Stripping away the lightning speed drums and very much favouring a mid paced plod, or a funeral march, Estonia’s Vanad Varjud experiment with some of black metal’s more avant-garde elements throughout their 2016 release ‘Dismal Grandeur In Nocturnal Aura’. Although they are billed as “ambient”, fans of genuine ambient music will certainly want to give this a wide berth. Judging by the four compositions featured on this release, the band don’t always seem to understand what ambient truly means. Most of the supposed ambient moments seem to be either just slow, or hastily composed oddness with a jarring noise for accompaniment.
Tag Archives: metal
DARKESTRAH / AL NAMROOD – Split EP
For those who feel that metal is a purile genre and that black metal is purely just noise, this split release from two underground bands will certainly challenge such ideas. Those who harbour such preconceptions are unlikely to step within a hundred miles of this release, of course, but that’s hardly the point. From Krygyzstan, Darkestrah fuse black metal themes with a few traditional Asian musical slants, while Saudi occult metallers Al-Namrood mix up black metal with some heavy folk metal influences. While the music on this split release can take a while to fully appreciate – if, indeed, in the case of Al-Namrood, it can be fully appreciated – it cannot be said that either band play to extreme metal traditions and that these tracks aren’t in some way surprising.
A THOUSAND SUFFERINGS – Burden
Belgian sludge/doom combo A Thousand Sufferings could never be accused to doing things half-heartedly. Sludge has always taken the nuts and bolts of Black Sabbath and slowed it and heavied it’s very essence to it’s logical extreme. A Thousand Sufferings, at first, seem to go one better, as even ‘Once In A Blue Moon’, a spoken intro, appears to adopt the sludge/doom ethos, as the band take what would have been a brief sample from TV drama ‘The Americans’, but play it back at half speed. The effect of hearing synth music, the sounds of helicopters and human voices played back at a much slower speed can be unsettling. The fact that one of the characters is halfway through a monologue regarding the chain of nature and mortality makes it all the more disquieting. It makes for a very slow and potentially quite grim three minutes. With this intro, the band builds tension in a really obtuse manner and the three proper tracks which follow – sprawling across over half an hour – are just as oppressive.
DEBUNKER – The Invisible Disorder EP
In the late 80s, thrash metal was king. Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer, Anthrax and (slightly later) Sepultura ruled the scene, but there were literally hundreds of other bands languishing in the second division whom churned out records that have stood the test of time: Testament, Kreator. The UK’s Metallica obsessed Xentrix, Annihilator…the list goes on. With a great musical blueprint, thrash never seemed to get old…and then at some point in the early 90s, as far as the likes of Metal Hammer were concerned, it kind of burned itself out.
IMPERIUM – Titanomachy
Formed by ex-members of Trigger The Bloodshed and The Bridal Procession, Imperium came together in 2010 to unleash a brand of tech-death metal upon the world. A debut album quickly followed, but their momentum was then shattered by a huge split, leaving only guitarist Mike Alexander to pick up the pieces. A new band was formed around Alexander in 2015 and ‘Titanomachy’ presents the first fruits of the rejuvenated line-up.