Shop

Limited edition reprint (200) of the official 2016 re-issue. Co-released with H.O.D. Productions

Limited edition reprint (200) of the official 2016 re-issue. Co-released with H.O.D. Productions

The actual Album plus the 4 songs from the 2010 Split release with Sapthuran.

Since 2005, Greece's SAD have been a madly prolific bastion of pure 'n' cold black metal. Their canon is vast and varied - VERY relatively so, given that this is all-caps BLACK METAL after all - with the longstanding duo of instrumentalist Ungod and vocalist Nadir exploring the darkest corridors of their souls every step of the way. They did so across a half-dozen albums for such esteemed labels as Drakkar, Obscure Abhorrence, and Old Temple among others as well as a dozen splits, but then joined forces with PURITY THROUGH FIRE in 2020 for the release of their seventh album, Misty Breath of Ancient Forests, and again in 2023 for Black Metal Craft.

Proudly remaining in the PURITY THROUGH FIRE stronghold, SAD return with their ninth(!) album, Fullmoon's Bestial Awakening. While its title might be something of an aesthetic misnomer - this is NOT bestial metal, thankfully - Fullmoon's Bestial Awakening does keep intact the nastiness of Black Metal Craft, making for a complementary record to its cantankerous predecessor. SAD here are characteristically unconcerned with anything in "black metal" during this millennium, still harkening to the glorious late '90s heyday of Sombre Records or the aforementioned Drakkar and yet tempered with the wisdom & resolve surely established by a band who've been around 25 years now. No more but definitely no less, Fullmoon's Bestial Awakening is raw & ripping orkishness shot through with a touch of the melancholic but all stirred malevolently, where hypnotic speed - cruise, gallop, headbang, or any combination thereof - often rights itself into something somewhat regal or at least triumphant. And just like that not-inconsiderable predecessor, SAD's ninth full-length similarly stretches toward the epic, encompassing eight songs in 55 minutes of righteous obsidian splendor. Cold, old, and still no surrender!

Black Vinyl 

comes with a poster (size A2) and an insert with complete lyrics

KERZENLICHT carve his own path within the genre, blending primal energy with atmospheric, madrigal tones, cold and unforgiving as the northern wilderness itself!

Since their formation in 2010, Dysylumn have been something of an unsung "dark horse" of the French black metal scene. Whilst exhibiting some of that scene's idiomatic traits - the robustness of the orthodox / religious school, the melancholy of its more lonerist school - the duo have recast them in vivid new iterations. Signal Rex made a bloodpact with the band in 2020 to release their visionary second album, 2018's Occultation, on vinyl. Two years later, Dysylumn impossibly eclipsed that modern classic with the staggering double-album Cosmogonie, also in 2020. Between the two recordings, the duo displayed a breadth of vision firmly rooted in black metal's noblest traditions, but one more so aiming for the hinterlands of creativity and experience.

And so it goes with Dysylumn's long-awaited fourth full-length, Abstraction. Curiously titled, Abstraction is actually the duo's most immediate record in many a year; even on the surface, its five-song / 37-minute runtime seems relatively quick by comparison. However, to suggest that Dysylumn are shortchanging their still-swirling creativity by attacking more directly would be grossly missing the point. Gutted bass-throb and etheric guitar characteristically form the foundation, but here does the former sound more pensive and contemplative while the latter suitably slashes & surges with an unmatched amount of emotion. In fact, just isolating the guitar work of Sébastien Besson alone would render Abstraction an incredibly compelling experience, but his impassioned vocals along with the slippery-yet-stylish drumming of Camille Oliver Faure-Brac make the album an effortless exercise in point / counterpoint: a reinvigoration of black metal classicism on one hand and a defiant flipping of the script on the other, bypassing "progressive" and "post" tags not out of churlish disdain but rather as already-established signposts of no use to Dysylumn. Stargazing, wistful, and yet so full of vim and vigor - Abstraction hits emotional centers, HARD, without obfuscating their core creativity. From nascent flames to the final breaths of a flickering light...

