NEGURA BUNGET Zirnindu-Sa (Lupus Lounge) 2cd 17.98

NEIGE ET NOIRCEUR Philosophie Des Arts Occultes / Thanatonaut (Dunkelkunst) cd 13.98
We've been meaning to review something by this Canadian atmospheric/ambient black metal horde for ages, but there records have been surprisingly difficult to get in numbers enough to review and list. But finally we got enough of this one, not brand new, but a reissue of an ep from 2009, with a single from the same year tacked on, four tracks, 42:23 in all, of some of the best, tranced out black ambience and buzzing blackness we've heard. Check out the first track, the slow building "Loudon" which sounds like an even blacker more lush Locrian, beginning with a recording of some preacher, condemning a witch to burn at the stake, all over a deep rumbling whir, the sound blossoming into a thick lush drone, all woozy warped tolling bells, swirling synths, mysterious reverbed percussion, and finally a guitar, the slowly erupts into a caustic roiling buzz, a thick crumbling distorted swell over a hunting Jeck like loop, which gives way to near silence, and recordings of what sounds like running water, beneath an acoustic guitar, the vibe sort of Comus-y, but even more harrowing and haunting, finally finishing off with another strange sample, which leads directly into the epic "Rituel Incantatoir Du Grimoire Du Sorcier", which erupts immediately into a fierce frenzied black buzz, the drums so fast they sound almost like a drone, the guitars blurred and frantic, the arrangement cyclical, weirdly looped with a little stutter, making the song swing hypnotically, and then the song explodes into an almost-waltz, epic and majestic and melodic, the blazing double kick returning, now accompanying the waltz like main riff, the sound seeming to grow ever grander, only to bliss out part way through, the guitars smeared into a lush layered sprawl, over which another mysterious sampled voice surfaces, and then it's back to the loping buzz, finishing off in a squall of synth soaked black doom churn.
The final track of the ep is all ambient, a haunting liturgical drift, all chanted voices blurred into woozy drones, delicate piano melodies, subtly manipulated sounds, almost like tape experiments, hazy and washed out and totally mesmerizingly hypnotic. Which leads directly into the single track, the even more epic 18+ minute "Thanatonaut", which spends its first 5 minutes droning ominously, swirling winds, the sound of workers toiling in the dungeons, then finally, the guitars come in, massive and heavy and huge, unfurling creeping chugging doom, an ominous creep, with more swirling synths, and some impossibly gurgly demonic vokills, the song a sonic death march, subtly psychedelic, wreathed in ambient shimmer and atmospheric swirl, a gorgeously abject slab of blackened doom, which trudges resolutely to the very end. So fucking great. While very little of this release is in fact black metal, black energy oozes from every note, and will no doubt convince the uninitiated, that Neige Et Noirceur could very well be their new favorite band.
MPEG Stream: "Loudon"
MPEG Stream: "Rituel Incantatoir Du Drimoire Du Sorcier"

NEKRASOV Cognition Of Splendid Oblivion (Siege Of Power) cd 10.98
For everyone who missed out on that last Nekrasov, which is probably most folks as it was a cd-r limited to 50 copies, half of which we got and sold in a flash, here's another new full length, from this Australian black metal / blacknoize terrorist, and this one is also limited, but never fear, not nearly as limited as that last one, and it's an actual cd, so we should have these for a while, a little while at least.
Which is good news, cuz this might be the best Nekrasov yet, let's start with the packaging, wow, a gorgeous and grim 6 panel sleeve, with intense black and green paintings, each panel featuring variations of the new super intense NKRSV logo printed in reflective clear ink, so striking, and pretty representative of the sounds within.
For those new to Nekrasov, his sound is a blasting blackness almost entirely ensconced in blacknoise, a swirling chaotic squall of hiss and grinding skree and blown out howl, within which lurks frantic riffing, relentless drumming, although much of the time, it feels implied more than actually heard. Like WOLD, Nekrasov rewards close listening, headphones strapped on, reveals a crumbling, abject hellish sound world, hateful and harsh and harrowing, it doesn't get much more brutal than this, or noisy, but on Cognition Of Splendid Oblivion more than even, Nekrasov finds a balance, letting the noise swallow certain portions whole, but dialing the noise back in places, giving us glimpses if riff or melody, of blast, ror texture. And the noise itself, is not straight up Merzbowian brutality, there's definitely nuance, almost like the noise is an artifact of the guitars being TOO distorted, the drums TOO crushing, the vokills TOO brutal...
"Psychic Epilepsy In The Butcher Of Light" might be the heaviest thing Nekrasov has recorded, the riffs seemingly MADE out of noise, churning, throbbing, the vocals struggling to be heard through the sheer crush of the riffs, the drums no more than a distant pulse. But within this black buzzing void, the sounds grow epic and majestic, soaring and struggling to shine through the thick black clouds of sound.
The other cool thing about Nekrasov that we may have mentioned before is the breadth of tone and timbre, the noise is multi dimensional, and varies from track to track, because it's not just noise for noise sake, it's part of the composition, an integral part, so sometimes the sound is hissy and brittle, other times murky and muddy, some track get all shoegazey and blissed out, others threaten to gouge your eardrums out. The second to last track starts out all dreamy and washed out, then the BM kicks in, sans noise, and we're treated to a rare glimpse of the buzz and blast behind the curtain, before the final track crushes everything in its path with some of the densest and pummeling noise possible, and even then, it's weirdly listenable, twisted and textured, a swirling blackness that grinds and howls and blasts and buzzes until finally slipping into oblivion.
MPEG Stream: "Heresy.Heresy. Heresy. Oh. Where Have You Gone"
MPEG Stream: "Psychic Epilepsy In The Butcher Of Light"
MPEG Stream: "The Person And The Yawning Abyss"

NEKRASOV Extinction (Crucial Blast) cd 13.98
Not one, but two new missives from mysterious blackmetal/blacknoize merchant Nekrasov, an Aussie one man horde who crafts some of the most twisted sickest noise drenched black metal we've ever heard. Elsewhere on this list you'll find an older title, a split/collaboration with Canadian doom-ed black metal peddlers Humiliation, but this right here is the latest bit of filth and fury, transmitted from NKRSV headquarters directly into your rotting blackened earholes. And weirdly enough, while it's still noisy as fuck, it seems Master Nekrasov has dialed back the noise a bit, right out of the gate, the awesomely titled "We Are Just An Indifferent Interpretation Of The Black Plague" explodes in a frenzy of lightning fast programmed beats, of insectoid riffing, of hellish howling vokills, but the whole thing weirdly and impossibly melodic, it's all relative of course, but woven into the fabric of the furious grinding black blast, is a distinctly hooky undercurrent, which not only makes it crazy catchy, also infuses the rest of the track with a distinctly weirdo black vibe. The second track is another blast of pounding grimness, this time the harsh vox are balanced by what sounds like monks chanting and yet still more strangely pleasing melodies, all buried under the relentless pound and churn, the result is a strange bit of almost orchestral sounding brutality.
After a lengthy bit of blackdrone drift, all muted rumbles and buried industrial percussion, a sort of militaristic windstorm ambience, the record slips back into blackened buzz, this time, much punkier, not blasting so much as pounding furiously, the vocals super hot and in-the-red, swallowing up all the other sounds with every shriek, while in the background the new surprisingly melodic side of Nekrasov struggles to shine from behind the black curtain of frantic buzzing and machinelike pound. More ambience follows, some field recorded creepiness, laced with buried bits of melody, culminating in an avalanche of crumbling distortion and harsh blurred black crunch, the final bit of pure buzzing metallic blackness comes in the form of "Chant The Name Of God In A Thousand Languages Until All Is Blood And Feces", a return to the noisy Nekrasov of old, a buzzing old school black metal smothered in thick sheets of hiss, the distortion so blown out, the vocals so processed and inhuman, the whole thing threatens to crumble to pieces, and is constantly blurring into an almost full on blackdrone.
The record finishes off with two lengthy tracks, nearly 22 minutes, of creeping, haunting, abject, miserable black ambience, the first a thick black churning dronescape, heavy glacial guitars smeared into dense streaks, trudging across a sonic wasteland, all industrial filth, whirring church organ (!) and mysterious melodic drift. And finally, the 16 + minute title track, a corrosive blackened noise drone, layered and dense, also industrial, but less rhythmic, heaving crumbling swells, the sound of cities crumbling, of collapse and decay, of death and oblivion. Brutal and intense.
MPEG Stream: "We Are Just An Indifferent Interpretation Of The Black Plague"
MPEG Stream: "Matter Is The Bastard"
MPEG Stream: "Pre-Fetal Non-Mantra"

NEKRASOV Into The No-Man's Sphere Of The Ancient Days (Exotic Corpse) cd 13.98
We always thought rap and metal would be so good together, but then rapmetal happened, and well, you know the rest of that story, granted there are a few moments on the Judgment Night soundtrack that truly shine, but not enough to erase all the other unspeakable abominations created in the name of rapmetal. To be fair though, we were envisioning something much more brutal and avant garde. Not metal bands playing funky for rappers, we were thinking insane rappers trying to flow over grinding thrashing blasting brutal metal. Say Onyx rapping with Cannibal Corpse. Or Carcass with Sensational. We still think that shit would work.
Anyway, we felt the same way about noise and metal, and well, that worked out much better. As metal bands incorporated all manner of buzz and grind and hiss and blown out production. WOLD, Portal, Vargr, it's definitely a good mix. And then there's noise bands who started introducing riffs and black buzz into their already caustic soundscapes. That too is pretty fucking cool.
Which brings us to Nekrosov, an Australian one man band, whose black metal is as noisy as all get out, but who spends so much time droning and buzzing and crafting bleak noisescapes, we're just as inclined to lump him in with the noise camp, incorporating riffs and blast beats into his distorted crumbling abject bleakscapes. Either way, it hardly matters, the point is this shit is fierce, and heavy as fuck, black and buzzing, but also hissy and blown out, lo-fi, crumbling and NOISY. Like we said, two great tastes, and for the iron eared, this is the stuff that will definitely hit the spot.
The opening is full on noise, there might be some metal going on in there, but if so it's pulled apart and flung into a roiling cauldron of black his and chaotic industrial clatter, followed up by a track that begins all rumbling and dark ambient, but quickly erupts into some grim primitive buzz, howling thrashing blackened buzz, furious and frightful, an old school black pummel, with guttural demonic croaks and insectoid riffing.
But then the third song, the longest on the disc is all ambient, field recordings of what sounds like rain, grinding coruscating feedback in the distance, thick reverberating rumbles, super grim and abstract, a song Wolf Eyes could have recorded if they were jamming with Prurient, a truly haunting soundscape, creepy and ominous, harsh and harrowing.
The rest of the disc careens from demonic squalls of black blast, to churning, roiling doomic dirges, to sprawling abstract minimal shimmer, to pounding primitive metallic crunch, to thick SUNNO)))-like glacial sludge to processed fields of scrape and creak, groan and whir, often more than one of those at once, for a truly inspired noise metal hybrid. Now if we can just get Sensational or David Banner or Bone Crusher to rap on the next Nekrosov...
MPEG Stream: "Freedom From Self Joy"
MPEG Stream: "Into The No-Man's Sphere Of The Ancient Days"
MPEG Stream: "Ashes Of The Lords In My Hand"

