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Tilbake til Trollberg is now out! We bring you a little snack from Troll while you are waiting for the new full-length album. We return to Trollberg this autumn with a new release of Norwegian symphonic black metal.
Leaving, who hail from Oakland, CA, meld the heavy distortion of doom metal with the ethereal textures of shoegaze, forging an audio landscape that is devastatingly hypnotic and dripping with sorrow. Founded in 2021, they are a seasoned group of sonic architects who include members of Noothgrush, Amber Asylum, Graves at Sea, Lycus, and Funerary among them. Leaving weaves a musical tapestry that plunges listeners into the abyss with shadowy vocals adding emotional depth and somber undertones to their enormous sound. Lyrically they delve into themes of desolation, depression, loneliness, introspection, and the shadows that lurk within the human psyche. Leaving’s music paints a bleak but vivid, almost gossamer picture of a world consumed by decay. This interplay of light and shadow, coupled with an underlying heaviness, creates an atmosphere that is bound to envelop the listener in a shroud of mesmerizing gloom. With each note, the band invites you into the liminal space they've crafted - a space between worlds, emotions, and musical genres.
Emerging in 2021 with their self-titled debut mini-album for PURITY THROUGH FIRE, MEISTER LEONHARDT were a new entity thriving on the old bones, dust, and hoarfrost. Still mysterious, we know that they hailed from Moscow, Russia, and consisted of members of such well-established underground outfits as Thy Grave, Goatpsalm, and Frozen Ocean among others. Named after one of Gustav Meyrink’s most inspiring short novels, Meister Leonhardt presented its opinion of what nowadays black metal should sound like in a throttling 'n' thrilling 27 minutes.
With deep respect to black metal traditions, from deepest desolation to barely restrained violence, MEISTER LEONHARDT return again to skillfully span true black metal's extremes with the full-length Thanatopoeia. As a debut album, it establishes itself in both presenting where the band is coming from and more so where they are going. MEISTER LEONHARDT's sound is still raw - unadorned, confrontational, and undeniably physical - but there's a skillful execution at play that sharpens their already-adept songwriting to a superlative degree. That songwriting swarms the listener with a shapeshifting number of shapes, whipping forth a fury when needed but surprising the listener with utterly incensed mid-tempo thrust. Thankfully, the quintet expound upon that anthemic element, twisting forth melancholic-yet-malevolent melodies that make their ever-escalating nastiness slice through to the bone. Fans of classic Craft and Carpathian Forest will surely have their fires stoked by Thanatopoeia.
From moniker to visual aesthetic and especially to the sonics themselves, HERALDIC BLAZE are encapsulating the oft-nebulous "medieval black metal" idiom with startling aplomb. While it's often difficult to discern exactly what medieval BM is other than a pithy "I know it when I hear it," HERALDIC BLAZE leave no doubt as to their intentions.
Witness their debut demo, Blazoned Heraldry. The duo of American multi-instrumentalist Argent Pale (vocals, bass, flute) and Norwegian guitarist Peregrinus (HJEMSØKT, SOLUS GRIEF, KVAD, UNHOLY CRAFT) create a spellbinding tapestry of rustic tones and textures. In fact, on texture alone - kinda clean and clanging, yet with more than a hint of ghostly grit and almost surfy reverb - HERALDIC BLAZE stand out, but it's how they utilize those textures in the service of songwriting: winding and wild, frothing up to an almost-dangerous delirium, but more often than not leaving wide-open spaces to let their medieval melodicism bend and sway with bravado and bittersweetness. And as actual flute flutters in from time to time, the sum effect, more often than not, is ALIEN - unsettling and alluring in equal measure.
While "merely" a demo recording, HERALDIC BLAZE's first work already trounces most modern works of "black metal." Unorthodox and unbound, Blazoned Heraldry is mandatory listening for fans of Sühnopfer, Ungfell, Grylle, Heltekvad, and particularly mid-2000s Peste Noire.
One of the most fully formed black metal entities of recent times, GRANITADER burst into brilliance with their debut full-length, Der Wald zwischen den Welten. After but an EP last year, the German quintet's first full-length displays a masterful grasp of songwriting and dynamics as well as confidence and charisma to spare. GRANITADER are old souls who exude the effervescence of the new; their continually cresting surge recalls pagan touchstones like Windir, Falkenbach, or Germany's Horn closer to home, as well as Drudkh's more cinematic moments. However, the wind beneath the wings of Der Wald zwischen den Welten is the album's overarching theme: a homage to their - as well as PURITY THROUGH FIRE's - home area of Erzgebirge, the Ore Mountains that are an UNESCO world heritage site, as well as older German history. Truly, it all comes together as one breathtaking blast of classically austere German black metal, but poignantly brimming with a heroic, almost-positive aspect that's simply impossible to deny. The spiraling lead-work is categorically sublime, and helps elevate GRANITADER to the top of today's pagan black metal pack. Completing this complete package is the professional & powerful production, encasing their bravado in a sheen wholly befitting of its majesty. Let GRANITADER guide you through Der Wald zwischen den Welten!
