CD

In late 2024, AINZAMKAIT delivered their bolt-from-the-blue debut album, Was des Lebens nicht wert. The work of one Grymnir der Zornige, AINZAMKAIT's moniker is a linguistic twist on the German "Einsamkeit," which is loneliness in English - and fittingly, that's exactly what he delivered, offering a righteous new twist on Teutonic black metal.

Proving that was no fluke, AINZAMKAIT return under the banner of PURITY THROUGH FIRE with Fluch des Nachzehrers. Sonically, on first blush, this second album is built upon the same foundation as the debut: riffs that are hypnotically melancholic yet also strangely triumphant, a slow-burning approach to pacing, and Grymnir der Zornige's full-throated rasp elevating everything safely beyond DSBM dross. However, where that first album conveyed a certain hooliganism latent to the best German black metal, here do AINZAMKAIT soar on cosmic wings high into the night, raised up on synths that are even more ethereal than that no-less-considerable debut; indeed, one need only translate this album's title as well as ponder the cover art to perceive their nocturnal trajectory. Strangely enough, the eight tracks comprising Fluch des Nachzehrers are more compact this time around but somehow sound even more expansive: the destination might be the same, but the route to get there has been altered slightly - and compellingly, vampirically so. With new drummer Geyst des Wüterichs likewise providing livelier color, AINZAMKAIT continue their noble march...the curse awakens!

A project of Ungod (SAD / NECROHELL/ BLOODMOON ECLIPSE) and Throne (HOR)
in the vein of BERGRIZEN, AASKEREIA

After a whole decade of silence, Downfall Of Nur is back with a new album. The studio project born from Italian-born Antonio Sanna is finally ready to give a proper follow up to the acclaimed debut Umbras de Barbagia (2015). And the Firmament will Burn to Quench the Pain of this Earth unfolds as a profound reflection on the ancestral memory and deeply rooted symbols of Sardinia.
At its core lies the dual figure of the feminine: the Mother Goddess, an ancient archetype associated with fertility, the earth, and permanence, represented in the prehistoric iconography of Sardinia, and human mothers, silent protagonists who carry the restrained sorrow of mourning their children lost to ancestral conflicts, such as the disamistade, a ritualized enmity deeply embedded in Sardinian cultural memory.
The album’s central narrative revolves around the transition of an individual caught in these ancient cycles of hostility. Upon shedding his physical form, his spirit merges with the archetype of the Mother Goddess, an ancestral presence embodying the exhaustion provoked by the endless repetition of violence and death. This union marks a threshold: an essential act of purification that confronts oblivion and halts the ceaseless recurrence of suffering.
Though not explicitly named, the mothers form the ethical and emotional foundation of the work. Their grief transcends the individual and extends into the collective, shaping the social memory and the ontological relationship between human beings and the land they inhabit. The Mother Goddess and the mothers symbolically intertwine, revealing the rupture between humanity and the earth that sustains it. The album posits a breaking point: the weariness of the Mother Goddess in the face of perpetual cycles of vengeance, death, and forgetting. This rupture is not presented as punitive, but as an inevitable act of purification, fire consuming what has been denied by collective memory.
And the Firmament Will Burn to Quench the Pain of This Earth calls for attentive and contemplative listening. It is not a linear or conclusive narrative, but a fragmented ritual space that opens the way to multiple layers of interpretation, where history, mythology, and human mourning converge. Ultimately, the album stands as an act of living memory—a tribute to Sardinia as a sacred, wounded land, bearer of silenced histories—and an invitation to recognize, through listening, the profound sorrow that resides in the broken bond between man, woman, earth, and the divine. 

Barren Canyon, the reclusive Canadian act formed by the mysterious duo of multi-instrumentalists Maikan and Absent, re-emerge with A Virulent Steam, their second release for Avantgarde Music after eight years of silence. Whereas 2018’s World of Wounds contrasted bursts of metal with cold ambient passages, Barren Canyon now return transformed, melding their influences into a tempered miasmic haze. Warmer synth tones drift and swell like a toxic fog, diffusing into harsher textures.

Taking the idea of “atmospheric metal” seriously and literally, A Virulent Stream draws both musically and lyrically upon themes of noxious air, suffocation, and the airborne contaminants of industrial society. The very cover picture is a statement in itself, as the band chose “Smoke from the continuously operating steel plants gives Birmingham its
spectacular nighttime red-orange glow” by Leroy Woodson to visually introduce their opus.

Hieron's debut album „From the Temple to the Grave“ offers a lamentation leading into a vortex of doubt, hopelessness, and madness - through fog, past old forgotten graves, through cold stone walls and vaults, toward a purifying fire and vast nothingness, where salvation never comes. A Tale told in six Acts of relentless melodic black metal.

CD re-issue of the fifth full-length from one of the most important bands to emerge from the Brazilian underground Black and Death Metal scene!

Upon its inception in 1989, Brazilian band MYSTIFIER created an aggressive, fast, and malignant sound within the classic black metal style which makes them veterans of their scene. MYSTIFIER's profane and primeval metal reigns true, and has outlasted three decades of trends and turmoil. 'Protogoni Mavri Magiki Dynasteia' is another spearhead in their renewed assault, with a cover art created by Paolo Girardi (INQUISITION).

Recommended if you like: BEHERIT, BLASPHEMY, SARCOFAGO

Back from the depths of Okinawan graves, dead souls chant occult folklore tales from the ancient Ryukyu realms.
Seiden is the only Black Metal band existent in Okinawa (JP), strongly sourced by original and edgy black metal (from Mayhem to Portal), with powerful drums, 8 sting guitars and evilish undertone vocals the sonic experience of Seiden is similar to deep diving into an ocean of ghosts and shadows.
Seiden is playing live with traditional Okinawa Taiko and Shamisen　which crafts a unique atmosphere unique to the undergrounds of Okinawa.

The first full-length album from America’s most vile and raw black metal act, Ärid. Utterly evil and utterly devastated, it is composed of feral performances that sound as though a forsaken, dying body has gathered its last strength to annihilate the enemies who abandoned it. Beyond the rusted gates, the revenge of the slaughtered victims dreams in silence. First-ever CD edition from Hidden Marly Production!