NEKRASOV On Certainty (self-released) cd-r 12.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
The return of Australian black mental noizemonger Nekrasov, with another ultra limited, beautifully packaged disc of buzzing blackness and grim blacknoize. And this time we do mean LIMITED. Only 50 copies made, already sold out, we have 20 copies, and that's it, which as always is a shame, cuz this stuff is killer, and WELL deserving of more ears...
But for the lucky 20 of you who are quick on the trigger and who have an ear for this sort of furious filth, On Certainty definitely does not disappoint, Taking the black metal / white noise hybrid we were already so into, and pushing it even further out, making it more psychedelic, more space-y, the opening track sets the stage, a gorgeous post industrial noisecape, all warped muted melodies, grinding metallic textures, a churning, looped sounding corrosive drone infused with a weird melodiousness, which is quickly obliterated by the second track, and incendiary white hot speaker shredding black noise blow out, there seem to be riffs and blasting drums, and howled vocals, but they are so over saturated, so in the red, that they seem to be coming apart and bleeding into the sounds around them, the result a blast of Merzbowian blackness, like an even more abrasive and harshly heavy Wold, but like Wold, there's tons of stuff going on below the caustic surface, strange little melodies surface occasionally riffs coalesce only to split apart into shards of crunch and buzz, the vocals seem to be set on constant howl, a thick layer of anguished blur. The cool thing is that the tone and timbre is super varied, one track will be brittle and blasty, a swirling sea of high end skree, while the next will be a churning chunk of low end, or all drums, so heavily effected they crumble and crunch and stop sounding like drums at all.
Maybe too harsh for the unadventurous metalhead, but for those who like their heavy noisy, and their noise heavy, this should totally hit the spot. And be sure to stick around for the closer, maybe the prettiest song on the disc, still plenty noisy, but underneath it all a woozy washed out bit of mournful melancholia, which infuses all sorts of intense emotion into the crumble and crunch and rrrooooaaar around it.
Gorgeous packaging too, a full color oversized 6 panel fold over sleeve, lots of stark shots of landscapes and wastelands, and a super cool logo / diagram adorning the front.
MPEG Stream: "Belief"
MPEG Stream: "Nothing In The World Can Convince"
MPEG Stream: "Belief Part II"

NEKRASOV The Form Of Thought From Beast (Exotic Corpse) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Record number two from this grim one man nekronoise black metal horde from Australia. We raved about the first one, Into The No-Man's Sphere Of The Ancient Days, a few lists back, but we're led to believe that a handful of you may have not made it past the first paragraph, the intro, the hook. If that was you, well, you should be regretting it now, and when you finish reading this review, listening to the sound samples, and most likely buying one of these, go back to the No-Man's review, skip the beginning and jump right in and read the whole thing. And everything will be right.
The point of that intro, and that review, and to a certain extent this one too, was that adding noise is not always as simple as just, well, adding noise. Mixing to genres, even if they're related, just as often leads to something messy and pointless, as it does to some genius fusion. And there is definitely plenty of noisy black metal, but much of it is either thick noise over shitty metal, or just metal, with the noise an afterthought. One must have a serious handle on both THE NOISE and THE RIFF to make it work. And if you hadn't figured it out by now, Nekrosov is most definitely a master of both the noise and the riff, and manages to fuse the two into something blackly transcendent.
That said however, the opening one two punch here are a bit misleading, in that the noise and the riff are kept well separate, the first, an ominous glitched out landscape of bleak minimal buzz and drone, hiss and crackle, almost like a black metal Philip Jeck, and the second track, the furious buzzing blasting "Mountain Ash" sounds amazing, only noisy in as much as black metal is inherently noisy, super well produced, the riffs HUGE and heavy, the drums lightning fast, erupting in squalls of impossible blasts, the vocals grim and harsh, the melodies soaring, even some hooks buried beneath the buzz.
The next track however finds Nekrosov returning to more familiar blacknoise ground. Deep swirling waves of static buzz, the vocals stretched into sheets of abstract whir, churning and roiling, beneath melodies lurk and struggle to surface, held under by the buzzing blackness. It's almost like some black metal song was frozen, a single moment played over and over stretched into some sort of infinite loop, but it's not a loop as it slowly grows and sprawls and spreads out into something expansive. It's almost ambient, and strangely soothing in its droniness, without losing any of its grim buzz or black mystery.
The next few tracks veer back and forth between, blown out soundscapes of samples and percussion, blurred into a windswept buzz, what sounds like ghostlike vocals underneath processed sounds of whipping winds and the click clack of a railroad, to noise drenched old school raw black metal crush, to slow burning deep ambience, to full on classic eighties style riffing, the old masters rendered in new shades of black and buzz, finally culminating in the twenty minute closer, which begins as some bleak, post industrial Wolf Eyes-an dronescape, all haunting whirs, and strange clanks and clunks, distant moans, bits of percussion and mysterious samples, building to a wall of white hot blackened buzz, sheathed in streaks of feedback and pulled apart riffs, this is the sort of shit that would put most cd-r dronescapers to shame, but it's not over yet, the wall of noise slowly takes shape, riffs emerge from the murk, drums explode from beneath the veil of hiss, the track barreling along churning wildly, riffing and blasting, but gradually sinking ever deeper into a morass of gorgeous textured noise, crackle and buzz and hiss, blown out and super distorted, eventually swallowing the blackness whole, leaving just a brief glimpse of the black buzz, before blinking out.
Fucking AWESOME! Absolutely essential. As is the first disc, if you haven't gone back and re-checked that one out already.
Killer handmade packaging too. The cd housed in a printed fold over black and white cardstock sleeve, that sleeve, housed in an oversized sealed envelope, hand painted black and red and silver, very abstract, and super striking. And as you might have guessed. ULTRA LIMITED!!! But the special print handmade versions are limited to 100 copies and we have the very last copies. Once these are gone, you'll get the normal version. Same music, mostly the same packaging, just minus the painted outer sleeve...
MPEG Stream: "Mountain Ash"
MPEG Stream: "Today The Sun A Golden Illusion"

NEKRASOV The Form Of Thought From Beast (Siege Of Power) lp 11.98
NOW ON VINYL, this big time aQ black metal fave, record number two from grim Australian one man nekronoise black metal horde NEKRASOV!!
We raved about the first Nekrasov, Into The No-Man's Sphere Of The Ancient Days, our first exposure to this maniac's haunting blacknoize infused buzzing riffage, noise being a key element of Nekrasov's sound. But as we mentioned in that review, adding noise is not always as simple as just, well, adding noise. Mixing two genres, even if they're related, just as often leads to something messy and pointless, as it does to some genius fusion. And there is definitely plenty of noisy black metal, but much of it is either thick noise over shitty metal, or just metal, with the noise an afterthought. One must have a serious handle on both THE NOISE and THE RIFF to make it work. And if you hadn't figured it out by now, Nekrosov is most definitely a master of both the noise and the riff, and manages to fuse the two into something blackly transcendent.
That said however, the opening one two punch here are a bit misleading, in that the noise and the riff are kept well separate, the first, an ominous glitched out landscape of bleak minimal buzz and drone, hiss and crackle, almost like a black metal Philip Jeck, and the second track, the furious buzzing blasting "Mountain Ash" sounds amazing, only noisy in as much as black metal is inherently noisy, super well produced, the riffs HUGE and heavy, the drums lightning fast, erupting in squalls of impossible blasts, the vocals grim and harsh, the melodies soaring, even some hooks buried beneath the buzz.
The next track however finds Nekrosov returning to more familiar blacknoise ground. Deep swirling waves of static buzz, the vocals stretched into sheets of abstract whir, churning and roiling, beneath melodies lurk and struggle to surface, held under by the buzzing blackness. It's almost like some black metal song was frozen, a single moment played over and over stretched into some sort of infinite loop, but it's not a loop as it slowly grows and sprawls and spreads out into something expansive. It's almost ambient, and strangely soothing in its droniness, without losing any of its grim buzz or black mystery.
The next few tracks veer back and forth between, blown out soundscapes of samples and percussion, blurred into a windswept buzz, what sounds like ghostlike vocals underneath processed sounds of whipping winds and the click clack of a railroad, to noise drenched old school raw black metal crush, to slow burning deep ambience, to full on classic eighties style riffing, the old masters rendered in new shades of black and buzz, finally culminating in the twenty minute closer, which begins as some bleak, post industrial Wolf Eyes-an dronescape, all haunting whirs, and strange clanks and clunks, distant moans, bits of percussion and mysterious samples, building to a wall of white hot blackened buzz, sheathed in streaks of feedback and pulled apart riffs, this is the sort of shit that would put most cd-r dronescapers to shame, but it's not over yet, the wall of noise slowly takes shape, riffs emerge from the murk, drums explode from beneath the veil of hiss, the track barreling along churning wildly, riffing and blasting, but gradually sinking ever deeper into a morass of gorgeous textured noise, crackle and buzz and hiss, blown out and super distorted, eventually swallowing the blackness whole, leaving just a brief glimpse of the black buzz, before blinking out.
Fucking AWESOME! Absolutely essential. AND LIMITED OF COURSE!!! ONLY 500 COPIES! With all new artwork, and an 11x17 poster...
MPEG Stream: "Mountain Ash"
MPEG Stream: "Today The Sun A Golden Illusion"

NEKRASOV The Form Of Thought From Beast (self-released) dvd-r 11.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Not one, or two, but THREE new hateful black noise drenched black missives from mysterious Australian, an ep, a three way split, and this, a dvd documenting the visual aspect of the black sickness known as Nekrasov. Fair warning, this this is stupidly limited, like less than 50, maybe WAY less. We got TEN. That's it, they're gone once these have left the building.
We won't go into too much detail since, odds are some of you black souls who are buying he other two Nekrasov releases on this list will no doubt snag this as well, but just in case, this chunk of visual brutality is the perfect accompaniment to Nekrasov's sinister blacknoize. Beginning with a test pattern that slowly shifts from rainbow colors to shades of grey, before dissolving into blackness, this is some far out, psychedelic experimental shit, snippets of broadcasts, lots of snow and interference, a tiny glowing orb exploding into a screen full of static, some creeping children's show viewed through a wall of horizontal hold bars and some between channel static, all to the strains of some caustic slow burning buzz, as the music grows harsher, the images grow more and more abstract, all manner of interference patterns, constantly shifting textures and patterns, seriously eye melting and brainwashingly hypnotic.
This is the dvd-r version of an even more limited VHS that is long long gone. The audio companion (we assume) to the ultra grim and vicious cd of the same name. Definitely only for the black of heart and kult of spirit.

NEKRASOV Tramp And Void EP (self-released) cd-r 10.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We just got in a handful of these super limited cd-rs from Australia's Nekrasov, the project of one Bob Nekrasov (no, really), formerly of Melbourne based doomsters Whitehorse, and current purveyor of abject post-industrial blackness. Tramp And Void is, as we like to say in the business, a real motherfucker. This ep is just teeming with filth and despair, the sounds within melding noisy as hell blackened ambience with super heavy black METAL. The first song is an awesome slab of crumbling electronics abuse with hateful vocals gurgling about in the slowly rumbling chaos, very cool and somewhat reminiscent of that Cities Last Broadcast cd we reviewed a while back. But when track two kicks in, it's like being launched out of an abandoned high rise and into a waiting hurricane. The sound is like a more traditionally metal WOLD meeting up with Australia's psychedelic doom/grind lords diSEMBOWELMENT. In a dog fight. Or something. Pretty intense stuff, regardless, the non-stop double kick drum gives you the impression that you ain't coming out of this one alive. Track 3 sounds like the last day of existence, with windy electronics dominating as Mr. Nekrasov spews out anguished, hateful musings until everything is overwhelmed by electronic skree. Following another vignette of slowly moving ambience, Tramp And Void concludes with an ultra depressive, mid-tempo dirge, the relentless kick drums once again letting you know there is nowhere to hide. The piece is brutal but melancholy, not to mention quite beautiful, and one of those perfect songs to end a record as you assume the fetal position and wonder what horrors await. Though brief, this ep is an intense and demanding piece of work, refusing to confine itself to any one genre in particular. That said, forward thinking metalheads will be scrambling to get their grimey hands on this one.
Again, this thing is insanely limited, not sure how many were made, but you're gonna want to act fast. Comes packaged in an awesome black and red mini-poster with an image of a forest dwelling black winged angel staring right into your soul.
MPEG Stream: "Track 1"
MPEG Stream: "Track 2"
MPEG Stream: "Track 5"

NEKRASOV / ADERLATING split (Chrome Leaf) lp 14.98
A pretty strange, but in many ways pretty perfect pairing, cult Aussie black metal / black noize horde Nekrasov, and industrial cinematic black doom project Aderlating, which just so happens to be an offshoot of the mighty Gnaw Their Tongues.
Both blackened, both noisy, here the two drift together and end up meeting somewhere right in the middle, floating in the hellish black abyss, heavier on the ambient than the black metal, more abstract and atmospheric than harsh and harrowing.
Nekrasov offers up a side long stunner, which begins as a roiling minimal dronescape of textured blackness, muted streaks of submerged melody, buried vocals, creeping slow motion pulses, constantly shifting layers, deep dense overtones, creaks and scrapes, utterly haunting and otherworldly, occasionally building to a SUNNO)))-like wall of sound, before slipping back into something more slithery and cinematic. By The end, the sound has reached a fever pitch, a swirling, caterwauling cacophony of inhuman vocalizations, tangled black tendrils of buzz and skree, all woven into an organic, heaving blackened ambient drone driven sonic beast, before finishing off with a stretch of hushed minimal shimmer.
Aderlating, aka Gnaw Their Tongues, otherwise known as Mories, counters with a set of three interlocking soundscapes, abject and industrial, set amidst a sea of softly swirling black tones, shapes and sounds seem to creak and groan, like some hellish machine, churning away just below the surface, spewing gouts of feedback, and sinking ever deeper into the vile black void that somehow keeps it afloat. Fragments of voice, melody, surface here and there, only to be swallowed up again. Occasionally the proceedings seems to almost coalesce into some sort of garish subterranean cabaret, but still cloaked in swirling swaths of hellish hiss and black buzz, and epic rumbling low end that threatens to devour all the other sounds. Fragmented barely there rhythms lead into an avalanche of crumbling distortion and in-the-red psychedelic blacknoize, which roils and churns and explodes in a frenzy of sonic chaos, before returning again, to its more tranquil state, which even itself is rife with industrial clatter and swaths of muted caustic noise, finishing off in a blaze of brilliant bristling blackness.
Gorgeous packaging, stunning cover art, black inner sleeve and pressed on sick green, white and black splattered vinyl.
LIMITED TO 300!!!

