My Music Path

Thanks to Spotify Discover, I discovered the debut album  'Shrines Of Absurdity'  by New York-based technical death metal band Thaetas, r eleased on the 26th of June by Maggot Stomp Records.  And it is, without a doubt, death metal album of the year.   Tracklist: 1. All Consuming Dread 2. Blood Distillery 3. Dearth 4. Shrines To Absurdity 5. Thith 6. Disassociated 7. Envy The Stillborn 8. Isixhenxe 9. Greenhaven The problem with death metal is its audibility. If you can't hear what the musicians are actually doing, the record becomes merely a vague tremor in the air. Having said that, I understand that there are masterpieces/genres that thrive on shitty quality, Darkthrone's  'A Blaze In The Northern Sky'  for example, but with death metal, it's a different story. Death metal is based on technicality creating an atmosphere. Thaetas is doing that by letting us hear every riff, every bassline every drum part (with help from master engineer Colin Marston). The...

Swedish black metalband Ov Shadows have made their second album 'I Djävulens Avbild' (In The Devil’s Image) and it's released on the 14th of August on Canadian label Hypnotic Dirge.  Tracklist: 1. Den Eld Som Tär och Förvrider 2. Blasfemiskt Crescendo 3. Under Dödens Vingar 4. Anaoretens Gap 5. I Djävulens Avbild 6. Spotsk 7. Av Kunskap Krönt Till Gud Black metal is as diverse as regional accents. Some accents sound like an angel pouring honey into your ear, others sound like a dead zombie slug crawling out of it. Ov Shadows fall in the first category since they make really solid black metal. No keyboards or time-consuming interludes, just guitars, bass, drums and vocals and that's it.  The band recorded, mastered and mixed 'I Djävulens Avbild' themselves, and they did an amazing job. You can hear every instrument, the vocals sound immensely dreadful and they all create this cohesive black metal spear once used by the gods but now in the hands of a pagan witc...

On the 21st of August, 20 Buck Spin is releasing the debut album 'Stygian'  by extreme funeral doom band Atramentus.  Tracklist: 1. Stygian I: From Tumultuous Heavens... (Descended Forth The Ceaseless Darkness) 2. Stygian II: In Ageless Slumber (As I Dream In The Doleful Embrace Of The Howling Winds) 3. Stygian III: Perennial Voyage (AcrossThe Perpetual Planes Of Crying Frost & Steel Eroding Blizzards) Atramentus formed in 2012 by Phil Tougas the guitarist in death metal band Chthe'ilist and 'Stygian' is his epic tale of eternity, loss and memories. The word stygian means related to the river Styx, the river in Hades, over which Charon ferries the dead to the underworld according to Greek mythology and mythology plays a big part on this record. It tells the tale of an unnamed knight that makes a pact with the gods to grant him immortality. The knight witnesses the death of the sun and passes out. When he wakes up from a terrifying sleep plagued by sleep paralys...

Holy Fawn is a shoegaze/doomgaze band from Phoenix, Arizona and after their awesome debut album 'Death Spells' in 2018, they released a surprise EP 'The Black Moon' in January of this year. Can they create that same feeling I got when I heard 'Loveless' for the first time?  Tracklist: 1. Candy 2. Tethered 3. Blood Pact The short answer, they do. The long answer is this entire review haha. For me, the idea of shoegaze is first trying to feel some superficial emotion, which opens up much deeper lying ones. Call it euphoric sadness, or cathartic, in the end, you’re addicted to that feeling and you dive into the genre and never come out. That’s what happened to me when I saw a fragment of a noisy, distorted clip on MTV back in the ’90s. I really liked the ocean of guitar noise sound and the angelic vocals. Years later I found out that I saw the 'Only Shallow' clip from My Bloody Valentine. Because of that, I started a journey into that genre and it has...

Ravaged By Ghouls is a one-man deathgrind project from Pittsburgh. Their debut album 'Ominous' is a perfect slab of spooky, horror infused deathgrind.  Tracklist: 1. The Scum Of Your Wob 2. Foul Apparition 3. Withering Into Dusks Embrace 4. A Vomitous Hymn 5. Intestinal Crown 6. Ritualistic Regurgitation 7. Punctured Lungs In Frozen Lakes 8. Rotting Poltergeist 9. Nocturnal Fingers Crept 10. Weeping With Existential Dread With 10 songs filled with tempo changes, a drum machine that sounds like a minigun, death- and black metal riffs, and eerie soundscapes/movie samples, you get a trip to the darkest realms of the earth. Song titles like 'Intestinal Crown' , 'A Vomitous Hymn' and 'Rotting Poltergeist' speak to the imagination of every young Clive Barker fan. So what's the music like you ask? Well.....imagine a well, circled with barbed wire and toxic weeds. When you look in it you see darkness but it's moving upwards. There's a black pillar...

Social media always helps me to find great music. On the Facebook group, There’s No Good Metal Anymore they actually share some great metal albums. And I came across this one: French deathgrind/crust/hardcore band Pilori from France. Their debut album 'À Nos Morts'  (To Our Dead) came out on the 26th of June and it is definitely something to mosh to. Tracklist: 1. Que la Bête Meure (with Dylan Walker from Full Of Hell) 2. Apnée 3. La Grande Terreur 4. Poursuite du Vent (with Matthias Jungbluth from Fange) 5. Roi des Rats 6. À Nos Morts 7. Lorsque Viendra la Nuit 8. Divine Comédie 9. Sous Mes Mains 10. À la Recherche de Temps Perdu 11. Danse Macabre The force is strong with this one, and that force is only strengthened by the fact that Dylan Walker from Full Of Hell is doing vocals on the opening track. Why? Because Pilori and Full of Hell are brothers so to speak. Their music has some similarities, they but it is their aesthetic that binds them. They both take much time to cre...

On the 21st of August, Polish black metalman K.M. releases his second album as Ars Magna Umbrae titled 'Apotheosis' on the might, mighty I, Voidhanger Records. If you like your black metal original and cosmic, watch this label.  Tracklist: 1. Through Fields Of Asphodel 2. She Who Splits The Earth 3. On The Wings Of Divine Fires 4. Apotheosis 5. Mare Tenebrarum 6. Oracle Of Luminous Dark 7. Of Divine Divergence 8. Ignis In Tenebris The band name means something like Way Of The Great Shadow, which sounds great as hell. And that’s also exactly where we’re going. Because Ars Magna Umbrae takes no prisoners when it comes to black metal. The way of incorporating dissonant guitarwork with cinematic soundscapes is exquisitely well done. Dissonance alternated with tremolo-picking and the bending strings trick, which makes the outro of the song 'Of Divine Divergence' one of the best I’ve ever heard. It’s like My Bloody Valentine black metal-style. It's one melting pot of ori...