If you're looking for the rawest, most atavistic sounds currently wafting out of the French necro underground, I doubt that there's a better place to start digging than the Infernal Kommando label. I've done a lot of ranting in the past about all of the assorted doses of foulness that I've picked up from the label, tapes from such primitive, low-fi black/thrash/punk abominations as Zarach'Baal'Tharagh, and the latest two Infernal Kommando tapes that we've gotten in come from a one-man band called Abject 666, another purveyor of primitive French filth. A project from one of the guys behind black thrashers Tank Genocide, Abject 666's cassettes have been described by the label as "raw, putrid and minimalist Black Metal...for fans of old Beherit, Zarach'Baal'Tharagh and Ildjarn." Didn't need much more prompting than that, so here we've got both of the cassette EPs on Infernal Kommando, both ugly, deformed blasts of messed-up black metal that sometimes veers into severe noise damage or warped soundscapery.

Tape number two from this fucked-up French blackthrash mutant, Vile Devotion features six tracks of Razor's mangy primitive black metal, opening up with a cribbed sample of Carpenter's iconic Halloween theme for the intro, before slithering off into the plodding, caveman necro-trance of the title track. Like the other Abject 666 tape that I picked up, this is mostly made up of pounding primitive thrash with tracks like "Visceral Abomination", "Infamous Agony" and "The Praise of Devil" stripping down to a single riff or two, buzzsaw three-chord punk riffs whipped into a chaotic roar of blown-out distortion and croaked, hateful vocals, the spiteful mess laid out over the skeletal mechanical pound of the drum machine. There's a heavy layer of reverb and hiss splattered over everything, and the songs tend to collapse into weird circular riffs where the drum machine completely drops out, or slips into pummeling passages of filthy Frostian sludge. Unsurprisingly, Abject 666's drunken black metal is often reminiscent of the repetitive, hypnotic violence of Ildjarn's Strength And Anger, but that sound becomes completely blanketed in rotting low-fi murk, ending with a faint ambient outro that sounds like an old Tangerine Dream piece breaking through a hiss-filled recording of ghostly knockings. Definitely has that murky, low-fi Infernal Kommando aesthetic all over it. I can't get enough of this stuff.

Limited to one hundred copies.

If you're looking for the rawest, most atavistic sounds currently wafting out of the French necro underground, I doubt that there's a better place to start digging than the Infernal Kommando label. I've done a lot of ranting in the past about all of the assorted doses of foulness that I've picked up from the label, tapes from such primitive, low-fi black/thrash/punk abominations as Zarach'Baal'Tharagh, and the latest two Infernal Kommando tapes that we've gotten in come from a one-man band called Abject 666, another purveyor of primitive French filth. A project from one of the guys behind black thrashers Tank Genocide, Abject 666's cassettes have been described by the label as "raw, putrid and minimalist Black Metal...for fans of old Beherit, Zarach'Baal'Tharagh and Ildjarn." Didn't need much more prompting than that, so here we've got both of the cassette EPs on Infernal Kommando, both ugly, deformed blasts of messed-up black metal that sometimes veers into severe noise damage or warped soundscapery.

Reign Of Agony is the first of the two Abject 666 tapes, laying out the project's general MO with bits of pilfered horror movie scores (this time it's Christopher Young's Hellraiser Theme that gets lifted wholesale and slapped across the beginning of the tape), that theme playing out beneath Razor's garbled, delay-drenched mutterings, giving the opening minutes of the tape a deranged feel. Then it kicks in to the blown-out assault of noisy primitive black metal, the rest of the tape made up of short songs built from simple repetitive riffs, roaring over a mid-paced drum machine beat that at a couple of points had me thinking of a more "industrialized" Ildjarn. That's completely enshrouded in a pukey no-fi recording that turns into a wall of putrid black noise half the time. It's a real mess. The band also makes a couple of detours into raw Hellhammer / Frost-style sludge, and the vocals are completely fucked up, totally incomprehensible, a series of endlessly echoing death-croaks that get swallowed up in Abject 666's pounding hypnotic scum-storm. This stuff is definitely the most frenzied of the two Abject 666 tapes we've picked up, with tracks like "Sodomized Nazarene" erupting into almost Wold-like blasts of formless, black static horror. For fans of barbaric basement black thrash only...

Limited to one hundred copies.

The first time I heard Afflictis Lentae was on the split 7" with The Austrasian Goat that came out on At War With False Noise, and ever since hearing that brief blast of nuclear blackthrash from this French lone wolf, I've been looking for more of his music. It didn't take long, as Infernal Kommando has just issued this cd collection of out-of-print material from this blackthrash maniac, and ever since I got our copies of From Nothing...To Nothing, I've been spinning this disc almost non-stop!

The album collects the seven tracks from the band's Saint Office LP, the Intolerance Deathsquad cassette, and the two tracks from the split with The Austrasian Goat, and all of this shit is blackthrash GOLD. I didn't even realize that Afflictis Lentae was a one-man band (the brainchild of a guy who goes by "Nuclear Thrash Gaichal") until I started looking into the band, the music is so tight and CRUSHING that it sounds like the product of a full band. But Gaichal handles all of the guitars, vocals and programming, crafting one awesome thrash riff after another, his voice soaring from an insane blackened shriek to deep, devilish growls to weird wailing in the blink of an eye, tons of Slayerized soloing and whammy-bar divebombs splattered all over, the sound a cross between the classic Teutonic thrash of Sodom and Kreator and the hyperblast black metal of Marduk, but with Tangerine Dream-y ambience drifting out of the cracks between songs, and strange samples, drunken bar-hall sing-alongs and murky drones lurking at the edges of the bestial blackthrash assaults. And the drum machine programming is out of fucking control. Usually, I tend to think that drum machines are a liability in speed/thrash bands, but Gaichal manages to eke a surprisingly natural drum sound, thick and dense and resonant...that is, of course, until he sets the drum machines for CHAIN GUN BLAST, where the drums suddenly sound like the mechanized blasting of machine guns going off. AWESOME. It's like hearing Sodom outfitted with industrial blasts and creepy electronic ambience. This is some of the rippingest French blackthrash ever, with killer song titles like "Exterminate and Dominate ", "Sadistic Messiah ", "The Eliminator ", and "Panzer Delirium ", and there's even a bestial blackened cover of Judas Priest's "Nightcrawler"! Recommended!

When Souvenirs d'un autre monde (which translates to "Memories Of Another World") came out in late 2007, it seemed really weird that the most beautiful rock album of the year (in my mind) came to us by way of the French black metal underground. Looking back, I've heard alot of other equally beautiful, very un-black metal albums come out of the black metal scene, but Alcest's latest full length is still one of the best, and one of the few albums to really take me back to the height of the whole UK dreampop/shoegaze scene that I grew up with. Souvenirs... is a perfect pop record, totally immersed in delicate jangly melodies and gorgeous blasts of shoegazey distortion and utterly removed from the blissed-out black metal shred of Ameseours, which is the other band that Neige from Alcest plays in. No, there are only the barest traces of metal found on this disc, heard in the super-distorted speedpicked guitars roaring down underneath the beautiful dreamy pop hooks and heartrending melodies, and in the occasional blasts of furious double-bass drumming that erupts here and there. For the most part, this is pure heavy shoegazer rock refashioned in a more distorted and epic form, much like how Justin Broadrick has taken early 90's shoegaze and molded that sound into the blissful grinding dreamsludge of Jesu, only here the sound is all dense layers of lush guitars and fragile fingerpicked acoustics, like My Bloody Valentine powered by a black metal drummer, or a heavier Chapterhouse or Catherine Wheel. All six songs here follow this route, awash in majestic swells of guitar and keyboards and dreamy vocal harmonies that evoke images of innocence and springtime. While Alcest's sound is drawn directly from early 90's shoegaze, those of you that are fans of the more atmospheric sounds of bands like Drudkh and Agalloch will likely love this album just as much as fans of Slowdive and My Bloody Valentine. Highly recommended! Comes in a full color digipack with booklet.

