digital EP / single

Who the heck is Hasse Fröberg I asked myself, when I got this CD to review.  As it turns out – after some googling, Hasse Fröberg  is the current vocalist/guitarist of Swedish band the Flower Kings, and before that he toured with Swedish hard rock band Spellbound.  When his band Flower Kings decided to put the activities on low for some time, he decided to form his own band and since he had some material left he had written, but was not quite suite for the Flower Kings.  They started in 200

Seven Morgues are (or were?) a project by Industrial / Ambient / Ritual Music artist Oren Ben Yosef, assisted by Ravid Zigdon, Yaron Allouche and some other human beings. They did record and release some material during last decade, and this release, the full length Brass Bells Poor Brothers!, is, if I am not mistaken, the latest release by this Israeli project.

One of the splits with NunSlaughter included (I will come back to the one with Perversor soon) is this one, with Colombia-based Witchtrap. For this split especially, they had their songs translated in Spanish, i.e. La Ofrenda and Altar De La Muerta. Isn’t that sweet?...

French act Le Seul Elément is a one-man outfit by someone who wants to stay incognito, because his Music has ‘an air of danger […] that seems to come from a ghost or some other force out of this world, as an abstract shadow-play translated to music’. My first idea was: yeah, whatever… Yet still, some mysticism; I’ve always liked that, so why not giving this project a chance?

I have always had a ‘boontje’, like they say in Flanders, for stuff on Cold Raw’s roster. It’s just the intention of the thought behind each release that makes me (un)happy, non-depending the musical qualities. But now they do really surprise me with the release of Dank Dreiser !!! by French horde Uluun.

Andsolis are a young septet from Germany and, partly, the Netherlands, consisting of former and current (session) members of e.g. Edge Of Serenity, Behind The Scenery, Liquid Horizon, Athean or December Flower. The founding member, Simon Abele, started this project in 2012, and soon he did find some same-minded musicians, which eventually resulted in the recording of the debut Vigil, which has a total running time of fifty minutes.

Well, sometimes surprises are great. And it has not always to do with renewing details or superb quality – though in this case both options I just mentioned are part of the greatness too. But it’s especially the style versus the label that did confuse me, albeit the positive way. I’ll explain why.

Devouring Star are a pretty young and quite mysterious horde from Finland, which I knew from one single demo only. Now they come up with a studio full album, consisting of five pretty lengthy compositions (i.e. lasting in between five and ten minutes), written for this release exclusively (meaning: these tracks were not on the 2014-demo).

One of Australia’s most notorious acts ever must have been Sadistik Exekution, I guess. Despite their bad reputation (or is it ‘because of’?), they reached some kind of kult-status. Undersigned could (can) appreciate about everything this band did in the past. Most of the members had or have their own solo-outfits too, and the very same goes for Sadistik Exekution’s bass player Dave Slave.

Unsacred are a very young Virginia-based trio (drummer Scott Bartley, bassist / vocalist Hunter McCarty, and guitar player Miguel Falcon), but despite their young age (they were formed in 2012) they did record and release three well-received EP’s in mean time (at least within the American market). It made them be able to perform live on stage with notorious acts like Ash Borer, Kylesa, Obliteration, Toxic Holocaust etc.