Metal 395 Items

„This is the missing link between Explosions in the Sky and Bongripper“ says a friend about Berlin based instrumental 5-piece neànder. Where do you draw the line between Post-Metal, Doom, Stoner or even Modern Black Metal? Post-Rock and Underground Metal have always been familiar. This is sweeping Ambient music combined with the intensity of a Norwegian Black Metal group. Epic songs hovering around the 10 minute mark. Black Sabbath influenced droning Doom riffs ascending into heavenly, dreamy soundscapes. 5 hypnotic chapters made to be listened to in its entirety; this album tends to be ritual music.

Founded in 2017 the collective consists of musos from Blackgazers Ånd, Hardcore Punks Patsy O' Hara, Berlin Sludgers Earth Ship, Doomsters Albez Duz and live band members from Indie outfit Casper. Asked about why they keep their music on an instrumental level the answer is „a singer would reduce us into being either a Metal- or a Post-Rock band. We believe that the sacrifice of lyrics will keep our musical vision open and will help to intend on the music“.

neànder recorded its self-titled debut album in March 2018 at Hidden Planet Studios, Berlin (The Ocean, Abest, Sun Worship) mixed by Jan Oberg from Earth Ship, mastered by Magnus Lindberg from Cult of Luna. This monolith of an album is due to release in February 2019. Coming via the independent Hamburg St. Pauli based diy record label Through Love Records, which released stunning records from artists such as God Is An Astronaut, Fjørt, Wayste, Lirr and Svalbard, just to name a few.

For fans of Pelican, Bongripper, Wolves in the Throne Room, Deafheaven, Explosions in the Sky, Isis, Neurosis, Russian Circles, Year Of No Light, YOB or Mogwai.

Gaia is one of the most acclaimed and popular songs taken off the "Wildhoney" album. It became one of the keystones in doom metal and evokes the lyrics of a classic melody.
The band, led by visionary guitarist, singer and songwriter Johan Edlund have been at the forefront of doom and rock innovation since the early 90s, deeply influenced by Pink Floyd and paying the pertinent tribute here with their own interpretation of “When You´re In”. With revamped artwork and layout, Alone Records gives Gaia it's first vinyl treatment ever.

Limited edition for Schwarzer Freitag Record Store Day 2018! Only 1 per customer!

Another friday dedicated to the black gold!

Wolves In The Throne Room will be releasing the sorrowful and grand self-titled debut album by Cascadian funeral doom band Vouna through their own Artemisia Records. All music on Vouna was composed and all instruments performed by front-person and fellow native to the Pacific Northwest Yianna Bekris, previously of Vradiazei, Eigenlicht, and Sadhaka. This debut evokes the devastating and beautiful journey of becoming the last person on Earth. Razor sharp tremolo picked guitars cut through the heart like a knife. Mournfully sung vocals and cinematic melodies are combined with crushing doom drumming, while layers of primitive ’90s digital synths conjure a lush and rugged soundscape. The music is inspired and influenced by Finnish funeral doom, Eastern European black metal, and Greek folk music, a must-hear for fans of My Dying Bride, Skepticism, Shape Of Despair, and similar acts.

Alastor hearken to the days when heavy rock was the music of the rebel, the occult adherent and lurker in the shadows, not hipster bros. Theirs is the doom sound for those who discovered it on the edge of town, in the cold rain, perhaps, as an escape from the squares who’ll never understand. Drenched in heavy, distorted darkness and steeped in occult horror that will make your skin crawl and ears cry sweet tears of blood, Slave To The Grave pulls no punches in the Swedish band’s unabashedly bleak themes.

The band formed under a bad moon in 2016, consisting of Dharma Gheddon (vocals, bass, acoustic guitar and organ), Lucy Ferian on lead & acoustic guitar and organ, Terry Fying on guitar and Levi Athan on drums.

The quartet released its epic three-song debut album Black Magic in early 2017 via Twin Earth Records, followed by the two-track Blood On Satan’s Claw EP on Halloween the same year. Joining forces with Riding Easy Records in 2018, they hunkered down to summon this seven-track hateful gospel with engineer Magnus Sörensen.

Two raw and unmixed songs from Wind’s Poem were transferred from the original analog tape masters into the ProTools HDX system at Owl Lodge. The studio is situated in the woods near Olympia, WA and is the headquarters of Wolves in the Throne Room. A single vocal track from “Lost Wisdom" was layered with newly recorded digital synths and a heavy bass from a vintage Korg MS-20. Wisps of the original organ and guitar appear in a heavily processed form. “Mouth of Sky” was created using techniques inspired by Lee Perry. In this case, the original tracks were routed to a variety of analog and digital FX units via the faders on the studio’s Harrison PP1 console. The mix was performed in real time.

Upon recovering from being steamrolled over by the onslaught of Satan’s Satyrs’ new album, The Lucky Ones, one’s likely to wonder just what exactly it was that just hit them. A punky, sleaze rock groove (perhaps even a whiff of ’70s glam) meets NWOBHM melodic fury, Blue Cheer mass and volume, and Ozzy’s dramatic charisma condensed into a sound all its own, perhaps. At its core is an unstoppable, unpretentious exorcism of rock ’n’ roll exuberance.