Back in stock once again!

The US vinyl version of Souvenirs seemed to go out of print almost as soon as it was announced, and I was only able to get a couple copies of it. Released by Hyperrealist in a limited edition of 1000 copies, this domestic pressing has the same artwork as the European LP release on Northern Silence (which is itself different from the CD release), and the copies we have are on black vinyl.

When Souvenirs d'un autre monde (which translates to "Memories Of Another World") came out in late 2007, it seemed really weird that the most beautiful rock album of the year (in my mind) came to us by way of the French black metal underground. Looking back, I've heard alot of other equally beautiful, very un-black metal albums come out of the black metal scene, but Alcest's latest full length is still one of the best, and one of the few albums to really take me back to the height of the whole UK dreampop/shoegaze scene that I grew up with. Souvenirs... is a perfect pop record, totally immersed in delicate jangly melodies and gorgeous blasts of shoegazey distortion and utterly removed from the blissed-out black metal shred of Ameseours, which is the other band that Neige from Alcest plays in. No, there are only the barest traces of metal found on this disc, heard in the super-distorted speedpicked guitars roaring down underneath the beautiful dreamy pop hooks and heartrending melodies, and in the occasional blasts of furious double-bass drumming that erupts here and there. For the most part, this is pure heavy shoegazer rock refashioned in a more distorted and epic form, much like how Justin Broadrick has taken early 90's shoegaze and molded that sound into the blissful grinding dreamsludge of Jesu, only here the sound is all dense layers of lush guitars and fragile fingerpicked acoustics, like My Bloody Valentine powered by a black metal drummer, or a heavier Chapterhouse or Catherine Wheel. All six songs here follow this route, awash in majestic swells of guitar and keyboards and dreamy vocal harmonies that evoke images of innocence and springtime. While Alcest's sound is drawn directly from early 90's shoegaze, those of you that are fans of the more atmospheric sounds of bands like Drudkh and Agalloch will likely love this album just as much as fans of Slowdive and My Bloody Valentine. Highly recommended! Comes in a full color digipack with booklet.

Nice, some new French filth from the consistently-killer black metal label Flamme Noir. The discs that I have thus far grabbed from this label have all blown me away, from the cold, satanic mecha-black metalof C.Y.T., to the furious hate-filled distortion whiteouts and murderous buzzsaw ambience of Drastus. The kind of stuff that seems to drop the temperature in the room a couple of degrees whenever you put it in the deck. Now we've got a new Flamme Noir outrage to run by you, and bud, this thing is pretty fucked. On the surface, Alien Deviant Circus appears to be black metal, of that peculiarly French variety with icy, dissonant guitars that form into strange riffs and unexpected song structures. But it's not long before this album reveals it's twisted agenda as looped film samples, volleys of pounding tribal drums, looped machine noises, skittery breakbeats, savage gabba beats lifted from a Bloody Fist 12", swells of orchestral majesty and slabs of malevolent black ambience are all layered together into evil industrial dirges, which make jarring, almost frightening transitions into feirce buzzing black metal riffs and hyperspeed blastbeat programming. Style-wise, Alien Deviant Circus are closer to the industrial/electro-black metal of bands like Manes, D�dheimsgard, Mysticum, Black Hole Generator and Aborym than the current crop of French avant-gardists, but there is still that perverse French sensibility still burning at the core of these hallucinogenic tracks. Could be because ADC actually has a member of Mutiilation in it's lineup, one of the original members of the notorious Les L�gions Noires. This doesn't sound at all like Mutiilation though, with the mangled drum programming and bleeping digital effects that swarm through these tracks; at times, this sounds more like Deathspell Omega buried by explosive gabba beats and sheets of electronic fuckery, or a more hypnotic version of D�dheimsgard with heavy tribal beats. Fans of the aforementioned bands should check this out, or if yer into the weird industrial/black metal deathscapes of C.Y.T. and Spektr. Blazing, warped sci-fi industrial black metal, with an overtly Satanic credo that reads like this:

Art, philosophy and drugz are the way ov this awakening towards Satan. We shall awake in order to match our vibration to his source and to arrange the manifste according to our will�

Let�s draw our strengh from decay, let us sawmp with this source ov creativity, expression and death!!!

Order shall never rise from disorder again!!!

Dethroned mankind shall end his cycle in pain and dishonor!!!

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust�

Vae victis, and they�ll be numerous!!!

Oderint dum metuant!!!

The CD is limited to 500 copies, and has some great devilish sci-fi artwork included in the packaging, all created by the singer from what I can tell. Recommended!

    Once again stirring an unholy mix of Satanic delirium, apocalyptic Vedic mysticism, technoid rhythms and necrotic hatefulness, French industrial black metal weirdos Alien Deviant Circus are back with Ananta - Abh�va, the band's first new album since 2010's En To Pan Omegas. And their stuff is still firmly rooted in the maniacal mechanized terror peddled by the likes of Blacklodge, Mysticum and Aborym, but Alien Deviant Circus up the techno ante a bit more than most, at times coming close to the sort of black metal speedcore of D-Trash artists like Schizoid.

    These maniacs kick it off with a twenty-two minute opening track, the mesmeric, murky electronica that creeps across the beginning of "Ap (N�da)" blending fragments of blackened doom-folk and eerie overtone chants, squelchy bass throb and a slow-motion technoid pulse, the first few minutes swirling with a strange, demented ritualistic vibe. Once those black metal guitars kick in, their bass-driven pulse turns into a relentless thump beneath those icy riffs and washes of black cosmic electronics. Definitely reminiscent of industrial black metal pioneers Mysticum, but enfolding that sound within their own uniquely sensual derangement, as female voices emerge in the distance with ghostly operatic wailing, glitchy noises and rhythmic bleeps creeping around that malignant slow-motion techno pulse. As things progress, the Circus continues to weave a weirdly narcotic atmosphere, erupting into glitch-riddled blasts of frigid blackness, and slipping into twisted, psilocybin-dosed, Tesla-quoting excursions into mechanized heaviness. The singer switches off between those morose chants and a hoarse, gargling croak, and some songs seem to unfold into a bizarre liturgy, layering magickal verses over minimal burbling synthscapes, wafts of malformed kosmische ambience spreading like inky clouds across recitations from Crowley's Liber Samekh. Clanking industrial rhythms and swarming guitars mutate into wicked necro-techno attacks, emitting blasts of pneumatic hiss amid the trance-inducing rhythmic pummel, while bits of Carpenterian synth dread circle in the depths alongside Wax Trax-sized chunks of dancefloor obliteration. These guys aren't doing anything to reinvent industrial black metal, but I could care less when it sounds this insane. Ananta-Abh�va is definitely on par with their previous works, injecting some of that uniquely French depravity into their howling electrocuted black metal, and it delivers what is now my favorite song of theirs, the heavily atmospheric closer "Maha Pralaya (Pradhvamsa-Abh�va)" that welds a particularly tough doom-laden riff to a sweeping tremolo riff, before speedcore-style drum programming ends up turning it into something vaguely Ministry-like, easily the most vicious song on the album.

    Limited to five hundred copies.

First heard Aluk Todolo on that debut 7" that the band released on Implied Sound last year, which I thought was a real blast of fetid hypno rock inscribed with cryptic occult imagery and one hell of a pounding groove, major groove, a kind of satanic trance rock meltdown that felt like it was crawling right off of the edge of the vinyl. Great stuff that caught the attention of a lot of people that follow this sort of thing, and this past November saw the release of Aluk Todolo's first full length on Public Guilt, which has been building a heavy buzz ever since it came out. On Descension, Aluk Todolo have carved out a pitch-black krautrock masterpiece that ends up sounding akin to Circle performing the background music for a black mass while being mixed by Masami Akita armed with short-circuiting amplifiers in each hand, punctuating their nocturnal dronerock rituals with blasts of white-hot electronic skzzzz.

