Apostolum are a band from Lombardy, Italy, formed about a decade ago. After a demo, the band released a first EP / album in 2006, called Anedonia, but it was one of the many releases within a huge grey mass of pulp. Result: Apostolum faded into silence…
This untitled split-EP/MCD starts with three tracks by pretty young Swedish act Usurpress (formed in Uppsala in 2010), which includes former and current members of e.g. Embalmed and Tyrant (the one from Eskilstuna).
Australian act Moon (one of the hundred bands with that moniker), a solo-project by a guy called Paul Marsh aka Miasmyr (also formerly known from e.g. Urgrund, Forn Valdyrheim or Catacombs), return with the second full length, after a couple of minis and splits. The first album easily made it into my top-five of 2011; Caduceus Chalice was, just like the mini-albums done before, a pleasure for ear and brain in case ‘Underground’ is your thing.
Stockholm-based outfit Circle Of Chaos return with their second full length, after 2010’s self-released Black Oblivion. The band also released the mini-album Twoheaded Serpent in 2012, by the way, and last year the band was joined by former Necrophobic-member Anders Strokirk on guitar, for your information.
If I’m not mistaken, this Dutch band called itself after a song by Ebonylake, taken from their 1999-album On The Eve Of The Grimly Inventive.
For more than twenty years, Acheron sicken our globe with their own aural vision on humanity and religion, and it isn’t a pretty view. Though, from that aural point of view, I need to say it can be very pretty. It is a band I learned to appreciate throughout the years. I wasn’t quite enthusiastic during the earliest years (even though I think the debut Rites Of The Black Mass is top!), but I am not sure if it was Vincent Crowley and his horde that stylistically changed, or if it was me who ‘grew’ into Acheron’s musical efforts.
Norway’s Glittertind are a project by Torbjørn Sandvik, who started this outfit at the age of sixteen, more than twelve years ago. In the past, Glittertind released two albums via Karmageddon (the full length Evige Asatro in 2004, and the mini Til Dovre Faller in 2005), both as solo-project for Torbjørn.
One of my favourite albums from 2012, and probably my favourite Death Metal album that very same year (and in many years), must be Ævangelist’s De Masticatione Mortuorum In Tumulis. I did refer to it in the review I recently did for Ævangelist’s newest album, Omen Ex Simulacra (see update February 8th 2014).
It wasn’t quite the case during the early years of this band, but since about a decade, I find it quite an exciting experience to listen to new material by German act Eisregen. I couldn’t really enjoy the first albums they did, but as from half of the 2000’s, they do draw my attention, for the material became much more interesting. The band comes close, in mean time, to its twentieth anniversary, and with Todestage, they deliver their tenth album.
Everything I, Voidhanger Records (an independent division of Aeternitas Tenebrarum Music Foundation aka ATMF Records) do is of a superior quality. This wonderful label releases nothing but excellent stuff, and this time it is not different. With Converge, Rivers Of Hell, this Italian label compiles material from three solo-projects by an Australian guy who calls himself Dis Pater (I have no idea who the person behind those projects is, but actually it does not matter, does it).
