Vircolac from Ireland… Codex Perfida, their debut, lasting for 23:36 minutes (four tracks). ‘at once grounded in filth, bulldozing and palpitating, doomed-out and disgusting’, or a ‘study of contrasts, set amongst a haunting ‘n’ harrowing soundfield and shot through with violent execution’. What do you think?... Are you willing to continue reading? Of course you are…
All right, and beware: this stuff is pretty old, going for the original writings as well as the recordings. So don’t expect to hear something in the vein of the recent trends, okay…
When Naturmacht Productions gave me the opportunity to listen to Knokkelkraft, the debut for Norwegian act Skygge, I swore eternal gratitude to this label. …kind of… Seriously, I was enormously impressed by this stuff conceived by multi-instrumentalist Frank ‘Skyggemester Kuldegys’ Bratten (formerly also in Viðr and Frozen Cries, by the way).
While Rick Springfield was born in Australia, and scored his first top ten hit there in 1972, he subsequently moved to the USA, and had a nr. 1 hit over there, as well as in Australia with ‘Jessie’s Girl’, for which he also received a Grammy award for best male rock vocal performance. More top ten hits followed with ‘Affair Of The Heart’ and ‘Love Somebody’. He also performed as an actor, playing Dr. Noah Drake on the daytime drame ‘General Hospital’.
Reasons Behind is a female fronted band, hailing from Bologna, Italy. The band was formed in 2010 and released a debut EP ‘Ouverture’ in 2012, This now is their first full album. What they bring us is symphonic Gothic metal.
Almost a year after their latest studio release Prong surprises us with a new longplayer. This time it's not about new songs, it's more a kind of journey into the personal record collection of the Tommy Victor and band mates.
Originally Orden Ogan was formed in 1996 under the name of Tanzende Aingewaide, but was renamed Orden Ogan in 1997. They hail from Germany, and bring us power metal with some hints of folk in it. What I like about these guys is the amount of what I’d call bombast they mix into their music, which can be described as a mix of Blind Guardian and Rage.
Together with the release of the new recording (on cassette) called Black Rust, Forever Plagued Records re-release the Endless Hate & Misanthropy EP, which was initially released independently the digital way in Autumn 2013. The review on Black Rust will be written and uploaded one of the next days, by the way. First a word about this re-issue.
Okay, this will be a quick one. Burn The Cross saw the unlight ten years ago, but it will be part of the new series of picture disc 7”EP’s via Hells Headbangers Records. Some others are about to follow soon…
Black metal from Nicaragua – why not?
I know, that’s a silly introduction, for there are tens of great acts from Nicaragua, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, but even the most experienced non-Latin American metal head needs to admit that he / she might not know an impressive list of bands from ‘out there’ (unless you live there).
