On June 8th 2015 Concreteweb did upload my review for Transmissions, a split in between Finnish act Moonkult and Hungarian one-man combo Solus. With certainty the latter was the best out of two on the split, at least to my humble (and totally subjective) opinion. I did have one remark (which did eventually influence my score) and that was the inferior sound quality.
Solitvdo are an Italian one-man act which I hadn’t heard of before. Apparently there was one single demo before, and Immerso In Un Bosco Di Querce is the first full recording. The material was released on tape in September 2014 via Eremita Produzioni, and on CD (digipack) in December 2014 via Naturmacht Productions. And for sure this material fits to the label’s roster, known for integrity and introspection, nature and purity, translated into a black-edged aural square.
Drawn Into Descent are a new band from the city of Mechelen (Flemish part of Belgium), formed after the demise of Galgenveld.
I have to admit that I was not that eager to listen to this album, if only because of the band’s name, The Hell. I did actually expect some infantile would-be act with more ego than writing capabilities. Yet seen the label(s) involved, this could be something quite different as well. The choice of those labels releasing an album by a band called this way, would it prove me wrong?
When I got in touch with French top-label Les Acteurs De L’Ombre Productions in very early Summer 2014, I went to my (permanent?) record shop in Leuven to search for some of this label’s ‘older’ stuff. Amongst this material: the album Regarde Les Hommes Tomber by French act Regarde Les Hommes Tomber. In the vein of pretty much all stuff on Les Acteurs De L’Ombre Productions, I was truly impressed by that debut album.
In their five year of existence, German act Porta Nigra did release a couple of mini-releases, one full length, and they contributed on one of the Elemental Nightmares splits. Now the duo returns with the second full album, Kaiserschnitt, a Decadent Dark Metal album that lasts for more than three quarters of an hour.
Vacula Productions did surprise me a lot last year and this year with quite some hands full of fine releases, such as Grimwald, Aeons Ov Frost, Nyx, Northern Tod or (evidently) Emptiness Soul, amongst many others. Just click on the label’s name on top of this review to check out some other reviews undersigned did for this Ukrainian label.
Catalonian combo Cendra return with their second album, 666 Bastards, after 2013’s Sang, Suor I Alcohol (independently released). In mean time there was some other material, like a compilation, but I did really look forward to this new collection of lullabies.
Finnish act Seal Of Beleth was formed in 2007 by vocalist / guitarist Jyrki Kostamo (he was part of the last Lathspell line-up), bassist / vocalist Aki ‘Grim666’ Klemm (who owns this label, Patologian Laboratorio Productions, and used to be part of Lathspell as well; besides he’s active in many other bands and projects, such as Oath, Hautakammio, Dead Girl 13, Grimirg, Kalmankantaja and many others
I lost it, counting the releases by Vardan. Does it matter? Yes and, at the same time, no. No, because the origin of this stuff is, like it has always been, very pure, decent, professional, convincing, grrrrimmmmm… Yes, it does matter, for it is once again another typifying Vardan-release… Well, to be honest, I do have a couple of Vardan’s recordings (being both promotional editions I did receive throughout the past decade, as well as several ones I did steal buy myself), and never it did disappoint me.