Aluk Todolo features members of the black metal cult Diametragon, but the main thread that ties the two bands together is the musician's use of brutal white noise as a kind of lead instrument; in Diametragon, the band splatters their razorwire black metal asaults with ear shredding skree, but here the noise is draped in layers over skeletal rock instrumentation, a basic drums/guitar/bass lineup that forms minimalistic propulsive jams that swim in black feedback and atmospheric speaker buzz. Like This Heat and Einsutrzende Neubaten filtered through an endless blackdronenoise ritual, sinister melodic sigils forming out of the fuzz and forming a claustraphobic, creepy low fi psych epic, their rhythms relentless in movement. The opening "Obedience" starts off as swirling black ambience with a shuffling sheet metal rhythm banging away in the background, and then suddenly a wavering female chorale appears and the whole song suddenly explodes into a clamorous, propulsive krautrock

jam, simplistic driving drumming slicing through a storm of overloaded demon howls and white noise. It's really low fi and garagey sounding, but powerful and totally in-the-red. On "Burial Ground", the band sets up a tense, claustrophobic vibe with a simple guitar arpeggio played over weird FX, rusted metal percussion, tinny evil drones and a plodding drumbeat. "Woodchurch" is another slow, plodding jam that almost seems to invert the guitar part from the previous track and crank the distortion way up while layers of machine noise and FX shift and warp above it; the last track, "Disease", has another shambling hypnotic drumbeat playing in an odd time signature accompanied by trippy distorted effects and blasts of overmodulated acid guitar clipping throughout the jam.

Imagine an evil, hypnotic fusion of the super blown-out blackness of Wold and Akitsa, Harry Pussy's shambolic noise, and This Heat. Slow marches into unnerving noise frequencies and atmospheric clatter are served up as black magic meditations, and alternate with invocations of demonic krautrock. Highly recommended !

Finsternis comes to us more than two years since the release of Aluk Todolo's debut Descension,

where we were fully introduced to their harsh, blackened trance-rock. In the time since that disc came out, Aluk Todolo has

garnered a bit of critical acclaim for their recordings, while the members spent time working with other related projects, like the acid-fried garage psych ensemble Gunslingers and French black metallers Diamatregon, whose latest album Crossroad came out last year and itself seemed to be infected with a bit of Aluk Todolo's scorched avant-rock DNA. I've been lusting for new Aluk Todolo, though, and they finally returned earlier this year with this, their latest slab of evil psychedelia and blackened, malevolent krautrock.

Divided into four sections with a shorter interlude track in the middle of the album, Finsternis (German fir "Darkness") feels as if it is tied together with a larger concept, though nothing is spelled out through the song titles. The album begins with the simple pounding trance of "Premier Contact", a steady, minimalist drum beat steadily banging away while the guitars squeal and howl, emitting controlled bursts of feedback and strange noises, the guitarists scraping and stabbing at their instruments. This physical guitar assault often sounds like it could've been something off of an experimental prepared guitar piece, if it weren't for the incessant deathmarch drumming and general atmosphere of dread that hangs over the music. After awhile, creepier riffs start to emerge, and Aluk Todolo reveal their blackened heritage' these spidery minor-key figures take over, circling around and around through gales of feedback and amp noise. And it leads right into "Deuxi�me Contact", which stumbles for a quick moment as the band erupts into a frenzied rhythmic tangle, but then settles back down into a similar metronomic pulse, the death-clock tick-tock hammering in slow motion, that sinister slithering guitar melody gradually joined by ghostly sustained notes and weird electronic sounds in the distance, leading the album into ever creepier regions. As the album deepens, the guitars transform. They slowly build, first blooming from those droning buzzing chords and strangled string noises into that creeping graveyard melody, and then from there into sudden bursts of reverb-drenched psychedelic shred, and morose, blackened riffing.

The simple, ritualistic floor-tom throb that comprises the center track "Totalit�" wipes the board, returning the band to the most basic, stripped-down percussive pulse. For several minutes, there is just the one drum, pounding in the blackness, but as the piece progresses, reaching tendrils of black amp fog and seething distorted electronics seep up from below, slowly overtaking the track with swarming, bacterial noise.

Then comes "Troisi�me Contact", and again the sound has intensified, the black metal aspect of Aluk Todolo's sound further defined as the guitars blast out in a black jet of crushing distorted tremolo-drone, swarming blackened riffing spreading out over the now thunderous drums. The guitars are a skygush of Skullflowery feedback-drone and murderous buzzsaw shred, and you can hear other dark, complex melodies unfolding beneath the roar of exploding amplifiers and rumbling detuned guitars. By the time you've reached the closer "Quatri�me Contact", the album has drifted into a nightmarish form of psychedelic rock, the guitars slipping into wailing high-end chords and eerie wavering notes. In its final half, the song breaks apart into something more spacious and minimal, that blackened hypno-riff burning off into sheets of warm, shimmering guitar glazed in echo and delay. Still pretty ominous though, the band locking into a strange, desolate atmosphere in the end as an almost Morricone-like feel taking over, transforming this into something quite different than from where we started.

Finsternis comes to us more than two years since the release of Aluk Todolo's debut Descension,

where we were fully introduced to their harsh, blackened trance-rock. In the time since that disc came out, Aluk Todolo has

garnered a bit of critical acclaim for their recordings, while the members spent time working with other related projects, like the acid-fried garage psych ensemble Gunslingers and French black metallers Diamatregon, whose latest album Crossroad came out last year and itself seemed to be infected with a bit of Aluk Todolo's scorched avant-rock DNA. I've been lusting for new Aluk Todolo, though, and they finally returned earlier this year with this, their latest slab of evil psychedelia and blackened, malevolent krautrock.

Divided into four sections with a shorter interlude track in the middle of the album, Finsternis (German fir "Darkness") feels as if it is tied together with a larger concept, though nothing is spelled out through the song titles. The album begins with the simple pounding trance of "Premier Contact", a steady, minimalist drum beat steadily banging away while the guitars squeal and howl, emitting controlled bursts of feedback and strange noises, the guitarists scraping and stabbing at their instruments. This physical guitar assault often sounds like it could've been something off of an experimental prepared guitar piece, if it weren't for the incessant deathmarch drumming and general atmosphere of dread that hangs over the music. After awhile, creepier riffs start to emerge, and Aluk Todolo reveal their blackened heritage' these spidery minor-key figures take over, circling around and around through gales of feedback and amp noise. And it leads right into "Deuxi�me Contact", which stumbles for a quick moment as the band erupts into a frenzied rhythmic tangle, but then settles back down into a similar metronomic pulse, the death-clock tick-tock hammering in slow motion, that sinister slithering guitar melody gradually joined by ghostly sustained notes and weird electronic sounds in the distance, leading the album into ever creepier regions. As the album deepens, the guitars transform. They slowly build, first blooming from those droning buzzing chords and strangled string noises into that creeping graveyard melody, and then from there into sudden bursts of reverb-drenched psychedelic shred, and morose, blackened riffing.

The simple, ritualistic floor-tom throb that comprises the center track "Totalit�" wipes the board, returning the band to the most basic, stripped-down percussive pulse. For several minutes, there is just the one drum, pounding in the blackness, but as the piece progresses, reaching tendrils of black amp fog and seething distorted electronics seep up from below, slowly overtaking the track with swarming, bacterial noise.

Then comes "Troisi�me Contact", and again the sound has intensified, the black metal aspect of Aluk Todolo's sound further defined as the guitars blast out in a black jet of crushing distorted tremolo-drone, swarming blackened riffing spreading out over the now thunderous drums. The guitars are a skygush of Skullflowery feedback-drone and murderous buzzsaw shred, and you can hear other dark, complex melodies unfolding beneath the roar of exploding amplifiers and rumbling detuned guitars. By the time you've reached the closer "Quatri�me Contact", the album has drifted into a nightmarish form of psychedelic rock, the guitars slipping into wailing high-end chords and eerie wavering notes. In its final half, the song breaks apart into something more spacious and minimal, that blackened hypno-riff burning off into sheets of warm, shimmering guitar glazed in echo and delay. Still pretty ominous though, the band locking into a strange, desolate atmosphere in the end as an almost Morricone-like feel taking over, transforming this into something quite different than from where we started.

