Turning one’s back on black metal, either temporarily or permanently, is almost as integral to the genre now as corpse paint. Bullet belt dudes in bands like Aura Noir will happily play spindly avant-rock in Ved Buens Ende or Virus one moment then go back to blackened thrash like it never happened. Or you can be an Ulver, one day just deciding to fuck this shit and launch a decades-spanning career off the back of abandoning black metal after two of the most vaunted full-length examples ever to come out of the Norway. For the Dutch scene, however, easily one of the most idiosyncratic movements ..read more

Yob. Photo credit: Ted Nubel Yob, Cave In, and Yakuza performing together? On the same bill? If it wasn’t at Chicago’s Thalia Hall (a large, independent venue), I’d ask what year it was. To that point, Yob frontman Mike Scheidt even reminded the crowd of a time in which Yob and Yakuza played together at long-defunct venue The Note at a show which started at 2 AM. I am glad this show started at 7 PM! Hot off the release of their newest album Sutra, their first in over a decade, was Yakuza. Performing choice cuts from said album, Yakuza’s blend of metal, free improvisation, and, most importantly ..read more

Progressive in more than the technical sense of the word, Spanish extreme metal experimenters As Light Dies‘ upcoming album The Laniakea Architecture – Volume II is a dazzling example of progressive metal that breaks out of predefined genre expectations, wielding avant-garde black metal and progressive heavy metal as tools to create a dramatic, cinematic album. Black metal is often not the primary focus and serves more as an ominous undercurrent to enhance the spectacle–the album draws strength from its willingness to completely shift tone with almost no notice, but always draws from a wellsp ..read more

Sometimes, time actually is cyclical, and in history we learn from the past to build the future. In Connecticut-based avant-metal trio Kayo Dot‘s case, what came before—namely a band called maudlin of the Well (capitalized exactly so)—left an indelible mark on experimental and avant-garde metal, fusing elements of jazz, new age, gothic metal, and death metal together to build something atmospheric and, for its time and beyond, wholly unique. On their three initial albums (My Fruit PsychoBells… A Seed Combustible and sibling albums Bath and Leaving Your Body Map, taking 2009’s surprise Part th ..read more

Prospectors is not a band that’s easy to pigeonhole—and that’s not only due to their genre-spanning sound, but also because the twisted, intricate progressive metal of their upcoming debut full-length Proven Lands feels impossible to confine to any container that exists in three-dimensional space. Beyond energetic and at times capriciously inventive, the atypical riffs packed into the record seem to shift into planes beyond our reckoning, like they’re executing impossible intervals in nonsensical time signatures. There’s possibly no better example than this than the track “Obsidious Veins,” w ..read more

From the Back of the Rack is a new column that looks at potentially overlooked releases from the month prior. In just five years, Esoctrilihum have become established as one of the leading forces in the extreme metal underground. Their unique brand of tormented blackened death metal has cascaded across six increasingly excellent albums via I, Voidhanger Records while the shadowy figure behind the band, Asthagul, has proven himself to be one of the great new talents in the scene. On his latest offering Dy’th Requiem for the Serpent Telepath, the masterful songwriting shines as some of Asthagul ..read more

Piercing the Veil is a new column that aims to dive deep into themed bands, exploring what makes their concepts more than just a gimmick. Believe it or not, Manhattan-based trio Imperial Triumphant have no interest in being impenetrable. It’s true that their stark presentation could be misconstrued as disengaged and high-brow: in concert they have an intermediary announcer communicate with the audience, their music videos are constraining messes of expressionism, and they adorn near-identical gold tinted masks. Based on this, a thousand different people with thousands of differing ears could ..read more

Though its electric nature makes metal an inherently modern music style, it, like most music, is stuck in the past. Popular music’s preoccupation with consonance, melody, and harmony places it in the Post-Romantic period, utilizing musical elements and practices with which we culturally feel familiar and comfortable. There is nothing wrong with being stuck in the past — in fact, it can be further expounded upon, still — but there are a few, very studied artists who take black metal into the latter half of the past century and beyond. One of those few Modernist collectives is Ehnahre, whose bo ..read more

Formerly known as a massive, ambient, doomed black metal outfit (going so far as to cover an In Slaughter Natives song), it is safe to say that Spire‘s Temple of Khronos is nothing like its predecessor. Active and progressive in nature, the riff-based and thrilling “Hymn III – Harbinger” is indicative as to the rest of this upcoming album’s sound. Featuring an exhilaratingly varied vocal performance and a driving, monumental rhythm section, Spire’s new self treads new ground comfortably for this surprisingly forward-thinking artist. … … Temple of Khronos releases February 19th, 2021, on Sent ..read more