Distant Voices are a very young label from France, formed in Autumn 2012, but for sure it is a special one. It has to do with the musical direction, i.e. a mostly underground-oriented kind of grim, depressive, ambient, melancholic and / or atmospheric Black Metal, which I do adore. But there are more labels that do so. What this label makes so distinctive from any other, is the care and time the crew takes for each single release.
This is where reviewing a album becomes fun rather than laborious – in such much that Michael Bormann has seen it fit to release a 'Best of Ballads' album under the title of 'Love is Magic' and believe me in this case the title is so true.
Miasmal some Swedish guy raised in 2007 at Gothenburg a dark death metal band. Line-up for the moment: Björn – drums, Magnus – guitars, backing vocals, Ruben – bass and Pontus – vocals, guitars. Björn replaced Random Mike (Corrupt, terror, Corruted) in 2011.
Hladomrak (Slavic Хладомрак meaning ‘cold darkness’) hail from Sweden and were formed in 2011 by members of e.g. Promenia and A.N.T.I. They self-released their self-titled album on March 31st 2013, but the strong Winter Solace-label is so smart to give it a decent chance right now. Respect!
This album lasts for just over forty minutes and brings a fast, energetic, rhythmic, thrashing, pounding and melodic form of Black Metal. Hereby…
I guess it is because of their reformation last year, but in any way Swedish band God Macabre decided to re-release their sole official recording, The Winterlong, which dates from 1993. Before reviewing this masterpiece, first a short history of the band.
Short introduction: Deep In Hate hail from France; two albums before: Only The Strong Survive and Origins Of Inequality (resp. in 2007 and 2011). The quintet (now with drummer Nicolas Bastos, whom you might know from his co-operation with Aborted) return with a nine-tracker that lasts for thirty five minutes.
After a long five years of waiting ‘Deathstars’ have risen from their graves with a new record called: ‘The Perfect Cult’ witch was released on (surprise, surprise…) Friday the 13th. It’s a solid ‘deathglam’ album wich stays in line of their previous work.
The Wroclaw, Poland-based band Dark Fury (not the Heavy Metal act with the prefix ‘the’) was formed in 1997 and has quite an impressive curriculum vitae. They are on Lower Silesian Stronghold for quite some period now (they were on the label when this one was still called True Underground Productions), and this eighth full length comes via the very same label.
When Black Anvil released their debut album Time Insults The Mind, I was enormously surprised; the positive way! The band was formed in New York City with members who were active in the NYHC-scene (the founding members were active in Kill Your Idols, for example), but Black Anvil’s 2008-debut had nothing to do with Hardcore whatsoever. And what’s more, their thrashing and Doom / Death-injected Black Metal truly was of a very high quality.
It has been quite a while, but I am glad I Hate did send our headquarters some new stuff at last. I cannot explain why, but their releases almost always please me a lot.
