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…
February is such a dump of a month. It’s snowed well over a foot in the last two weeks in my home state, and we’ve nothing to show for it but mud splatter, sidewalks covered in ice left by feckless neighbors, and frigid temperatures. February is the microcosm of all…
February; or, as I like to call it (I literally just invented this), “The Bastard Month.” It’s not just the weird length which makes this month hard to pin down; it’s no longer “The First Month of the Year,” but nor is it close to its half. It’s not Midwinter…
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…