A significant difference on this album from the band’s previous releases is the addition of second guitarist Nate Towle, which expands the band’s steamrolling capacity tenfold. Bassist / vocalist Clayton Burgess (Electric Wizard), Towle, guitarist Jarrett Nettnin and drummer Stephen Fairfield convened at the Richmond, VA studio of Windhand guitarist Garrett Morris, working in fits and starts over several months, first quickly capturing the raw energy of a band firing on all cylinders, then fine-tuning the sounds and experimenting to get everything massive. Likewise, Burgess’ lyrics show new levels of achievement.

The twin guitar assault begins from the very first beat of the album and never relents until the last second of the nine track, thirty-five minute album. Opener “Thrill of the City” wastes no time launching into soaring harmonized riffs and swaggering rhythms setting the scene for a debauched good time. The title track, perhaps the most personal song on the album, is also the most unabashedly melodic. “Trampled By Angels” pits a swinging T Rex-vibe against dizzy, noisy guitars and lyrics about a pioneer of fetish photography using his medium to express forbidden desires to the world. Likewise, the whole album is a vibrant, brash and loud expression of defiance against convention that refuses to be ignored.

Seattle, Washington’s Hissing engage in dark, dissonant, cacophonous, inverted death metal noise and with their debut album, Permanent Destitution, the three-piece have created a nihilistic vision of deranged otherworldly audial pandemonium. A soundscape of pure enveloping darkness and unrelenting chaos, it deconstructs and builds itself through walls and layers of pummeling turmoil and disarray generated through twisted, angular guitar work and fretboard annihilation, surgically cold and calculated death march drums and monolithic bass, all with a dark overbearing ambience. The added touch of droning noise segments, also crucial to the band’s sound, mixed with the doomy industrial components, become that final element to make this release a towering monument of primal avant-deathnoise.

You can probably feel it already. Amid the shimmering haze of dusk. In the marrow of your bones. The darkness is getting darker. Malevolent forces are on the prowl. The wasteland is beckoning. Uncle Acid is on his way home. A disorientating journey through Kevin Starrs (AKA Uncle Acid)’ wonkiest dreams, Wasteland glides majestically from punchy and direct psych-rock anthems like "I See Through You" and "Shockwave City" to the viscous, somnambulant ooze of the eight-minute "No Return" and the twinkly-eyed bad trip of the album’s mesmerising title track. Recorded at the legendary Sunset Sound studio in Los Angeles, Wasteland boasts the kind on irresistibly raw and exuberant sound that only the greatest bands can generate. Yet more confirmation that Uncle Acid exist in their own musical universe, Wasteland is also a powerful cautionary tale: one rooted in the alien landscapes of Starrs’ imagination, but with a very clear connection to the deranged chaos of today’s political world. As humanity cheerfully circles the plughole, Dystopian visions and present-day horrors have become more-or-less interchangeable, making Wasteland’s ghoulish surrealism a lot more pertinent and disturbing in the process. While most musicians seem content to chase their own (or other people’s tails), Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats remain proud and resolute individualists and Wasteland is simply their most powerful and memorable spurge of creativity to date. Masterfully echoing the magical atmospheres of heavy music’s turbulent past while sounding entirely unlike anything else available to human ears, this is what happens when the shadows come to life and suffocating darkness, Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats style, is the only show in town.

Sulphur Soul, the latest offering from Canadian black metal unit Gevurah, continues and builds upon the promise laid down with their 2016 debut album Hallelujah!, one of that year’s most recognized albums within the scene. With this album, the band continues to explore their more aggressive and punishing aspects while conjuring even more complex and challenging realms. The four hymns that encompass these thirty-two minutes present some of the band’s most intense and uncompromising material yet and shows how the Montreal-based duo encircle their sonic palette with a new heightened sense of brutality and atmosphere, all the while upholding their trademark dark essence and transcendental spiritual aura.

Five years since their last release, Morne is proud to announce their fourth studio album entitled, To The Night Unknown, which will be released by the Armageddon Label and the bands’ own label Morne Records, in September 2018. The album was recorded at New Alliance Audio Productions by Jon Taft and mastered at Audiosiege by BRAD BOATRIGHT and features the photography and design of Hillarie Jason. Morne, formed in 2005, is a heavy, atmospheric band based in Boston, Massachusetts. Their style blends doom metal and classic British crust but stretches beyond those boundaries, combining a bleak lyrical style with driving riffs. The band has toured the US, Canada and Europe, and they have been part of large festivals such as Roadburn, Hellfest and Psycho Las Vegas. Vinyl edition of 600 copies.

Wytch Hazel’s stellar 2016 debut Prelude confirmed these Lancastrian apprentice wizards to be Britain’s most promising new hard rock band. Two years on, that promise comes to abundant fruition on II: Sojourn, an album that moves Wytch Hazel on from the innocence and exuberance of the debut to a darker, more profound and complex place, carefully wrought into optimum shape by the band’s singer, guitarist, songwriter and mastermind Colin Hendra. The most crucial influence fully expresses itself via Les Paul guitars in sweet twin harmony through cranked Super Lead Marshalls. In the parallel universe where the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal happened 600 years early, Wytch Hazel are the band of choice for the discerning Plantagenet headbanger.