Aluk Todolo's 7" is available again, repressed in a limited run of two hundred copies for their recent East Coast tour (which slayed; I caught the band in Baltimore at Golden West Cafe a few weeks ago with Darsombra and Lussuria, and they had me completely zoned by the end of their set), with hand-stamped labels and no obi-strip this time.

Featuring members of such esteemed French black metal iconoclasts as Vediog Svaor and Diamatregon, Aluk Todolo's debut EP is an amazing, occult-tinged eruption of heavy drone/Kraut/trance rock that uses the bands driving motorik formations to explore transcendental consciousness and trance-like states. Each song on this 7" is identified with only an arcane set of runes, and the compositions are based on music conjured during Aluk Todolo's live improvised sessions. The A side sports a rhythmic drone rock jam that builds into sheets of guitar sound similiar to Rhys Chatham overlaid with recordings of legendary occultist Aleister Crowley. On the B side, the band generates a powerful krautrock influenced number that pulsates like a darker Circle/AMT jam. The riff is totally trance inducing before it fades into a cavernous grey drone, then exploding suddenly back into full-on heavy hypno rock. This EP is a killer debut, and I'm dying to hear more from this band. Aluk Todolo's take on kraut/drone influenced heavy psych rock imbues the music with the sort of bleak blackness that you'd expect from their black metal projects. There's parts of their jams that make me think of the obvious modern heavy hitters in the field of heavy trance-psyche, like the aforementioned Acid Mothers Temple and Cirlce, as well as Circle side project Pharoah Overlord, as Aluk Todolo can get pretty heavy...but I also hear that Rhys Chatham/Robert Poss/Band Of Susans brand of overloaded guitar drone in parts of these songs that push the intensity level even further. Awesome stuff, highly recommended. Our buddy J.R. at Public Guilt did a killer job of presenting this EP as well, packaging the 7" in a simple but effective glossy gatefold sleeve printed in silver and grey inks, with cabalistic symbols and photography.

Originally released on CD and LP by Utech and Public Guilt respectively, the second album from French necro / hypno-rockers Aluk Todolo is now back in print via The Ajna Offensive/Norma Evangelium Diaboli, on both formats with revised artwork. The CD version is now presented in a six-panel digipack, while the Lp comes on 180 gram vinyl. Here's the original review for the Utech version from when we had that in stock:

Finsternis comes to us more than two years since the release of Aluk Todolo's debut Descension,

where we were fully introduced to their harsh, blackened trance-rock. In the time since that disc came out, Aluk Todolo has

garnered a bit of critical acclaim for their recordings, while the members spent time working with other related projects, like the acid-fried garage psych ensemble Gunslingers and French black metallers Diamatregon, whose latest album Crossroad came out last year and itself seemed to be infected with a bit of Aluk Todolo's scorched avant-rock DNA. I've been lusting for new Aluk Todolo, though, and they finally returned earlier this year with this, their latest slab of evil psychedelia and blackened, malevolent krautrock.

Divided into four sections with a shorter interlude track in the middle of the album, Finsternis (German fir "Darkness") feels as if it is tied together with a larger concept, though nothing is spelled out through the song titles. The album begins with the simple pounding trance of "Premier Contact", a steady, minimalist drum beat steadily banging away while the guitars squeal and howl, emitting controlled bursts of feedback and strange noises, the guitarists scraping and stabbing at their instruments. This physical guitar assault often sounds like it could've been something off of an experimental prepared guitar piece, if it weren't for the incessant deathmarch drumming and general atmosphere of dread that hangs over the music. After awhile, creepier riffs start to emerge, and Aluk Todolo reveal their blackened heritage' these spidery minor-key figures take over, circling around and around through gales of feedback and amp noise. And it leads right into "Deuxi�me Contact", which stumbles for a quick moment as the band erupts into a frenzied rhythmic tangle, but then settles back down into a similar metronomic pulse, the death-clock tick-tock hammering in slow motion, that sinister slithering guitar melody gradually joined by ghostly sustained notes and weird electronic sounds in the distance, leading the album into ever creepier regions. As the album deepens, the guitars transform. They slowly build, first blooming from those droning buzzing chords and strangled string noises into that creeping graveyard melody, and then from there into sudden bursts of reverb-drenched psychedelic shred, and morose, blackened riffing.

The simple, ritualistic floor-tom throb that comprises the center track "Totalit�" wipes the board, returning the band to the most basic, stripped-down percussive pulse. For several minutes, there is just the one drum, pounding in the blackness, but as the piece progresses, reaching tendrils of black amp fog and seething distorted electronics seep up from below, slowly overtaking the track with swarming, bacterial noise.

Then comes "Troisi�me Contact", and again the sound has intensified, the black metal aspect of Aluk Todolo's sound further defined as the guitars blast out in a black jet of crushing distorted tremolo-drone, swarming blackened riffing spreading out over the now thunderous drums. The guitars are a skygush of Skullflowery feedback-drone and murderous buzzsaw shred, and you can hear other dark, complex melodies unfolding beneath the roar of exploding amplifiers and rumbling detuned guitars. By the time you've reached the closer "Quatri�me Contact", the album has drifted into a nightmarish form of psychedelic rock, the guitars slipping into wailing high-end chords and eerie wavering notes. In its final half, the song breaks apart into something more spacious and minimal, that blackened hypno-riff burning off into sheets of warm, shimmering guitar glazed in echo and delay. Still pretty ominous though, the band locking into a strange, desolate atmosphere in the end as an almost Morricone-like feel taking over, transforming this into something quite different than from where we started.

The latest slab of charred, blackened psych from France's mysterious Aluk Todolo comes via the fine Ajna Offensive imprint, and it's a superb new dose of their intense occult-fueled hypno rock. Well, not quite new...this long track, here split into to halves across the two sides of the record, was actually recorded several years ago, back around the same time that they were recording their excellent debut album Descension, but was never made available until now. If you're a fan of that album, this delivers the same corrosive black pulse, with deceptively simple drumming locking into a heavy trance-state as the band pushes through hideous tar-pit bass throb and caustic guitar noise that undergoes a series of transformations over the course of the record.

The record begins with the band fading in gradually, the scrape and huzz of the guitars drifting in over a rickety quasi-break beat. The guitars and feedback swirl with other, less identifiable noises, bits of industrial scrape and broken-down crackle, and there seem to be strings or keyboards or something along those lines droning and drifting over it all. The sound is abrasive and creepy but also quite hypnotic, the shambling rhythm resembling something from Scorn as it lopes through the shifting clouds of sonic detritus and metallic creak. As this goes on, the different noisy elements move around, allowing bits of head-nodding throb to peer through all of the murkiness, and there are some vocals that take form at different points, a deep growl that intones strange mangled incantations within the caustic, chaotic noise. This all burns off about halfway through the side, and changes into a slightly more controlled dirge. The drums are still shuffling and clanking along, but the noisy elements are replaced by a searing distorted noise that is looped over and over, until the band once again shifts gears at the end and lurches into an aggressive mid-tempo krautrock groove. Heavy throbbing bass and sheets of guitar skree and pounding motorik drums guide the song into it's final minutes.

