Greetings once more, lovers of the black. Welcome to Kvlt Kolvmn. The time is ripe for another fresh batch of black metal selections hellbent on freezing your blood and pulverizing your heart into a fine pulp. Thankfully, August offered an abundance of such releases, particularly in the experimental camp. If…
2018 has been quite the year for metal as a whole. With big releases from big bands hitting all the high notes, and several subgenres experiencing some of their most consistently impressive output in decades, it’s fairly safe to say that this has thus far been a premium year for…
Welcome to Kvlt Kolvmn, where the black metal runneth over! And from all over the world, apparently. This month’s wealth of quality releases come to you from Greece, New York, Italy, Portugal, Seattle and Sweden. Black metal truly knows no borders, as band’s from across the globe share an affinity…
Hello, friends. Welcome once more to Kvlt Kolvmn. Another month, another helping of fantastic black metal. May was a veritable smorgasbord of the good stuff, but also deftly displayed the variety in theme, style, and execution that makes black metal just the very best. A quick peek below at this…
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…
Black metal has a history of problematic behavior. From the onset of the Second Wave, the subgenre has come under attack for its outward manifestations of physical violence, arson, and abject anti-normative behavior. Needless to say, in the few decades that this type of music has existed, things have changed.…
Welcome to Kvlt Kolvmn, “Is This Even Black Metal?!” Edition. We hope you’ve had a frosty, satan-blessed month. But, I mean, let’s be real. Such exclamations are couched in the traditional, stereotypical norms of a community that has built and staked its reputation on an allegiance to popularly assumed constructs…
Welcome to our first installment of Kvlt Kolvmn in the Year of Our Dark Lord 2018! We’ve missed you. Let’s talk about black metal. 2017 was not a watershed year for the subgenre like it was for death metal. While there were a number of quality releases throughout the year…
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.
