Ivan Tibos.

In a philosophic way – and hey, I am not trying to set up any discussion about it – but mankind’s ‘inner self’ is always like a travel into one’s identity, a quest to discover your own raison d’être, a confrontation with monstrous entities, nothing else but caused by your own thoughts, ideas, beliefs, opinions, and so on. Are there any supernatural powers – gods or deities, if you want – to enlighten the path we’re crawling on to reach the end? Is our inner self, being a ‘dungeon’, able to trespass the limitations, to cross the borders of our personal expectations and conversances?

Ángel Chicote is a talented musician from Spanish soil, whom you might know from his current or previous collaborations as / in e.g. Graveyard Of Souls, Mass Burial, Aural Butchery or Ad Nebula Nigra, amongst others. Ángel is also the human being behind Ornamentos Del Miedo (meaning something like ‘ornaments of fear’), a project that was formed somewhere in 2017.

Not that very long ago, I got in touch with Chris, a nice person who runs the amazing label Depressive Black Ambient Records. I was surprised by what this label did release as from the start: great works through obscure and oppressive, ominous and odious sounds from beyond the putrid abysses. Destruction and self-mutilation, hate and self-hatred, fury and nostalgia; this label doesn’t share joy or happiness…

I won’t go way too deep into the matter, but RS-28 Sarmat has to do with a quite young intercontinental nuclear missile manufactured in the Russian Federation, able to devastate vast areas all around our oh so beautiful and beloved planet. Boom!

It would be too easy to call Withered Land a side-project of Bleeding Malice, but take notice that this Belarussian act was formed very recently by a member of Bleeding Malice, bassist / keyboardist / lyricist / composer / visual artist Olga Kann (she’s also the woman behind the intriguing Space / Drone / Noise / Ambient project Cryo Depth). For this project, she has been assisted by Bleeding Malice colleague and vocalist Alexander Rabets.

I have been thinking about how to start the former release, over and over again. The reason: both muSICKians involved – sorry, musicians, I mean. But after re-writing my introduction a couple of times, I thought it would just be fun / honest / easy / clear / whatever… Whatever… I’ll keep it simple and to-the-core…

PS: this introduction was like a copy-paste of the former review, haha.

I know that Sentient Ruin Laboratories do not release catchy or poppy stuff, and once again this Californian label figuratively hits, and crushes, my (beautifully-shaped) skull with a rusty pickaxe. Resigner is the name of that rabid monster, that unleashed vehicle by one-man-army 8 Hour Animal.

The respectable Julien Lacroix is the mastermind behind the fabulous outfit Moloch Conspiracy, but he’s involved with other projects too. Apparently this guy is hugely passionate by the Japanese history and culture (which also includes music, evidently) throughout the centuries, as well as rather modern themes from Japan, like their video games and movies. This did result in some intriguing new experiments, i.e.

Two years and a half after their debut Blood Oath, Dunkelheit Produktionen do release the sophomore full-length album With Hoof And Horn by Flemish act Rituals Of The Dead Hand, part of the sweet collective The Nox Entity. This band was formed in 2016 by Hemelbestormer members Filip ‘Lykaios’ Dupont and Frederik ‘Isangrim’ Cosemans.

I will not go too deep within this Flemish band’s history this time; I’d rather like to refer to one of the reviews I did write for their former full-length releases – see below for the links on Burden (Satanath Records, 2015) and Bleakness (Symbol Of Domination Productions, 2018). So, I will go almost immediately to the aural content of this newest effort by this act from Antwerp-based soil. But first a small introduction…