I knew a Texas-based Thrash band called Pendulum (it was a long time ago), and it was the moniker as well in the earliest years for Carpathian Full Moon, but this review deals with a French act, nowadays coming from the city of Nantes, in the West of France, at the border of the Loire river (a region known for some highly agreeable Muscadet wines, but that’s irrelevant right here).
If you believe it or not (not that I do care about what you believe), but there sort of is a small and hidden yet highly impressive scene in Iran. Personally I owe (and appreciate) stuff from ‘out there’ within several of my favourite aural genres, like Drone / Dark Ambient (such as Xerxes The Dark, Alphaxone, Porya Hatami) and (different kinds of) Black Metal (Ekove Efrits, Margg, Silent Path, Aras, Nathorg, …), amongst others.
I do follow Germany-based Old Pagan for quite some time. The members joined forces two decades ago, and since then they did record and release quite some interesting material. In 2014, for example, Vacula Productions and Narbentage Produktionen did release the album MaledictusS (which was actually recorded a couple of years before, yet not released until then); a review which I did write for that recording was published on December 24th 2015, by the way.
‘negru pvlse’, it does include ‘negru’ and ‘pvlse’ (but the smartest ones amongst you saw that…). But I mean, it’s ‘negru’ as in Negru Voda, and ‘pvlse’ as in Moljebka Pvlse. And hey, this seems to be a project of Mathias Josefson (Moljebka Pvlse) and Peter Nyström (Negru Voda) indeed…
On March 21st 2016, a partnership of Hypnotic Dirge Records and BadMoodMan Music (a side-label of Solitude Productions) resulted in the release of two albums: Cold Redrafted by Negative Voice (the review was published on July 4th 2016 – for the review, just enter the band’s name in the ‘search’-tab) and Immensity’s debut The Isolation Splendour. Both releases are somewhat comparable in approach, so pay attention!
For the xth time, Satanath Records and Black Plague Records are joining forces in order to punish the world with a merciless skull-hammering release, this time under the banner of a split in between two fine acts, Russia’s Drama and Perdition Winds from Finland.
American act Concrete Mascara floats around for five years or so, yet despite their ‘limited’ number of years of existence, they brutally reached the top of the international Power Electronics community. Concrete Mascara’s debut Blossoms Of Shame (Corrosive Arts Records, 2014) got highly acclaimed, and now the project returns with the sophomore album Perennial Disappointment via mighty Malignant Records.
Sintax were formed at the end of 2010 in Jerusalem, Israel, by some members from acts like Birth, Salem, Sensorium (though I didn’t think Nir was the original drummer, actually) and Shwortsechaye. In mean time, they gained an enormous fan-base in their home country, being considered as one of the most prominent live acts around.
Pär Boström is especially known from the mighty project Kammarheit, with quite some fantastic releases especially on Cyclic Law.
Recently I came along the quite unusual yet highly interesting label Merdümgiriz (nowadays based in London), which focus on Underground material especially, with releases handmade by one of the label’s owners, Emir Togrul.
