggoted leads. Distressing, to put it mildly, but to quote a curious statement featured in Death‘s accompanying documentation:

“The second Teitanblood album corrects the misconception about death metal being music. Mortui vivos docent.”

That last bit translates from Latin into “the dead teach the living,” and the first bit is something your Daft Punk-listening pal has been trying to convince you of for years. So, yeah… Not exactly the prime choice for an accompanying soundtrack to your bbq with the neighbors while the kids hit the ol’ Slip’N Slide. Unless your idea of Shangri-la involves endlessly explaining why and when you decided to let your life derail into a fiery, deranged wreck.

As mentioned, the majority of Death‘s material is pretty lengthy. Five of the seven tunes break the 9 minute mark, with three pushing well-beyond 10, so it’s a punishing, lingering trip recommenced from the equally drawn-out EPs the band produced prior to this release.

“Sleeping Throats of the Antichrist” (12:27) starts with a nasty crawl that quickly gives way to a rotting gallop and surprisingly scooting midriff, but any semblance of deceleration gets blown to bosons once “Plagues of Forgiveness” thrusts the listener’s face right back into Hell’s boiler for 9+ minutes. This is Death‘s principle goal: To smolder, pulverize, and then slowly drag you kicking and screaming through the blistering soot. Lovely stuff. And closer “Silence of the Martyrs” drops the curtain with 16 minutes of unnerving horror intensified with the sort of cursed monk chanting you’d expect to hear during the birth of Rosemary’s baby.

Comparitively speaking, Teitanblood is to death metal what Germany’s Katharsis is to black metal: A terminally ugly, hallucinatory, abysmal gape into the appalling void that awaits all you filthy sinners, and Death represents an ideal accomplice to your fiery descent.

Sure to be one of 2014’s most formidable highlights.

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Before you get all huffy, please keep in mind that I’m not generally one of these internet generation assholes who live and breathe only for irony, post-irony, and meta-post-irony, for whom sincerity and hard work are nothing but qualities to be openly mocked rather than praised or imitated. But the problem is, I can hear Necros Christos’s gears cranking so damn loudly throughout the background of the album. Great music typically requires artful composition, but then equally important is the ability to erase the lingering traces of that artifice.

But maybe I’m getting ahead of myself. Doom Of The Occult sounds great, with a nice thick guitar tone and deeply resonant bass. The kick drum is a bit weak-sounding, but the overall sound is full and clear, with every riff cleanly articulated. If anyone (*ahem* Metal-Archives *cough*) tries to tell you that Necros Christos is some kind of black/death hybrid, they are stupid and they are liars and they are not to be trusted: This band is pretty straight-on death metal, with the tempos hovering mostly around the crypt-crawling creep of the doomier stylings of Incantation, Coffins, Hooded Menace, or maybe a half-speed, shit-boring version of Nile. The vocals are invariably delivered in the same relentlessly rhythmic fashion as Glen Benton. The tempo is never the same, nor is the almost sing-songy delivery of Benton’s Deicidal barks usually there, but there remains a nearly unbreakable lockstep between the vocals and the guitar riffing.

The plentiful interludes are consistent, with the “Temple” segments featuring organ and occasional chanting, while the “Gate” interludes are almost sitar-sounding acoustic guitar pieces. These interludes aren’t really bad, but they are completely superfluous, particularly the shitty little 20 or 30 second snippets of organ. (“Gate 2” and “Gate 4” are both more interesting, drawn-out interludes, with flute, acoustic guitars, and some tabla-esque drumming. They sound more like they should slot into one of Karl Sanders’s solo albums – well, the good one, at least.) They might have been able to break up the flow of a really intense metal album, but they can’t do anything here for the fact that all of these songs are internally monotonous. Where Necros Christos excels is in penning some groovily catchy death/doom riffs in essentially every one of the proper songs. Where they falter, however, is in doing much too little to vary those riffs, leading individual songs to sound great at first, but eventually to massively overstay their welcome.

