Ivan Tibos.

Hailing from Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, Fretting Obscurity is the solo-outfit of one Yaroslav Yakos.

The history of Grimoire De Occulte goes back to the very beginning of this decade. Bernd, the guy involved as drummer in bands like Nacht or Lost, and the same person who runs the Dunkelheit Produktionen label, created this outfit to focus more deeply on aspects like occultism, afterlife, dreamworlds and rituals.

I can easily sum up tens of Black Metal bands and projects from Australia, but when talking about the Southern island Tasmania, there are only three names that immediately come to mind: Astral Winter and Atra Vetosus, both projects with Josh Young (Immortal Frost Productions) and Striborg. The latter is a very, very, extremely very much very productive outfit by one Sin Nanna (real name: Russell Menzies).

Active since 2012, German act Pestlegion, originating from the city of Marl in Germany, not that far away from the border with the Netherlands, didn’t record that much. In early April 2014 they released the mini-CD March To War via Bret Hard Records, and early 2017 saw the light for the first full length (and sole full album to date), called Dominus Profundum via that very same German label.

Once in a while, you just get blown away by a (new) release that offers something unique, promising, magnificent. Well, did you have the opportunity to enjoy Tacent Semitae, the 2016 debut by international act Adaestuo? Indeed, that’s what I mean with getting blown away. It isn’t just Black Metal that this trio performs. This goes way beyond the ‘orthodox’ borders of that mighty muSICKal style called Black Metal!

Short statement: I do a lot to support those labels and bands that, to my opinion, deserve it. That’s why I come up, more than once, with an older release. Okay, it is not ‘up to date’, but whatever. It might deal with something that deserves all additional promotion and support.

Nachtfrost is the name for a young project from Macedonia (the Greek part, not the FYROM! Krieg!), started by Lord Konrad aka Orthanc. There were some demonstrational recordings, which Orthanc created and performed himself, occasionally helped out by some guest musicians. The very same goes for the first full length album, Spectral Domains Of Dusk, which he wrote in 2016 and 2017, and which he recorded in between Summer 2017 and Winter 2018.

From the bleak, Arctic soil of New Mexico hail Aetranok, a quintet that started earlier this decade. At the very beginning of 2014, the band released a first album (on compact disc), Grande Invokation, via Colorado-based Death Portal Studio, re-released a couple of months later, also on CD and digitally, through Senseless Life Records from the U.K. (nowadays known as Sepulchral Silence).

Well well well, this is a great surprise for the audience! AnnapurnA is re-issuing a very old recording by Italian cult-act Die Sonne Satans, or if you want, Die Sonne Satan (without the additional ‘s’ at the end – what does it matter anyway). Metaphora was once created in the early Nineties, and did appear on a split with another great Italian act, Runes Order. It was in 1993 when Old Europa Café (ave!) released this split on tape.

I remember being quite happy – no, I’ll start all over again. Happiness has been disbanded, banished from my personal mental sanity. So, here it is… I remember being quite aroused when I heard the album Hexkonst by Finnish horde Ondfødt more than four years ago. I received the album from Immortal Frost Productions’ chieftain S., and this very same guy / label takes care of the release of sophomore full length Dödsrikets Kallelse.