CD

6-panel digipak, 24x24cm Poster, plus a designed album download card.

Switzerland's practitioners of alchemical madness return with their sophomore full-length, "Blut, Milch und Thränen", presenting a concoction of truly mesmerizing sonic movements.

The music contained on "Blut, Milch und Thränen" was recorded somewhat unconventionally as two separate tracks, which were subdivided into several movements to correspond with the album's gripping narrative. With regard to this narrative, Kvelgeyst recounts the tale of an alchemist, beset by visions that leads him to search for an adept who in turn shall serve as the victim in a sinister ritual, hoping to achieve unio mystica. Initially, he is pleased, as he discovers an adept soon enough in the gutters. Regrettably for him, however, he is finally confronted with the realization that he has fatally misinterpreted his visions, and it is not he who sacrifices the adept in his pursuit of revelation, but rather he must serve as the sacrificial lamb in ritual slaughter, thus enabling the adept to achieve unio mystica. This, in turn, drives the adept into utter madness, rendering him free of all his senses and forcing him to the gutters from whence he emerged.

Suffering can be a borderline experience, opening doors to the divine. Canadian black-metal-outfit GIVRE has dedicated its fourth album to this concept. On “Le Cloître” (engl. “The Cloister”) the band continues its exploration of the atoning side of pain and the austere aspects of faith through music that goes all the way from elegiac elegance to disturbing outbursts.

This time, the lyrics are taken from the hagiographies of six saint women and explores freely their relation to god through suffering, from the symbolic poetry of Hildegard Von Bingen (1098-1179) to the disturbing and factual depictions of Marthe Robin (1902-1981). Musically, this album explores a variety of extreme genres while maintaining a suffocating and tormented Black Metal atmosphere.

CD in classic jewel case with 12-page booklet incl. all lyrics, plus a designed album download card.

Collectors edition, one off pressing, digipak CD with booklet

Italian long-standing black metal pioneers Funeral Oration are back with their third album. Originally formed in 1989 in Taranto, Apulia, the band released their debut album Sursum Luna in 1996 on Avantgarde Music before dissolving the following year. Twenty years later, in 2017, guitarist and keyboardist Luca La Cara and singer and lyricist The Old Nick brought Funeral Oration back from the dead to release their sophomore album Eliphas Love in 2019, again via Avantgarde Music.

Five years have passed already, and the time has come for a new chapter. Antropomorte sees La Cara and The Old Nick banding with bassist Iblis (Handful Of Hate) and drummer David Folchitto (Stormlord and many others) to craft seven hymns of old-style, essential black metal from the ‘90s. As Funeral Oration describes it, Antropomorte is “a desperate litany of decadence and mystical delirium. Marcia funebre per il genere umano.”

Once again we deal with poetry, occultism and antichristian sentiment thanks to lyrics directly inspired when not directly translated from poets and artists from different ages. “Amor Obsessio” is a direct translation made by The Old Nick from ”La morte embaumée” by M. Rollinat (1883), “Cloaca Cattolica” (“Catholic Sewer”) is inspired by true events occurred in Varazze in 1907, “Il Serpente Della Genesi” (“Serpent from the Genesis”) is another translation from “Lilith” by R. de Gourmont (1892) and so is “Notturno Sepolcrale”, translated from “Ténèbres” by A. Samain (1895). “Stregheria”, on the other hand, is a direct quotation of Salvator Rosa’s “La strega”, from 1646.
 

Album preview at this link

“Shrouded in Gyllbergen’s mist, and the sentient essence of the nocturnal fire burning within, the hiking metalpunk hordes Dödsrit hereby unveils its fourth beckoning! Restless and visceral, these unhallowed tomes beckon the mournful chants from its resonant harmonious introduction to the victorious dagger in the very core of the cosmos under the celestial will of heroic bloodshed”
- FFO: Dissection, Vanum, Wolfbrigade

Album preview

The past has already witnessed the virtuous way Verwoed contemplated and traveled through unfathomable aural stratospheres brimming with feeling, intensity, and a sense of visceral commitment. “The Mother” perceives the Utrecht project as taking a step further in the direction of the abyss, an epic of splendor and imposing nature, bursting with emotion in the form of striking riffs that offer an electrical pallet of eclectic, evocative, and utterly cathartic songwriting.”
- FFO: The Devil’s Blood, In Solitude, Watain

Reissue of a timeless masterpiece originally released in 1998.
BLACK SWAN is an unfairly underrated Finnish band and "When The Angels Of Twilight Dance" is a magnificent Symphonic Black Metal album made of amazing riffs, fantastic melodies, perfectly placed keyboards and excellent songwriting.
Digipak Cd edition with 8-page booklet limited to 300 copies