NEKRASOV / HUMILIATION split (New Scream Industry) cd 12.98
This is not actually brand new, it's from last year, but we've been doing our best to track down enough copies to list for ages now, and were finally able to get some direct from NEKRASOV HQ. And holy shit was it worth the wait. Nekrasov, the one man Aussie blacknoize wrecking crew who have long terrorized aQ with epic blasts of furious blackness, teamed up with Canadian black metal misanthropes Humiliation, for a seriously malformed chunk of audial evil. And while it's a split, it's also a partial collaboration, each band contributing three tracks, one of which has been augmented and fucked with by the other.
The proceedings begin with Nekrasov unfurling drifting clouds of muted murk, which give way to a barrage of blurred riffage, then blown out tumbling blast beats, all gnarled and blurred, weirdly pretty and washed out, Humiliation adding various sounds to the already dense racket. For the next two tracks, Nekrasov goes it alone, first the epic (and epically titled) "From Where I Sit The Sky Was Full Of Wrath And Ill Will", a sprawling 11 minutes of tangled spidery guitar melody, creeping droned out drift, hushed industrial ambience, ominous orchestral swells, harsh howled vokills, a brief blast of black metal crush, and then a tripped out squall of twisted effects drenched blackened noise. Finally, things finish off with a a super abstract final jam, all lumbering machine like lurch, rumbles and creaks, clatter and processed grinds and buzzes, eventually smoothing out into a deep subterranean sounding low end thrum.
The first Humiliation track begins as a haunting whirl of strange processed winds and voices, almost like some sort of EVP style field recording. Soon the voices become more pronounced, wreathed in effects, the ambience peppered with disembodied riffs, bits of chug, soaring bits of minor key melody, all suspended in a field of hiss and whir and buzz, eventually exploding into some seriously filthy and damaged black doom, harsh vokills, lo-fi drum damage, thick black chugs, a strange bit of Khanate-meets-Abruptum-meets-Burzum-meets-Wolf Eyes, a spaced out bit of grimness, eventually fading into a soft swirl of music box like melody and distant rumble, before exploding into the follow up, another chunk of lumbering hateful black stumble, which over the course of the next 8 minutes drifts from abject industrial pound, to tripped out Gnaw Their Tongues style almost orchestral minimal doom, to clattery creepy soundtracky ambience, to Swans like Teutonic pound, to almost dreamy otherworldly drift.
The final track, begins like another slab of industrial flecked doomic plod and crush, wreathed in a corrosive halo of crumbling distortion and malfunctioning effects, before the riffing drops out completely, leaving a roiling expanse of fractured feedback, strange samples, grinding scrape and howl, all wrapped in wildly explosive layers of blown out buzz.
More necessary Nekrasov, and something serious to whet your appetite for more fucked up filth from the mysterious Humiliation...
MPEG Stream: NEKRASOV "From Where I Sit The Sky Was Full Of Wrath And Ill Will (w/Humiliation)"
MPEG Stream: HUMILIATION "Barbarians (w/Nekrasov)"

NEKRASOV / MOON / NEKROS MANTEIA The Haunting Resonance (Fall Of Nature) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
So, apparently Australia is more than just adorable animals and funny accents. No, many bands from Australia are simply scary as shit! And what better way to throw yourself headfirst into the maelstrom than with this KILLER 3 way split, featuring some of the island continent's most depressive and unsettling blackened exports?
The Haunting Resonance is, as the liner notes briefly explain, a conceptual album "regarding the matter of ghosts, spirits, and phantoms" and what role, if any, they would play if the earth was wiped clean of all humanity. Pretty upbeat stuff, huh? And while it is impossible to discern just what is being sung, the music more than ably conveys this dark subject matter.
Nekrasov, whose awesome Tramp And Void ep is reviewed elsewhere on this list, inaugurates the affair with "That Which Hunts...", a burly juggernaut of a song combining Wolf Eyes-styled electronic terrorism with esoteric black metal. This song is like a continuously swirling black hole, constantly turning on and devouring itself. The song shifts, without a moments notice, from creepy, slow moving ambience to full on black metal fury, with gothy keyboards smeared across the landscape. The end result is like the soundtrack to dying alone in the wilderness, where instead of finding some source of divine strength, you simply realize that this is it. The last half of this psychedelically informed piece is a haunting, droney loop with all kinds of high end to make you nice and uncomfortable. Its repetition is its unsuspecting source of power, and before long, you are lulled into a trance where you are powerless to do anything but adjust your body to the ominous rhythms of your dying breaths.
The middle part of the trilogy is represented by Moon, who follow a similar approach to merging black metal atmospheres with more contemplative noise elements. "Forgotten Spirits" drones about as labored pulses carry the piece to a more metal (but still really weird and avant-garde) second half. While not quite as furious as Nekrasov, Moon's contribution is equally creepy and unsettling, with what may or may not be a human voice howling incessantly until the song just stops.
Bringing The Haunting Resonance to its grim conclusion is Nekros Manteia with the song "The Final Ghost". Slow, focused drums hold the foundation while delayed guitars float amongst rumbling drones. Stylistically, it makes sense when you realize the song features guitar work from Bonnie Mercer of Grey Daturas. Both bands follow a psychedelic approach that manages to sound both expansive and concentrated within its own realm of noise. Eventually, the band locks into a crusty, doom laden groove before switching to a sparse, post-rock dirge with weird, croaking vocals.
While not exactly the feel good hit of the summer, The Haunting Resonance is a worthwhile listen in its own right, and sure to appeal to those willing to explore the darker realms of noise and the more insular, lonely aspects of outsider black metal. Recommended. And apparently quite limited as well. We got a bunch of these, not sure we can get more when we run out...
MPEG Stream: NEKRASOV "That Which Hunts..."
MPEG Stream: MOON "Forgotten Spirits"

NEVAI, NONDOR Three Tocattas (self-released) lp 23.00
If we had to pick THEE most warped and bizarre and musically confusional motherfucker out there, we just might have to pick Nondor Nevai, sometime member of To Live And Shave In L.A., but with a pretty sizable catalog of completely fractured and fucked solo recordings, not to mention he plays in a duo with Mick Barr, which is like a free-metal freakout, which really has to be heard to be believed. As does this, the latest outing from NN, self described as "murderous freeblasting klassikill" performed on "an amplified organ so distorted and piercing it is painful", which is pretty much spot on, but there's way more going on. The provenance of discovering this record might put it in perspective. Someone sent us an amazing video, featuring Nondor Nevai, in a snowy clearing in the middle of a dark forest, next to a tree with a severed deer head tied to it, NN in black jeans and suspenders, shirtless, huge shaggy mop of hair, arms covered in blood, wildly headbanging as he lights an upside down plywood cross and chugs alcohol, and most importantly, getting all up in the camera, menacingly brandishing his iPhone! That phone clutched in his outstretched hand 'invisible orange' style. And the music, suitably warped, blasting buzzing weirdness, check it out for yourself:
http://nandornevai.com/movies.html
So when NN got in touch we ordered a bunch of this new record, a super limited (only 250 copies) 180 gram 12", housed in a super thick, gatefold sleeve, with a killer patch affixed to one side, featuring a strange image of some sort of demon hovering over the earth, glowing silver hands holding arrows crossed in front of this hooded visage, bearing the legends "Overshadower Kommand" and "Kolder Than Heaven". Once you finally make it past the eye popping art and the confusional text, you'll discover a sprawling collection of what can only be described as electro classical black prog doom whatthefuck. Buzzy super distorted melodies, twisted processed vokills, heavily panned so they stutter swinging wildly from speaker to speaker, the songs alternately plodding along menacingly, lumbering and lurching or occasionally slipping into ferocious blackened blasts. There's plenty of Goblin-y ambience here and there, but even those bits are wrapped around wild octopoidal drumming, the sound not really black metal, but definitely black, and occasionally metallic, instead it's like some twisted carnivalesque black prog, which to us sounds like a dream/nightmare combination of ELP, Vondur and Orthrelm, which needless to say, means this RULES.
Baffling and brilliant, totally recommended for folks who like their heaviness as fucked up as possible, total outsider black prog bliss.
LIMITED TO 250 COPIES!!!

NEVER PRESENCE FOREVER / UNGEROMIMIZU split (Lyderhorn) 7" 4.50
Super bizarre 7" match up, that will have weirdo music freeks flipping out. Two bands, with essentially nothing in common, each exploring extreme and opposite ends of the sonic spectrum, both completely ruling. And in one case, completely baffling.
The A side is a band from Virginia called Never Presence Forever. Never heard of em? We hadn't either, but all it took was this brief 7" sampling to have us wanting to hear way more. We were sort of expecting some furious black metal, or damaged noise, but instead, NPF offer up some gorgeous creeping dark ambience, low rumbling strings, deep metallic reverberations, all mournful and melancholy, cinematic and haunting.
The flipside is a whole other something. A band, or a guy, called Ungeromimizu, whose sound is a sort of lo-fi black metal Whitehouse, a square wave damaged synth blown out psychnoise screamo, that is so intense and noisy and freaked out, we weren't sure if we were loving it or hating it. But it only took a few second for us to go with love.
Imagine full on white noise chaos, all hiss and squeal and speaker shredding skree, like Faxed Head with no bass and all the treble your stereo can('t) handle, super processed vocals Masonna style, squiggly FX addled synths, total ear punishing insanity. The second track is toned down, but only a little, a weird warbly techno synth pulse beneath howling black metal vox, and all sorts of squiggly high end streaks and squeals.
Due to a pressing mistake, pressed not on black, or bloody red, or trippy swirled vinyl, but various shades of pink!