I mentioned previously that this album sounds great, meaning it has a very clear production, which of course sounds all for the good. Doom Of The Occult actually suffers from a rather strange inversion: Too much contemporary death metal (especially of the creepy-crawly, occult death/black Incant-olation variety) masks rather effective songwriting with intentionally poor production. Necros Christos, on the other hand, has a nearly pristine production which ends up dooming (har har) the record to easier scrutiny of the songwriting, which just doesn’t hold up. The implication, therefore, is that a dank and murky production job on this same exact batch of songs might make it easier to overlook the flawed songwriting. (That having been said, very little could have been done to make me overlook the fact that this album’s 73 minutes feel like 8,000 minutes.) Let me put it in purely scientific terms: This album has no balls. Necros Christos seems to desperately want Doom Of The Occult to be an atmospheric, claustrophobic journey to some shadowy nightmare kingdom, but for an ostensibly extreme metal album, there is very little that is either intense or extreme about the album (apart from the intense difficulty of sitting through the entire record multiple times). Instead, this is, quite frankly, boring and utterly internally predictable, and sounds more like a one-man band than any other death metal I’ve heard recently.

And look, I know it’s a four piece band, and I’m not trying to denigrate the individual members’ contributions, but this whole stinking mess sounds like one guy cooked up a grand vision of an Album before any music was ever written, and then essentially retroactively filled in riffs and drum fills and slow, high-school-talent-show guitar solos around the sides to mortar up the brickwork of Concept and Vocal Up-Front-itude. Rarely is the bass doing anything different from the guitar, which is rarely doing anything different from the drums, all of which are arranged too comfortably around the outside beats of the vocal rhythms (see “Hathor of Dendera” for a “good” example of this). This is essentially the same problem I have with last year’s Dawnbringer album (which still does absolutely nothing for me): both albums are so transparently composed (in both senses of the word). The compositions are, in fact, meticulous, but that translates to every single song sounding like it was metronomically-plotted and scribbled out on blank staff paper before ever having been played; this is essentially an anti-jam record. Consequently, nothing feels spontaneous, improvisatory, or unexpected. If you close your eyes, you can essentially visualize the structure of the songs as they are played – “Okay, we’ll play this riff through four times across eight measures, while you, Mr. Drummer Man, play a little fill to bridge us into that first and fourth measures, and after that, we’ll slip directly into the half-time section, where we play the same riff slowed down, and repeat it FOR GODDAMN EVER.”

Most of the guitar solos also end up sounding very much the same, modeled on frequently ‘Eastern’-sounding scales (I don’t know my Phrygian from my Mixolydian, so I’m stuck giving Edward Saïd a posthumous heart attack) and using similar flourishes (see “Succumbed to Sarkum Phagum,” “Invoked from Carrion Slumber,” and “Necromantique Nun” – really, guys?), and while I’m sure there’s probably some grand numerological/magickal/kabbalah-ish significance to having 23 songs on both the band’s full-length albums, honestly, who gives a shit?

The most unfortunate consequence of the unbearable monotony of this album is that when notable moments do crop up, like the massive riff breakdown into (yet another) slow section just before 3:00 into “The Pharaonic Dead,” their effect is blunted tremendously by one’s active interest having long since been beaten down by a parade of individually okay-to-good but collectively tedious songs. By the time “Descending into the Kingly Tombs” rolls around, I can no longer decide if the way that the vocals follow the exact same line as the guitars is completely obnoxious or totally awesome. In fact, this song may be one of the best on here (despite the fact that when it kicks into the album’s fastest tempo the drums sound clipped as shit, and the band sounds like it’s about to fall apart…), but because my will to live has been so sorely sapped by having already sat through, what, 64 minutes of this rather mediocre mess, all critical faculties have dribbled out my nose and I have melted into a loose gelatinous sac of protoplasm.

Sometimes playing slower can make every note and musical phrasing seem weightier and more impressive; Here, the attention focused on each note by both the too-slow pacing and crystal-clear production actually detracts from the impact, making each note, each riff, each snail’s-pace solo seem insufferably ponderous and hesitant. If one removes all of the interludes, the album is mercifully reduced to 54 minutes, but that’s probably still almost 20 minutes too long. Somewhere within Doom Of The Occult is buried a rather tidy 35 minutes of reasonably satisfying death metal trying desperately to escape from excessive structure and insufficient variation. Extreme metal is a nasty business, yet we are drawn to it, because even when this art form is spiteful, miserable, caustic, antisocial, nihilistic noise, the very best of it remains imbued with a certain vitality and intensity that verges on joyfulness. Doom Of The Occult demonstrates the will-sappingly dull results of a band in pursuit of all of the sound and fury, yet which has found none of that grace, and none of the joy.

