Vhöl: Deeper Than the Sky (2015)

Vhöl is turning out to be--as their debut might suggest--more than just a supergroup. It's a worthy, unique band in its own right. As I described them before, they're sort of an American Darkthrone, combining black metal with old-school heavy metal, crust, and thrash.

Deeper Than Sky by VHOL

The formula from the first album is intact, but this time around the song lengths are more varied. The

Mastery: VALIS (2015)

The promo spiel for Mastery’s VALIS called it the most extreme record the Flenser has ever released. That’s saying something.

This is some intense, weird, dissonant black metal featuring two long compositions, a shorter one, and two interludes. I’ve spent a lot of time listening, trying to unravel its secrets, to no avail. But I’ve enjoyed it along the way. There are some strangely compelling

Myrkur: M (2015)

Relapse isn’t typically known for releasing atmospheric/folk black metal, so the debut full-length from Myrkur certainly caught me off guard. It’s the project of one woman, whose background is in indie pop, so of course hipster alarm bells will go off. And go off they have: The Metal Archives ratings for this record are abysmal.

But fuck that, because I like this. If you’re looking for

Blasphemy: Fallen Angel of Doom (1990)

Say you run across some backwoods boys slitting the throat of an animal at just the right moment to create the proper bucking motion. You might get out of there alive, but only if you hand them a third-generation tape of Slayer's Hell Awaits. Those boys would go on to create something like Blasphemy.

Fallen Angel of Doom by Blasphemy

Fallen Angel of Doom is a perfect blend of mindless, bestial

Destruktor: Opprobrium (2015)

Opprobrium by DESTRUKTOR

One of the best parts of Ride the Lightning is that part in “Fight Fire With Fire,” where Hetfield warns, “Soon to fill our lungs the hot winds of death . . . .” Destruktor play a similar riff on “Eradication.”

That’s the level of speed and aggression these Australian black/death metal tyrants keep up for nearly an entire full-length album. It’s got a whole lot of

Perversor: Anticosmocrator (2015)

Perversor is a Chilean band who play bestial black metal. It’s brutal, ugly, and uncompromising. I must be a sucker for this kind of stuff, because it seems I never hear one that I don’t like—but then again, I mostly listen to the ones that come out on Hells Headbangers, and if any label knows their shit, it’s them.

*FREE* Compilation Vol. 8 by PERVERSOR

I couldn’t tell you what sets them

Pale Chalice: Negate the Infinite and Miraculous (2015)

It has been observed many times—including by me—that the term “black metal” has become increasingly vague over the years. Are we talking about atmospheric music? Something epic and woodsy? Artistic and weird? Blistering, cold, boneheaded?

Pale Chalice, though: They embody black metal as it is today. The combine the weird, epic artistry of bands like Agalloch with a blistering, concise approach

Black Witchery / Revenge: Holocaustic Death March to Humanity's Doom (2015)

Black Witchery is one of the finest bands in metal right now. What they play is furious, uncompromising black/death that can singe your ass hair all the way from their Floridian den, no matter how far away you manage to get. This is what some call bestial black metal, or war metal. As they say, war is not going to win any beauty pageants. and bestiality is something reserved for only a few

False: untitled (2015)

False is serious black metal. This Minneapolis band isn't playing riffs to make you bang your head and lose your shit. You couldn't possibly keep up, anyway. No, they're playing epic hymns to something untoward, something that experiences time and space more fully than we do.

On their 2015 untitled full-length, the pace is almost entirely fast. It's played and produced in such a way that it's

Sigh: Graveward (2015)

Sigh would most likely be the craziest thing to come out of their own country, if they were from anywhere other than Japan. But as the popular wisdom has it, Japan is home to some crazy pop culture. Now, it’s been my experience that crazy Japanese pop culture stuff is mostly terrible, and occasionally brilliant. Sigh has been mostly brilliant. I mean, their last album was just one example of a

Solefald: World Metal. Kosmopolis Sud (2015)

Why the hell isn’t anyone in America talking about Solefald? Their full-length Norrøn Livskunst was the most criminally underrated album of 2010, and now they’ve got a new full-length, and once again nobody is talking about this brilliant duo.

