black metal

This Saturday (11/12) at the Dark Arts — a Philly-based “collaborative organization made up of like-minded individuals who live and breath all things dark and heavy” — brings a multimedia smorgasbord of malevolence to the City of Brotherly Love with “Black Metal”: In addition to performances by five crazy sick bands — Anicon, Wayfarer, Surgeon, Necroscythe, and Dreadlords — the event will also feature renegade art and readings by dark authors, including current and past Decibel contributors Sean Frasier, Dutch Pearce, and Andrew Bonazelli.

Eternal Deformity fuse genres for a unique and challenging listen on No Way Out. 

Violently aggressive. Atmospheric. Unsettling. What do those words have in common? They could all be used to describe “The Shadow Over Innsmouth,” the first single from The Great Old Ones’ new record, EOD: A Tale Of Dark Legacy. 

We hope you brought your hat and gloves today…. you’ll be needing them for this Tarnkappe premiere, in which hypothermia abounds.  

For the past four years, Tasmanian black metallers Ruins have been working on their fifth album, Undercurrent. Without the pressures of most bands–writing, recording, touring–frontman Alex Pope, drummer Dave Haley, guitarist Joe Haley, and bassist Kai Summers were afforded time and space to realize their latest black metal vision.

The Whole of the Law
Total fucking destruction
dB rating: 8/10

The latest installment of Dayal Patterson’s series on black metal is a paradise for genre obsessives.

Get your fill of Belgian black/death with the new number from Emptiness.

Dive into the Infinity of Thoughts.

Take a listen to a b-side from The Missing while Vaura prepares to enter the studio to record their third LP. 

Belgian black/death cosmonauts Kosmokrator take a giant leap forward on First Step to Supremacy.

Sons of Balour has had a presence in the Norwegian black metal scene since 1992, but it is finally time to hear the band’s debut album. 

Put down the Yellow Goat pressing of the first Bathory album you paid $500 for on eBay, and spend some time with the overlooked gem that is Requiem.

Rheia
Dawn of a different apocalypse
dB rating: 8/10

If Sarcofago, Watain, and Beherit got into a winner-takes-all fist fight, it might end up sounding like Kyy. If chaos, disorder, fervent calls to the Nameless One are our future, then Kyy might be the soundtrack to it all.

Poland’s Arkona, not to be confused with the Russian act of the same name, is one of many great under-recognized bands from black metal second wave. Forming in 1993, the band has spend the ensuing decades creating some of the finest black metal out of eastern Europe (or anywhere else).

Lord! Anagnorisis certainly doesn’t pull any sonic or emotional punches on its majestic, seriously affecting gut-punch sophomore full-length Peripeteia — a powerful blend of forward-thinking, nuanced black metal and excerpts from circa ’82-87 family recordings he found on two cassette tapes after his father’s death. 

Romanian black/folk metal pathfinders Negura Bunget prowl through the woods in the hypnotic video for “Stanciu Gruiul.”

The newest song from Départe is vast and crushing.

Lotus Thief‘s Gramarye is a beautiful album that draws from some of history’s most renowned texts to create an atmospheric journey through time. Listen to it in full now. 

Satyricon may have traded in medieval times for urban discipline in 1999, but that doesn’t mean that you should overlook the power of the controversial Rebel Extravaganza.

Reach negative enlightenment and reignite the blaze of evil (typical Monday goals, obviously) with this stream from Norwegian black metallers Tortorum.

Pure
Not-so-strange in stereo
dB rating: 8/10

Dutch blackened doom-death amalgamators Swampcult have written a concept album around H.P. Lovecraft’s story “The Festival” and the thing somehow manages to aurally channel the dread and terror of its inspiration. Today Decibel haunts your imagination with this exclusive stream of “Chapter VI – The Procession” as well as one of the corresponding “story cards” designed to accompany it.

Copies of Decibel Books’ Black Metal: The Cult Never Dies Vol. 1 have reached Decibel HQ and are shipping now!

Cemetery Piss is here with the first taste of their debut full-length, the thrash/black metal combination “Astral Souls.” 

Ode to the Flame sounds like a typical Nuclear Blast release. A valiant knight astride a white armored horse. The knight’s hand is aloft, in it he’s holding a great flaming sword, for which he’ll use to the slay the malignant flying beast perched behind him on the top of a snow-capped mountain. But Ode to the Flame isn’t a typical Nuclear Blast release. Not by its cover or band the band, Mantar, that created it.

Psychedelic Seattle shapeshifters warn of shroom-doom and shapeshifting dolphins in the climax of their phantasy thrashterpiece Hallucinogenesis.

The ‘Witch is Back! And The Apothic Gloom four-track EP features the best material of Skeletonwitch‘s career. Hear it now.

Bloodshed Across the Empyrean Altar Beyond the Celestial Zenith
Satan is good, Satan is our pal
dB rating: 8/10