When Black Metal was born almost four decades ago (!), Greece was one of the protagonists, yet largely underestimated. Throughout the years, the Hellenic scene remained of high importance, but they never reached the same fame as, let’s say, the Scandinavian countries. Of course, there are some exceptions, but I am not going to come up with a list of ‘known’ (read: popular) band from out there. You know who they are…
Ah, what a great surprise. Okay, when a label celebrates its 100th release, it is like party time, but when they come up with a fabulous soundtrack to enrich that festivity…
Hailing from the beautiful city of Barcelona, you know, the capital city within the independent new country of Catalonia (no further comment…), Survival Is Suicide are a duo that started playing together under this name more than a decade ago. In 2011 Epojè (drums) and Zaratozom (vocals, bass, keyboards) released their debut album, …Just Like Spiders Eat Flies, which was mixed and mastered, by the way, by no one else but Javi Félez.
Cadaveris are a band from the centre of the Russian Federation, and it is one that seems to exist for quite some time. Despite being formed in 2010, there were no official releases – until now.
Severomorsk is a city in the far North of the European part of the Russian Federation, on the Kola peninsula, and quite close to the not-that-unknown city of Murmansk. It’s also home to Nordlumo, a joyful outfit of a guy called Nordmad, who started this project quite recently. Evgenyi (real name of Nordmad) wrote, recorded and released six lengthy tracks (the total running time clocks about seventy-seven minutes) in very early 2016 via his own digital channels.
I have always adored that imaginative, winterly Ambient stuff à la Moloch, Symbiosis, Sieghetnar, Vinterriket, Nebula VII and the likes, and another act within this non-limitative list is Italian one-man project Winterblood.
Premarone are an Italian Doom band, originating from the Piedmontian region (at the French border), who took the audience by surprise with their 2015 debut album Obscuris Vera Involvis (Nicotine Records). Three friends started jamming together, and when a fourth human being joined the crew, Pol (bass), Ale (drums and percussions), Mic (synths, Theremin, Monotron recorder) and Fra (vocals and guitars) continued as Premarone.
Dual is (was?) an outfit by Doncaster-born sound artist Colin Bradley, who you might know from his assistance with Splintered or his activities in Bark Psychosis too. He started this solo-outfit somewhere in the mid-Nineties, with some recordings done during the second half of the Nineties and the first half of the 2000’s. Then things turned into silence, but the project never officially split up, to my knowledge, despite no more recording activities going on. But that’s another issue…
I want to shout, to scream, to yell: wooaaargh! That’s what I wanna do after listening to this album. No, that’s what I want to do while listening to this brutal rape of my sweet, delicate eardrums. All together: wooaaargh!
El Salvador is not the hugest country when it comes to Extreme Metal, but it houses some interesting bands for sure. One within quite an impressive list must be Disorder, band that was formed almost two and a half decades ago. The band was active, especially in their local scene (Latin America), and in 2002 they independently released their great debut Voces De La Tumba. Unfortunately, some members decided to form a new act (Dreamlore), so Disorder split up short after the release of their first full length.
