Black Metal

BLUT AUS NORD set North American release date for new album Deus Salutis Meæ, reveal teaser video

Three years after the critically acclaimed Memoria Vetusta III – Saturnian Poetry, BLUT AUS NORD are back with Deus Salutis Meæ, a brand-new opus eagerly awaited by a horde of fans in need of disturbing sensations.

Mastered by Bruno Varea at Upload-Studio, Deus Salutis Meæ is an unfathomable opus in which BLUT AUS NORD fuses each distinct era of its 23-year existence with innovative readings of cavernous death metal, the occult excesses of outsider industrial, and the abject hauntings of psychotropic doom.

This crepuscular new opus contains ten obscure compositions:

01. δημιουργός
02. Chorea Macchabeorum
03. Impius
04. γνῶσις
05. Apostasis
06. Abisme
07. Revelatio
08. ἡσυχασμός
09. Ex tenebrae Lucis
10. Métanoïa

The astonishing artwork was handed to talented artist Anna Levytska. You can witness the front cover above.

Originating in 1994 from the ashes of VLAD (who released two demos), BLUT AUS NORD are undisputable French Black Metal pioneers, always managing to progress and move forward, evolving in perpetual mutation, developing their own vision of Black Metal.

Choosing, from the start, the total opposite path of regressive bands (who copy what others have done ten years earlier and ten times better), BLUT AUS NORD eschews all the inherent clichés belonging to the genre. BLUT AUS NORD’s Black Metal approach is a fist in the face of mainstream mediocrity, becoming more macabre and sinister through a blend of innovative musical research, subliminal mental manipulation, and an incredible haunted, nightmarish feeling based on disharmony.

BLUT AUS NORD are creators of a hallucinogenic universe, erasing all preconceived ideas of Black Metal – and extreme music in general. They redefine the rules…

Satanism, crimes, violence, and suicides: a new book tells the untold story of Finnish black metal

The Devil’s Cradle: The Story of Finnish Black Metal is the definitive history of one of the most uncompromising music scenes in the world: Finnish black metal. Based on over 50 interviews conducted by Helsinki-based journalist Tero Ikäheimonen between 2014 and 2017, the book unravels the story of Finnish black metal from the late 1980s to modern times.

“Countless of books have been written about black metal over the years, but every time, the Finnish scene has remained merely a side note,” says Ikäheimonen. “It’s an atrocity, since Finland has created some of the world’s most renown underground black metal since the beginning; I wanted to fix that. This book is made for the maniacs all over the world.”

To be released by Svart Publishing on November 1st, The Devil’s Cradle features such bands as Beherit, Impaled Nazarene, Barathrum, Archgoat, Azazel, Diaboli, Darkwoods My Betrothed, Horna, Vornat, Thy Serpent, Wanderer, Urn, Black Dawn, …And Oceans, Musta Surma, Alghazanth, Azaghal, Warloghe, Behexen, Clandestine Blaze, Satanic Warmaster, Ride for Revenge, Goatmoon, IC Rex, Charnel Winds, Cosmic Church, Saturnian Mist, Rienaus, and Abyssion among others.

“It was important for me to base the book on the experiences of true underground spirits – black metal musicians, zine authors, and tape traders,” Ikäheimonen says. “Many stories are told for the first time. I wanted to focus on the music, but not forget the darker side of black metal – all the violence, death, and destruction that have ravaged the Finnish scene. It was crucial to include the spiritual and psychological side of black metal, too. Satanism with all its different notions and the occult are present throughout the book.”

The Devil’s Cradle was first published in Finnish in September 2016 by Svart Publishing (titled Pirunkehto). The English translation features all the original content and two additional chapters. This edition will encompass 500+ pages and be presented in a hard cover. Chapter excerpts will be periodically revealed HERE.

MORE INFO:
www.facebook.com/The-Devils-Cradle-406077333070793

Spanish black/death cult Krossfyre premiere the new track “Burning Torches”

Today, Spanish black/death cult Krossfyre premiere the new track “Burning Torches” The track hails from the band’s highly anticipated debut EP, Burning Torches, set for international release on September 15th via Hells Headbangers.

