Aquilus occupies a place of special importance in my music collection. One or two exceptions aside, 2011’s Griseus and 2021’s Bellum I offer the best fusions of symphonic music and heavy metal that I’ve heard. Now in 2024 Bellum II completes the puzzle started by its predecessor. A gap of just 2.5 years, compared with 10 years, is far more digestible and strikes while the band remains fresh in my mind. The soloist sitting behind everything, Horace Rosenqvist, already felt like a master of his craft on the production of his first album, with the second just another iteration of that mastery. Ca ..read more

No one does music quite like Austin’s Glassing. Nearly impossible to pigeonhole in its blend of jagged riffs and crystalline melodies, critics have conjured the likes of post-metal, post-black, post-rock, mathcore, shoegaze, sludge, noise rock, screamo, and post-hardcore to describe it – none ever quite sticking the landing. Comparisons to Amenra, Deafheaven, Holy Fawn, and Infant Island are rife – fair but incomplete. Ascending to the ether with a style formed on 2017’s Light and Death, honed in 2019’s Spotted Horse, and perfected with 2021’s Twin Dream, Glassing seems to level up with each r ..read more

As per usual with Darkthrone these days, a new record arrived without any notice and NO ONE got the promo until after its release. So, here I am trying to toss together a review at the last second for a band whose process is so annoying that I don’t even want to review them. But, I love Darkthrone. So I will ignore my annoyance and pen this fucking thing. Even after twenty full-length albums and nearly four decades in existence, Darkthrone can still surprise their fanbase with each new record—to the point that you don’t know what to expect. But, the last time I enjoyed a complete Darkthrone al ..read more

I would like to go back to Paris one day. Not for its popularity as a romantic destination, nor especially to see the famous art and architecture it hosts. No, the reason I’d like to go back is to pay a visit to a site I missed when I went as a teenager: the Catacombs. This ossuary, home to the bones of around six million people, is one of the few places you can legally be in the presence of so many skulls, and it sounds incredible. Why are we talking about this? Prior to placing a person’s remains in an ossuary, one must conduct an Ossilegium, which is, literally, a “collecting of bones.” Thi ..read more

How I’ve never known about France’s ACOD is beyond me, and I heartily apologize to them because I’ve been having a hella good time with many of their releases. Beginning their career as a black/thrash outfit with metalcore tendencies, they began to explore Mephorash-meets-Septicflesh territories around the time of their 2018 release, The Divine Triumph. While there are thrashy moments, the songwriting is now predominantly massive string atmospheres, marching drumbeats, cranked-up bass work, and riff after motherfucking riff. Each song is a rollercoaster ride, continuously rising and falling th ..read more

“Upharsin” is part of an Aramaic phrase seen in the Hebrew Bible, in which the words “mene, mene, tekel, upharsin” appear mysteriously upon the wall of the palace of King Belshazzar, which are interpreted by the prophet Daniel as foretelling the fall of Babylon and its dispersion to the Persians and the Medes. The rich religious undertone pervades the Polish Blaze of Perdition, not as a point of blasphemy but of portent. Catholicism is a specter that haunts Poland, one whose national identity has historically been intertwined with religion – and the inevitable trail of pain wrought from the ir ..read more

Ah yes, February. Wait, what? It’s almost MAY!!! Who approved this two-months-late bullshit? Oh… right, that would be me. Shit. Well, you know, sometimes life gets in the fucking way, you know? It’s been rough days, and I know I’m not the only one struggling. With 2024 on such a rocky start, it should come as no surprise that we grasp desperately for media to help us escape and find solace in the art of others. Unfortunately for my Filter minions, they don’t get to escape from the mire and muck of the neglected filtration system from which we find what could be generously described as “art ..read more

When I happened across one of the singles for Adon, I recall thinking it sounded, quote, “impossibly good.” Adon formed in 2019 and has thus far released one EP, Arkane, in 2020. They currently maintain a humble online presence; unsurprising for a relatively new band, but from what I’d heard I couldn’t help but believe they deserved better. When I got the chance to review their self-titled debut I felt excited at the prospect of potentially helping their following grow… but that depends on the music, doesn’t it? And so I dug in, hoping the potential I saw in their pre-release material would b ..read more

In the blurred-boundary world of black metal, Selbst is quite special. Possessing neither the cold grit, folk-leaning whimsicality, or vivacious bombast of European and Northern American variants, the Latin American influence instead lends their sound a lilting, layered musicality. It’s been clear from the project’s beginning that this music is both incredibly personal and a way of exploring the darker and more devastating of shared human experiences. This is more true than ever with third LP Despondency Chord Progressions, of which sole composer and member N1 says, speaking also to the surrea ..read more

There’s perhaps no better moniker that these Detroit natives could have chosen. Temple of the Fuzz Witch embodies a green fuzz that saturates all the negative spaces, tinged with a ritualistic and sinister occult edge. Apotheosis embodies a culmination, a godlike apex as the name suggests, of the act’s history, megaton riffage greeting dark atmospheres and a thick veil of smoke, although their third full-length finds the trio embracing a distinctly vicious edge. Does Apotheosis make Temple of the Fuzz Witch the divine success to which they strive? The act’s history is one associated with Sleep ..read more