Welcome to Kvlt Kolvmn, hellions. Here’s hoping your holiday is as frosty as the metal gods intended it. We’re approaching the end of the year, and prep for our Kvlt Kolvmn prospectus is in full swing. But in the midst of the maelstrom, we offer you a few choice selections…
September was a damn good month for all things frostbitten and evil. Showcasing the genre’s insane breadth of style and influence more than in any month in recent memory, black metal showed up in a big way as the multi-faceted beast we’ve always known it was. The releases featured here are in majority some of our favorite of the year, and we hope you will share that sentiment. So feast your eyes and ears on the ridiculous bounty that was the month in black metal.
Hello and welcome to September, where everything’s made up and the points don’t matter. Cultural references aside, September is indeed the month where the year usually goes: “Oh, you thought there was a lot of music so far? Well, get ready for this”. The holidays are already looming high in…
Swedish blackened post-hardcore/crust/metalcore project Totem Skin were a truly cutting-edge band by the time they released what would be their swan song, 2015’s Weltschmerz. Whereas blackened-anything is just about as common in extreme music now as it is at your local Chili’s, Weltschmerz was a lightning-in-a-bottle snapshot of a carefully…
Blackgaze is now established; it’s time to recognize this and move on. What does this mean, exactly, to be established? It means many things but it mostly means that bands, and journalists writing about those bands, no longer have to “apologize” for using that name. It also means, perhaps more importantly, that the genre now has tropes, tropes created from the expectations of the not-negligible number of listeners the genre now enjoys. This posits unique challenges for any bands looking to make music within the blackgaze space but it mostly affects the veteran bands that have been operating within it for a while now. Think of the latest Deafheaven record; their change in style is a direct response to the pressures and expectations now working on the band.
But they’re far from the only ensemble to face this issue; Bosse-de-Nage have been, up until Deafheaven’s explosion into popularity, one of the most associated with blackgaze or post-black metal in general.
Each month, we always seem to come to the same conclusion when it comes to our Editors’ Picks column: Friday release days open the floodgates and unleash a seemingly endless stream of quality new music. But while some of our Editors and Contributors sit down gleefully each week to dive into this newly stocked treasure…
There are few genres in music that have a deeper and more fundamental connection to nature and history than black metal. From its earliest thematic inception, the most evil of metal’s subgenres has sought to restore through music and philosophy a way of life that, for the most part, has…
Ah… April. Flowers blooming. Trees displaying their green, lush foliage in all their splendor and glory. Grass is full. Rain falls gently. Just the perfect, exact opposite setting for icy black metal darkness. Curse you, sun. Curse you. Or… maybe not? I guess it depends on your opinion of black…
It’s pretty incredible to reflect on how much Kvlt Kolvmn has grown over the last couple years, especially when it comes to how consequential it’s been for Heavy Blog’s coverage of the vast web of metal subgenres. What began as an outlet for me (Scott) to occasionally ramble about my…
Happy Halloween, 2017, from your nefarious friends at Kvlt Kolvmn! Hard to imagine a better day for this column to land near, what with all the ghouls, spirits, demogorgons and Eleven’s traipsing around with their sugar receptacles and real world terror encroaching from every corner of this planet. God, what a miserable year in so many ways. Thankfully, that misery has not extended into the world of black metal, which continues to drop sensational releases month after month. October is no exception. This month saw the release of several exceptional albums that not only continued to solidify the importance of black metal’s existence as one of the premier subgenres within the metal universe, but also its ability to offer complex, fierce statement of countercultural urgency. That last component is important for one particular album that screams thoroughly against some of the prevailing philosophical dogma that runs rampant in the darkest corners of the subgenre. Despite the most truly reprehensible portions of its collective ranks, black metal can indeed speak the language of justice. But enough talk. Let’s metal.