One of the most exciting newcomers Hells Headbangers has come across lately, Krossfyre formed only last year, but set to work on writing and recording Burning Torches, completing the six-song/20-minute EP last September at Moontower Studios. Although an otherwise brand-new name, Krossfyre include among their ranks members who do or have done time in such bands as Sheidim, Spain’s Graveyard, Körgull the Exterminator, Insulters, Morbid Flesh, and Suspiral. Nevertheless, the creation of Burning Torches itself bespeaks a whole new era of domination.

Right from its very beginning, Burning Torches explodes with an excitement and electricity that are uniquely Krossfyre’s, passion and poison mixed into one. Pounding metal, diabolic force, total power from Hell: this Spanish quintet whip forth a fury that’s strangely familiar yet simultaneously refreshingly unique; it’s a sound that’s been brewing in cast-iron cauldrons for time eternal, but now bubbling over with a youthful joie de vivre. References to be made include classic Nifelheim and Vomitor, but also early Tribulation, later Desaster, Gospel of the Horns, Bestial Mockery, and Nocturnal Graves among others. But the sheer charisma and cantankerous esprit Krossfyre exude – not to mention infectious, gloriously METAL songwriting – puts the band squarely amongst those hallowed ranks. Early days still, to be sure, but on evidence of the forthcoming Burning Torches, the name Krossfyre will soon be upon the tongues of diehards worldwide soon enough. Take these Burning Torches and feel the fire!

Cover and tracklisting are as follows:

Tracklisting for Krossfyre’s Burning Torches
1. Krossfyre (intro)
2. Fire Solution
3. Burning Torches
4. Tabellae Defixionum
5. Black Jaws of Evil
6. The Great Masturbator

KROSSFYRE is:
A.K. – vocals (Sheidim)
C.S. – guitars (Sheidim, Graveyard)
J.B. – guitars (Graveyard, Körgull the Exterminator)
A.T. – bass (Sheidim, Suspiral)
J.G. – drums (Graveyard, Morbid Flesh, Insulters)

MORE INFO:
www.krossfyre.bandcamp.com
www.facebook.com/krossfyre666

KAWIR set release date for new album, reveal video

Today, Iron Bonehead Productions sets November 3rd as the international release date for Kawir’s highly anticipated seventh album, Exilasmos, on CD, vinyl LP, and cassette tape formats.

Since 1993, Kawir have been one of the unsung pillars of the classic Greek black metal sound. While the names Rotting Christ, Varathron, and Necromantia are incredibly important to that style’s foundation, it was Kawir who kept the faith during the ’90s and into the new millennium. In 1994, the then-young band released two pivotal 7″s, Eumenides and a split with Japan’s Sigh – on the pivotal Cacophonous Records, no less – and then followed those up in 1996 with the To Cavirs MLP, which is the first truly pagan-oriented record to hail from the Greek black metal scene. With that mini-album, Kawir set about on a Hellenistic crusade to celebrate their native gods and mythology in their lyrics and sartorial presentation. From the late ’90s onward, the band continued to remain prolific, perpetually committed to fine-tuning their idiosyncratic craft, culminating in underground classics Arai (2005) and Ophiolatreia (2008). Although 2012’s Ισόθεος featured a cross-continental lineup, the album further solidified Kawir’s status as unique icons in the black metal underground.