The second side is much more threatening and assaultive; as soon as it begins, the band is locked into a grinding, off-time almost tribal workout, the over-modulated bass rumbling and buzzing around the feedback howl and scrape of the guitar, taking shape as an industrialized trance-rock workout. The sound here at first seems to feel much less hypnotic, and instead unleashes an ever-changing, always shifting cloud of metallic buzz and grinding noise and far-off clang over and around the hammer-clang rhythm of the band. It's as malevolent sounding as anything that these guys have put on record in the past, and as it goes on, it does begin to reveal a murderous trance-like quality, still very rooted in a classic psychedelic krautrock influence but taking that sound and blowing it out into a blackened, heavily distorted, thoroughly evil sound of it's own. At the end of the b-side, Aluk Todolo once more transforms the song, this last time into a slow, warbling dronescape filled with echoing guitar chords buzzing and drifting through billowing feedback and washes of murky guitar noise while a single bass drum pounds away slowly in the background.

Like all of their other releases, this comes bound in strange occult-influenced artwork, and is pressed on thick black vinyl.

Originally released on CD and LP by Utech and Public Guilt respectively, the second album from French necro / hypno-rockers Aluk Todolo is now back in print via The Ajna Offensive/Norma Evangelium Diaboli, on both formats with revised artwork. The CD version is now presented in a six-panel digipack, while the Lp comes on 180 gram vinyl. Here's the original review for the Utech version from when we had that in stock:

Finsternis comes to us more than two years since the release of Aluk Todolo's debut Descension,

where we were fully introduced to their harsh, blackened trance-rock. In the time since that disc came out, Aluk Todolo has

garnered a bit of critical acclaim for their recordings, while the members spent time working with other related projects, like the acid-fried garage psych ensemble Gunslingers and French black metallers Diamatregon, whose latest album Crossroad came out last year and itself seemed to be infected with a bit of Aluk Todolo's scorched avant-rock DNA. I've been lusting for new Aluk Todolo, though, and they finally returned earlier this year with this, their latest slab of evil psychedelia and blackened, malevolent krautrock.

Divided into four sections with a shorter interlude track in the middle of the album, Finsternis (German fir "Darkness") feels as if it is tied together with a larger concept, though nothing is spelled out through the song titles. The album begins with the simple pounding trance of "Premier Contact", a steady, minimalist drum beat steadily banging away while the guitars squeal and howl, emitting controlled bursts of feedback and strange noises, the guitarists scraping and stabbing at their instruments. This physical guitar assault often sounds like it could've been something off of an experimental prepared guitar piece, if it weren't for the incessant deathmarch drumming and general atmosphere of dread that hangs over the music. After awhile, creepier riffs start to emerge, and Aluk Todolo reveal their blackened heritage' these spidery minor-key figures take over, circling around and around through gales of feedback and amp noise. And it leads right into "Deuxi�me Contact", which stumbles for a quick moment as the band erupts into a frenzied rhythmic tangle, but then settles back down into a similar metronomic pulse, the death-clock tick-tock hammering in slow motion, that sinister slithering guitar melody gradually joined by ghostly sustained notes and weird electronic sounds in the distance, leading the album into ever creepier regions. As the album deepens, the guitars transform. They slowly build, first blooming from those droning buzzing chords and strangled string noises into that creeping graveyard melody, and then from there into sudden bursts of reverb-drenched psychedelic shred, and morose, blackened riffing.

The simple, ritualistic floor-tom throb that comprises the center track "Totalit�" wipes the board, returning the band to the most basic, stripped-down percussive pulse. For several minutes, there is just the one drum, pounding in the blackness, but as the piece progresses, reaching tendrils of black amp fog and seething distorted electronics seep up from below, slowly overtaking the track with swarming, bacterial noise.

Then comes "Troisi�me Contact", and again the sound has intensified, the black metal aspect of Aluk Todolo's sound further defined as the guitars blast out in a black jet of crushing distorted tremolo-drone, swarming blackened riffing spreading out over the now thunderous drums. The guitars are a skygush of Skullflowery feedback-drone and murderous buzzsaw shred, and you can hear other dark, complex melodies unfolding beneath the roar of exploding amplifiers and rumbling detuned guitars. By the time you've reached the closer "Quatri�me Contact", the album has drifted into a nightmarish form of psychedelic rock, the guitars slipping into wailing high-end chords and eerie wavering notes. In its final half, the song breaks apart into something more spacious and minimal, that blackened hypno-riff burning off into sheets of warm, shimmering guitar glazed in echo and delay. Still pretty ominous though, the band locking into a strange, desolate atmosphere in the end as an almost Morricone-like feel taking over, transforming this into something quite different than from where we started.

Finally back in print from Red Stream!

The furious fourth full-length from French satanic black metal outfit Arkhon Infaustus circa 2005, which was originally released on Osmose Productions before going out of print the first time around. Luckily for fans of fucked up, psychotic French blackness, Red Stream re-issued Perdition Insanabilis with this digipack edition, inscribed in alien code and classic Satanic icons. Arkhon Infaustus developed a bit of a rep over the years since forming in the mid-90's; their releases have been censored in several countries due to ultraviolent album art and lyrics that outlined acts of Satanic perversion and rough S&M-related imagery, and the band is pretty outspoken regarding their fierce anti-christian/satanic ideology. Musically, they play a demented fusion of death metal and black metal, kind of in the vein of Zyklon and also reminiscent of the total sonic evil of Anaal Nathrakh, with some additional doom elements stitched into the mix. The songs blaze by with relentless double bass blasting, awesome chaotic drumming, and chunky, downtuned death riffing and complex layers of dismal minor key melodies. And the sound is heavy, really heavy, with a massive bottom end that will rattle your ribcage. The vocals are disorientating, often with multiple deep death growls and blackened rasps all singing different lyrics at the same time, adding to the awesome "out of phase" vibe that seeps through the entire album. And there's plenty more of that fucked up French weirdness at work here too: creatively placed samples and electronic drones, manipulated feedback that crafts their trans-dimensional ambience, executing vertigo-inducing time changes (seriously, the drummer on this disc is fucking awesome), crazed dissonant shredding, harmonized chanting, and electronically-fucked vocals. Tracks like

"Whirlwind Journey" even hint at some distinctly old-school Voivod and Celtic Frost influences, while "Saturn Motion Theology" reveals a lumbering slab of ultraheavy blackened doom that reaches psychedelic heights as sheets of wailing feedback are draped over the sour, slightly out-of-tune guitar harmonies and the pulverizing central dronedirge riff. Crushing. Definitely another essential blast of bizarre French malevolence! And the packaging for Perdition Insanabilis is great, too; the booklet includes text that has to be decoded to be read, using a system of alternating lines, and the photos of the band are pretty rad, with their eyes covered in gauze as if they have been torn out after witnessing some hellish horror.

The supremely blackened 2007 album from France's Arkhon Infaustus, Orthodoxyn is their fourth, released in Europe on Osmose but now available here in the States on the esteemed Red Stream label. Opening with the lurching dissonance of "Trigarammaton", Arkhon Infaustus again plunges us into a fetid tangle of brutal, atonal death metal and complex black metal with songs that combine crushing, chunky riffing and slow, doomy passages with complex layers of guitar composed into droning, fucked-up melodies and alien harmonies. Much of the music on Orthodoxyn is slow, huge doomic riffs slithering through fields of evil dissonance with gutteral layered vocals that create a weird disorienting effect, the lyrics surrounded by overt satanic imagery and fascinating lyrics that infuse their goat-worshipping concepts with feverish visions that are drawn from biblical scriptures, scenes of sexual perversion, and quantum physics. I can hear a similiarity to fellow French black metallers Deathspell Omega, especially in the fucked up, avant-garde riffing and bizarre song structures that Arkhon Infaustus employs, but these guys are much, much heavier, their atonal dirges and downtuned riffage often broaching Incantation territory. These parameters of Arkhon Infaustus's sound make this another crucial slab of French black metal, filled with experimental guitar textures and abstract melodic leads matched by pulverizing heaviness, with an undercurrent of disturbing dissonance that constantly underscores their music. Another album of brutal, blackened French death from these masters, a must-get if you were into their last album Perdition Insanabilis (which is another favorite around here), and lust for both the innovative French blackness of Antaeus, Deathspell Omega, S.V.E.S.T., Blut Aus Nord, and the discordant crush of bands like Incantation and even Portal. Includes a thick booklet with lyrics and artwork.