The post Necros Christos – Doom Of The Occult Review appeared first on Last Rites.

The most obvious place to begin seemed to be production, of all things. I don’t think I’ve ever begun a review with a discussion of production, but this one seemed to warrant it. The knob-sliding and -tweaking here is liable to be a love-it-or-hate-it kind of a deal. Some of you fine folks will love it for its allegiance to all things unfiltered, unclean, unholy. And everything here comes from far away. Not in the next room; maybe the next dimension. Some of you will hate it because you don’t give a shit about such aesthetic and maybe consider it a copout or even some sort of ironic sellout. Either way, Negative Plane doesn’t give a fuck what you think.

But then it also made sense to begin with a discussion of, well, just what the hell kind of music is this, anyway? Black metal seems to be the tag most often attached, but these are not your typical frostbitten riffs. In fact, they’re probably best cast as thrash riffs, though they’re pretty far outside those bounds, as well. The drum patterns are unorthodox and seem to be laid down with a calculated coarseness. Fuck precision. There is plenty of bass here and it will not be ignored, every bit as busy as the other instruments, sometimes in time with them, often breaking its own ground. Plenty of accompaniment, too, from tolling bells to ethereal chants to two-story pipe organ. And then there’s the lead guitar, gliding back and forth between weird, twisty riffs and classical motifs and virtuosity delivered with more mystique than conceit and weirdly awesome departures, like what seems to be a “surf guitar” effect that somehow works perfectly in this context. So what does all this add up to? I’m of a mind to just call it progressive and move on.  Either way, Negative Plane doesn’t give a fuck what I call it.

Although, maybe I should begin with how it’s progressive, because it’s not progressive in the same way as the bands that come to mind when you hear the term “progressive.” So, progressive how? What makes progressive progressive? Sure it’s a sound, but it doesn’t have to be all clever harmonies and lilting melodies and synthesized keyboards and super-clean sheen. Moving past “prog” to “progressive,” then, the term more completely captures a structural approach that uses odd time signatures and long, intricate songs full of instrumental acrobatics and contrasting interludes. Progressive music simply moves beyond its purported boundaries. And Stained Glass Revelations does that. Thing is, this record works outside this constraint, as well, and either way, Negative Plane doesn’t give a fuck about boundaries.

But then, of course, why ought I not begin with the album’s evil air? Malevolence is a hot commodity, after all. But this is a different kind of evil. So unconcerned with the good, the light, the living that it renders the contrast necessary to define evil obsolete. It beautifies death. But isn’t revelry – even in death – a function of joy and, therefore, a concession to life? Well, this isn’t exactly celebration. More like an artist’s manic fugue, ablaze with an insatiable taste for creation via destruction. Either way, Negative Plane doesn’t give a fuck about common conceptions.

In the end, I decided it best to begin with what this record does for me. I’ve said many times (I understand if you haven’t been paying attention) that my favorite albums are those that take me some place mysterious and fantastic. I’ve said often, as well, that this demands something of me, the listener, in that I have to get myself right for the record. Get my context straight. Stained Glass Revelations is one of those special albums, to be sure, and it plays well in all levels of light, but it does its best work when I’ve taken the time to invite the darkness, both literally and figuratively.

Finding myself alone late at night, enraged at the traffic-jammed, Wal-Marted, credit report-scored banality of the daylit world, I open wide my windows, drawing closed the curtains behind them.  Walls illumined with the gaunt glow of candlelight, I pull my wandering shadow to the center of the room and, anticipating metamorphosis , fear bleeds over my anger. Eyelids tight and aspect disquiet, I hunch, arms raised, palms up, wretched fingers stretched skyward and my space becomes deep, cavernous, the ancient cathedral once sanctuary for salvation seekers, now a place for the conjuring of souls whose salvation never came; long ago bathed in light now swallowed by blackened blue. And “The Fall” commences.

Fear succumbs to mania, reservation to revelation as I slip the mundane to become master of Hell’s symphony. My limbs extended to their trembling limits, distant bells beckon electric discharge to rise, expand in vast cacophony. Surging power reaches my arms to the netherworld, unlocking the door, unleashing the black from beyond the frame and sepulchral spectres engulf the room on electric waves born of bone-fretted instruments, forbidden notes cast backward, overturned, whirling upward. Great crazed flurries of my gnarled hands propel reverberant waves, careening the spirits between and against the walls in byzantine patterns, each note relinquishing its energy only as the next usurps its space.