Read our Interview with Kawir here

Then, just last year, Iron Bonehead released the massively acclaimed Father Sun Mother Moon, which saw Kawir return to an all-Greek lineup and recast their classic sound in a whole new light, and now they continue that forward momentum with the fiery Exilasmos. If the 64-minute Father Sun Mother Moon was the sound of Kawir indulging their most epic expanses – always with power and poignancy, it must be said – then the 42-minute Exilasmos is its punchier and more restless counterpart. Across its six characteristically cascading tracks, Kawir take a decidedly darker and more aggressive turn, racing into the fray in a manner most mid ’90s (or To Cavirs, as it were) but never losing the inherently heroic aspect so crucial – and so engaging, after all these years – to their Hellenic sound. Supplementing that dark heroism is the addition of a fulltime keyboardist in Aristomache, who lends mystical light and shade to the band’s surge ‘n’ swell. Further coloring the windswept wildness of Exilasmos are an endless supply of dramatic solos from guitarists Melanaegis and founder Therthonax.

But, as ever with Kawir, the sonic portrait they paint is imbued with a deep lyricism hailing the Greek pantheon. In the case of Exilasmos, the record is conceptually about the tragic dynasties of the house of Lavdakides (Oedipus Tyrannus) and the house of Atreus. Both dynasties nearly exterminated themselves, and all these violent and inhuman acts brought forth the wrath of Zeus and the curses were consequently laid upon the whole bloodline. “Exilasmos” in Ancient Hellenic Language means calming down the gods’ wrath, so it perfectly describes the tragic events featured in the namesake album.

Recorded at Esoteron Studio in Athens and mixed and mastered by Esoteric’s Greg Chandler at Priory Studio, Exilasmos is yet another gleaming jewel in the rich Kawir canon. Long may they ascend Mount Olympus! Begin that ascent with a special promo video for the new track “Agamemnon”

Cover and tracklisting are as follows:

Tracklisting for Kawir’s Exilasmos
1. Lykaon
2. Oedipus
3. Tantalus
4. Thyestia Deipna
5. Agamemnon
6. Orestes

Read our Interview with Kawir here

Roman Catholic Black Metal Act REVERORUM IB MALACHT stream new album

Today, black metal enigmas Reverorum ib Malacht stream their highly anticipated third album, Ter Agios Numini. Set for international release on August 18th via The Ajna Offensive, stream the entirety of Ter Agios Numini HERE.

Reverorum ib Malacht’s newest offering, however, isn’t all that new, having been composed and compiled and reworked and redesigned over the past 10+ years, kept lingering in a haunted and purgatorial state until just a few months ago. Therefore, those who came to understand and marvel at the likes of Ur-kaos and De Mysteriis Dom Christi will find Ter Agios Numini to be equally as dense and vast and inspired. And yet, Ter Agios Numini reveals another complex dimension of the band, all the while being unapologetically Reverorum ib Malachtian: cryptically, murkily terrifying and simultaneously cathartic with moments of sublime remoteness.

Cover and tracklisting are as follows:

Tracklisting for Reverorum ib Malacht’s Ter Agios Numini
1. Synestesi
2. Long into the Time Beyond
3. Reverorum ib Malachtum
4. Dwellings are His that Die

MEGALITH GRAVE set release date for new SIGNAL REX compilation, reveal first track

Signal Rex sets October 13th as the international release date for is proud to present Megalith Grave’s From Effigies Past, a compilation of the band’s super-rare demo tapes. Playing “Raw Putrid Black Metal” exclusively, this one-man band has built up a sizable discography devoted to the darkest past of the ancient black metal underground. Strictly limited to 200 copies, the From Effigies Past CD compiles the demos Insidious Dark (2011), Through Clandestine Thickets (2012), and Embittered Isolation (2013). Totaling 14 tracks in an hour, here Megalith Grave unleashes a torrent of utterly dead, impossibly grim BLACK METAL done the way in the days before social media and “diehard” vinyl, before the veil of mysticism was pulled back to reveal normal human beings. This is not entertainment; this is pure disgust. “This filth came from the deprivation of this human cesspool which we live in. Solitude and hate feed me the desires to create this abomination,” says mainman Gamol. Hearing is believing, so enter From Effigies Past at your own peril…

The first step can be taken with the track “The Retribution of Life and Death”

Cover and tracklisting are as follows:

