Stockholm-based outfit Circle Of Chaos return with their second full length, after 2010’s self-released Black Oblivion. The band also released the mini-album Twoheaded Serpent in 2012, by the way, and last year the band was joined by former Necrophobic-member Anders Strokirk on guitar, for your information.
If I’m not mistaken, this Dutch band called itself after a song by Ebonylake, taken from their 1999-album On The Eve Of The Grimly Inventive.
For more than twenty years, Acheron sicken our globe with their own aural vision on humanity and religion, and it isn’t a pretty view. Though, from that aural point of view, I need to say it can be very pretty. It is a band I learned to appreciate throughout the years. I wasn’t quite enthusiastic during the earliest years (even though I think the debut Rites Of The Black Mass is top!), but I am not sure if it was Vincent Crowley and his horde that stylistically changed, or if it was me who ‘grew’ into Acheron’s musical efforts.
Norway’s Glittertind are a project by Torbjørn Sandvik, who started this outfit at the age of sixteen, more than twelve years ago. In the past, Glittertind released two albums via Karmageddon (the full length Evige Asatro in 2004, and the mini Til Dovre Faller in 2005), both as solo-project for Torbjørn.
One of my favourite albums from 2012, and probably my favourite Death Metal album that very same year (and in many years), must be Ævangelist’s De Masticatione Mortuorum In Tumulis. I did refer to it in the review I recently did for Ævangelist’s newest album, Omen Ex Simulacra (see update February 8th 2014).
It wasn’t quite the case during the early years of this band, but since about a decade, I find it quite an exciting experience to listen to new material by German act Eisregen. I couldn’t really enjoy the first albums they did, but as from half of the 2000’s, they do draw my attention, for the material became much more interesting. The band comes close, in mean time, to its twentieth anniversary, and with Todestage, they deliver their tenth album.
Everything I, Voidhanger Records (an independent division of Aeternitas Tenebrarum Music Foundation aka ATMF Records) do is of a superior quality. This wonderful label releases nothing but excellent stuff, and this time it is not different. With Converge, Rivers Of Hell, this Italian label compiles material from three solo-projects by an Australian guy who calls himself Dis Pater (I have no idea who the person behind those projects is, but actually it does not matter, does it).
There are many bands that are called Abyssal, but this review deals with the second album by the so-called band from the United Kingdom, recorded shortly after the release of 2012’s Denouement.
This split-album - and indeed, I am directly going ‘into’ the actual review - starts with three tracks (Deonte, Oblitus and Dolore) by Salem, Oregon-based act Hell, a solo-outfit of former Merkstave and Elu Of The Nine member M.S.W. Once again, his contribution is an aural definition of desperation, suffering and anger, translated via slow-paced tunes of Drone, Sludge, Funeral Doom and Black Metal.
Amongst the (many) bands that do not really need an introduction for being a kind of ‘legend’: Deicide! More than two and a half decades of experience, ten studio releases (some very good, some shitty, and some in between), and an enormous live reputation (though often contested), this are but a limited view on the glorious existence of these American sweethearts, once coming to Earth to make blasphemy a religion on its own. Hail!