Vast emptiness is now choked by a tortuous sonic web spanning the breadth and depth of this unholy place, its spaces pressed violently with the deadened drub of toms overstretched with the skin of innocents. Entangled scarves of sound coalesce to dark symbologic tapestries threaded with neoclassical strands, a terrible beauty against a backdrop of necrolust. From my blackened throat froths a voice not my own, the manifestation of centuries of death-staid spite and hatred loosed this night in an eclipse of righteous light. Purity blighted, bedlam relents and the deathly temple is drained to inanimate void, save towering calcite cylinders piping hymnal blasphemies, and I crumble, depleted, to the moss-ridden floor, sensations reduced to a vague awareness of being.

Stained Glass Revelations, primal in substance and grandiose in execution, is destined to be at once revered and reviled and the loudest voices on either side will cite identical criteria to support their positions. But the discussion is relevant only to those of us residing in the positive picture plane, all of it reduced to academic masturbation the moment the record was conceived because, outside of their creative sphere, Negative Plane just doesn’t give a fuck.

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This year certainly has not lacked in ugliness, but there’s been a fundamental absence of forward movement among the black and death metal crowd in many cases. The relatively short period of time between the debut and subsequent follow-up from Alberta, Canada’s Weapon could have been a worrying sign of a rushed new labor, but much like what Krallice achieved last year with Dimensional Bleedthrough, From The Devil’s Tomb is a prime example of a band laying the heavy hammer down to those hot irons in a big way with a brawnier, even more aggressive sophomore effort that expands upon the groundwork laid out on the debut with occasionally jaw-dropping results.

What separates this release from its predecessor is how Weapon has integrated a quirkiness to their sound that is undeniably catchy but also dead serious to boot. Although energetic, the abundant riffs on this album are both technical yet very easy to grab a hold of through smart repetition and virtually ceaseless rage. The lead-off title track is highly representative of the remarkably quick growth spurt the band has gone through, arranging the pounding uptempo sections to coincide with slower, equally strong moments that almost sound mosh-worthy (terrible term, I know) and most conducive to snapping necks. Even though things are a bit more in-your-face overall this time around, the same strangely mystical qualities Drakonian Paradigm exuded are also present here, but deepened in groove and leaning heavily toward a warlike muse as displayed on “Vested In Surplice And Violet Stole” and the flat-out nasty “Furor Divinus”.

Closely approaching the fifty-five minute mark spread out over nine tracks, the flow of this disc really couldn’t have been planned better, most notably by placing the brief and peculiarly titled “Lefthandpathyoga” directly in the middle to help the listener catch their breath to something that isn’t just random filler. There’s almost an elegance to their power, like a deceptive martial art or a sophisticated method of dismemberment. Weapon manages to add class to a very foul and raw base of operations, highlighted by the asymmetrical charge of “The Inner Wolf“ and the savage grace of following standout track “Sardonyr”, which is simply one of the most intelligent and bruising songs from any band this year. Both of those songs show Weapon to be a formidable force when it comes to variation, melodic daring, and thunderous syncopation, excelling to the point where the brooding “Trishul” feels rather subdued and restrained in comparison.

Curiously, as fresh and implacable as From The Devil’s Tomb sounds, it’s also not completely new or innovative by any stretch, as clearly most of the material here could very well appeal to fans of bands such as Absu and Morbid Angel. This wispy familiarity isn’t a hindrance, and as shown on the majestically grandiose closer “Towards The Uncreated”, there is a classic eloquence that surrounds even the most malevolent sections. Immaculately produced, and impeccably performed as if by refined demons with filthy wings, this act has shaped a creation of mass destruction indeed. A suave construct of arcane and elaborate force, this is an album that I highly doubt will die quietly. Obscene, and beautiful.

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One listen to one song was all it took to know that I not only wanted to pen words about this album, but likely buy it as well. The name Nightbringer only brought to mind a vague remembrance of positivity, but a thorough digestion confirmed and furthered initial impressions that Apocalypse Sun is one harshly serious slab of forward-thinking, instrumentally impressive and downright soul-shattering black metal. These Colorado natives may ring up occasional parallels to more well-known USBM acts, but the material contained herein ranks amongst the genre’s most seething, regardless of geography.

