When notorious artists join forces to create something together, the result often surprises, but unfortunately it often stinks as well. When talking about the latter; too often the individual artists try to do their own thing, forgetting about the common result. But once in a while, such collaboration is a successful one too. That’s the case with the new project Stromstad.
Malignant Records are such label that often (actually: most of the time) come up with something that deeply inspires and surprises. Actually, I have not ever been disappointed by any release, though I have, since I am a human being (or at least I am trying to act like one, from time to time), my preferred ones, and that means some lesser releases in my personal opinion, for what it’s worth. But hey, that has to do with subjectivity, something man cannot escape from, of course.
I was not trusted with the sound of Shock Frontier, though I do appreciate quite some other material done by Shock Frontier’s half of the project, Robert C. Kozletsky.
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.
Phragments, the main outfit of Slovakian artists Matej Gyárfáš and Nenad Branković, return with their fifth studio recording, after 2013’s New Kings And New Queens. That last one did slightly differ from the first recordings, for being less martial and orchestral in nature, yet rather Drone-oriented than before. And that indeed is sort of the direction this album goes on once again.
Shibalba are a Greek project with e.g. Acherontas V. Priest (known from e.g. Acherontas, Nihasa, Virus Of Koch, Acrimonious etc.) in its ranks. But despite those other projects this guy is, or was, involved with, Shibalba have nothing to do with (Black) Metal. ‘black’ is correct, ‘metal’ is not.
Phragments, the main outfit of Slovakian artists Matej Gyárfáš and Nenad Branković, return with their fifth studio recording, after 2013’s New Kings And New Queens. That last one did slightly differ from the first recordings, for being less martial and orchestral in nature, yet rather Drone-oriented than before. And that indeed is sort of the direction this album goes on once again.
Shibalba are a Greek project with e.g. Acherontas V. Priest (known from e.g. Acherontas, Nihasa, Virus Of Koch, Acrimonious etc.) in its ranks. But despite those other projects this guy is, or was, involved with, Shibalba have nothing to do with (Black) Metal. ‘black’ is correct, ‘metal’ is not.
Despite having some earlier releases on different labels, I hadn’t heard of Milwaukee-based project Climax Denial before.
I did never dislike the international Death Industrial scene, but it isn’t but fair to say that the Swedish scene must be one of the most convincing, influential and prominent ones. One of the (many) artists known within this specific genre is Fredrik Djurfeldt, known from the outfit Knös (with material on Malignant Records too) (or active with Electro-project Severe Illusion as well, to be correct).