Oratio ad Septem Profanationes
Invocation to the Seven Desecrations

You who kneel before the frail architraves of the divine, behold the eruption of the Primordial Antagonist, whose essence subverts the very fabric of creation. This sonic compendium, forged in the crucible of 1990s orthodox Black Metal, is the anti-litany that decrees the corruption of the Seven Sisters—once pillars of cosmic harmony, now collapsed beneath the weight of absolute negation.

Each emanation of this opus is a syllogism of desolation, an ontological rupture that dissolves the illusion of order and enthrones the supremacy of malignant entropy. The Adversary offers no redemption - only a mirror wherein your insignificance is revealed, an abyss wherein your faith is pulverized.

Let those who cling to the light falter, for this is the mandate of the Enemy, whose sovereignty brooks no opposition. Submit to the annihilation of the sacred, or be devoured by the maelstrom of eternal dissent.

Oratio ad Septem Profanationes
Invocation to the Seven Desecrations

You who kneel before the frail architraves of the divine, behold the eruption of the Primordial Antagonist, whose essence subverts the very fabric of creation. This sonic compendium, forged in the crucible of 1990s orthodox Black Metal, is the anti-litany that decrees the corruption of the Seven Sisters—once pillars of cosmic harmony, now collapsed beneath the weight of absolute negation.

Each emanation of this opus is a syllogism of desolation, an ontological rupture that dissolves the illusion of order and enthrones the supremacy of malignant entropy. The Adversary offers no redemption - only a mirror wherein your insignificance is revealed, an abyss wherein your faith is pulverized.

Let those who cling to the light falter, for this is the mandate of the Enemy, whose sovereignty brooks no opposition. Submit to the annihilation of the sacred, or be devoured by the maelstrom of eternal dissent.

ASTRAL SPEAR are a newcomer with an old sound. Hailing from Poland, indeed do the mysterious entity harken to their homeland's ancient black metal style - cold, mystical, defiant - and with similarly strong songwriting to boot. However, to say that Astral Spear stands in the glare of burning churches isn't entirely accurate. With their own fire blazing brightly, ASTRAL SPEAR erect surging monuments of stoic darkness, under a funeral moon but taking their torch to other dread places. Righteous and robust in their physicality but equally emitting an ethereal aspect, ASTRAL SPEAR's opening salvo is a 22-minute journey to forgotten realms: truly named!

ASTRAL SPEAR are a newcomer with an old sound. Hailing from Poland, indeed do the mysterious entity harken to their homeland's ancient black metal style - cold, mystical, defiant - and with similarly strong songwriting to boot. However, to say that Astral Spear stands in the glare of burning churches isn't entirely accurate. With their own fire blazing brightly, ASTRAL SPEAR erect surging monuments of stoic darkness, under a funeral moon but taking their torch to other dread places. Righteous and robust in their physicality but equally emitting an ethereal aspect, ASTRAL SPEAR's opening salvo is a 22-minute journey to forgotten realms: truly named!

Forming in 2022, Finland's Victimarum quickly set to work on upholding the sterling standards of their nation's underground black metal scene. A demo and an EP followed the next year, the latter including a Horna cover, which indeed underlines the lineage from which they spring: cold and yet intensely melodic, "freezing fire" of a most early 2000s vintage. Those who know already know the names, and it's a banner still worth raising.

And Victimarum raise it even higher with their full-length debut, Seitsemän soihdun valossa. With strength & honor and Satanic black devotion, the quartet here unload nine screeds of melancholic misery set to speeding stun. Incensed but not without a certain sense of ragged glory, Victimarum uphold that iron-clad template set out by their forebears and bolster it with strong songwriting and even-stronger execution. The sounds may be familiar, but as the album plays on, the Finns' personality shines through, with deft shifts in tempo and a slightly-more-pronounced propensity for the climatic coming to the fore. Likewise, Victimarum wisely locate a production style that's on the right side of polished, the grit coming not through the sound itself but rather through the playing: you FEEL this, every second of its 44-minute runtime.