We've picked up a bunch of different cassettes from the French black metal label Infernal Kommand for Crucial Blast, all of 'em filled with weird and freaked out occult black metal mutations and queasy psychedelic ambience scraped from the underbelly of the French BM underground. Some of the tapes that we've been able to get are from familiar freakazoids (like the brilliantly fucked one man black metal of Zarach'Baal'Tharagh), while others are new discoveries, from the pitch-black void-ambience of Aymrev Erkroz Prevre and the ritual industrial murk of Stigma Diabolicum, to the sadistic satanic power electronic/crypt-drone rites of Silcharde, Malvoisie's bizarre didgeridoo-fueled black metal hallucinations and the perverted blackgrind overload of Kratornas. All of this stuff is brilliant and fucked, the sort of damaged outsider black metal weirdness that we lust for constantly, and fellow fans of all things blackened and noisy and abstract should definitely check all of these titles out.

There's probably only a few of you who will recognize the name Meldhkwis, but in the annals of satanic French ambient/industrial music, he's become infamous for creating soul-crushing black dronescapes under the name Dapnom. With his roots in the French black metal scene, Dapnom's recordings are intensely evil and bleak, taking the otherworldy dread and misery that the Les Legiones Noires evoked and channeling it through the minimal orchestral aesthetic of dark ambient pioneers like Lustmord and Raison D'Etre. The result is some of the most hellish dark ambience of the early 21st century, and any fans of black ambience that haven't heard Dapnom yet should go directly to the collaborative double CD that Dapnom released with Melek-Tha pronto.

Aside from Dapnom, however, Meldhkwis keeps busy with a handful of other projects that even more obscure and underground, like the mysterious

Aymrev Erkroz Prevre. With Aymrev Erkroz Prevre, Meldhkwis strays from the severe isolationist evil of his main project and ventures into a murkier and more psychedelic territory. On this 2006 cassette, we're immersed in two half-hour long tracks, both untitled and each one taking up an entire side of the cassette. The sound is murky, everything indistinct and obscured by a thick, almost inpenetrable cloak of subterranean drone, but all around the vast Lustmordian drift there are ghostly strains of what might be distant orchestral strings, smears of backwards percussion and booming tympani echoing from far away, harrowing Goblin-esque strings, eerie synth tones and brief glimpses of demonic vocal utterances. Swells of heavy distorted riffage seep up from the earth, Sunn O)))-like blasts of detuned thunder that hover for a short time and then dissolve into the blackness. The whole experience is soaked with an oppressive nightmarish atmosphere, a soundtrack for black magic rites and midnight acid trips, those insistent drums bestowing a ritualistic energy to these fearsome murkscapes. Fantastic demonic ambience, highly recommended to fans of Kaniba, Black Seas Of Infinity, Melek-Tha, Sorc'henn, and Uno Actu.

The follow-up to their 2006 album Solarkult, the cryptically titled T/ME [3rd Level Initiation = Chamber of Downfall] is a new 32 minute mini- album from French technoid black metallers Blacklodge. It's a standalone version of their half of the split Lp with Abigor that came out last year, a weird concept album that involved Einstein, the nature of time, and a Satanic agenda. Blacklodge's material is presented here on Cd in a deluxe black digibox release that includes a twelve page booklet. Their fusion of electronic music and black metal is a little more abstruse this time around, the songs a bit more fractured and twisted than on Solarkult, but all aspects of Blacklodge's techno-satanic vision and their hard-line oro-narcotic, pro-Satan stance are intact here, with a combination of techno and dystopian electronica with black metal that puts this firmly in the same realm as bands like Aborym, Abigor, Red Harvest, and Dodheimsgard. What separates Blacklodge from their peers is the extent to which vocalist, guitarist, and overall mastermind Saint Vincent (also of Vorkreist and Merrimack) takes the techno and drum n' bass elements on T/ME....

The first song Lambda [Or The Last of The Gods; Being The Secret of SataN] begins the disc with mysterious black ambience, eerie feedback strains slicing through fragments of orchestral melody, drafts of factory noise and distant chanting, the sound slowly evolving into a chugging spacey black metal riff that erupts into a throbbing blackened disco pulse, pounding industrial rhythms surging beneath grinding guitar and manic layered vokills, for a moment sounding like a cross between Skinny Puppy and majestic black metal and an extremely bleak strain of trip-hop. As it winds down, the beat-driven BM delirium begins to break off into machine noise and dark dolorous drift at the end, with a stern male voice speaking above choirs of synthetic silicone angels.

Then "Vector G [Gravity XVI]" kicks in, all Wax Trax style stomp and black buzz, a massive electronic pummel that dominates the swarming riffing and hateful vibe, breaking into alternating blasts of violent gabber and spastic drum n bass, whipping itself into a frenzied black metal techno chaos. The music is layered with effects and glitchy noise, a maniacal frenzied black electro blast of warped dissonant riffing and chaotic arrangements, veering into soundtrack-style ambience for a moment, then dropping off into densely layered hellish dance floor industrial and grinding programmed crush.

At the onset of "Sulphuric Acedia", Blacklodge releases a shuffling mess of stuttering machine rhythms, buzzing dubbed-out bass and swirling minor key creep, then surges upwards into jackhammer techno that's splattered with glitchy drum programming and imperial black metal riffs. And closer "Stupefying" introduces a massive booming slow motion break beat into a moody black dirge, lurching through a halting stop-start riff, a sort of metallic industrialized trip-hop with dramatic riffs and thunderous boom-bap, an anguished vokill performance taking the song to evil heights, mutating into lush electronic textures and smears of processed sound and looping electronic keys that sounds something like Massive Attack remixing Mayhem.

This is a short album, but man, is it ferocious, a complex and cerebral electronic black metal beast that's highly recommended to fans of Aborym and Dodheimsgard.

��Machination is the most recent album from French industrial black metallers Blacklodge, having come out back in 2012 on Season of Mist; I initially sold out of the album so quickly that I didn't bother taking the time to put together a review for the site, but now that we finally have it restocked (available both in digipack CD format and double LP, limited to five hundred hand-numbered copies) I finally have an excuse to ruminate a little on just how badass this disc is.

�� I've long been a fan of Blacklodge's drug-fueled vision of blackened Satanic raver violence; there are few bands that have bridged the void between classical black metal and furious electronic music as adeptly as these maniacs, and with each new album their music has evolved into more complex designs of mechanical evil and digital pandemonium. True, Blacklodge have never enjoyed the level of recognition as some of the more well-known industrial black metal bands like Dodheimsgard, Aborym or Mysticum (at least here in the U.S.), but these guys have produced some of my all-time favorite albums of electronically-enhanced blackened violence, especially in recent years, often fusing a heavy drum n' bass influence into their fractured and abstract mecha-metal hallucinations. Machination maintains that manic, warped vibe that has coursed violently through their recordings, the production filled with all sorts of weird little production tricks and odd effects that make this sound a lot more fucked-up and otherworldly and alien than many of their industrial/techno-infected black metal peers. Could be their Frenchiness, of course. There's definitely some of that baroque quality that seems to come along with most French black metal bands; Machination shimmers with some of that Deathspell-style discordance that has permeated most corners of the French black metal underground. But the way that sound intertwines with the frenetic, constantly changing electronic rhythms and violent drum programming ends up turning this into something quite unique. The songs are fast and ferocious, each one a complex blast of ripping black metal riffage and discordant tremolo swarm welded to spastic jungle rhythms, bizarre Whourkr-esque glitchery and crushing distorted breakbeats, the influence of various forms of ultra-aggressive European dance music seeping like opiate residue and black bile into Blacklodge's electro-Satanic blasts, rife with the sound of screwed-up drum n' bass and pounding 4/4 techno beats that relentlessly jackhammer at your skull. Clanking mechanical rhythms and vicious bass drops are utilized alongside jittery samples and pounding pneumatic sheet-metal percussion, and tracks like "NeutroN ShivA" and the punishing "Order of the Baphomet" even start to resemble some perverted black metal version of Ministry or Front Line Assembly, at least up to the point where strange layers of chirping nocturnal frog sounds start to appear over more fractured blasts of juddering mechanical heaviness. When the album comes to a close, its with an awesome slithering mecha-dirge titled "The Other Side", a bizarre droning nightmare of jazzy bass, wailing operatic female vocals, ultra distorted synths that bore gaping black holes straight through your brainmeat, malevolent whispers and some supremely dissonant guitar creep; it's a nightmarish dub-flecked descent into total drug-drenched delirium that starts to resemble Skinny Puppy more than anything remotely black metal, but with a pulsating evil energy that is unlike anything I've ever heard on any of my Wax Trax or Nettwerk 12" singles. It's a deeply dystopian atmosphere that Blacklodge evokes here, fueled on narcotics and flickering digital images of worldwide atrocities, visions of leering Baphometic demons, their visages lit by the dull neon tracers from twitching glow-sticks, tuning in to lycanthropic incantations hidden in the garbled scream of malfunctioning modems, heavy doses of 21st century paranoia that feel as if they could've been lifted from the pages of a William Gibson novel splattered in black goat's blood.

