Listening to Halgrath’s Ritual Of Lost Epoch that made my brother mentioning the existence of this album. Blessings from the darkness – opus II, the second release of these two members of Corona Barathri, is an almost 75 minutes during trip to the deepest evilness of mankind. This is not an ordinary dark ritual ambient project, this is one long Satanic ambient evocation, based on the Luciferian lifestyle both members keeping up with.
Spell Forest is quite an ‘old’ band, nowadays terrorizing our globe for more than two decades. They were formed in 1995 in São Paolo, Brazil, with members included from other notorious acts such as Mythological Cold Towers, Vobiscum Inferi, Crux Caelifera, Cruor Cultum and other aural greatness.
My first ‘meeting’ with ProtoU was last year, when I had the opportunity to review Lost Here, a grandiose full length album that was released via Cryo Chamber (one of my preferred labels within the Drone / Ambient / Industrial scene lately). The interested ones might read my thoughts and opinion about that release on Concreteweb’s update of April 18th 2016 (or just enter the name in the ‘search’ tab). A brief history can be consulted in that chronicle.
Not that long ago I got in touch with a French guy, Arthur Arsenne, who did initially impress me by a collaborative album, created together with Piotr Cisak and Pawel Oleksinski (for the review on that Arsenne + Cisak + Oleksinski recording, see update of January 17th 2016) – thanks to Frozen Light for the opportunity, and so on… Anyway, it turned out that A.Arthur (his ‘professional’ name as musician) did run two young labels, Death Carnival Records and <
I’ve always been impressed by bands and projects that involve Matron Thorn: Crowhurst, Benighted In Sodom, Midwinter Storm, Andacht and, especially, mighty Ævangelist. And hurray, recently he started a new project, called Death Fetishist.
Sometimes a band needs many years before they find a stable line-up, or before they have the opportunity to record and release decent material. Soulwound is such a band. Actually, the origins go back to the Nineties, when the brothers Niko and Janne Huusari started jamming and gigging. They wrote some pieces, which they did record as a demonstrational release, and there were permanent line-up changes going on in the meantime, which didn’t make it easier to perform live, evidently.
Not that long ago I started co-operating with Antiq Records, which crew did send me a couple of (great) recordings (check out the review I wrote for Syrian one-man army Chained, for example, posted on March 21st 2017). But this release was brought to my attention by Noémy from Solstice Promotions, just like new material from Ayin Aleph or Digital Nova, for instance (to be heard of quite soon).
Almost three years ago, five musicians from the region of Nantes (France) joined forces under the Clouds Of Dementia banner. Their aim: paying tribute to the greatness of the Heavy / Doom Metal scene of Old. They composed a couple of tracks, which the band performed live on stage, often alongside known acts such as Svart Crown, The Bottle Doom Lazy Band or Ataraxie.
If I’m not mistaken – and since I’m a smart guy the chance is almost nihil – ‘Arkona’ is the name of a cape on the Rügen island, nowadays in Germany (Baltic Sea, close to Poland), where the Slavic fortress Jaromarsburg was built. Like many castles, it has been a source of inspiration for many Metal bands. Behemoth’s first recordings, for example (at the time that they did still play ‘real’ Black Metal), referred to that era / area, but there are quite some bands named after that specific historical place too.
I knew an act from Brazil called ColdBlood, being active during the first half of the Nineties. And because this release (which was send to me, the kind way, by my dear colleague Aleksey K. from e.g. the Abigorum project and Satanath Records), did deal with a Rio De Janeiro based act with the very same name, I was kind of wondering: is this the very same band? So, here I seemed to suffer from a period of total amnesia.
