Metal has a penchant for the transcendent. As an avid music consumer, it’s a rare occurrence for a record to stop me dead in my tracks and demand my complete, undivided attention. No working. No multitasking. No casual listening. Instead, on first listen, complete and total surrender to a wave…
Atmospheric black metal has been doing a lot of things in the last five years or so. Beyond “just” an explosion in release numbers, atmospheric black metal also seems to be undergoing another (re)negotiation of what constitutes its basic parts, with the genre splitting off into further sub-genres. You have…
When I was in my senior year of high school, I was really Going Through It. Due to a combination of factors – a couple years’ worth of personal events with peers that I still don’t really talk about much, seeing the signs of the oncoming death of a loved…
This is one of those years where you’re writing your end of year summary every day. It’s a year which inundated all of us with so much music, and from so many angles and genres, that it almost begged to constantly be analyzed, made sense of, and conceptualized. I’ve written…
Welcome, friends, to the final installment of Kvlt Kolvmn in the year of our infernal overlords 2019. What a year it’s been. From releases by foolproof genre legends like Mayhem, Blut Aus Nord, and Abbath to seething experimental shots across the proverbial bow from Liturgy and Botanist, this past year…
Sometimes, as a lover and critic of music, one has to admit that they’re wrong. Egregiously so, even. Thus is the case with my relationship with, and belief in, the music of Ken Sorceron’s Abigail Williams. I first heard their debut record almost a decade ago, and was in all…
Metal means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. Always has, and always will. In all of its inherent juxtapositions and contradictions, a key battle within the heart of the genre is the push and pull between innovation and tradition. The ways in which we classify,…
Other than the blackest, darkest depths of winter, I find that summer’s zenith is when I listen to black metal the most. The genre’s obsession with every manner of the frigid, frostbitten, grim pastoralia one associates with the long Scandinavian cold season is practically a simulation of stepping into a…
2019 is a big year in more ways than one. For starters, it’s one year before the the big 2020, where our collective minds lose themselves (there’s a joke on one of the album titles in here) over a round number. Are you ready for “Best of The Decade” lists?…
Writing about a new Abbath album without mentioning Immortal would be tantamount to writing about Bruce Dickinson’s solo albums (The Chemical Wedding still holds up!) without mentioning Iron Maiden. It’s simply not done. It’s uncouth. Almost a quarter century after co-founding Immortal, Abbath struck out on his own in 2015 to assemble a…
