Tag: Black Metal

Ashbringer -Subglacial

Metalcatto

Ashbringer is Minnesota’s answer to Deafheaven. For some time now, the band has been delivering emotional and heartbreaking Post-Metal richly layered with atmospheric touches. While Absolution continues to stand as my personal favorite (and arguably one of the best Post-Metal albums ever made!), We Came Here to Grieve was a fascinating, if decidedly weirder, successor. My expectations for this new album, Subglacial, are therefore absurdly high. The fact the band has stated it was created with minimal financial investment only fuels my excitement further! Let’s begin.

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An Elegy in Riffs: Albums to Help You Heal

Metalcatto

Time flies when you’re mourning. It feels like yesterday when Pappa Catto left for Valhalla. This past year, there were albums I would turn to when the emotional mess hit me hardest. You know what I’m talking about: the deep ache of loss and the nagging sense of existential meaninglessness, paired with the paradoxical need for brutal riffs to power through the day. Here are some of those albums that helped me navigate the pain. Maybe they can help you, too.

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Mayhem – Liturgy of Death

Metalcatto

There might be no other band in extreme Metal that has inspired more dank, enduring memes than your dark majesty, Mayhem. I even conducted a retro-review of the seminal album back in the day. However, I approached its latest release, Liturgy of Death (wow, how surprising that title is…), with next to no expectations. The central question looms: how can a band with such a famously chaotic and tragic trajectory possibly offer something genuinely compelling and interesting decades after its infamous peak?

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Handful of Hate – Soulless Abominations

Ixone

I think I’ve reached a point in my… listening of extreme metal if you will, where the wisest thing I can do is go against what my gut tells me about an album. What that actually translates as is: The more I put off listening to an album because I’m not sure that it will be good, the better that album is going to be when I actually manage to get over myself and actually listen to it. I guess that’s one way to avoid complacency in the realms of music… but I digress.

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The Ruins Of Beverast – Tempelschlaf

Metalcatto

I’m kind of mad that this promo somehow ended up in my junk folder and only now did I get around to listening to The Ruins of Beverast – Tempelschlaf. Needless to say, I can’t recall a time when this band released anything that wasn’t at least a solid 4/5. Few acts have mastered the feeling of shamanic Black Metal the way The Ruins of Beverast has. The trance-like state the music induces is so distinctive that its only real competition has always been itself. As a result, my standards were high going into this record. I was expecting nothing less than a hallucinatory descent into something deeply unsettling, so let’s get into it.

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Ellende – Zerfall

Metalcatto

I’m late to this party again, but here we are: a new Ellende album exists, and that alone means we can’t just let it pass unnoticed. The band has been delivering stunning Post/Black Metal for years now, to the point where having an opinion on a new release isn’t just advisable, it feels almost mandatory. I also happened to see that one of the band members (L.G.) defended his PhD not long ago, which honestly explains a lot. Suddenly, the sheer emotional devastation of this record makes complete sense. Ellende, if you’re reading this, I’d love to say the academic pain is over, but judging by Zerfall, it has merely transformed into sound.

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