Highly reminiscent of the bass-heavy rumblings of Mortuary Drape among other early black metal bands from the Czech Republic and Greece. Great lyrics, too.

When it comes to black metal in Chile, Bewitched has been there since the beginning, yet they’ve never fallen off or sold out at any point. No band has come quite close to sounding like them either. Bewitched’s style of black metal draws heavily from a pool of unique influences ranging from Candlemass, Mercyful Fate, and some Norwegian bands at the time that defined the black metal sound of the 90s. All of this culminates in an opus of instrumental prowess and a vocal performance for the ages.

Extreme, arrogant, jaunty, and consonant French death metal.

Gene has once again asserted his supremacy in the underground of extreme metal guitar playing with this album. While I love Blasphemic Cruelty and Apocalypse Command, Perdition Temple is the most well known of Gene’s post-Angelcorpse projects for a few good reasons — breakneck speed, shit-hot riffs, and Impurath’s vocals to top it all off. Buy it.

Arghoslent has been radio silent for nearly a decade now and HoA does more than simply fill that Gelal-shaped void in your heart. Much like Arghoslent, this is imperious, martial, and arrogant death metal played with melodic intent. So many brilliant riffs on this album give it a haughty rock and roll attitude that so many modern death metal bands are severely bereft of.

Been in love with this band since Nordkarpatenland, and it’s been quite a ride to hear the way they’ve carved out a signature sound that is both rooted in the ways of old school heavy metal and embryonic black metal from the Eastern bloc during the late 80s and early 90s. The chorus to the title track is something you need to experience for yourself.

This is by no means your average black metal album. For the sake of brevity, CdG’s black metal sounds like a remarkably eldritch Italian doom metal band with a necromancer hailing from Innsmouth as their vocalist. That said, this is the perfect opportunity to tell a macabre tale of woe and witchery to accompany some truly demented black metal. With a lesser band, this could have gone terribly awry. CdG is no such band.

This is the best way to end the perfect story of black metal beauty that was Alghazanth. Alghazanth takes the melodic core of Dimmu Borgir and Old Man’s Child to a height it’s never reached until this release. Many more bands should take note of the sublime elegance of this band. Thank you, Alghazanth, for the fond memories. Thank you for not going quiet into that long good night.

Melodic black metal in the vein of Dissection is a very easy thing to fuck up. Sinira is a band that is nowhere close to being in danger of fucking up on this demo. The drums and riffs are technical(not in the gimmicky tech death context) and Knell delivers one of my favorite vocal performances of the year. Three songs is all it took to make me become enamored with this band. Best demo of the year.

Melodic black metal in the vein of Dissection is a very easy thing to fuck up. Sinira is a band that is nowhere close to being in danger of fucking up on this demo. The drums and riffs are technical(not in the gimmicky tech death context) and Knell delivers one of my favorite vocal performances of the year. Three songs is all it took to make me become enamored with this band. Best demo of the year.