NIELLERADE FALIBILISTHORSTAR (N.F.H.) Hackelsekista (Total Holocaust Records) cd 14.98

MPEG Stream: "Jasande Lera"
MPEG Stream: "Castrol:265695"

NIELLERADE FALIBILISTHORSTAR (N.F.H.) Halrum (SNSE) cd 8.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

NIELLERADE FALIBILISTHORSTAR (N.F.H.) Halrum (SNSE) lp 8.98

NIFLHEIM Neurasthenie (Sepulchral Productions) cd 11.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Sepulchral is turning out to be one of our new favorite black metal labels, bringing us the blackened noise from the new grim frostbitten North, Canada that is, with the folk fleckedÊMetal Noir Quebecois of Forteresse, the grim depressive buzz of Sombres Forets, and now this, the latest from doombuzz merchants Niflheim, whose latest is a sorrowful trawl through the dourest of human emotions, rendered in shades of black and grey, minor key melodies and miserablist plod, anguished wails and bleak buzz.Ê
Neurasthenie, which means "aÊmental deviance which causes intense grief", in French, is a pretty apt title for Niflheim's latest, a slow burning, plodding, meandering chunk of harsh melancholia. The opening tracks is quite lovely, a simple slowcore drift, all clean guitar, sorrowful melodies, with some buzz draped over the top here and there merely as an afterthought, and a classical sort of outro, which leads into "The Cold Wind Of My Breath Is Always Blowing" (great title!) a gorgeous doomic plod, simple and sad, drenched in blown out crumbling distortion, strangely pretty as well as being harsh and hateful, think Nortt and Xasthur and the like, and these guys sound right at home in those hallowed halls of musical misery.Ê
But the next track is something completely different, a haunting abstract slice of cinematic ambience, chunks of distorted guitar drifting in an expanse of shimmer and buzz, vocals super distorted sprawled out over the top like some black storm cloud, simple sad melodies, glistening guitar harmonics, eventually transforming into more depressive doom.Ê
The rest of the record drifts back and forth between the two: spare, abstract guitar ambience, spacey swirling somber slowcore, dreamy instrumental minimalism, and buzz drenched blackness, crushing slow motion plod, depressive dirge, sometimes blending the two into something truly chilling and creepy, heavy and beautifully depressing.Ê
The band have changed their name to Gris, since we got first got this in, so there's a slight chance that when we run out, the restocked version will be under the name Gris, but fear not, it will be the same miserably brilliant blackness inside....
MPEG Stream: "Le Neurasthenique"
MPEG Stream: "The Cold Wind Of My Breath Is Always Blowing"
MPEG Stream: "Lueur d'Ombre"

NIGHT TROLL / TREMOR OF THE BLACK MANX Circle Of Witches / Armor (Jeshimoth) 3"cd-r 4.98
We're a sucker for a band name, you should definitely know that about us by now. And a lot of you are the same. The thinking is, if you're that creative with just the name of your band, imagine how nuts the music must be?? Sure, that doesn't always hold true, but in the case of the awesomely monickered Tremor Of The Black Manx, the name couldn't suit the music more.
On the same label as last week's record of the week, the bizarre black metal weirdness of Jute Gyte, comes TOTBM, who we know NOTHING about, but it hardly matters, what does matter is that this is some awesomely confusional and fucked up stuff, like some sort of fractured electronic hyper grind, or maybe we could call it grindtronica, or something like that. The structure is definitely grind, the songs are short, the arrangements are head spinning, but all of the sounds seem to be synths and not guitars, although sometimes the sounds DO seem to resemble guitars, maybe they're just super processed, regardless, the result is a strangely synthesized bit of frantic buzz, tangled melody, moody murky drift, all wrapped around skittering, stuttering programmed drums, that go from plod to pound to inhuman blast in the blink of an eye, dragging the rest of the sounds along with it. Really rad, and WAY weird.
TOTBM are teamed up here with Night Troll, who sound like a slightly electronic, WAY fucked up, ultra lo-fi raw primitive black metal. Ildjarn, Bone Awl, Akitsa, if you love that stuff but wish it was WEIRDER, more damaged and demented, with throbbing sub bass, tangled atonal guitars, processed death metal grunts, and all sort of other random fuckery, then this is for you. Total lo-fi stumbling ultra raw outsider electronic black metal. Which to us reads: SUPER RAD.
MPEG Stream: NIGHT TROLL "Circle Of Witches"
MPEG Stream: NIGHT TROLL "Dungeon Forest"
MPEG Stream: TREMOR OF THE BLACK MANX "Opal Blondes"
MPEG Stream: TREMOR OF THE BLACK MANX "Carving Sea Altars"

NIGHTBRINGER Apocalypse Sun (Ajna) cd 14.98
Full length number two from one of the most revered US black metal bands around. And for good reason. Their Death And The Black Work record was near flawless, a swirling epic, spaced our psychedelic blackness, with insane insectoid riffing, inhumanly blazing drumming, filthy demonic vox, and some of the most tangled, gnarled and complex arrangements ever. Especially the guitars. Strip the guitars away, and you'd still be looking as a practically perfect BM framework, blasting, chaotic, dense, ultra heavy, to that you could add some generically grim and frosty riffage and have a decent slab of black metal, or you could add some warped and dizzyingly fractured Nightbringer style riffing, and suddenly, we're in a whole 'nother dimension. In some ways the sound is more death metal than black metal, in structure at least, furious and relentless, so fast, but cloaked in a filthy patina of grim ambient buzz, shot through with spidery mournful melodies, and those guitars, soaring and howling and tangly and layered and totally epic and relentless, as close to manic blackened riffing can get to non stop shredding without losing cohesion, instead it makes every track seem more epic, more spacey out, as if the band were trying to craft some impossible black metal ur-drone raga, a constant build, getting more and more and more frantic, the energy spilling forth it huge gouts of incendiary buzz and blast, totally exhausting, but also utterly exhilarating, one track feels like a whole record by other, less ambitious bands, like some strange hybrid of Deathspell Omega, Leviathan and Liturgy, the last especially in the way Nightbringer seem to transcend black metal, taking the traditional tropes and stretching them into something almost more akin to 20th century composition, black metal rendered in sprawling expansive soundscapes of light and dark, buzz and blast, grind and crunch, howl and shimmer, occasionally slipping into gorgeous swirling guitar drones, other times, pounding majestic doomlike lumber, and still other times face melting bursts of white noise blasts of grinding black crunch.
Nightbringer are easily one of the best USBM bands, and Apocalypse Sun is just latest in their ever expanding black world of sound, and is most definitely a contender for black metal record of the year. As if we were expecting anything less...
MPEG Stream: "I Am I"
MPEG Stream: "Supplication Before The Throne Of Tehom"
MPEG Stream: "Serpent Of The Midnight Sun"
MPEG Stream: "Upturning The Seventh Chalice"

NIGHTBRINGER Death And The Black Work (Full Moon Productions) cd 11.98
Also available on cd! For those who balked at the $40+ pricetag on the triple lp, or who just prefer cds to lps, this chunk of incredible blackness is now available on aluminum and plastic, the bonus 1/2 hour of material from the box set is missing, but the core of the record is still the same, and even in its pared down version, Death And The Black Work is still one of the best black metal records in recent memory!
The return of Nightbringer! One of the best USBM bands going, hailing from the frosty, wintry climes of Colorado, whose last release (or at least the last one we got) was an insanely kick ass split with Temple Of Not (a sort of drone-y Nightbringer side project), a record that most of the black metal folks we know consider a masterpiece. Ourselves included. So there were seriously high expectations for this, their first full length. We can safely say, even after only a few listens, this will WAY surpass expectations and will likely be topping a lot of year end lists, a total contender for black metal record of the year.
Nightbringer's sounds is a dense swirling blackness, spaced out and subtly psychedelic, incredibly thick and textured, a bizarre hybrid of Darkspace and Deathspell Omega, but also plenty of old school raw black metal, long stretches of lurching doom, the sounds are not necessarily unfamiliar, but it's how they're employed. The guitars are the strangest of all, slipping from classic buzzing riffage, to sweeping majestic epic chords, to super strange ultra fast trills, almost like a tremolo, something we've heard very few BM bands do, it's really haunting and otherworldly, and adds to the sort of blackness of space vibe, and offers a cool counterpoint, the main riff lumbering along, the drums a chaotic slowed down plod, but then that strange guitar part unfurling these rapid fires runs, that almost sound like drones, long drawn out tones, making the whole thing so haunting and tense, in fact for a black metal record, much of Death And The Black Work is spent not playing fast at all (minus that awesome weird guitar part), the band is almost more like some alien blackened doom, that occasionally erupts into a thunderous blast, before slipping back into their buzzing black sprawl. But when they do get fast, it's fucking manic, frenzied, gloriously fucked up and feral, a buzzing blurred onslaught, that has few equals. We could go on and on but fuck it, this is IT. This is black metal supremacy. Mysterious and otherworldly, furious and blackly epic, total grim and frostbitten outer space brilliance. And yeah, this just might be black metal record of the year after all.
MPEG Stream: "Caput Draconis - Black Saturn"
MPEG Stream: "Womb Of Nyx"
MPEG Stream: "Feast Of The Manes"

NIGHTBRINGER Death And The Black Work (Forever Plagued) 3lp box set 42.00
The return of Nightbringer! One of the best USBM bands going, hailing from the frosty, wintry climes of Colorado, whose last release (or at least the last one we got) was an insanely kick ass split with Temple Of Not (a sort of drone-y Nightbringer side project), a record that most of the black metal folks we know consider a masterpiece. Ourselves included. So there were seriously high expectations for this, their first full length. We can safely say, even after only a few listens, this will WAY surpass expectations and will likely be topping a lot of year end lists, a total contender for black metal record of the year.
There is a cd version that we'll be getting eventually, but this vinyl version is SO much cooler. First off, it comes in a killer box, but more importantly, it contains nearly 30 minutes more music! So odds are the troo grim black metalheads are gonna want one of these super limited boxes. The rest of you can wait a couple weeks for the cd.
Nightbringer's sounds is a dense swirling blackness, spaced out and subtly psychedelic, incredibly thick and textured, a bizarre hybrid of Darkspace and Deathspell Omega, but also plenty of old school raw black metal, long stretches of lurching doom, the sounds are not necessarily unfamiliar, but it's how they're employed. The guitars are the strangest of all, slipping from classic buzzing riffage, to sweeping majestic epic chords, to super strange ultra fast trills, almost like a tremolo, something we've heard very few BM bands do, it's really haunting and otherworldly, and adds to the sort of blackness of space vibe, and offers a cool counterpoint, the main riff lumbering along, the drums a chaotic slowed down plod, but then that strange guitar part unfurling these rapid fires runs, that almost sound like drones, long drawn out tones, making the whole thing so haunting and tense, in fact for a black metal record, much of Death And The Black Work is spent not playing fast at all (minus that awesome weird guitar part), the band is almost more like some alien blackened doom, that occasionally erupts into a thunderous blast, before slipping back into their buzzing black sprawl. But when they do get fast, it's fucking manic, frenzied, gloriously fucked up and feral, a buzzing blurred onslaught, that has few equals. We could go on and on but fuck it, this is IT. This is black metal supremacy. Mysterious and otherworldly, furious and blackly epic, total grim and frostbitten outer space brilliance. And yeah, this just might be black metal record of the year after all.
LIMITED of course. And fair warning, ALL the boxes have some sort of very light cosmetic damage, actually damage might be too dramatic, they all have light scuffs on the edges, or seem a bit worn in places, but that just make them seem even more like some lost sacred scroll, some ancient book of the dead, discovered beneath the ruins of a church, and minus those slight imperfections, these boxes are precious black jewels, emanating a timeless malevolence, that will no doubt feel right at home on that candle lit skull laden black altar you keep all your records on at home.
MPEG Stream: "Caput Draconis - Black Saturn"
MPEG Stream: "Womb Of Nyx"
MPEG Stream: "Feast Of The Manes"

NIGHTBRINGER Emanation (Starlight Temple Society) cd 8.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
One of a handful of new releases on the always kick ass Starlight Temple Society, the new Temple Of Not, and the Void Of Reveries cds, both reviewed elsewhere on this week's list, and this, a killer collection of demos and rare and unreleased tracks, from Colorado's best black metal export, Nightbringer, whose previous two records were huge favorites around here, both Death And The Black Work and Apocalypse Sun, buzzing blasting works of black art.
This compilation gathers up various tracks from the last decade, two from a 1999 demo, two from Nightbringer's split with Serpentinam from 2004, and most excitingly, two unreleased tracks from the Death And The Black Work sessions. The demo tracks are awesomely raw, after a brief ambient intro, the band explodes into a serious murky sprawl of blackened buzz, the sound so lo-fi and murky, all the sounds blur into a glorious stretch of smeared blown out blackness. Laced with weirdly lush keyboard swells. The split tracks are a bit more produced, the first track raw and trebly, the sound epic and majestic, but still harsh and grin and hellish, the second more moody and atmospheric, midtempo, still buzzing and black, but with some cool weird keening high end guitar skree, and some doomy ambience, a pretty epic slab of lumbering crush.
The Death And The Black Works tracks are as epic as you would hope, unclear why they got left off the record proper, soaring, frantic, blasting buzzing blackness, pounding double kick drumming, intense insectoid riffing, raspy vokills buried in the mix, and some super cool parts where all the low end drops out, just leaving frenzied high end riffing soaring over chaotic drumming. The final track is another more doomy jam, the frantic riffing spread out over lurching lumbering drum plod, howled anguished vox, lots of swirling black atmosphere, and plenty of twisted dynamics, like guitars dropping out and then swooping back in, as well as some totally epic arrangements.
Killer stuff, especially for an odds and ends collection. Definitely recommended, for fans obviously, but also for disciples of the grim black buzz.
LIMITED TO 150 COPIES!!!
MPEG Stream: "Oblivion's Descent"
MPEG Stream: "Scorn Of The Enlightened"
MPEG Stream: "Womb Of Nyx"