World Metal. Kosmopolis Sud is unmistakably the work of this avant-garde Viking metal oddity. It’s got catchy riffs, both high-speed black metal style and

Dwell: Vermin and Ashes (2015)

I have to confess that I’m more inclined to check out bands from Denmark than bands from anywhere else. (LLTK, for those in the know.) Dwell is one such band who caught my attention for just that reason.

They’re billed as a death/doom band, but I think you’d find it difficult to pick up any death metal in this at all. The vocals might fit that mold, but the rest does not. The first song sounds

Doldrums

Sorry I've been away from the blog for so long. You don't want to hear me drone on about taking care of sick kids (again--this has been the worst year for that) or about how I had an ear infection myself. I don't want to review an album when I've been listening to it with slightly askew hearing. But everyone is recovered for the time being. So let's get to it.

As you probably know, this time of

Metal Briefs: Clearing the Docket

National Sunday Law: Festival of the Horned God (2012)
4 out of 5 stars

It's practically criminal how long I've been sitting on this one without a review, because it's actually pretty damn good. I have some trouble getting past that modern metal vocal style, but this is worth it. It's progressive and dark, with synths that bring to mind Mose Giganticus (the first track) or Opeth (the second).

Negură Bunget: Tău (2015)

ThineBy weird coincidence or a mood I’ve been in lately, my last two reviews have been for albums in the folk/pagan/black metal spectrum, and I’m continuing that trend with this one.

Romanian band Negură Bunget continue to practice that Eastern European brand of the style. Om and Vîrstele pămîntului were the Eastern European counterpart to Agalloch and Wolves in the Throne Room: Cinematic,

Panopticon: Roads to the North (2014)

Where We’re Going, We Don’t Need RoadsIf you haven’t heard Panopticon’s Kentucky, then stop reading this right now and buy that album. It is essential. A keystone of the present-day metal landscape, and a triumph. When you’re done absorbing that one, come back here.

. . .

Ready? OK. Now, Roads to the North isn’t quite the revelation Kentucky was. That brilliant interplay of traditional protest

Skogen: I Döden (2014)

I Döden Do ItWhen it comes to underground black metal and Viking-ish / pagan-ish metal, I tend to get overwhelmed by the sheer numbers available. Yes, there are incredible releases out there, and they often come from bands I’ve never heard of before. It’s tough to know where to direct my attention. So I download a few promos, a few of them end up on the iPod, and fewer get a complete listen.

Abigail: Intercourse & Lust (1996)

Tentacle Rape by Chthonic Venom WorshipersAs I was listening to Abigail's Intercourse & Lust, I had no idea it was 18 years old. Speed metal is evergreen. This is true to the purest ethos of the backpatch-on-jean-jacket set.

This reissue has new cover art, from the band's native Japan. Believe it or not, I looked up the Wikipedia page for tentacle porn a while back and found that this is a print

Botanist: VI: Flora (2014)

Fawning Over FloraIt’s always important to know where a reviewer is coming from. So in case you missed it, I’m a huge Botanist fanboy. I’ve been covering the band since the beginning, posting one of the earliest reviews and interviews with the band. The band has made multiple appearances on my year-end lists. I also have a Botanist patch from supporting the recent Kickstarter.* With that record

Pact: The Infernal Hierarchies, Penetrating the Threshold of Night (2014)

Pennsylvanian HungerBoy, that album title is a mouthful. Helpful hint: if your album title is a complete sentence, consider cutting it down a little nit. Pact is a black metal band out of Transylvania... no, wait, make that Pennsylvania. The publicity materials make a big deal out of the fact that this is the band's long-awaited, highly-anticipated second album, making it sound as if it has