Tracklisting for Megalith Grave’s From Effigies Past
1. Intro
2. The Retribution of Life and Death
3. As a Forlorn Shade Drifts
4. In a Time of Darkness and War
5. Decomposing in Memories
6. The Divide Between Unknown Dimensions
7. Coronation In Decay
8. Epoch of Obscurity
9. Decrepit and Forgotten
10. Foreboding Passage to Infinite Truths
11. Embittered Isolation
12. As the Cold Winds Whisper
13. Relentless Animosity Against Human Life
14. Fading Desolate Entity

Tracks from 1 – 5 taken from Insidious Dark demo 2011
Tracks from 6 – 10 taken from Through Clandestine Thickets demo 2012
Tracks from 11 – 14 taken from Embittered Isolation demo 2014

MORE INFO:
www.facebook.com/megalithgrave

SUTEKH HEXEN / BLSPHM – Split 7″ Announcement

Sentient Ruin Labortories is happy to present you with the final and ultimate form of Sutekh Hexen and BLSPHM’s 2014 infamous tape split – now finally available in vinyl format as a dual-colored 7″ enhanced by staggering DIY/hand made packaging.

Originally released by Dead Accents in 2014 as 50 hand-numbered cassettes, to coincide with Debacle Fest 2014, this release sees the two entities tread shadow and reap flesh at the peak of their game and in their period of maximum splendor. With each band spewing forth one spasm each of nerve-shattering audial terror, both movements can be seen as opposite sides of a dark prism which reflect light in different ways, but which both work in harmony to summon a darkened and wretched chasm of aural blight that envelops the listener like a ghostly deluge, wrecking unholy havoc upon their senses.

While this split saw Sutekh Hexen’s infamous abyss of raw black metal, harsh noise, and drone combust with unseen vigor, and BLPHM’s blackened industrial terror ascend to unthinkable qualitative heights, the original extremely limited tape vanished quickly from the market rendering the release both unfindable and somewhat forgotten – a fate much too unfair for such an iconic and masterful accomplishment in recent extreme underground music history.

As such we could not be happier to bring you the second and ultimate incarnation of this gloriously wretched split as a dual color vinyl 7″, elegantly enhanced by a die-hard hand made packaging consisting of a black heavy cardstock flap, each copy letterpressed one by one by hand with silver inks by Demian Johnston of BLSPHM himself. The standard and more widely available edition will be available as purple vinyl, while a limited edition black vinyl will also be available in extremely small quantities and with a slightly more elaborate look given by a letterpressed OBI strip. The staggering layout was designed by Sutekh Hexen founding member Kevin Gan Yuen using source imagery hand-drawn by surreal horror art luminary Stephen Wilson, while the original songs were remastered for vinyl by none other than James Plotkin himself.

Satanize Stream Death Mass Execution EP

Portuguese war-horde Satanize stream the entirety of their forthcoming Death Mass Execution EP set for international release on August 7th via Larval Productions on 7″ vinyl format, stream Satanize’s Death Mass Execution in its entirety here.

A special EP comprising three exclusive tracks, Death Mass Execution is a quick ‘n’ concise attack capping more than a decade of Satanize terrorizing the underground. Hailing from the fertile Portuguese black metal scene, Satanize forego their scene’s usual withering rawness for a righteously barbaric assault on the senses. Pounding and pulsing, overwhelming its gibbering intensity, Death Mass Execution ably approximates its title: sonic slaughter abounds at every chaotic, careening turn. And yet, for however jagged their bestial blackgrind may be, Satanize wield their physicality with an almost martial strictness – and escape is never an option, only submission. Completed by a noise intro by Erratix (Rick Smith of Caveman Cult/Torche and David Smith of Shitstorm/Mehkago NT) and cover artwork by Sickness666, Death Mass Execution is sure to satisfy maniacs of Black Witchery, Conqueror, Morbosidad, and especially old Spear of Longinus and Impiety.