NIGHTBRINGER Hierophany Of The Open Grave (Season of Mist) cd 15.98
We've long been fans of this grim kvlt Colorado horde, whose uniquely twisted sound seems to merge classic Norwegian style black metal, with the gnarled, warped blackness of bands like Deathspell Omega, their hybrid a furious, frenzied, impossibly complex and totally maniacal black metal that while reminiscent of other bands, is most definitely a pure and extremely virulent strain of blackness few bands can ever hope to attain. We often joke that even the black metal savvy among us have trouble telling one band from another, but there's no mistaking Nightbringer, their sound strangely distinctive, tonally, compositionally, this latest record, their third, delves even deeper into the warped world of post blackness that their Deathspell brethren are constantly exploring, for every burst of blast beat driven fury, there's a stretch of twisted super melodic mathiness, for every chunk of churning doomic plod, there's some progged out moment of soaring majesty, the songs slip and slither, transform and constantly shift shapes, the riffs besides being gnarled are strangely slippery, sounding almost at times like they're being played with a slide, and lending a warped psychedelic vibe to much of the proceedings, with much of the black filth tempered by moments of surprising loveliness, or bits of classic metal that find their way into an otherwise furiously fractured squall of black hole buzz.
But like the records before, there's something going on well beyond the playing, or the production, an ineffable something that infuses the music here with something special, a mood, and ambience, evocative and mysterious, pretty much every black metal band is grim and brutal, dark and blackened and EVIL, but Nightbringer seem unconcerned with all of that, instead crafting this incredible black metal worlds, where the mood is built into the sound, into the order of notes, the choice of tone and timbre, it seems like it must be unconscious, but whatever it is, and however these guys do it, it's what makes THIS the real transcendental black metal!!
MPEG Stream: "Rite Of The Slaying Tongue"
MPEG Stream: "Eater Of The Black Lead"
MPEG Stream: "Psychagogoi"

NIGHTBRINGER / TEMPLE OF NOT Rex Ex Ordine Throni (Full Moon Productions) cd 11.98
What better way to find a band to release a split with than to just pick a band that features essentially the same members? Such is the case with this two way split between buzzing black hordes Nightbringer and ritualistic dark ambient ensemble Temple Of Not. Most bands would probably just combine the two, and have a black metal band with long drone passages, or vice versa, but these are two entirely different sonic entities, and both are amazing. Hailing from Colorado, these groups were brought to our attention by Wrest from Leviathan, who is VERY selective about the metal he listens to, so much so that when he repeatedly sang (growled?) the praises of both these bands we knew we had to check it out.
Nightbringer buzz darkly through a thick black void, with loping midtempo tempos over furiously fast riffing, and some completely insane drumming, not just blast beats, but wild fills and strange unlikely rhythms. Occasionally the band slows down, at which point the music takes on a creepy majestic air, like court music for some hellish black temple, but it's not long before the band bursts back into full speed blackness. Super atmospheric with bizarre blasts of hyper speed buzz as well as stretches of dense droning riffage. Heavy and dense and evil. These guys definitely wouldn't sound out of place on NED alongside Deathspell and Antaeus.
Nightbringer's occultic ambient alter ego Temple Of Not is just as dark and heavy, but realizes their evil through drone not buzz, with two lengthy glacial crawls, thick soundscapes of whirring rumble and dreamlike shimmer. But be prepared, this is not normal ambient music. Part way through the first track, the song is disrupted by huge speaker shredding bursts of what sounds like a garbled black metal transmission from an alternate universe, repeated over and over building into a strange fuzzed out super distorted rhythm before drifting off again, allowing the song to wind down into blackness. The second ToN track is even more spare, but still haunting and ominous, disembodied vocals drift above a slowly shifting, layered landscape of throb and thrum, warble and whir, guitars and synths intertwined and tangled up in a slow drift skyward, the last few minutes punctuated by a simple distant pulse-like distant drum beat. Very primal and ritualistic. And the perfect compliment to Nightbringer's hellborne onslaught.
Recommended by AQ and Wrest endorsed!! You know what that means...
MPEG Stream: NIGHTBRINGER "The Void"
MPEG Stream: NIGHTBRINGER "Mors Philosphorum"
MPEG Stream: TEMPLE OF NOT "Temple Of Not"

NIGHTBRINGER / TEMPLE OF NOT Rex Ex Ordine Throni (Forever Plagued ) 2lp 11.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
What better way to find a band to release a split with than to just pick a band that features essentially the same members? Such is the case with this two way split between buzzing black horder Nightbringer and ritualistic dark ambient ensemble Temple Of Not. Most bands would probably just combine the two, and have a black metal band with long drone passages, or vice versa, but these are two entirely different sonic entities, and both are amazing. Hailing from Colorado, these groups were brought to our attention by Wrest from Leviathan, who is VERY selective about the metal he listens to, so much so that when he repeatedly sang (growled?) the praises of both these bands we knew we had to check it out.
Nightbringer buzz darkly through a thick black void, with loping midtempo tempos over furiously fast riffing, and some completely insane drumming, not just blast beats, but wild fills and strange unlikely rhythms. Occasionally the band slows down, at which point the music takes on a creepy majestic air, like court music for some hellish black temple, but it's not long before the band bursts back into full speed blackness. Super atmospheric with bizarre blasts of hyper speed buzz as well as stretches of dense droning riffage. Heavy and dense and evil. These guys definitely wouldn't sound out of place on NED alongside Deathspell and Antaeus.
Nightbringer's occultic ambient alter ego Temple Of Not is just as dark and heavy, but realizes their evil through drone not buzz, with two lengthy glacial crawls, thick soundscapes of whirring rumble and dreamlike shimmer. But be prepared, this is not normal ambient music. Part way through the first track, the song is disrupted by huge speaker shredding bursts of what sounds like a garbled black metal transmission from an alternate universe, repeated over and over building into a strange fuzzed out super distorted rhythm before drifting off again, allowing the song to wind down into blackness. The second ToN track is even more spare, but still haunting and ominous, disembodied vocals drift above a slowly shifting, layered landscape of throb and thrum, warble and whir, guitars and synths intertwined and tangled up in a slow drift skyward, the last few minutes punctuated by a simple distant pulse-like distant drum beat. Very primal and ritualistic. And the perfect compliment to Nightbringer's hellborne onslaught.
Recommended by AQ and Wrest endorsed!! You know what that means...
MPEG Stream: NIGHTBRINGER "The Void"
MPEG Stream: NIGHTBRINGER "Mors Philosphorum"
MPEG Stream: TEMPLE OF NOT "Temple Of Not"

NIHILL Grond (Hydra Head) cd 16.98
The second Grond begins, it all becomes clear: this is EXACTLY what you want to be listening to! Nihill follows a similar path to progressive black metal heavies such as Deathspell, Blut Aus Nord, and S.V.E.S.T., meaning this is modern black metal done the right way, but they also inject a significant amount of dooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooom into the mix, ala SUNNO))) and Bunkur. So, uh, do we really need to say it? We're giving this one our seal of approval like you wouldn't believe.
Grond is part II of a trilogy (check out our review for the recent reissue of part I, Krach, from a few lists back), and it kicks off in grand fashion with "Aard," a blitzkrieg of pummeling blast beats, seasick guitar riffs, and forceful growling vocals. The song is a bit like wandering in a psychedelic dream state through a blackened, frozen wilderness, and it doesn't let up one bit for the duration of its 11 furious minutes, at least not until its feedback drenched conclusion, which segues into the next song, "Antimoon", a plodding doomscape pierced with discordant, siren like guitar notes and shrouded in infinite layers of fuzz and murk for the first 8 of its 17 minutes, after which the song spirals into an abyssic crevasse of windy, electronic ambience. "Vacuum" is a brutal and relentless lesson in Satanic riffage that works its way into the depths of your mind with its constant repetition and the singer's harsh, demonic croaks. The song is unrestrained and beyond the control of anything but the band themselves. The final selection here, "Pulsus", is another lesson in abject, doomed out black metal, a glacial, slow moving vortex ready to pull you deep into the misery. As the minutes progress, the song stops and starts like an animal gasping to crawl out of a blizzard, only to repeat its into eternity, or at least until an ever growing fuzz takes over everything in its path.
So yeah, this one pretty much fulfills the requirements for a metal record around this neck of the woods - equal parts speed and barely mobile dooooooooooooooom, all mixed into a hateful brew of metallic fury. We can only wonder where things will go with part III.
MPEG Stream: "Aard"
MPEG Stream: "Antimoon"

NIHILL Krach (Monumentum) cd 13.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
It's hard to not love a band that sounds like some unholy spawn of Deathspell Omega and SUNNO))), a blackened ritualistic blend of furious black metal and epic doomdrone, and while that combination in and of itself is not outrageously novel, since lots of BM record incorporate ambience and drones, it's all in the execution, and Nihill have managed to spin a sinister black web of sound that while familiar in some ways, is truly unlike anything we've heard before.
The first in a supposedly already completed trilogy of albums, Krach is a droning black beast, that begins with a short intro, a barely there bit of dark ambience, before exploding intoÊblasting chaotic, almost industrial black metal, so intense and blown out it basically ceases being black metal and becomes some droning buzzing black noisescape, the relentless blast beats the only thing holding everything together, huge swaths of ugly buzz and furious tangled black riffing. About partÊway through the brutality abates, leaving a fuzzy free floating tangle ofÊstrange voices, and circusy guitar melodies, whirring drones and abstract ambience, before a black blast shatters the tranquility and we're sucked right back down into Nihill's fuzzed out hellish sonic abyss.
The rest of the record is primarily the epic, three part, 42 minuteÊGnosis song suite. Each movement a cinematic slab of black doomdronedrift,Êhuge ultra distorted swells of chordal crunch, overÊhaunting plodding percussion that sounds like it was recorded in some massive underground cathedral, theseÊglacial sonic shifts lumber beastlike through sprawling black hole soundscapes, the various layers and drones shifting from hateful industrial pummel to gorgeous ambient shimmer and back again. Imagine a more druggy SUNNO))) but with actual percussion, some demonic propulsion driving this epic's 16 rpm engine. The trilogy is broken up by another burst of DSO style blackened chaos, a completely deranged off kilter sonic assault, but the last two movements follow, one right after the other, finishing off the record with a nearly half hour of glacial, suffocating, brutal black drift.Ê
Any one remotely into any of the following bands absolutely NEEDS this: SUNNO))), Deathspell Omega, Moss, Khanate, Bunkur, S.V.E.S.T., Trollmann, Tenhornedbeast, Monument Of Urns, Marzuraan, Black Boned Angel... we could go on and on and on. A new deathdoomdronedrift favorite, with the added bonus of some seriously buzzing blackness.Ê
And we're already dying for the rest of the trilogy....
MPEG Stream: "Mundus Subterreanus"
MPEG Stream: "Gnosis Pt. 1"
MPEG Stream: "Dreams Upon The Scaffold"

