When I got in touch with French top-label Les Acteurs De L’Ombre Productions in very early Summer 2014, I went to my (permanent?) record shop in Leuven to search for some of this label’s ‘older’ stuff. Amongst this material: the album Regarde Les Hommes Tomber by French act Regarde Les Hommes Tomber. In the vein of pretty much all stuff on Les Acteurs De L’Ombre Productions, I was truly impressed by that debut album.
The Haunting Presence are a new outfit by Ghastly Apparition, the guy behind the mighty project Nocturnal Blood (FYI: you can find a review undersigned wrote on Devastated Graves – The Morbid Celebration, released as well via Hells Headbangers, which was posted on November 26th 2010; check the Archive-section).
In their five year of existence, German act Porta Nigra did release a couple of mini-releases, one full length, and they contributed on one of the Elemental Nightmares splits. Now the duo returns with the second full album, Kaiserschnitt, a Decadent Dark Metal album that lasts for more than three quarters of an hour.
Vacula Productions did surprise me a lot last year and this year with quite some hands full of fine releases, such as Grimwald, Aeons Ov Frost, Nyx, Northern Tod or (evidently) Emptiness Soul, amongst many others. Just click on the label’s name on top of this review to check out some other reviews undersigned did for this Ukrainian label.
Catalonian combo Cendra return with their second album, 666 Bastards, after 2013’s Sang, Suor I Alcohol (independently released). In mean time there was some other material, like a compilation, but I did really look forward to this new collection of lullabies.
This band from the South-West of the U.S. certainly does not need any introduction anymore, I guess. Let’s keep it with: more than two decades of activities, countless releases (amongst which several ‘cult’ recordings), numerous line-up changes (only founding member and vocalist Tomas Stench remains), and now we’ll welcome Tortura, the band’s latest effort, done on vinyl via Nuclear War Now! Productions (a cassette edition did see the unlight too in mean time).
Finnish act Seal Of Beleth was formed in 2007 by vocalist / guitarist Jyrki Kostamo (he was part of the last Lathspell line-up), bassist / vocalist Aki ‘Grim666’ Klemm (who owns this label, Patologian Laboratorio Productions, and used to be part of Lathspell as well; besides he’s active in many other bands and projects, such as Oath, Hautakammio, Dead Girl 13, Grimirg, Kalmankantaja and many others
I hadn’t heard of the band Gloson before, but that’s all right, because it seems to be a pretty young act from Sweden, consisting of Mikael (g), Christian (g, v, d), Kristoffer (b, bv) and Anders (g, v). They are now debuting with Yearwalker, which they initially did release independently and digitally in 2014.
I lost it, counting the releases by Vardan. Does it matter? Yes and, at the same time, no. No, because the origin of this stuff is, like it has always been, very pure, decent, professional, convincing, grrrrimmmmm… Yes, it does matter, for it is once again another typifying Vardan-release… Well, to be honest, I do have a couple of Vardan’s recordings (being both promotional editions I did receive throughout the past decade, as well as several ones I did steal buy myself), and never it did disappoint me.
Canadian act Harrow were formed by Ian Campbell in 2009 under the Wraith-moniker. In 2011, Wraith became Harrow, and during those years the band (with new members, yet with Ian being the sole remaining musician from the original line-up) did record and release several mini and full length albums. In early 2014, Harrow recorded the Fallow Fields album, which was initially released on tape in early 2015 (via Broken Limb Recordings).