Cover and tracklisting are as follows

Tracklisting for Satanize’s Death Mass Execution
1. Purge Sacred Blood
2. Doom Conjuration
3. Death Mass Execution

BARBARIC HORDE stream new WAR ARTS tape

Today, barbaric horde Barbaric Horde stream the entirety of their highly anticipated second strike, Tainted Impurity. Set for international release on August 4th via War Art Productions on cassette tape, hear Barbaric Horde’s Tainted Impurity in its entirety here.

Early last year, this Portuguese duo assaulted the underground with its debut demo, Gasmask Perpetrators. Released by War Arts and aptly fucking titled, Gasmask Perpetrators incited rapturous obeisance among diehards who worship at the altar of Black Witchery, Profanatica, and Archgoat. And now, yet another aptly-fucking-titled tape arrives in the form of Tainted Impurity. Taking the warring bestiality of its predecessor one step further, here Barbaric Horde are both more unhinged and more martial, unleashing wave upon wave of unfettered filth with total arrogance, exercising mastery over their maelstrom whilst clawing deep within the caverns of chaos. It’s the sound of bestial and (yes) barbaric black metal torn asunder and rebuilt upon a throne of purity – or indeed, Tainted Impurity. Submit to Barbaric Horde’s war-mongering violence or forever cower in fear…

Cover and tracklisting are as follows:

Tracklisting for Barbaric Horde’s Tainted Impurity
1. Bestial Offensor
2. Death the First Option
3. Impulse to Attack
4. SDD (Sulfuric Death Demons)
5. Morbid Rape

SACROSCUM set release date for their debut album, reveal first track

Unholy Prophecies sets October 28th as the international release date for Sacroscum’s highly anticipated debut album, Drugs & Death. Ever aptly titled, Drugs & Death is a scourge upon one’s sanity and sanctity, a black-hole blight that swallows you whole. Sacroscum aren’t fucking around.

Sacroscum was formed in 2015 by J. and SS. After playing music together for a long time and trying to create something unique, the duo mixed influences of Darkthrone, early Celtic Frost, Discharge, Skitsystem, Inquisition, and everything they thought would be fitting. Combined with utterly hateful lyrics and a healthy disdain for most of you, Sacroscum was born.

Thus armed, Sacroscum soon transcended musical means and become a philosophy for the two, which can be broken down thusly:

SACROSCUM can be music.
SACROSCUM can be a mirror.
SACROSCUM can be a judge.
SACROSCUM can be a knife.
SACROSCUM can be whatever you want.

But, ultimately, SACROSCUM is whatever the fuck we want it to be.

After some recording sessions in their rehearsal room, they created eight pieces of musick which were then released under the title of Stillbirth, courtesy of Unholy Prophecies in 2016, on cassette tape. Everything “do it yourself” from beginning to end, Stillbirth came from raw, primal aggression, setting down Sacroscum’s foundation for death, dedication, disgust, and what lies beyond all these. But now, with the imminent release of their debut album, Drugs & Death, Sacroscum are primed for their most bountiful ejaculation of filth and hatred – the fullness of their cumming, as it were. Recorded at the band’s rehearsal studio and mixed and mastered by Fabi Krapp at Ruins Rust Studios in southern Germany, Drugs & Death is yet another staunchly DIY affair, but this time, the band have dialed in their most destructive material to date, simply taking what once was, adding some unexpected elements and making it what once will always be: truly, DRUGS & DEATH.

Nine anti-anthems, 41 minutes of foulness, Sacroscum never stop the madness, and heartily encourage you to finally drink yourself to death but with a smile on your face. “Do it…”

Check out “Waste, Horror & Degradation,” the first dosage of Drugs & Death

Cover and tracklisting are as follows:

Tracklisting for Sacroscum’s Drugs & Death
1. Initium
2. Drugs & Death
3. Autoerotic Thanatophilia
4. Gutter.Moloch.God
5. Vermin
6. Waste, Horror & Degradation
7. Skin Canvas
8. Downwards Spiral
9. DCLXVI
MORE INFO:
www.facebook.com/sacroscum666