NIHILL Krach (Hydra Head) cd 16.98
This killer slab of heaviness, originally reviewed right here way back in 2007, has been out of print for a while, but the fine folks at Hydra Head have gotten the rights from the Monumentum label to unleash it once again. So for those of you who missed out on this the first time, don't blow it again, after all, it's practically impossible to not love a band that sounds like some unholy spawn of Deathspell Omega and SUNNO))), a blackened ritualistic blend of furious black metal and epic doomdrone. And while that combination in and of itself is not outrageously novel, since lots of BM record incorporate ambience and drones, it's all in the execution, and Nihill have managed to spin a sinister black web of sound that while familiar in some ways, is truly unlike anything we've heard before.
The first in a supposedly already completed trilogy of albums, Krach is a droning black beast, that begins with a short intro, a barely there bit of dark ambience, before exploding intoÊblasting chaotic, almost industrial black metal, so intense and blown out it basically ceases being black metal and becomes some droning buzzing black noisescape, the relentless blast beats the only thing holding everything together, huge swaths of ugly buzz and furious tangled black riffing. About partÊway through the brutality abates, leaving a fuzzy free floating tangle ofÊstrange voices, and circusy guitar melodies, whirring drones and abstract ambience, before a black blast shatters the tranquility and we're sucked right back down into Nihill's fuzzed out hellish sonic abyss.
The rest of the record is primarily the epic, three part, 42 minuteÊGnosis song suite. Each movement a cinematic slab of black doomdronedrift,Êhuge ultra distorted swells of chordal crunch, overÊhaunting plodding percussion that sounds like it was recorded in some massive underground cathedral, theseÊglacial sonic shifts lumber beastlike through sprawling black hole soundscapes, the various layers and drones shifting from hateful industrial pummel to gorgeous ambient shimmer and back again. Imagine a more druggy SUNNO))) but with actual percussion, some demonic propulsion driving this epic's 16 rpm engine. The trilogy is broken up by another burst of DSO style blackened chaos, a completely deranged off kilter sonic assault, but the last two movements follow, one right after the other, finishing off the record with a nearly half hour of glacial, suffocating, brutal black drift.Ê
Any one remotely into any of the following bands absolutely NEEDS this: SUNNO))), Deathspell Omega, Moss, Khanate, Bunkur, S.V.E.S.T., Trollmann, Tenhornedbeast, Monument Of Urns, Marzuraan, Black Boned Angel... we could go on and on and on. A new deathdoomdronedrift favorite, with the added bonus of some seriously buzzing blackness.Ê
And we're STILL dying for the rest of the trilogy....
MPEG Stream: "Mundus Subterreanus"
MPEG Stream: "Gnosis Pt. 1"
MPEG Stream: "Dreams Upon The Scaffold"

NIHILL Krach (Monumentum) 2lp 17.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
It's hard to not love a band that sounds like some unholy spawn of Deathspell Omega and SUNNO))), a blackened ritualistic blend of furious black metal and epic doomdrone, and while that combination in and of itself is not outrageously novel, since lots of BM record incorporate ambience and drones, it's all in the execution, and Nihill have managed to spin a sinister black web of sound that while familiar in some ways, is truly unlike anything we've heard before.
The first in a supposedly already completed trilogy of albums, Krach is a droning black beast, that begins with a short intro, a barely there bit of dark ambience, before exploding intoÊblasting chaotic, almost industrial black metal, so intense and blown out it basically ceases being black metal and becomes some droning buzzing black noisescape, the relentless blast beats the only thing holding everything together, huge swaths of ugly buzz and furious tangled black riffing. About partÊway through the brutality abates, leaving a fuzzy free floating tangle ofÊstrange voices, and circusy guitar melodies, whirring drones and abstract ambience, before a black blast shatters the tranquility and we're sucked right back down into Nihill's fuzzed out hellish sonic abyss.
The rest of the record is primarily the epic, three part, 42 minuteÊGnosis song suite. Each movement a cinematic slab of black doomdronedrift,Êhuge ultra distorted swells of chordal crunch, overÊhaunting plodding percussion that sounds like it was recorded in some massive underground cathedral, theseÊglacial sonic shifts lumber beastlike through sprawling black hole soundscapes, the various layers and drones shifting from hateful industrial pummel to gorgeous ambient shimmer and back again. Imagine a more druggy SUNNO))) but with actual percussion, some demonic propulsion driving this epic's 16 rpm engine. The trilogy is broken up by another burst of DSO style blackened chaos, a completely deranged off kilter sonic assault, but the last two movements follow, one right after the other, finishing off the record with a nearly half hour of glacial, suffocating, brutal black drift.Ê
Any one remotely into any of the following bands absolutely NEEDS this: SUNNO))), Deathspell Omega, Moss, Khanate, Bunkur, S.V.E.S.T., Trollmann, Tenhornedbeast, Monument Of Urns, Marzuraan, Black Boned Angel... we could go on and on and on. A new deathdoomdronedrift favorite, with the added bonus of some seriously buzzing blackness.Ê
And we're already dying for the rest of the trilogy....
The lp is LIMITED TO 500 COPIES and comes with a poster!
MPEG Stream: "Mundus Subterreanus"
MPEG Stream: "Gnosis Pt. 1"
MPEG Stream: "Dreams Upon The Scaffold"

NIHILUM Dead And Forgotten (Insikt) cassette 5.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
An ultra brief blast of grim, depressive, doomy ambience, from this Swedish one man horde known as Nihilum. Also spreading his harsh hateful message of metallic doom and gloom in the groups Durthang and Hypothermia, Nachtzeit, the man behind Nihilum, here weaves lush, lonely synthscapes of minor key melody, rumbling drones, soaring faux strings, and mournful melancholia, all over drawn out pulses and epic sweeping expanses of slow shifting fuzz. A gloriously lo-fi dark ambience, cinematic and sad, weirdly dramatic and hauntingly pretty.
Not so much metal, or doom, or even heavy really, as lilting and lovely, dark, dreamy and depressive.

NJIQAHDDA Aartu Mortaa (Njiijn Arts Productions) 2xcd-r + incense + candle + box 24.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Another missive of murky unblack energy from the mysterious Njiqahdda, another project from the man behind E.E.E. Recordings, as well as some of our favorite unblack bands: Light Shall Prevail, Agathothodion, Glaciial, but for Njiqahdda, the approach seems to be much different that for the other more traditionally buzzy outfits. In our review for the last Njiqahdda, we described the sound as alchemical psychedelic naturalist atmospheric doomed UN-black metal, which still pretty much applies, but like in those other projects, the sounds and productions are so varied, it sounds sometimes like they were recorded in different studios, used different equipment, it even sounds sometimes like it was played by entirely different bands. Not sure how he does it, but whatever it is, every new record re veals a new facet to his sound, and on this new Njiqahdda, the sound is murky and hypnotic, not so much a buzz as a muddy blur. A main riff that is repeated over and over and over, a chord progression rendered almost dronelike, the vocals a layer of gurgling rumble over the top, the drums only audible as a distant throb or the occasional sizzle of cymbal shimmer. Definitely grim and (un)black, but with that distinct postrock vibe, and a weirdly catchy main melody, the whole thing locked and looped into an endlessly repetitive mantra.
Two tracks on the first disc, muddy and murky and dreamily washed out, almost like some minimal black metal record produced by Tim Hecker or Philip Jeck. Buzzy and beautifully blurred.
The second disc is a single hour long track of deeeeeeep black ambience. A haunting and mysterious expanse of distant whirs and cavernous rumbles, soft shimmer and high end streaks, super spare and sparse, headphones recommended, reverbed voices, the sound of some underground cavern, lightless and devoid of all life, an emptiness, a nothingness, beautifully austere.
Packaged in an oversized black cardboard box, with a candle and incense, a parchment insert, the cd-r's in plain white cardboard sleeves with paste on text on the front and back. Crazy limited. In fact, TOTALLY OUT OF PRINT, this batch made just for us, which means once these are gone, they are gone gone gone...
MPEG Stream: "Aartuu Solmua Orkk"
MPEG Stream: "Mortaa Skaldai Unvettu Oom"

NJIQAHDDA Ints / Nji / Verfatu (Njiijn Arts Productions) cd-r 9.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
The return of the unpronounceably named master of alchemical psychedelic naturalist atmospheric doomed UN-black metal, Njiqahdda, whose last record was a revelation, which is saying a lot as the man behind Njiqahdda also records as Light Shall Prevail, Agathothodion, and as part of Glaciial, not to mention running the kick ass E.E.E. Recordings label.
But with Njiqahdda, there does seem to be something more organic going on, something less tied to the structures and strictures of black metal. There is definitely plenty of buzz and blast, but there's also lots of krautrock style jamming, psychedelic ambience. The sound is much more lo-fi, murky and muddy, but not in that blackened grim way so much as a strange haunting earthy way.
The opening track begins with some swirling black rumble, and mysterious downtuned drones, but when the song proper kicks in, it's not a burst of blackness, instead it's an effects drenched tripped out hypnorock jam, Butthole Surfers style vocals swirl in a sea of trippy druggy FX, the main riff is looped and repeated, the drums propulsive and inventive, if anything this sounds more like last week's record of the week CAVE, than any black metal we've heard . There are some shrieked harsh vocals, some double kick blast beats, but those are strung beneath clean guitars weaving a seasick shanty, the effects cycling and swirling and adding so much weird texture and so many strange layers, that this honestly sounds like it could be some blackened Circle side project. The track unwinds into a dense field of slowly unfurling feedback and more spacepsych FX.
The second track follows a similar pattern, hewing a bit closer to a distinctly black metal sound, but still, the effects are wrapped around everything, the drums are busy and chaotic, the vocals are weird whispers, doused in delay, and allowed to careen amidst the warped riffage and splattery drumming, part way through, the band locks into a nearly Burzumic buzz, but before too long the song slips back into hushed black ambience.
Track three is the blackest so far, a loping, dirgey, depressive minor key midtempo lurch, the guitars surging and soaring majestically, the drums simple and propulsive, the vocals still weird indistinct clouds of echo and shimmer. Tripped out and seriously psychedelic, but definitely black and buzzy, almost blissed out, not really in a shoegazey way, but more like an effects laden space rock.
Finally to finish things off, Njiqahdda takes the last song and dips back into a soundworld much more grim and black, the riffing much less effected, more a churning buzz, still swathed in effects and keyboards, the vocals hissy wraiths hovering overhead, the cymbals so hot and sizzly, they seem to never decay, adding a whole 'nother layer of high end shimmer, finally giving way to a weird looped abstract riffscape, with guitars, roiling pulsing, flecked with stuttery glitch and random abstract crunch, eventually becoming a soft minimal whisper before blinking out.
Shit yeah. If anyone is pushing the boundaries of black metal, it seems to be the ones not even playing it. Unblack is definitely the new black, especially if you like your grim buzz tripped out and seriously fucked up.
MPEG Stream: "Lvistagnagsetta"
MPEG Stream: "Infertel"

NJIQAHDDA Nji. Njiijn. Njiiijn. (E.E.E. Recordings) cd 12.98
First actual, non cd-r, cd release from this mysterious one man ambient doomy un-black metal band. Like all of the EEE and related bands, Njiqahdda are tough to describe, black metal is the source and the root of their sound, but what is done to that sound, how it is twisted and processed and effected, the arrangement, the production, the recording, are all as important to the sound as the sound itself.
Like the last Njiqahdda record, this one is all about repetition, the riffs and parts looped over and over, the drums locked into rhythms that often stretch the length of the song barely wavering. But like that record, the sound here is fantastic, alien - sure there's the requisite buzz and blast, the distortion and growled guttural vox, but they are twisted into truly strange shapes. The guitar, the main riff, is blurred and murky, turned into a throbbing pulsing drone as much as an actual riff, occasionally stripped down to an almost indie rock like jangle. The drums, programmed and machinelike, offer up a framework for the various elements to hang on, the vocals too are heavily effected, a blown out howl, that sometimes transforms into what sounds like radio interference. And like most tracks, there is always one element that makes everything else seem downright normal, here it's the cymbals, which stutter and hiccup, like they're super processed, or perhaps they're just recorded so hot, that they cause the tape heads to malfunction, either way, it sounds amazing, and sort of like some blackened Chain Reaction record. So for half of the first track's 16 minutes, these elements loop and shift sucking the listener in, mesmerizing with its trancelike groove. At which point the track pauses, before relaunching, this time with thick streaks of distorted melody, and soaring sort-of-leads, blown out Nadja-like majesty, before the distortion and buzz is pulled back, revealing the murky strummy underbelly of the song, leaving just drums and jangly guitar, and a layer of distorted hiss, peppered with weird percussive throbs and dropouts, which only add to the track's weirdness.
And so goes the rest of the record. Loooooong tracks. The riffing so hot and blown out and in the red, that the various distortions and crumbling tape hiss, add a whole other element to the sound. The drums buried in the mix, the cymbals acidic and hissy, sometimes washing out all the sounds around it, other times bathing the main riff in a shower of sizzle, the guitars white hot, slipping from blinding and effulgent to blackened and falling to pieces, what sounds like keyboards, smeared streaks of buzz and drone, deep fuzzy bass, harsh vokills, all the various elements going through various stages of distortion and decomposition, doused in effects and processing, recorded in such a way, that they often don't sound like guitars, or drums, or vocals at all. Each song a series of blackened riffy drones, long stretches of clean shimmer, of lilting jangle, of stumbling dizzying abstraction, even longer stretches of looped mesmerizing buzz, but always run through with lilting melodies, buried hooks, subtly catchy, blissed out and black. A record as much about riffs and beats as it is about sound and timbre, texture and mood, a dreamy blissy blackened dronescape of buzz, blur, loop rhythm and ambience, twisting its unblackness into something haunting and hypnotic and unforgettable.
MPEG Stream: "Nortii Maatu"
MPEG Stream: "Aasklamatii Ligmett Aursag"

