Germany’s impressive Extreme Metal label War Anthem Records and Baden-Württemberg-based Black Metal act Unlight recently joined forces in order to have this band’s sixth album released. It took quite some time, because the last album they did (Sulphurblooded, reviewed by colleague Tim; see update September 14th 2010) dates from 2010. However, it does not imply a drastic change of style.
Blazej Kazimierz Adamczuk is a Polish multi-instrumentalist who used to be part of some of Poland’s most notorious bands, like Thunderbolt, Legacy Of Blood and Veles. At that time, he acted under the name Paimon. At the end of last decade, he moved over to Bergen, Norway, and he joined Dead To This World, a band formed by former Immortal-bassist Iscariah, as from now under his new artist name, Skyggen.
Swedish band Skogen return with their fourth full length, after Vittra, Svitjod and Eld, released respectively in 2009, 2011 and 2012 via Russia’s Frostcald Records, a small but underestimated label known for many excellent Black Metal releases.
Imprecations Of Black Chaos is a demonstrational recording by a pretty young band from new Zealand. It can be considered some kind of introduction to the upcoming split with Trepanation (another act from new Zealand), which will be done as well via Canada’s Vault Of Dried Bones.
Sweden’s Karnivore were initially formed in 2002 as Karneywar, and they recorded three interesting demos until the name-change a couple of years ago, as well as a first album, The Triumphant Khaoz. This album, however, wasn’t released until 2012 (under their new moniker), despite being finished in 2009. This delay had to do with the (sad) decease of long-time guitar player Patrik (f*cking cancer destroyed another life) and bad support (read: no decent label to take the opportunity to etc…).
I am always excited when Sepulchral Productions come up with a new release, and I try to follow them as much as possible. I often check their homepage to check out what is about to happen, but I was not aware this would happen. Suddenly they showed up with this split…
My first acquaintance with Al-Namrood was when I bought Kitab Al Awthan in 2012 (yes, I do still buy lots of stuff myself instead of downloading it; Metalzone’s logo, or at least one of their logos, is: ‘real metalheads buy hard copies’; if you do not want to f*ck up the scene completely, you need to get rid of your pathetic avarice and miserliness and [self-censorship…]).
Greek band W.E.B. (it seems to be the abbreviation for where everything begun) were formed about twelve years ago. They recorded some material that was pretty popular in their home country, but outside Greece they never really broke through. And despite the acceptable quality of this third full length studio album, I am not sure they will now.
Velnias are a project from Colorado, given birth to in 2006 and especially known as live act (recently they toured around Europe in support of Kampfar). They initially released Sovereign Nocturnal in 2008 via God Is Myth Records, and in mean time there were a couple of re-issues (Vendetta Records, for example, did the vinyl-edition, Eternal Warfare the cassette-one).
Unearthly are a Rio de Janeiro-based band, formed at the end of last century. They are extremely popular in South America, having toured with internationally high-acclaimed bands like Obituary, Behemoth, Suffocation, Marduk, Hate Eternal and probably the most popular band from Brazil, Sepultura. The band visited Europe too, and especially in the eastern countries they became a welcome live-act.
