OSR: December 24th, 2015

A theonihilogical instrumental album by Peculate, with more experimentation than usual, as we like it, but we could’ve been spared the synthesized saxophone.

An alternative death metal album that’s heavily good, or goodily heavy?

A slab of black metal-infused hardcore; anything black-infused is already much better!

A fantastic album with various experimentations on death metal and other genres!

Another great album, very dark indie fit for metalheads.… Read more

Amia Venera Landscape cured my longing with their new music video for Hiraeth

Amia Venera Landscape released their widely acclaimed album The Long Procession back in 2010, and we’ve all been eager to listen to new music from them since! Well, they wrapped up a cool gift for us in time for the winter solstice with “Hiraeth”, and a release date for Vision I: The Great Mystery: April 30th, 2016. Seems like they took their sweet time to carefully craft this album, and this rather short song, for their own standards, proves it! I just hope there’ll be longer songs since I think that’s where the band shines the most!… Read more

OSR: December 19th, 2015

Heavy and low experimental black metal with industrial tendencies; it ultimately sounds too industrial for my tastes.

Swallow the Sun‘s triple album is unnecessarily long and could’ve been much better if the individual songs were more worked upon and if the weaker ones were weeded out.

A simple yet efficient instrumental stoner/doom album.

A pretty solid progressive black metal album coming out in early 2016.

Technical death metal has never really been my thing, but this Icelandic band must be doing something right!

Atmospheres‘s The Departure is a deserving if rather simplistic ambidjent album.

This would’ve most probably … Read more

OSR: December 17th, 2015

A 2013 experimental jazz album that will get a re-release through Art as Catharsis in early 2016: as everything from AAC, it’s innovative and well executed!

An early 2016 entry for very good album of the year in the progressive death metal genre.

Although it’s not labeled as such, I think this is exactly what if black metal went pop would sound like, and it’s not a bad thing!

Self is a very decent post black metal album with interesting melodic and harmonic ideas throughout.

As is legacy from grindcore bands, this is a very concise split, but I have … Read more

Nono Cerchio – Ombre

a0705784611_16From the beautiful Italian city of Bologna, here comes Nono Cerchio – Ninth Circle -, a progressive post-metal band with two members from one of last year’s biggest new names: Nero di Marte. Their debut album, Ombre, was released in early November, and clocks in at almost 50 minutes.

With draughts of experimental music imbuing the atmospheres of the post-metal background, we get a work of art heavy with dissonance, and deeper meaning than can be thought of at first listen. In fact, the album is influenced by Dante’s Divine Comedy, most specifically, the 32nd Canto of “Inferno”, … Read more