Reviewing music adds a unique element to retrospection. While everyone reflects on their past opinions, revisiting a detailed analysis of an album frames that type of reflection in a much more formal way. It’s the difference between a casual remembrance of past feelings and revisiting several paragraphs of your opinion…
The end-of-year bonanza that comprises most of November and December is both exhilarating and frustrating for music writers. On the one hand, it’s refreshing to be given the opportunity to initiate an organized, systematic retrospective on the year in music, and creating lists of surprises and favorites is always an…
Despite being just a guitar and drum duo, Mantar still sound just as massive as their modern sludge metal brethren. On their third album The Modern Art of Setting Ablaze, Erinç Sakarya (drums, vocals) and Hanno Klänhardt (vocals, guitars) continue their consistent trend of dropping an abrasive slab of blackened, crusty sludge every two years, all…
Black metal is formulaic in nature. The tropes of the genre have been recycled and reused on an endless spectrum. Bands have been integrating strange things into the style for a long time, yearning to breathe life into the cold and desolate sound beyond the standard helping of meat and…
Five years on from their atmospheric, neofolk-inspired album, A Forgotten Land, Australia’s Encircling Sea have returned with a release that takes the band’s unique blend of black, post, and doom metal in a fresh new direction. While their latest effort, Hearken, retains elements from all these genres, it tends to…
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…
Heaviness – that all important, ever elusive, sonic be-all and end-all – can come in many different guises. Black metal traditionally chases heaviness through tremolo-picked surging speed and haunting yet beautiful enveloping atmosphere. Doom, of course, typically retains some of the atmospheric trappings but reaches peak heaviness through slower means,…
What exactly makes a good metal song or album? How does solid songwriting create a critically-acclaimed album? Some think that experimentation is the way to go, and with the recent rise in black and death metal acts that want to add different sounds—post-black metal, the new trend of “dissonant” death…
