CD

The album comes with a 12 page booklet & full artwork design. Limited to 500 copies on CD

"Cryptic (1997) marks the arrival of vocalist Roberth Karlsson (Scar Symmetry, Pan.Thy.Monium, Facebreaker, Darkified), who took over from Dan Swanö. This remastered edition of Cryptic is now available.

The 2CD set in an O-Card includes the 8 tracks from the original album on the first CD, along with 10 bonus tracks (covers, alternative mixes, and live recordings) on the second CD."

Batushka's 2019 Opus Returns: The Liturgy of Death Re-released!

Back on Black is proud to announce the comprehensive reissue of Hospodi (Church Slavonic for "Lord"), the second full-length album from the Polish black metal phenomenon, Batushka. Initially released in 2019, Hospodi represents a more polished, melodic, and theatrical evolution of the band's signature, ritualistic sound.

Based on the Eastern Orthodox "Liturgy of Death" and traditional funeral rites, the album is a thematic journey through death and judgment. This reissue brings back the ten-track masterpiece, which blends traditional black metal (tremolo riffs, ferocious blast beats) with haunting choirs, atmospheric ambient interludes, and profound Slavic chants.

Hospodi was lauded for its dramatic production, and this reissue shines a light on key tracks like the atmospheric opener "Wozglas," the rocking-yet-menacing "Wieczernia," and the powerful closer "Liturgiya".

After years of silence, Toroidh returns with a somber new chapter — a fusion of dark ambient textures, martial industrial rhythms, and the distant echoes of funeral marches. Rooted in forest solitude and sharpened by a deep contempt for human folly, this album explores the fleeting nature of freedom — a concept always just out of reach, always reshaped by history and hubris.

Bleak. Reflective. Uncompromising.

SMOHALLA's avant-garde black metal is overwhelming, rich in nuances, tempo shifts, and atmospherics. The arrangements are extremely layered; the structures, complex yet consistently coherent, serve a songwriting that masterfully interweaves epic dark melodies, nocturnal ambient/electronic interludes, and unstoppable explosions of metal violence, while Slo's vocal performance alternates between beastly screams and dreamy vocalizations.

The cosmic and hypnotic grandeur of "Ruina Draconis" is a religious experience that revives the great avant-black tradition of masters ARCTURUS and VED BUENS ENDE

Throughout the four lengthy tracks of "Obstinacy: Sisyphean Dreams Unfolded," FLESHVESSEL seem possessed. A kaleidoscope of colors pours forth from the rich instrumentation employed, which includes, among others, acoustic and electric guitars, flute, clarinet, piano, synthesizer, viola, and a multitude of exotic instruments. The vocals are also impressive and over the top, alternating deep growls and heavy metal falsettos, tying together bone-crushing death metal grooves and airy melodic landscapes into complex prog-style harmonic structures.

Born between the UK and Morocco from the mysterious singer/multi-instrumentalist known as The Orator, TZEVAOT is a vehicle through which the occult - not just theatrics, but actual hidden mechanisms of reality - are unveiled. Merging the ever-malleable black metal sound with death, thrash and heavy metal elements, and with progressive, classical and jazz compositional influences, TZEVAOT’s first offering - appropriately named "The Hermetic Way" - is a dive into the ancient school of mystical understanding which ultimately gave rise to the modern scientific disciplines, bridged the gaps between pagan and Abrahamic theology, and bestowed the world with the greatest practical synthesis of Graeco-Egyptian wisdom.

Wrapped in a stunning painting by Luciana Nedelea, TZEVAOT’s “The Hermetic Way” is an album of magnetic charm, made even more intriguing on one track by the narration of Lon Milo DuQuette, the world’s most cited living occult author and a high-ranking figure in the Astrum Argenteum and the Ordo Templi Orientis, both institutions founded and shaped by Aleister Crowley during his lifetime. TZEVAOT complements the esoteric depth of their themes with incredibly creative music that, thanks to a mercurial songwriting, moves coherently and masterfully through every facet of black metal, tempering its raw, cutting sounds with compelling prog orchestrations.

Having released their self-titled debut album of progressive noise rock in 2022, French power trio CRATOPHANE returns to the scene with their brilliant blend of post-metal, heavy psych, noise rock and progressive, a sound that has previously earned them comparisons to the likes of SHELLAC, PELICAN, MAGMA, and CARBONIZED.

Their new album, "Exode" is once again an entirely instrumental work. Thanks to a multifaceted yet consistent style and a songwriting skill that has further refined in recent years, CRATOPHANE's music is a sonic journey full of surprises. "These are compositions that fall into the realm of a kind of instrumental, psychedelic, and cosmic prog metal," the band says, "in a spirit somewhere between BLIND IDIOT GOD and PELICAN, but played by fans of VOIVOD and ALUK TODOLO, with a mix of zeuhl-style melodies and many very dissonant, even noisy passages. In other words, a sort of RUSSIAN CIRCLES on LSD, trapped in an inhospitable parallel dimension."

After the dissolution of FERAL LIGHT, frontman and songwriter A.S. wasted no time in channeling his artistic flair into a new project, UNSOULING. Their 2024 debut, "Vampiric Spiritual Drain," laid the foundation for a new stylistic approach that is now fully realized on "Outward Streams of Devotional Woe," the band's sophomore release, once again graced with a stunning cover art by Luciana Nedelea.