The opening duo of “I Am I” and “Supplication Before the Throne of Tehom” displays the faster, more active of the two approaches that Nightbringer brings to the table on full-length number two. The dissonant and torrential attack of interlacing riffs and extremely skilled drumming might (might, I say) have listeners imagining a marriage between the soaring guitar techniques of Krallice and the staunch devotion to darkness best exemplified by Deathspell Omega. (It must be noted that Nightbringer has actually existed much longer than the former, and thusly the comparison is meant only as a reference point. So don’t start calling these guys “Evil Krallice”; it wouldn’t be accurate.) The music swarms, with differing elements taking turns shifting melodies, as if they are engaged in some twisted high speed chase as an ultimate homage to Discordia herself. It is often difficult to discern exactly how many guitar parts exist at one time, and the fact that things stay tight is a testament to both the band’s skill as musicians and the quality of their compositions.

The other approach employed is the dirge, eschewing the more melancholic tendencies heard in the Pacific Northwest and instead using the less-intensified music to accentuate the emotional disturbances communicated throughout the album. On these tracks, Nightbringer utilizes a form of tempo variation in which tremolo picking is stretched over slower drumming in the same way that a canvas is stretched over its frame. The resulting music appears pushed beyond its own limits and thusly provides the listener with merely the illusion of respite between the more cacophonous pieces.

If a criticism has to be made, it is that Apocalypse Sun ultimately loses a bit of focus within its 66 minutes, due not to the existence of mediocre material (there is none), but more so to the album’s immense scope. Thankfully, the closing trio of “Nephal- The Seat of Pan-Daimonium,” “The Utterance of Kasab’el,” and “Fount of the Nighted God-Head” back-loads the album with ferocious quality. The first is an absolutely wild ride that sees the band using every tool at their disposal to provide not only the album’s best track but also its most intense. The second is the poisoned deep breath before the plunge, and the third is the extended death rattle, bleeding with finality but very much not with a happy ending.

Apocalypse Sun might stop short of the masterpiece tag — it isn’t quite Foulest Semen of a Sheltered Elite — but it is easily one of the best black metal albums of recent memory, standing particularly unique amongst Nightbringer’s USBM peers. Essential to even the most stubborn of the corpse-painted hordes, this record will create that special kind of venomous joy that only a truly top notch black metal album can provide. In other words, from the first furious introduction of the swarm, you will just know.

If you require more convincing, know this: I have already purchased my copy.

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Sometimes you come across bands so transgressive in their approach that it seems pointless to judge them against even the loosest standards commonly accepted in music. Case in point, Teitanblood’s full-length debut. Purveying a form of death/black/grind almost ridiculously raw and primitive, stacking Teitanblood against even the more grizzly extreme metal outfits would still have those bands sounding tame and reserved by comparison.

The primary songs here consist of little more than a barrage of sloppy blastbeats and muddy tremolo riffs interspersed with ghostly, almost inaudible vocals and numerous noisy, Repulsion-esque guitar solos. The guitar sound is devastatingly heavy, completely enveloping all the other instruments in a sea of black sludge that strongly harkens back to Carcass’s unforgettable Wall-of-Sound on Symphonies of Sickness. While Seven Chalices tends to go by in an incoherent blur on the first listen or two, repeated spins reveal some pretty damn solid riffwork, especially in “Domains Of Darkness and Ancient Evil” and the title track, satisfying if only because of how utterly animalistic and filthy it sounds. Breaking up the pace are a few “atmospheric” interludes which, while serving nicely to give the listener some breather time from the relentless noisy bursts of the main songs, are overly long and frequent and lose their luster fairly quickly. In fact, the album’s length (almost an hour) and repetitive nature may make it a hard front-to-back listen for some, but when taken on a song by song basis, the sheer barbarity of this music is at least fairly intriguing and entertaining, if not especially engaging.

Seven Chalices takes the primitive, old-school aesthetic popular in death metal these days and shoves it down to a whole new extreme of dark depravity. If you prefer your death metal with even a marginal amount of clarity or songwriting focus, look elsewhere. But for those who crave this style at its most rudimentary and savage form, Teitanblood delivers with a vengeance. You are warned.

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