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From the depths of Norway looms a new rising beast of hate and misanthropy in the form of Avmakt, featuring members of Aura Noir, Obliteration, Condor. Speaking about Avmakt’s music, vocalist Christoffer Bråthen said “Abstract and concrete as asphalt, processed through life as blood and ash, these riffs have seeped through the bottomless psychic wall. The themes are futureless and true to who we really are – clean and clear as disease.” Avmakt are: Christoffer Bråthen - guitars, vocals, bass Kristian Valbo - drums, vocals, bass

Jewelcase CD with 8-page booklet, including lyrics.
 

Five years after the release of Hearts of No Light, Swiss avant garde experimentalists SCHAMMASCH return with the follow up, The Maldoror Chants: Old Ocean - set for release via Prosthetic Records on October 25. This upcoming release will be the second in an ongoing series of works by SCHAMMASCH that draws from Les Chants de Maldoror - one of the 19th century’s most fascinating literary works which would later become part of the foundation of the surrealist movement. Sonically, the album charts the continued evolution in the sound of SCHAMMASCH; dark, gothy undertones rise often to the surface with sultry spoken word taking centre stage at various points. A pulsating, monolithic rhythm flows through the album with their atmospheric take on post-black metal providing a majestic backdrop - replete with a love for detail and the use of unusual elements like accordions, classical orchestration or industrial soundscapes - to explore existential thoughts on humanity and its ambivalent relationship to nature.

Hin helga kvöl (The Holy Suffering) is a profound exploration of raw emotion and stark beauty, deeply inspired by Sólstafir’s cultural heritage and Iceland's breathtaking landscapes. Sólstafir, meaning "crepuscular rays" in Icelandic, refers to sunlight piercing through dark clouds at dusk, capturing the essence of Hin helga kvöl, a beacon of hope shining through the heaviest of times. Sólstafir confronts inner demons and transcends rock and roll decadence, creating music that resonates with the universal struggle and triumph over hardship. Recorded at Flóki Studios in the remote Skagafjörður, Iceland, the change of scenery has profoundly influenced the album's atmosphere. Hin helga kvöl features eight tracks blending Sólstafir's signature melancholic sound with elements from their past, merging black metal roots with tuneful, anthemic rock. Reflecting on the album's title, Tryggvason shares: "We all suffer in life, and even nature suffers. It can be found in religion and spirituality as well. Hin helga kvöl means 'The Holy Suffering,' representing the struggle we all face." The album’s stunning cover art by Rowan E Cassidy, featuring charcoal shadows, perfectly illustrates the emotional depth and breathtaking altitudes of Hin helga kvöl. Tryggvason describes the music with one word: "alone," capturing the essence of Sólstafir's unfiltered and ardently emotional sound. Sólstafir’s music is shaped by diverse influences, including Black Metal, Classic Rock, Post-Rock, Punk, and the stark beauty of Icelandic nature, crafting a unique sound all of their own. Hin helga kvöl promises to be a bright, shining milestone in Sólstafir’s illustrious career, illuminating the path from darkness to light. This November, let that undiluted haunting beauty and spiritual raw power of Hin helga kvöl run free in your mind. Suffering has never felt this enlightening. The album is available as: Ltd. CD Box Set, Ltd. CD Digipak, black LP, Ltd. Gatefold red LP & Art print, Digital Album

Hin helga kvöl (The Holy Suffering) is a profound exploration of raw emotion and stark beauty, deeply inspired by Sólstafir’s cultural heritage and Iceland's breathtaking landscapes. Sólstafir, meaning "crepuscular rays" in Icelandic, refers to sunlight piercing through dark clouds at dusk, capturing the essence of Hin helga kvöl, a beacon of hope shining through the heaviest of times. Sólstafir confronts inner demons and transcends rock and roll decadence, creating music that resonates with the universal struggle and triumph over hardship. Recorded at Flóki Studios in the remote Skagafjörður, Iceland, the change of scenery has profoundly influenced the album's atmosphere. Hin helga kvöl features eight tracks blending Sólstafir's signature melancholic sound with elements from their past, merging black metal roots with tuneful, anthemic rock. Reflecting on the album's title, Tryggvason shares: "We all suffer in life, and even nature suffers. It can be found in religion and spirituality as well. Hin helga kvöl means 'The Holy Suffering,' representing the struggle we all face." The album’s stunning cover art by Rowan E Cassidy, featuring charcoal shadows, perfectly illustrates the emotional depth and breathtaking altitudes of Hin helga kvöl. Tryggvason describes the music with one word: "alone," capturing the essence of Sólstafir's unfiltered and ardently emotional sound. Sólstafir’s music is shaped by diverse influences, including Black Metal, Classic Rock, Post-Rock, Punk, and the stark beauty of Icelandic nature, crafting a unique sound all of their own. Hin helga kvöl promises to be a bright, shining milestone in Sólstafir’s illustrious career, illuminating the path from darkness to light. This November, let that undiluted haunting beauty and spiritual raw power of Hin helga kvöl run free in your mind. Suffering has never felt this enlightening. The album is available as: Ltd. CD Box Set, Ltd. CD Digipak, black LP, Ltd. Gatefold red LP & Art print, Digital Album

