I was quite surprised when I did receive Darkness And Decay, which seemed to be an album by Orpheum. I surely did remember that name from a couple of years ago. I wrote a review for them, for their self-released EP Treason, which was released in March 2012. In case you’re interested, you can find that chronicle in the ‘Archive’-tab, published on November 30th 2012.
To celebrate their tenth anniversary, Minnesota-based act Nuklear Frost released their first full album, Subjugation, which clocks just over half an hour. The seven-tracker was mixed and mastered by Maxwell Thomas Karon, who was responsible for the final result as well for releases from bands like Scordatura, Astral Blood, Mouth Of The Serpent or Adora Vivos too.
About four years ago, two friends from the Tienen-area (in the East of Flanders, in between Leuven and Sint-Truiden) started jamming together in some moisty and smoky cellar. Sometimes it seemed to come with a modest hit-potential, then again the material could not satisfy the members’ ear drums. But that good stuff, well, slowly on they started memorising the better elements from their jam sessions. Finally, some first songs became reality. In a next step, the band started playing live too, trying to remember the songs they created before.
A short one, but I think worth being mentioned: Born Again Misanthrope by Plutonium. It’s an outfit by a guy who calls himself MR J, and with Born Again Misanthrope he releases a third full length under the Plutonium moniker, each time with quite some time in between them.
What does this stand for? Well, actually it’s a mostly weird and experimental form of Black-oriented Metal, quite eccentric and adventurous, with an overload on traditional aspects, smartly mingled with progressive and post-modern elements.
Jose Murcia is the guy who runs Craneal Fracture Records, a label specialized in Noise, Power-Electronics and more of that sonic terrorism. Probably, in a near future, there might be some reviews for releases on that Spanish label.
Vorbkt are a one-man outfit from the windy South-East of Canada, where the Atlantic crushes and smashes upon the shores of civilization. The guy behind the project (-z?) started this project in 2011 and since then he recorded and released two hands full of stuff, especially independently released.
One of the several solo-outfits started by the very young multi-instrumentalist Damien Anton ‘Elisa’ Ojeda is Born An Abomination, quite a productive outlet. On March 28th I did upload a review for an album by Sadness, another project from this person, and in the near future there will be a handful of others too (for e.g. Left Alone…, more Sadness material, or Nänmëë).
Sometimes it’s just incomprehensible that musicians can be enormously productive. Such an example is Damien Anton Ojeda aka Elisa aka E., born in Mexico and currently living in Oak Park, Illinois. He is active in several solo-projects, such as the new outfit Left Alone… or Born An Abomination, and used to release material under names such as Aevilian, A Nightlit Poesy, Iniquitous Depression and Evocative Atmosphere too.
It is not strange that hadn’t heard of Ande before, because it seems to be a new project by Jimmy Christiaens, from the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium (Flanders, somewhere…). With Light (which actually lasts for twenty two minutes), Ande bring three Black Metal tracks, accompanied by four very short untitled instrumental pieces (though, not totally untitled, for they are called I, II, III and, indeed, IV).
Our Lowlands have always been quite underestimated within the Black Metal scene, and actually it isn’t that strange, seen the glorious quality of so many acts from all over the world. Once in a while, a band from Belgium or Holland sort of ‘breaks through’, reaching an audience outside our artificial borders. Unfortunately, so many bands from our countries remains too ‘low’. Will The Shiva Hypothesis prove the opposite?