NJIQAHDDA Njimajikal Arts (E.E.E. Recordings) 2xcd-r 19.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
With a name like Njiqahdda, and a record title like Njimajikal Arts, all the text written in some unreadable Eastern script, and cover art consisting of lush green foliage and nothing else, with the promise that this was some mysterious alchemical psychedelic naturalist atmospheric doomed black metal, you know we were seriously intrigued. But at the same time, we really had no idea what to expect. We got these from E.E.E. one of our current favorite labels, home to all of the amazing unblack metal we've been raving about forever... so at first we assumed it was another unblack metal offshoot of one of the many E.E.E. bands, but the label assured us it wasn't. Later we discovered, it was actually a sort of experiment to see if folks reacted differently to stuff on E.E.E. if they thought it wasn't Christian. So, after all, it ends up, it is actually guys from Flaskavsae and Drommer, who together have whipped up one of the weirdest and most gorgeously fucked up (un)black records of the year. Which is saying a lot considering how twisted and far out most of the E.E.E. stuff is...
Where to start? Two discs, looooong tracks, weirdly washed out buzzing post rock, with lots of clean guitars and haunting atmospherics, all tangled up with thick blasts of dense black buzz, and with super freaked out production and lots of unlikely and not very metal sounds and arrangements.
The opening track, "Blister Within The Hive" is based around a super Slinty' guitar riff, looped and repeated, the drums weirdly staggered and mathy, the vocals a muted mumbly howl, super distorted and demonic, but not like black metal, more like noise rock. The main riff shifts and gets more and more dramtic and lush, while the vocals become more distorted and more unhinged, transforming into swirling clouds of harsh hiss and blurred white noise. With the repeated almost looped riff, it's like an un-black metal Circle, relelntless and mesmerizing, and totally hypnotic. The guitars and drums slowly fade out leaving a twisted, slithery buzzing low end drone, super minimal, as it crawls through a field of glitch and shimmer, like some cd-r drone record.
The second track, "A Tale Of Ancient Tergue" is more traditional black metal, but it's all relative. A loping Burzumic midtempo buzz, with tho seame freaked out alien vocals, the drums and cymbals super hot and way up in the mix, threatening to overload everything, the main riff and melody surprisingly melancholy and catchy, again locking into a continuous loop, until the main riff drops out, and suddenly a haunting chorus of voices takes over the main melody, humming and crooning over the still poundin and crashing drums, creepy and so beautiful. All hovering in a thick cloud of swirling FX and spaced out shimmer.
The disc finishes off with the nearly half hour long "Blue Wintry Days", a doomy surge through fields of hissing white noise buzz, the guitars soaring, the drums again sizzling white hot all over the place, mournful and melancholy, but so weirdly washed out at times it sounds like Tim Hecker vs. Burzum vs. Merzbow. About halfway through the various elements become less and less distinct, and the song transforms into an almost static blur, before shifting back into a dark doomy plod, but still always, a bit more mathy and post rock and spaced out that any black record has a right to be. And we love it.
The second disc is just two long songs. The first, "Ancient Tergue Recital" begins all ambient, with deep cavernous drones and birdsong, shimmering metallic reverberations and delicate chimes, a sparse ambient sprawl, that builds and builds, getting darker, and more ominous, the melodies turning minor key, but continuing to drift, a tranquil black ambient lullaby wrapped around a lilting and haunting music box melody.
The final track, "The Wintry Grey" is another long ambient workout, this one even more minimal than the first, more in line with Coleclough or Chalk, minimal and nearly static, subtle overtones shifting gently as the various layers rub against each other almost imperceptibly. A keening high end draped over a warm whirring low end, the two all tangled up in a divine dreamy drift.
Definitely one of the coolest, darkest, weirdest, doomiest, dreamiest (un)black metal records of the year.
MPEG Stream: "Blister Within The Hive"
MPEG Stream: "A Tale Of Ancient Tergue"
MPEG Stream: "Blue Wintry Days"

NJIQAHDDA The Path Of Liberation From Birth And Death (Pagan Flames) cd 9.98
Latest blast of avant UN-blackness from the awesome and unpronounceable Njiqahdda. The latest project of the man who seemed to single handedly define the UN-black metal scene we were so enamored of, with his label EEE, and his various other awesome and aQ approved projects Light Shall Prevail, Agathothodion, Glaciial and a bunch of others. But Njiqahdda was always way weirder. Which is saying a lot considering that the weirdness of those other projects is precisely what made them so appealing to us in the first place.
So when we say this stuff is weirder, well prepare yourself. Sprawling super intricate and convoluted blackened epics, we hesitate to call it black metal, even though it most definitely is, guitars buzz, drums blast, the vocals and howled and anguished, the melodies minor key and majestic, but those tropes are all twisted up here, into something way more unique. More like a mathy blackened prog, or some avant blackened hypno-rock. Both would apply, the parts constantly shifting, the arrangements always in flux, the drums wild and dense and intricate, the guitar playing both gnarled and frantic, chiming and soaring, songs as likely to erupt into a grim burst of furious buzz, as a woozy, almost poppy bit of melodiousness. The sound too is distinctly un-black metal, and not UN-black in that sense, more like NOT black at all, murky and muddy, warm and a little washed out, not buzzy and brittle, the voice buried in the murk, the drums also a bit muted, occasionally some more traditional blackness surfaces, but usually just as quickly the sound shifts to something more rhythmic or mathy or proggy, tranced out and droney, all of the songs seemingly parts of a single massive and majestic whole.
The record's centerpiece, a 25 minute epic, even breaks down part way through into some glimmering shimmering post rocky drift, all hazy and washed out and dreamlike, acoustic guitars and little high end melodic trills, before disappearing in a cloud of alien FX, processed percussion, mysterious electronics, before finally emerging on the other side reverted back to its moody, murky, repetitive hypno rock blackness, somehow more melodic and poppy than ever.
The whole record is overflowing with sonic surprises, and yet somehow every random bit of sonic weirdness, doesn't stick out, instead it all sounds perfectly organic, from brooding acoustic folk, to manic mathy super frenetic stop start dynamics, from jangly almost post rock, to gnarled, almost impossibly complex blackprog, and from weirdly muddy washed out almost gothy sounding black buzz to abstract electronics flecked foresty folk.
As much as we love all the other Njiqahdda, and hell, pretty much all the other groups that came before, this one definitely takes the cake. Stretching the realms and bounds of the black metal sound about as far as they can go, while impossibly still managing to retain a sound that is both black AND metal. A new favorite for sure.
Some super stunning artwork as well, a massive booklet, filled with gorgeous photos of the sea, overlaid with blue metallic sigils and mysterious mantras...
MPEG Stream: "Transcendental Knowledge Upon The Battlefield"
MPEG Stream: "Attaining The Confidential Supreme Absolute"

NJIQAHDDA Yrg Alms (Pagan Flames) cd 9.00
**SALE **SALE* *SALE**
This awesome UNblack metal favorite finally back in stock!!
It's been a while since we've listed any UNblack metal, the twisted Christian variant of the more traditionally heathen black strain of metal that we hold so near and dear to our black withered hearts. But as longtime readers of the aQ list no doubt know by now, we LOVE unblack metal, not necessarily for the message (we don't love black metal for its message either), but instead, the sound of unblack metal is so far out, so far removed from the tired tropes of BM, not sure if it's divine inspiration, or just the particular group of unblack metallers we tend to be drawn to, but it seems like the unblack tends to be weirder and more warped than the black in most cases, and thus, we've found ourselves looking to the UNdark side for that which our musical soul yearns for.
This latest slab of abstract experimental UNblackness, comes courtesy of aQ faves Njiqahdda, which just so happens to be the work of the man behind a bunch of other aQ unblack faves including Light Shall Prevail, Agathothodion, Glaciial and others. Which already meant this was gonna be some seriously experimental, evocative buzzing brilliance. Which it is, we're happy to report, but much has changed, the sound here is much prettier, much more stripped down, with less of an emphasis on buzz and blast, and more on mood and texture, ambience and emotion.
The epic 15 minute opener, is all jangly clean guitar, and wild drumming, at least in the beginning, the song soon explodes into something much more black, but after the initial burst, it sort of smoothes out, and instead of being crushing and punishing, it's hypnotic and mesmerizing, there are still harsh vocals, but the buzz is smoothed out, and the melody is lilting and melancholic, not hard to imagine this song could be stripped down to a gorgeous hazy drone, without losing to much of it's actual form and structure. The follow up skips the buzz entirely, and offers up a bit of dreamy, slightly gothic indie jangle, a sort of sweetly minor key post rock, wrapped in a light haze of shimmery ambience.
The next two tracks look back to the opener, both lengthy drone drenched black metal jams, with that muted buzz, tangled guitar harmonies, and super catchy melodies, both, even at their heaviest, manage to remain poppy and melodic, that blend, and the push and pull between light and dark, is what makes those tracks so emotional and powerful.
The closing track is an extended dronescape of whirling haze, shimmering high end, and deep cavernous rumbles, it almost sounds like a field recording set to music, one can almost visualize, the epic forests, the moon reflecting off the water, the glimmer of starlight on the frost covered branches, quite beautiful, and a fitting finish to a strangely beautiful batch of buzzing washed out unblack post metal.
MPEG Stream: "Ingratuu Maate Lagentii"
MPEG Stream: "Sombre Fortu"
MPEG Stream: "Abyssii Iiortuu Liomaatiin"

NO FUNERAL Six Song Ep (Wands) lp 16.98
On the same label that brought us the recent lp from SF blackmetal/blacknoize merchants Sutekh Hexen, comes this crusty, blackened slab of raw, primitive, feral heaviness. And, as the title suggests, there are in fact six songs, but they all sorta bleed and ooze into each other, blown out and in the red, each track a skull shearing slab of blackened crust punk crunch, D-beat pound wedded to grisly grinding riffage, the drums distorted and weirdly industrial at times, sounding more like metal on metal (maybe Pussy Galore style) than a proper kit, and the vocals, holy shit, total throat shredding hellish howls, all wound up into relentless onslaught of grinding, blasting, buzzing brutality. And somehow, the band still manage to cram some melody into their constant blackened barrage, the result turning this sick black slab into something strangely catchy.
The vibe is definitely more blackened punk, then punky black metal, the difference is really maybe too minor to quibble over. Needless to say if you like your sounds raw and heavy, primitive and in-the-red, punked out and black as fuck, then this stuff should definitely hit the spot. Fans of Ancestors, Bone Awl, Akitsa, Ash Pool, Malveillance, Acephalix, Harassor, Endless Humiliation, Dishammer, Trap Them and the like should definitely check these guys out.
LIMITED TO 350 COPIES!!!

NO PLEASURE IN LIFE Happiness Is Not An Option (P.V.R.) cassette 5.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We only have 6 of these, the debut demo from this Florida depressive black metal duo, who sound is a twisted, grim melding of screeching abject misery and blasting blackened buzz. After a brief intro of spidery acoustic guitar, and some jagged shards of distorted noise, the band launches into a frenzied fury of insectoid guitar buzz, galloping blasts, and over it all, so hysterically shrieked vokills, wrapped in TONS of reverb, which invariably leaks all over the rest of the proceedings giving the whole record a sort of hazy lo-fi vibe. While most depressive black metal seems to lean more toward the doom side of the spectrum, lots of the jams here are frenzied and fast, flitting from D-beat pound, to all out lightning speed black blast, the melodies minor key for sure, keeping the mood appropriately miserable, but all wrapped up in burst and blasts. There are a few tracks of loping doomic creep, some of the record's finest, and most emotionally charged moments, during which the vocals get even more anguished, the music sounding post rocky and proggy, but inevitably, they eventually slip right back into something more blasting and black.
CRAZY LIMITED, already out of print, and super cool packaging...

