As the days grow warmer, we’re thankful for the icy cold black metal that continues to stream through our veins. It’s Kvlt Kolvmn, and we’re here to deliver unto thee the goods.
While the earliest parts of any year tend to deliver a more slim slate of premium offerings, 2026 has proven to be a notable exception. Each month feels like it brings a list-worthy album or two, and April continued this trend by spewing forth enough cold deliciousness to amount to a veritable feast. Below is a sampling of such delights, and we’re excited to share them with you.
As always, stay frosty.
-Jonathan Adams
Winter’s Crown
Ultha - A Light So Dim
Germany’s Ultha are, in my estimation, one of the true unsung heroes of the post-black metal movement. Few have heard of them, but those who have cannot stop gushing about their unique and brilliant brand of musical genius. 10 years and 5 albums into a stellar career and I can confidently assert that the collective has yet to produce an album I’d categorize as anything short of fantastic. Even so, their latest record A Light So Dim feels like a monumental step forward. Heralded by the gorgeously dark All That Has Never Been True back in 2022, A Light So Dim is by far the band’s most adventurous, unpredictable, and genuinely beautiful. It may very well be their finest offering to date.
Opening two-piece “The Unseen World” and “Love As We’re Falling Down” set the stage beautifully. Atmospheric, melodic, punchy, and filled with a bevy of delectable and memorable riffs, it’s an effective opening statement that offers listeners with fodder for immediate engagement. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg, as A Light So Dim is filled with enough left turns throughout that looking back at these two tracks in retrospect paints them in an entirely new light. Despite their effectiveness in creating a sonic template for the rest of the record, things get a whole lot less straightforward from here. The next two tracks are… something else entirely.
“Her Still Singing Limbs” is the first of these jarring yet supremely impactful segues. Opening with a tribal percussive section, laced with a post-punk jangle in the guitars and an eventual off-kilter section reminiscent of Oranssi Pazuzu, the listener is transported into an elevated headspace, equal parts beckoning and foreboding. This much variety can often spell bad news for a record’s effectiveness as a listening experience, but like the gifted pros they are, Ultha use this as a launchpad into the best work of their career. “What’s Yours Is Yours To Carry” is a techno-inflected mindfuck that works both as a standalone piece and within the context of the record. With mournful female vocals provided courtesy of Daevar’s Partis Latifi opening the track into stratospheric heights and juxtaposing beautifully against the industrial maelstrom that follows. Four tracks in and this album is already the band’s most ambitious and wild record to date.
As for the remainder of the record, I could write a dissertation on each track, but what’s the point in spoiling the fun to come? My advice is that you listen to this record as soon as possible as it is fundamentally brilliant and by far one of my favorite black metal records of the year. Though classifying it that way feels somewhat reductive. Like the best bands in any given space, genre is a result of threads in the music rather than a box for a band to confine themselves to. There’s a veritable cornucopia of sounds and textures here. All of them work. All of them rule. Listen to this album immediately.
-JA
Best of the Rest
Pure Wrath - Bleak Days Ahead
While one-person atmospheric black metal projects are a dime a dozen nowadays, and many of them epitomize the style’s oversaturation and perhaps should not have left their creators bedrooms, every once in a while one sticks out above the fetid marshes of mediocrity.
Enter Indonesian one-man project Pure Wrath. Formed in Java in 2014, project mastermind Januaryo Hardy rather mightily impressed me with 2022’s Hymn to the Woeful Hearts. Emotional and incisive, the album firmly put Pure Wrath on my radar as an act to watch.
Four years later, Pure Wrath are back with their fourth album Bleak Days Ahead. Where Hymn to the Woeful Hearts had an organic, warm-blooded atmosphere that matched its narrative of a mother’s suppressed sorrow at her son’s brutal muder during the 1965 Indonesian genocide, and the album perfectly encapsulated a cathartic sonic outburst of this grief, Bleak Days Ahead is very much an affair painted in shades of concrete and industrialized despair.
Opting for a less grandiose but no less affective palette, Bleak Days Ahead embellishes its foundation of urgent yet immersive black metal with tasteful incorporation of organ, mellotron, saxophone and keys, and mathematically odd but effective bit of throat singing.
It’s no coincidence that comparisons to White Ward are easily made, as the bands dynamic and long form compositions are underpinned by the rhythmic expertise of their former drummer Yurii Ciel. I’m equally reminded of Der Weg Einer Freiheit in Pure Wrath’s excellent use of soft-loud dynamics and mastery of bleak catharsis. The twangy, reverberating melodies also remind of Wayfarer, although without the obvious Americana influence.
Tasteful use of sampling, and a bona fide trip-hop escapade on closer “Opaque Mist” offer interesting anchor points on an already rather varied and succinct piece of music. Points of criticism are few and far between, but I do miss some of the more sweeping, organic qualities that were present on the previous album. Lastly, while the third track “Haven of Echoes” closes out with an absolutely magnificent bit of foreboding riffing, the way it ends makes me feel like there is a missing climax. This adds to a general feeling of disjointedness that is the unfortunate by-product of the album’s varied nature, and may have been softened by a slightly longer runtime, or some different sequencing or editing choices.
All in all though, Bleak Days Ahead is a triumphant continuation of quality for Pure Wrath, showing what can be done within the dreaded category of one-person black metal acts. If the future is as bleak as we fear, at least it has a great score.
-Boeli Krumperman
Eveale - Enter the Woodland Realm
When you’re having a hard time with a genre, it’s easy to blame yourself. Am I old? Out of touch? Do I no longer have what it takes to “get” this style of music? But honestly, most times it’s not your fault. Maybe you’re out on your luck and happened to pick some subpar releases. Maybe the genre as a whole is stuck in a rut and not doing so great right now. In either case, and in the many other cases that can lead to such feelings, there’s nothing like finding the one release which does click to remind you that it’s on bands to be good and not on you to like them if they’re not.
This is me these days with black and Eveale’s Enter the Woodland Realm. Don’t get me wrong, there have been excellent black metal releases this year. But, so far, I’ve only liked experimental or avantgarde ones, that is releases that explicitly move away from the core of what makes the genre tick. So is it me or is it black metal? Enter the Woodland Realm hints at the latter. While the album is not really straight-forward, it is also not experimental; the core of black metal runs at the album’s heart. And it’s good. Oh boy is it good. There’s something effortless about Enter the Woodland Realm, something that’s groovy inside of the seriousness and attack of black metal that speaks directly to me and reminds me why I love the style so much.
Whether it is tremolo picking on “Lament of the Dryads”, channeling meatier riffs on “Carniflora”, or sinking deeper and slower with “The Final Quest”, Enter the Woodland Realm is dedicated to making black metal that is razor sharp and efficient. No track clocks in at more than six minutes because there’s no need. Every note is placed with consideration towards the atmosphere it builds, towards the grandiose, overwhelming, and moving feeling that is black metal. Then, these notes (and words, because the vocals on this album might be my favorite part of it) are executed to perfection, with a mind for clear production that leaves plenty of meat on the bone. Put all of these elements together and you get an album that’s reminded me that it’s not me that’s the problem. Black metal can still move me if it’s performed with true passion and a skill for the craft like Eveale display on this release.
-Eden Kupermintz