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.
I admit that I had not heard of Zohamah before. Apparently it is an outfit by Hezi Menashe, whom you might know from his collaboration with Folk / Pagan band Romuvos or Death Metal act Spawn Of Evil.
Vladimir ‘Wolfir’ Prokofiev is a very productive designer and musician. As visual artwork artist, he did create the cover paintings for tens of bands / albums (which I am going to list up), and as musician he worked under different pseudonyms before. But his most active outfit surely is In Tenebriz, which he started in 2005. Throughout the years, In Tenebriz recorded and released more than ten full lengths, many EP and several split-releases, especially during the first half of this decade.
Cardinal Roark are a pretty young band from Québec, Canada. The band was formed in 2015 by Dominic ‘DooM’ St-Laurent to play some stuff he had in mind, yet which did not fit in one of the other bands he is involved with (c.f. Succubus Irons, Doom’s Day and Wrath Of Echoes).
Despite being formed more than a decade ago, Krasnoyarsk-based duo Истина (aka Istina, which is Russian for ‘truth’) has not such a huge curriculum vitae. But hey, that’s all about the philosophical question: do you prefer quantity or quality? Since I do absolutely and deeply prefer the latter, quality, I am glad that this band focuses on a long-time writing and recording process rather than releasing an overload of inferior stuff.
Just two months after their grandiose debut The Syncretic Labyrinth (released via Spain’s Sphingidae and Germany’s Attenuation Circuit, home to Emerge), the Spanish project Sudaria returns with Lucid Nightmares, a monstrous successor of the debut for sure. This second effort is available digitally via the Bandcamp page of the project itself, as well as the label involved, and the latter, Russia’s finest Frozen Light, also took care of the compact disc edition.
At the feet of the Alpes, covered in snow and veiled by icy winds… A Beautiful area, unspoiled nature, nice food, splendid wines (though…) and Walküre… Welcome to Saint-Etienne…
