CD

Nearly eight years after the release of Antediluvian’s sophomore album, the band returns with a new full-length entitled “The Divine Punishment.” Originally a duo before later inviting additional members into the fold, Antediluvian has always fundamentally been a collaboration between guitarist/vocalist Haasiophis (Black Death Cult, Revenge) and percussionist Mars Sekhmet, whose relocation to Austria precipitated the band’s hiatus. After reforming for a series of live performances, with a lineup that also featured bassist Aedh Zugna (Solar Winds, Allfather), the band set about writing and recording new material culminating in this monumental album. “The Divine Punishment” defies the preconceptions that many listeners might have going into it. Thematically centered around the many manifestations of carnal deviance—pathological, unrestrained, cruel—the album is a contorted rendering of the spirit, once pure, blemished and bespoiled through sexual blasphemy. The recoil of ecstatic release. The organs of reproductive union mutilated, splayed. Unbounded perversion, the primal transgression. Musically, this is the most abstract and experimental release in the band’s catalog but also the most accessible, due in no small part to the album’s production, which is as vital to its power as the songs themselves.

The idiosyncratic methodology of Portland’s Ænigmatum is instantly apparent from the whip-start blast of “Forged From Bedlam”, the opening track of their second album Deconsecrate. While the pace is frenetic, speed is never a crutch to be relied upon, but rather one deliberate device in a sprawling collection of melodically precise and technically riveting fragmented death shards. The eight songs on Deconsecrate constitute a labyrinthian structure of twisting nuanced complexity and intricate explosive chaos. Blood-freezing and incandescently beautiful at once, Ænigmatum temper their withering elaborate intensity with astonishingly elegant melodic passages carved into the mind, like towering marble hallucinations. Immersing in this album, one might be forgiven assuming they’d stumbled upon a lost obscurity of mid-90s Gothenburg, the dark harmonies, the dual guitars, the staggering rhythm section; but in fact Ænigmatum have bequeathed a startlingly ambitious paragon of mystifying esoteric death metal magnificence.

first full-length

"Ash of the Womb", the sophomore full-length from California's ILLUDIUM was born in the fiery pandemonium of the burning season of 2020 when huge tracts of the sunshine state went up in flames, while skies glowed orange at night. The many layers of dark and harsh metal shading on this album can easily be seen as a residue from those events. Yet the listener will still encounter those sun-drenched textures and honey-rich passages from the band's beginning on "Septem" (2016) that reflect the beautiful landscapes of the Pacific Coast with its redwood forests and the blue ocean that also inspire ILLUDIUM. Mastermind Shantel Amundson spent her formative years listening to SMASHING PUMPKINS, ISIS, KATE BUSH, and COCTEAU TWINS among many others, which makes it difficult to pin her own music down. While "Ash of the Womb" clearly builds on and expands "Septem", the new album intensifies the darker and heavier elements, which results in a more dynamic and holistic musical experience that ILLUDIUM elegantly balance against their dreamy and sophisticated side. Taking their name from a concept coined by Mircae Eliade, ILLUDIUM can be seen as the musical embodiment of the religious philosopher's idea of "illud tempus" ("that time"), which is referring to the mythical sacred time of the first creation of this world. With a degree in cultural anthropology and art history, it is hardly surprising that Shantel's lyrics revolve around mystical and metaphysical ideas. With "Ash of the Womb", ILLUDIUM have created an equally heavier, darker and yet more honey-combed vision of their musical exploration that gently asks for extra attention and diligent listening before revealing its true depths.

With their new EP "Til Nord" (Eng.: "Northward") legendary Norwegian folk rockers Gåte achieve a stunning transformation. The band from Trøndelag, the area surrounding the ancient harbour city of Trondheim, is delivering an emotive, epic collection of tracks revisiting some of their own classics and adding a new track as a taste of great things to come.

What Gåte have done to their songs is both breathtakingly bold and amazing to hear. The first single and opening track 'Kjærleik' is the perfect example of how they have reimagined their sound. Taking away keyboards, electric guitar, and rock drumming, Gåte have added an archaic percussion style and used acoustic instrumentation. Gunnhild Sundli, has stripped some of the technical complexity from her singing style and placed emphasis upon folk attitude and expression. In stylistic terms, we see a shift from their energetic folk rock to a darker, more down to earth, Norse-atmospheric folk expression.

Gåte were founded in 1999 by violin player and keyboardist Sveinung Sundli, recruiting his sister Gunnhild as singer. Sveinung's violin and Gunnhild’s folk song technique “kveding” brought to the sound a firm base in traditional music, which was complemented and contrasted by modern bass, drums, and electric guitars. The resulting folk rock blows both minds and ears!

CD in Jewel case with 12-page booklet.

Founded in Czestochowa, Poland in one night in 2015 by Hellscythe and Draugr, dark black metal band MISANTHUR begun to take form.Inspired by metal and non-metal genres, MISANTHUR merge trance percussion, earthbreaking bass, crushing guitars and hellish vocals with (post)apocalyptic ambient landscapes and noise to create its own ouvre and paint the stories and scenery of mundane spiritual wasteland.
This is metal at its darkest.

For fans of REGARDE LES HOMMES TOMBER, GAEREA, WHITE WARD, THE RUINS OF BEVERAST.

With 2012's "Aeons Black" standing as one of the defining death metal albums of the twenty-first century it has been a long wait for the follow up. In 2021, Sweden's Aeon finally return with its successor, "God Ends Here", and in doing so only up the ante with a record that is bigger, harder and stronger in every way. "I wasn't feeling any pressure after such a gap, we don't do shit half assed and I feel like this is our strongest album yet," states guitarist Zeb Nilsson. A darker, even more epic collection, it is everything an Aeon fan could want with a few surprises in store, pushing the genre in new directions and once again asserting that they are one of the most important bands in extreme metal.

4-panel Digipak

Comes with an 8-page booklet.
 

Claustrophobic and demented. Raw Black Metal with intensity and refined musicianship

Vlad Tepes depicts the epitome of Raw Black Metal and the legend of the Black Legions.
This demo was previously released officially on tape by Black Gangrene back in 2016 and now these special editions on vinyl and cd bring the ultimate consecration to a brilliant tribute to the most haunting manifestation of Black Metal.