��Machination is the most recent album from French industrial black metallers Blacklodge, having come out back in 2012 on Season of Mist; I initially sold out of the album so quickly that I didn't bother taking the time to put together a review for the site, but now that we finally have it restocked (available both in digipack CD format and double LP, limited to five hundred hand-numbered copies) I finally have an excuse to ruminate a little on just how badass this disc is.

�� I've long been a fan of Blacklodge's drug-fueled vision of blackened Satanic raver violence; there are few bands that have bridged the void between classical black metal and furious electronic music as adeptly as these maniacs, and with each new album their music has evolved into more complex designs of mechanical evil and digital pandemonium. True, Blacklodge have never enjoyed the level of recognition as some of the more well-known industrial black metal bands like Dodheimsgard, Aborym or Mysticum (at least here in the U.S.), but these guys have produced some of my all-time favorite albums of electronically-enhanced blackened violence, especially in recent years, often fusing a heavy drum n' bass influence into their fractured and abstract mecha-metal hallucinations. Machination maintains that manic, warped vibe that has coursed violently through their recordings, the production filled with all sorts of weird little production tricks and odd effects that make this sound a lot more fucked-up and otherworldly and alien than many of their industrial/techno-infected black metal peers. Could be their Frenchiness, of course. There's definitely some of that baroque quality that seems to come along with most French black metal bands; Machination shimmers with some of that Deathspell-style discordance that has permeated most corners of the French black metal underground. But the way that sound intertwines with the frenetic, constantly changing electronic rhythms and violent drum programming ends up turning this into something quite unique. The songs are fast and ferocious, each one a complex blast of ripping black metal riffage and discordant tremolo swarm welded to spastic jungle rhythms, bizarre Whourkr-esque glitchery and crushing distorted breakbeats, the influence of various forms of ultra-aggressive European dance music seeping like opiate residue and black bile into Blacklodge's electro-Satanic blasts, rife with the sound of screwed-up drum n' bass and pounding 4/4 techno beats that relentlessly jackhammer at your skull. Clanking mechanical rhythms and vicious bass drops are utilized alongside jittery samples and pounding pneumatic sheet-metal percussion, and tracks like "NeutroN ShivA" and the punishing "Order of the Baphomet" even start to resemble some perverted black metal version of Ministry or Front Line Assembly, at least up to the point where strange layers of chirping nocturnal frog sounds start to appear over more fractured blasts of juddering mechanical heaviness. When the album comes to a close, its with an awesome slithering mecha-dirge titled "The Other Side", a bizarre droning nightmare of jazzy bass, wailing operatic female vocals, ultra distorted synths that bore gaping black holes straight through your brainmeat, malevolent whispers and some supremely dissonant guitar creep; it's a nightmarish dub-flecked descent into total drug-drenched delirium that starts to resemble Skinny Puppy more than anything remotely black metal, but with a pulsating evil energy that is unlike anything I've ever heard on any of my Wax Trax or Nettwerk 12" singles. It's a deeply dystopian atmosphere that Blacklodge evokes here, fueled on narcotics and flickering digital images of worldwide atrocities, visions of leering Baphometic demons, their visages lit by the dull neon tracers from twitching glow-sticks, tuning in to lycanthropic incantations hidden in the garbled scream of malfunctioning modems, heavy doses of 21st century paranoia that feel as if they could've been lifted from the pages of a William Gibson novel splattered in black goat's blood.

Dope double-CD reissue of the mindblowing fourth album from France's Blut Aus Nord, their most critically acclaimed release and the album that has garnered the band attention from far outside of the confines of the underground black metal scene. You can probably chalk that up to the fact that The Work Which Transforms God moves further outside of the parameters of black metal moreso than with any of their previous releases. The album was first released in 2003 in France, and it's sort of a concept album that deals with the band's philosophy of forward-thinking, new perceptions of reality, and constant evolution, although no lyrics are included here and it's all open to interpretation. Now we've got this new version reissued for the US through Candlelight and packaged with a second CD that contains the entire Thematic Emanation Of Archetypal Multiplicity EP. Growing weirder and more abstract with each release, Blut Aus Nord unleash some grim, searing black metal here, think early Emperor or Darkthrone, but at the same time they take that sound and warp it, melt it, mutating their filth-encrusted black metal buzz into a surreal drug trip filled with icy industrial ambience, deep gore gurgling vocals, huge stretches of drifting black dronescapes, passages of dub-like machine psych, and those queasy guitars that warble and lurch like someone is messing with the tuning pegs while they're playing the song. Those seasick guitar chords and guitar lines add alot of the unearthly ambience that makes this album so intense, permeated with an intangible, dreamlike dread. There's all kinds of rhythmic action happening here too, the drum machine sometimes grinding out a mechanized dirge a la Godflesh's Streetcleaner, or layering twisted tribal percussion that moves in and out of the background. The pinnacle of the album is the final song, "Procession Of The Dead Clowns", a lumbering ten minute dirge with spare, glacial drumming and a sorrowful, keening guitar melody, almost like a Jesu song but way more funereal and dismal and grim.

The second disc features the Thematic Emanation Of Archetypal Multiplicity EP, a more recent release from Blut Aus Nord that has five tracks of eerie, doomy dirges, fucked-up industrial clang, dank fields of black drone drifting over sparse drum machine beats, Gregorian-style chants, a weird breakbeat-heavy industrial dance track, and more of their frozen, lysergic ambience.

A gorgeous-looking deluxe vinyl reissue of the 1996 album from this French avant-garde black metal cult, the latest edition of Fathers Of The Icy Age: Memoria Vetusta I with stunning new artwork and album design by Metastazis (Dapnom, Morbid Angel, Antaeus, Nachtmystium), foil stamping on the cover, printed inner sleeve, 180 gram vinyl...this album has never looked better. We've got this on the limited grey colored wax...

