Mortuus Umbra are a new combo from the city of Tel Aviv, Israel. After a digitally released single, they came with a four-track EP, released the digital way as well as on CD in a co-operation in between Israeli labels Forneus Records and Totalrust Music and now on tape too via No Return (the review for Saligia, by the way, will be written and uploaded very soon!).
Hailing from Vilnius, the capital city of Lithuania, Inquisitor were formed at the beginning of this century, initially as a technical and eccentric Symphonic / Dark Metal band. Throughout the years, however, their aural style did permanently evolve, but the lyrical approach maintained its bizarre thematic ideas: metaphysics, esoterica, the search for the Inner Eye, empiric data, epistemology, identity and perception.
Once again Cyclic Law satisfy my ear drums with a monumental offering, Proslambanomenos by ONUS. ONUS? Indeed, ONUS.
About three and a half years ago, Mexican musician L. Nergot started the outfit Sacrimoon, another depressed solo-outfit to express his ideas about life and death, love and loss, tragedy and melancholy, suicide and self-mutilation.
Azure Mortal “is producing avant-garde electronic audio-experiments and writing low frequency music for live performance, art installations, expos, films and choreography. Dark Ambient is maybe a good description for the Azure Mortal sound” – quite a statement, this introduction, but to the point for sure. The list of ‘reasons’ to write music for (performance, art installations, enfin, you can read it in my former phrase) gets translated through the huge curriculum vitae by the members involved.
Italy’s Shit Fucking Shit (sometimes labelled as ShitFuckingShit or SFS too) are known, to my opinion, for their shit fucking shit contributions on split efforts especially.
Shibalba are a Greek project with e.g. Acherontas V. Priest (known from e.g. Acherontas, Nihasa, Virus Of Koch, Acrimonious etc.) in its ranks. But despite those other projects this guy is, or was, involved with, Shibalba have nothing to do with (Black) Metal. ‘black’ is correct, ‘metal’ is not.
Fabiant are a band from Belarus, which were formed almost a decade ago. However, despite ten years of existence, they didn’t release but two recordings in mean time: Life Despite Nothing, a mini-CD which was self-released in 2010, and Death Is Not The End, their full length debut that sees the light via Ukrainian Wolfshade Records.
I won’t spend my time on introducing both of these solo-outfits. For Moloch you can expect some more reviews in a near future, but recently I wrote (+ updated) some others: Verwüstung, Abstrakter Wald, Somewhere On The Forgotten Paths, Die Isolation, or the split with Voidstar. For more info about this Ukrainian outfit, check these out.
I am not sure whether I must call Raubbau a sub-division of Ant-Zen, or a sister-organisation. What I do know, however, is that this label is a highly interesting one, with quite some projects on its roster that used to be part of the legendary Cold Meat Industry majesty. Next year, by the way, they will celebrate their tenth anniversary. This review will be the first one I will do for them, but I don’t think it will be the last.