NOCTERNITY En Oria (ISO666) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Debut record from this Greek black metal band of buzzing symphonic Empreror style black metal. Not quite as polished as their new ep, but there's something to be said for that. Blazing primitive metal, with huge epic keyboard parts, spacey droned out instrumental passages, dirge-y midtempo sections ala Burzum, and some truly anguished vocals (fluctuating in volume, based, I suppose, on just how anguished he is during each part). Fans of Burzum, Darkthrone, Emperor and the like should not pass this one up.
RealAudio clip: "To The Shrine"
RealAudio clip: "The Drowning"

NOCTURNAL DEPRESSION Soundtrack For A Suicide - Opus II (Sun & Moon) cd 13.98

MPEG Stream: "Soundtrack For A Suicide - Opus II"
MPEG Stream: "Anthem To Self-Destruction"

NOCTURNO CULTO The Misanthrope (Peaceville) dvd+cd 17.98
Ever wonder what sort of depraved and demented home movies might be the result of a prurient glimpse into the private life of Darkthrone's Nocturno Culto? Well, wonder no more. But be prepared to be disappointed, at least if all you're looking for is lots of metal and blood and mayhem. The opening scene pretty much sets the tone, a light hearted bit of ice fishing, with NC and Grutle from Enslaved, as they lay on the ice and dangle tiny little poles over a hole cut in the ice, not wearing spikes or leather, but instead the best Northface has to offer. Nocturno Culto even kisses the first fish he catches.
And so it goes, a meandering journey through the life of Nocturno Culto, sure there's plenty of metal, the score is all Darkthrone tracks (a few Aura Noir tunes here and there) and droning ambience composed by NC for the film, but it's interspersed with plenty of light hearted fun, slow sweeping images of the vast and untamed beauty of Norway, and all sorts of other random bits and pieces. Darkthrone fans will NEED this obviously, not just for the amazing rehearsal footage, with Fenriz complaining about the price of cymbals (hasn't bought a new one in 13 years) and the duo setting up in a little rec room style basement complete with flowered drapes and Iron Maiden poster, their primitive lo-fi buzz interspersed with amazing shots of them wandering through snowy forests, but for a private glimpse into a world and country that are wreathed in mystery and that most metal folks only experience filtered through black buzz or smeared corpsepaint. As fun as it is to get lost in the drama and showmanship, it's equally interesting to experience what life as a musician in Norway must be like, and how living amidst forests and fjords, snow and sky, informs the music we've come to love so much.
Besides the rehearsal footage, some of the highlights include: gorgeous footage of waterfalls and autumn forests, overlaid with ghostly images of the band, all to the strains of Darkthrone's buzzing grimness, complete with subtitles so you can finally understand the words, some hanging out with an old man who used to be a circus performer and his constantly barking dog, Aura Noir signing their recording contract, on a table in front of a wall full of nailed up antlers, followed by a very quiet repast of smoking and drinking... and playing Chinese checkers, a trip to Japan for Peter Beste's black metal photo show opening, featuring Nocturno Culto and Aaron from Iran playing a Kodo drummer video game, and crusty heartthrobs Gallhammer!!! We're even more crushed out if that were even possible. Some killer live footage as well as photo sessions, the Aura Noir record release party, backstage boredom, onstage mayhem, in a tiny club complete with those grade school acoustical tiles not more than a foot or two overhead, some footage of the downtime in the studio during the recording of Sardonic Wrath, a record label meeting, that takes place on a hillside around a campfire... and then a graveyard, and loads more. It's very abstract, a bit arty, but eminently watchable. Sometimes dark and bleak, other times sort of goofy and laid back, usually we tend to reach for the remote and skip around, but this The Misanthrope had us watching the whole thing end to end. And made us want to listen to nothing but Darkthrone!
Extras on the first disc include a gallery of stills (or not-so-stills, as the pictures tend to shift and shimmer with the aid of some strange video effect), set to some dizzying Darkthrone tuneage, some amazing old old old footage of Darkthrone, 2 killer tracks from way back, the band looking like they're all of 12 years old (which they probably are), as well as the 'video' for "Too Old Too Cold" which almost plays like a mini version of the movie, graveyards, forests, and plenty of headbanging...
Also included is a bonus second disc, a cd featuring all new music composed by NC specifically for the film, lots of rumbling crumbling dark ambience, all the haunting mood music from the movie. Spacey and abstract, creepy and shimmering, droney and dark, some of it pulsing and ethereal like some lost Tangerine Dream track, a few tracks super abstract guitarscapes, one track, a totally demented metal jam, with ultra processed guitars, tangled leads and goofy distorted vocals, but most of it is some seriously bleak and strangely lovely ambient minimalism....
Packaged in an oversized dvd style cd superjewel case with a big booklet of liner notes and photos, including one in which Darkthrone and Aura Noir are posed in the woods, snarling and brandishing what appear to be magazines and fireplace tools. Awesome.
All region, NTSC.

NOKTURNAL MORTUM Lunar Poetry (The End) cd 11.98
Our favorite Ukrainian black metal band releases, not a new album, but a cd containing the music from their early demo cassette, previous to their "Goat Horns" debut. Majestic grimness from the pagan forests! If you don't already have their "NeChrist" disc, get that first, but fans should check this early stuff out, as we all know that demos are the are the most "cult", and Nokturnal Mortum knew what they were doing on this one! Also, this includes the original version of a track reworked/mixed on "NeChrist", as well as a bonus track I guess not found on the original demo.
RealAudio clip: "Perun's Celestial Silver"

NOKTURNAL MORTUM NeChrist (The End) cd 13.98
Imagine the Charlie Daniels Band jammin' with Emperor. Or rather, playing at the same time in adjoining practice rooms -- out in the forest. The ancient forests of the Ukraine, to be precise. That's where Nokturnal Mortum hail from. This is their third album. You may remember the big fuss we made over the amazing Mistigo Varggoth Darkestra disc last year? Well, Mr. Varggoth is the main guy in this band Nokturnal Mortum. With "NeChrist", he and his comrades have created a unique sound, one that combines a raw, roaring black metal attack with the pipes and fiddles and "yee-haws" of folk/country music, Ukrainian style. And, to make us AQ-ers enjoy this EVEN MORE, all of a sudden all the music will stop and the middle part of a track will be occupied by the croaking of frogs! And you know we like frogs and the noises they make. Similarily, the final song on the disc is preceded by 78 short (3 sec.) tracks of twittering birdsounds and forest ambience. Therefore, if you play the disc in "shuffle" mode, you get lots of cut-up bird calls mixed with the occasional actual fantastic Nokturnal Mortum song! The unanimous AQ black metal pick of this lunar month!! Brilliant. Yee-haw! (Recommended.)
RealAudio clip: "The Funeral Wind Born In Oriana"

NOKTURNAL MORTUM WeltAnschauung (No Colours) cd 22.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
There's very few comparisons to listening to Nokturnal Mortum. The Charlie Daniels Band jammin' with Emperor? Bizarre black metal hoedown? Some sort of line dancing campfire jamboree gone horribly horribly wrong? The unholy spawn of the grimmest black metal and a hauntingly festive medieval gypsy folk? Okay, so maybe there are more than a few comparisons, but they all tend to center around NM's unlikely country-gypsy-folk / black metal hybrid. Precisely what makes them so completely and bizarrely brilliant. This Ukranian horde unleash the ghost hounds and the battle commences with the sounds of galloping horses, strange battle horns, the strangled cries of wounded beasts, the clatter of steel on chain mail, sounds that continue throughout the entire record. It's almost like a field recording of some epic medieval battle, a mad dash through corpse strewn villages, with occasional bursts of black metal buzz from some random corpsepainted ghouls playing in the smoking rubble of a burnt and blackened tavern, or from within a copse of twisted trees, the metal soon drifts into the background as you head deeper into the forest, are farther out upon the battlefield. Nokturnal Mortum's particular take on black metal tends toward the buzzing midtempo gallop and lope, thick and gnarled and fuzzed out, a la Burzum, Graveland, Woodtemple, etc. But more often than not, these black bursts twist into unlikely shapes, blackened metallic jigs, strangely festive and rollicking but still razor sharp and dense with guitar buzz and ripping riffs, jubilant (yet still slightly ominous) gypsy stomps, but laced with spiky guitars and blasting drums. Most noticeable this time around are the extensive ambient interludes, swooshy, starlit night twinkle and shimmer, lush wooshes over tinkly melodies, almost new age-y at moments, but it's not long before you are felled once again by a sharp slab of utter blackness, or a rollicking jubilant mace to the temple, all part of the curious journey through Nokturnal Mortum's bizarrely blackened world.
While they last we have the super deluxe oversized hardcover book version (limited to 1000 copies), once we run out of those you'll get the regular jewel case version (which also happens to be cheaper!).
MPEG Stream: "I Feel The Breath Of Ragnarok"
MPEG Stream: "Weltanschauung"
MPEG Stream: "Hailed Be The Heroes"

NOKTURNAL MORTUM WeltAnschauung (No Colours) cd 16.98
There's very few comparisons to listening to Nokturnal Mortum. The Charlie Daniels Band jammin' with Emperor? Bizarre black metal hoedown? Some sort of line dancing campfire jamboree gone horribly horribly wrong? The unholy spawn of the grimmest black metal and a hauntingly festive medieval gypsy folk? Okay, so maybe there are more than a few comparisons, but they all tend to center around NM's unlikely country-gypsy-folk / black metal hybrid. Precisely what makes them so completely and bizarrely brilliant. This Ukranian horde unleash the ghost hounds and the battle commences with the sounds of galloping horses, strange battle horns, the strangled cries of wounded beasts, the clatter of steel on chain mail, sounds that continue throughout the entire record. It's almost like a field recording of some epic medieval battle, a mad dash through corpse strewn villages, with occasional bursts of black metal buzz from some random corpsepainted ghouls playing in the smoking rubble of a burnt and blackened tavern, or from within a copse of twisted trees, the metal soon drifts into the background as you head deeper into the forest, are farther out upon the battlefield. Nokturnal Mortum's particular take on black metal tends toward the buzzing midtempo gallop and lope, thick and gnarled and fuzzed out, a la Burzum, Graveland, Woodtemple, etc. But more often than not, these black bursts twist into unlikely shapes, blackened metallic jigs, strangely festive and rollicking but still razor sharp and dense with guitar buzz and ripping riffs, jubilant (yet still slightly ominous) gypsy stomps, but laced with spiky guitars and blasting drums. Most noticeable this time around are the extensive ambient interludes, swooshy, starlit night twinkle and shimmer, lush wooshes over tinkly melodies, almost new age-y at moments, but it's not long before you are felled once again by a sharp slab of utter blackness, or a rollicking jubilant mace to the temple, all part of the curious journey through Nokturnal Mortum's bizarrely blackened world. Regular jewelcase version.
MPEG Stream: "I Feel The Breath Of Ragnarok"
MPEG Stream: "Weltanschauung"
MPEG Stream: "Hailed Be The Heroes"

NORDHEIM s/t (Eerie Art) cd-r 8.98


MPEG Stream: "Spina De Mul"

NORDIC VISION #14 magazine 6.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Everyone's favorite metal magazine. Dodheimsgard on the cover, with Darkthrone, Immolation, Godflesh, and more. Ridiculously brutal reviews and bizarre nonsensical writing to the point of being surreal. Plus their newest and silliest feature; a 'sexy death goddess' will pose for readers per their suggestions (hopefully they'll heed my suggestion in a future issue and she'll dress up like a Hot Dog On a Stick girl!!).

NORDIC VISION issue #16 magazine 7.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
More "entertainment for maniacs" from this seminal Norwegian black metal magazine. Cover stars: Gorgoroth ("What an astonishing and Devilish album 'Incipit Satan' really is. That's what we think, and therefore Infernus and Tormentor had some questions to answer"), plus Notre Dame, Necromantia, Impaled Nazarene, Necrophagia, Carpathian Forest, and more. The Gorgoroth interview is demented, as they somehow answer all the questions in even more bizarre a manner than they were asked. And, as usual, there's a ton of reviews written in the now-infamous fucked up Nordic Vision vocabulary, as well as their dumb "Sex & Satan" pictorial feature, and the "Soundcheck" department where black metal celebs like Fenriz, Shagrath, Samoth, Maniac, and Frost rate current releases. Another eccentric, silly, fascinating issue of our favorite Norwegian metal magazine. Sample editorial comment: "We have dived into the Necro World of bands like Necrophagia, Necrodeath, and Necromantia."