Ltd. CD Box Set (incl. Ltd. CD Digipak, branded fake leather bracelet with adjustable size, set of 3 buttons, branded magnetic bottle opener)

Hin helga kvöl (The Holy Suffering) is a profound exploration of raw emotion and stark beauty, deeply inspired by Sólstafir’s cultural heritage and Iceland's breathtaking landscapes. Sólstafir, meaning "crepuscular rays" in Icelandic, refers to sunlight piercing through dark clouds at dusk, capturing the essence of Hin helga kvöl, a beacon of hope shining through the heaviest of times. Sólstafir confronts inner demons and transcends rock and roll decadence, creating music that resonates with the universal struggle and triumph over hardship. Recorded at Flóki Studios in the remote Skagafjörður, Iceland, the change of scenery has profoundly influenced the album's atmosphere. Hin helga kvöl features eight tracks blending Sólstafir's signature melancholic sound with elements from their past, merging black metal roots with tuneful, anthemic rock. Reflecting on the album's title, Tryggvason shares: "We all suffer in life, and even nature suffers. It can be found in religion and spirituality as well. Hin helga kvöl means 'The Holy Suffering,' representing the struggle we all face." The album’s stunning cover art by Rowan E Cassidy, featuring charcoal shadows, perfectly illustrates the emotional depth and breathtaking altitudes of Hin helga kvöl. Tryggvason describes the music with one word: "alone," capturing the essence of Sólstafir's unfiltered and ardently emotional sound. Sólstafir’s music is shaped by diverse influences, including Black Metal, Classic Rock, Post-Rock, Punk, and the stark beauty of Icelandic nature, crafting a unique sound all of their own. Hin helga kvöl promises to be a bright, shining milestone in Sólstafir’s illustrious career, illuminating the path from darkness to light. This November, let that undiluted haunting beauty and spiritual raw power of Hin helga kvöl run free in your mind. Suffering has never felt this enlightening. The album is available as: Ltd. CD Box Set, Ltd. CD Digipak, black LP, Ltd. Gatefold red LP & Art print, Digital Album

Hin helga kvöl (The Holy Suffering) is a profound exploration of raw emotion and stark beauty, deeply inspired by Sólstafir’s cultural heritage and Iceland's breathtaking landscapes. Sólstafir, meaning "crepuscular rays" in Icelandic, refers to sunlight piercing through dark clouds at dusk, capturing the essence of Hin helga kvöl, a beacon of hope shining through the heaviest of times. Sólstafir confronts inner demons and transcends rock and roll decadence, creating music that resonates with the universal struggle and triumph over hardship. Recorded at Flóki Studios in the remote Skagafjörður, Iceland, the change of scenery has profoundly influenced the album's atmosphere. Hin helga kvöl features eight tracks blending Sólstafir's signature melancholic sound with elements from their past, merging black metal roots with tuneful, anthemic rock. Reflecting on the album's title, Tryggvason shares: "We all suffer in life, and even nature suffers. It can be found in religion and spirituality as well. Hin helga kvöl means 'The Holy Suffering,' representing the struggle we all face." The album’s stunning cover art by Rowan E Cassidy, featuring charcoal shadows, perfectly illustrates the emotional depth and breathtaking altitudes of Hin helga kvöl. Tryggvason describes the music with one word: "alone," capturing the essence of Sólstafir's unfiltered and ardently emotional sound. Sólstafir’s music is shaped by diverse influences, including Black Metal, Classic Rock, Post-Rock, Punk, and the stark beauty of Icelandic nature, crafting a unique sound all of their own. Hin helga kvöl promises to be a bright, shining milestone in Sólstafir’s illustrious career, illuminating the path from darkness to light. This November, let that undiluted haunting beauty and spiritual raw power of Hin helga kvöl run free in your mind. Suffering has never felt this enlightening. The album is available as: Ltd. CD Box Set, Ltd. CD Digipak, black LP, Ltd. Gatefold red LP & Art print, Digital Album

Three years after the acclaimed Obârșie, Romanian folk/progressive black metal band Sur Austru is back with their third studio album, Datura Străhiarelor.
Sur Austru was born from the ashes of the late Negură Bunget, keeping alive their intent to bring Romanian lore into music. Datura Străhiarelor is the band’s most complex and ambitious project to date, the music heavily leaning on the progressive and folkloristic side, even more than before.
Datura Străhiarelor is Romanian for The Gift of Scarecrows” and is a concept album focusing on the Apocalypse triggered by magical beings from Romanian mythology.
Their spells break the gate between the fantastic world and the real one, through which ancient beasts surge, thus annihilating humankind.
Haunting incantations and invocations, mesmerizing flutes, percussions and unpredictable guitar structures all blend together to craft a new fascinating journey through the Carpathians and beyond. If you ever loved masterpieces such as Negura Bunget’s Om or Dordeduh’s self-titled debut, as well as Enslaved’s most prog outputs, Datura Străhiarelor is an album you cannot miss.

