Ivan Tibos.

Superbia – avataria – luxuria – invidia – gula – ira – acedia… Who is not craving for all these pleasures of life?... And if you take the first letter of each sinful joy, you’ll have ‘saligia’, which is the name as well for a project by Ghastly. At the end of last decade there were some demonstrational recordings, amongst which the promotional demo Sic Transit Mundi, and under the very same title, Norwegian act Saligia released a first vinyl album in Autumn 2011 via U.K.-based label Barghest.

It would be a waste of time, taking too much energy from my laziness, to introduce Raison d’Être, which is probably the best known outfit by Peter Andersson. I am sort of possessed by this project as from the release of Prospectus I, though not every release that followed could totally please me. But in any case, Raison d’Être are highly influential (so are many of Peter’s outfits).

One year after the debut, French duo Cepheide (Gaetan and Thomas) returned with a new album, which consists of two (extremely) lengthy tracks: seventeen and nineteen minutes respectively. The sophomore album was an independently released digital record (July 2015), which was followed in September 2015 in cassette-edition. And now we can enjoy the CD-version too, which has been made available at the very end of November 2015 by Ogmios Underground.

Russian warriors Oprich (it’s an old Russian word that means something like ‘unique’, ‘opposite’, ‘against’, ‘isolated’) return with a new epic tale, focusing on the glory of the past, the heroism and pride of Old. It’s called Wind’s Heady Mead, and it comes in an edition limited to 100 copies only (hand-numbered) on vinyl with cover artwork created by Igor Burlakov aka Dartgarry (think: North Diamond, Hagl, Grey Heaven Fall etc.).

I have to admit that I did pleasantly enjoy the split album in between Wigrid and Sunshine & Lollipops, called Split The Indifference / Geteilte Gleichgültigkeit. In case you’re interested, you can find the review on this label’s update of December 2^nd 2014.

Aurum Solis is a new outfit by Siberian born Sergey ‘Thanataur’ Andrievskikh, part of e.g. Tahatoc or Eisflammen, and the guy behind projects such as Without Dreams, HexenHammer’s Flame (the review for Ad Fines Nivis Aeternae, by the way, was published on this site’s upload of February 14^th 2016 by undersigned) or Психоз 4.48.

The French label Distant Voices did surprise me every time for both the sonic result of each release, as well as the devotional artwork involved. This time it is not different, for the CD-version of the sophomore Scars From A Dead Room album has been designed by the Distant Voices team once again. It’s a cold, totally black edition with two cards inserted, containing quite mysterious artwork (which does fit the philosophy of both label and artist).

ProtoU are quite a young project from Ukraine, led by Sasha Cats. Only recently she entered the realms of the Drone / Ambient / field recordings scene; before Sasha was known as violinist and choir singer especially.

Well, I was enormously surprised, the positive way, when I received a message from Cyclic Law telling that there was a new Sophia album coming up. For more than a decade we did not hear anything anymore, at all, about this project by Arcana’s Peter Bjärgö. And indeed, it was true that there was a new work in the making.

Pretty recently I came in touch with Turkish label Merdümgiriz, pretty young but quite productive, especially focusing on projects by label founders Merdümgiriz and Emir Toğrul. It’s quite a unique label, not only for being a Turkey-based one (which cannot be that easy out there), but because of the explicit philosophy (especially of some specific acts that are on their roster) and the ‘strange’ signings.