Belarusian post-punk / synth pop group Molchat Doma have always exuded the kind of brutalist aesthetic of the architecture that adorns their album art. It's cold, gray, imposing, industrial, and yet there are human hearts beating within those foundations. In the wake of their breakthrough success in 2020, the trio endured a polarity of experiences, from the nadir of an uprooted life and forced relocation away from their native Minsk to the apex of headlining massive shows across the world. It was in this headspace that the band settled into their new home of Los Angeles to finish writing their fourth album Belaya Polosa, a testament to change in difficult times, a love letter to the digital pulse of the '90s, and a technicolor reinvention of the band's somber dance floor anthems.

Gabriele Gramaglia is back with his main solo output COSMIC PUTREFACTION for another chapter of his own tale under the banner of his new LP “Emerald Fires Atop The Farewell Mountains” set for release on Oct 4th. Taking place right after “Crepuscular Dirge for the Blessed Ones”, “Emerald Fires...” takes us to an even deeper and ineluctable journey. Now that the empyrean inhabitants have fallen down for good and all the debris of physical worlds are scattered around, the main character of the tale has in-fact to walk his very last path counting only of his very last strengths to face eternal solitude and death; a path exploring both the widest astral distances imaginable and the most twisted labyrinths of the inmost self. Musically speaking, the concept is depicted through an even broader palette of influences compared with its predecessor, ranging from the most hammering death metal riffs, to progressive veins and even shades of symphonic black metal, embraced through an almost omnipresent wide atmosphere and multilayered arrangements of distant guitars, cellos and synths. Giulio Galati (ex-Hideous Divinity, Nero di Marte), once again teamed up with Gramaglia as a session drummer, to complete his effort through an extremely powerful and dynamic performance behind the kit. COSMIC PUTREFACTION was formed in 2018 as the death metal sonic incarnation of the multi-instrumentalist Gabriele Gramaglia (also behind The Clearing Path and part of Turris Eburnea, Vertebra Atlantis and Hadit), which summoned the aforementioned musical entity to re-arrange and complete the unreleased album of his first band Oaken/Throne, which begun in 2012 but was left uncompleted because the combo disbanded. This album was completed and released in 2019 under the name of “At the Threshold of the Greatest Chasm”, which comprehended six-and-a-half tracks taken from the unreleased Oaken/ Throne album. He later refined his formula through the second album “The Horizons Towards Which Splendour Withers” and Crepuscular Dirge for the Blessed Ones” which expanded the death metal roots with the multifaceted range of influences Gramaglia has developed throughout the years. For fans of Blood Incantation, Artificial Brain, Wormed, and Tomb Mold.

Jewelcase CD with 8 pages booklet

ColdCell were founded in 2012 in Basel, Switzerland and released their first album, Generation Abomination, during the following year. ColdCell are rooted in the Swiss underground black metal scene and have always been eager to deliver dark and atmospheric live shows. And although drummer aW concurrently plays in Swiss icons Schammasch, ColdCell put forward their own unique approach that melds both old and new schools of black metal, making for a highly personal expression both timeless and modern.

The impressions of the dark, eerie, and extreme are expressed within ColdCell's successive albums like Lowlife (2015), Those (2017), and The Greater Evil (2021). With their latest album, Age of Unreason, ColdCell now align with AOP Records and furthermore venture deeper into social abysses and explore the (un)reason of being. Their sound remains as challenging and unsettling as ever here, with equal emphasis placed on abyssal heft and ethereal atmosphere, slipstreaming violence and ominous trudge. While so many extreme metal albums trail off in a tide of unwavering familiarity, Age of Unreason reaches a crescendo at about the halfway point with "Meaningless," which features bewitching guest vocals by Swiss chanteuse Ines Brodbeck (aka INEZONA), and continues to spiral into cathartic delirium with the closing combo of "Sink Our Souls" and "Discord." During these three tracks in particular, the emotional core of ColdCell is on dazzlingly display, darkly exploring those corridors of the soul few dare to tread. In 47 minutes, Age of Unreason rips asunder and rearranges the template of orthodox black metal.