Here's my original write-up of the Candlelight Cd edition:

The second in a series of reissues of early Blut Aus Nord albums presented by Candlelight Records, Memoria Vetusta is the French black metal band's second album from 1996, and as I sit here and listen to this, I'm thinking that it's probably my favorite out of all of the Blut Aus Nord albums. Don't get me wrong, everything that this band has released is amazing, no two albums of theirs are the same, and all are absolutely essential listening for fans of adventurous black metal and heavy, abstracted weirdness. But Memoria has got to have their catchiest songs ever, and I just can't stop listening to this album. This new edition is presented with new album artwork that consists of a series of green-tinted mountainscapes, which continues the visual theme from the reissue of the band's first album Ultima Thulee which was released simultaneously with this. Musically, this is Blut Aus Nord before they mutated into the interdimensional black art of their 00's output; on Memoria, the band unleash epic, ghoulish black metal blasts with heavy, emotive synthesizers that lend a classic prog rock/80's soundtrack vibe to the blackened buzzsaw assault. It's all as atmospheric and haunting as their debut, and the melodic hooks here are stunning, they'll stick in yer head for days. Some of the spacey guitar lines here even have a shoegazey shimmer to them, and all of the riffage is really inventive and powerful. An awesome combination of grandiose frostbitten black metal a la Emperor and woozy, surreal celestial beauty. And yeah, you can hear the band starting to mutate, the drum machines start to stumble here and there, breaking off into Godfleshy dirges and weird mathy rhythms that take you by surprise, and the guitars occasional take on that melted, flowing in-and-out-of-tune sheen that Blut Aus Nord would take to extreme levels with their later albums. Lots of clean Viking singing and heavenly chorales soar across the album too. Brilliant, psychedelic black metal, one of the best France has to offer. Highly recommended.

The latest album from French black metal abstractionists Blut Aus Nord can't even really be called "black metal" at this point - their last album, the

critically acclaimed The Work Which Transforms God, had already mutated their heavily ambient, icy blackness into a kind of seasick, doomy metal

whose guitars slipped in and out of Slint-y math figures, chaotic buzzsaw thrash, and wobbly chords that sounded like they were floating in and out of tune,

all surging over a punishing mechanized pulse that felt like the drum machine from Godflesh's Streetcleaner moving in reverse. But with

Mort, Blut Aus Nord have completely slipped into the Forbidden Zone, presenting what is basically a single 47 minute track that is divided into

eight chapters, almost entirely instrumental, and which drags you down into a murky, drug-induced state of horror populated with amorphous riffs that sound

like their being played by Luc Lemay on heavy 'shrooms, winding guitar lines layered over one another and shifting in and out of tune, warbly and surreal

sounding, while the terminally off-time Godfleshy drums pound erratically and dead monk chants and viscous growls drip across the music's pitch-black canvas

of subterranean rumbles and gooey melting circus keyboards. At time, Mort starts to sound like a free jazz band moving through glue and flickering

out of our dimension, constantly being swallowed up in the syrupy murky blackness, and clean, emotionally crushing singing emerges at times out of the muddy

chaos to . Super asbtract and twisted, moving at a slow, lurching, lopsided crawl, sort of like a fucked up combination of Xasthur and newer Wolf Eyes and

Abruptum, sad and surreal, weird and dreamlike, a masterpiece of hallucinatory post-black metal.

Now available on limited edition clear vinyl from the French label Debemur Morti, with the same album artwork as the original Cd release on Impure Creations Records.

A crucial peice of French black metal history and an essential part of the puzzle that is Blut Aus Nord, the band's debut album from 1995 Ultima Thulee has been reissued by Candlelight, and it's a must-get for fans of metaphysical, atmospheric blackness. If you've gotten into Blut Aus Nord relatively recently through their acclaimed albums The Work Which Transforms God or last years Mort, then their first album might surprise you at first. Back then, Blut Aus Nord was primarily the work of founder/mastermind Vindisval, and the eight songs that make up Ultima Thulee are

murky, thunderous blasts of buzzing low-fi black metal reminiscent of both Burzum and Emperor, filthy buzzsaw guitars and droning eerie keyboards, rolling double bass drumming and blastbeats, super heavy and ripping and atmospheric, reaching blizzard levels of churning black buzz that also call to mind the early works of Immortal. But it quickly becomes apparent that even this early in Blut Aus Nord's existence, the band was a heavily progressive, experimental force. Songs break apart midway to reveal ice-plated glaciers of vintage analog synthesizer-prog ambience straight out of some lost 80's horror movie. The vocals are strange and abstract much of the time, warped and sounding more like howling winds than a human throat. "My Prayer Beyond Ginnungagap" is totally devoid of black metal; instead, we are enshrouded in hauntingly beautiful chant-harmonies, a dark hymn drifting out of the night. Equally beautiful electronic appear ghostlike over droning midtempo riffs. And you can't even tell that Vindisval was using a drum machine here, it sounds so organic and natural. Fans of 90's black metal will groove on this heavily, and it's obviously an essential addition to the library of any serious follower of French black metal. Progressive and wildly original psychedelic blackness, with some of the coolest keyboard sounds ever used on a black metal album. Highly recommended.

A crucial peice of French black metal history and an essential part of the puzzle that is Blut Aus Nord, the band's debut album from 1995 Ultima Thulee has been reissued by Candlelight, and it's a must-get for fans of metaphysical, atmospheric blackness. If you've gotten into Blut Aus Nord

relatively recently through their acclaimed albums The Work Which Transforms God or last years Mort, then their first album might surprise

you at first. Back then, Blut Aus Nord was primarily the work of founder/mastermind Vindisval, and the eight songs that make up Ultima Thulee are

murky, thunderous blasts of buzzing low-fi black metal reminiscent of both Burzum and Emperor, filthy buzzsaw guitars and droning eerie keyboards, rolling

double bass drumming and blastbeats, super heavy and ripping and atmospheric, reaching blizzard levels of churning black buzz that also call to mind the

early works of Immortal. But it quickly becomes apparent that even this early in Blut Aus Nord's existence, the band was a heavily progressive, experimental

force. Songs break apart midway to reveal ice-plated glaciers of vintage analog synthesizer-prog ambience straight out of some lost 80's horror movie. The

vocals are strange and abstract much of the time, warped and sounding more like howling winds than a human throat. "My Prayer Beyond Ginnungagap" is totally

devoid of black metal; instead, we are enshrouded in hauntingly beautiful chant-harmonies, a dark hymn drifting out of the night. Equally beautiful

electronic appear ghostlike over droning midtempo riffs. And you can't even tell that Vindisval was using a drum machine here, it sounds so organic and

natural. Fans of 90's black metal will groove on this heavily, and it's obviously an essential addition to the library of any serious follower of French

black metal. Progressive and wildly original psychedelic blackness, with some of the coolest keyboard sounds ever used on a black metal album, presented in

an almost entirely text-less package that simply features a set of photographs that evocatively capture an icy mountain range, a perfect visual accompaniment

to Blut Aus Nord's frozen terrorscapes. Highly recommended.

The second in a series of reissues of early Blut Aus Nord albums presented by Candlelight Records, Memoria Vetusta is the French black metal band's

second album from 1996, and as I sit here and listen to this, I'm thinking that it's probably my favorite out of all of the Blut Aus Nord albums. Don't get

me wrong, everything that this band has released is amazing, no two albums of theirs are the same, and all are absolutely essential listening for

fans of adventurous black metal and heavy, abstracted weirdness. But Memoria has got to have their catchiest songs ever, and I just can't stop

listening to this album. This new edition is presented with new album artwork that consists of a series of green-tinted mountainscapes, which continues the

visual theme from the reissue of the band's first album Ultima Thulee which was released simultaneously with this. Musically, this is Blut Aus Nord

before they mutated into the interdimensional black art of their 00's output; on Memoria, the band unleash epic, ghoulish black metal blasts with

heavy, emotive synthesizers that lend a classic prog rock/80's soundtrack vibe to the blackened buzzsaw assault. It's all as atmospheric and haunting as

their debut, and the melodic hooks here are stunning, they'll stick in yer head for days. Some of the spacey guitar lines here even have a shoegazey shimmer

to them, and all of the riffage is really inventive and powerful. An awesome combination of grandiose frostbitten black metal a la Emperor and woozy, surreal

celestial beauty. And yeah, you can hear the band starting to mutate, the drum machines start to stumble here and there, breaking off into Godfleshy

dirges and weird mathy rhythms that take you by surprise, and the guitars occasional take on that melted, flowing in-and-out-of-tune sheen that Blut Aus Nord

would take to extreme levels with their later albums. Lots of clean Viking singing and heavenly chorales soar across the album too. Brilliant, psychedelic

black metal, one of the best France has to offer. Highly recommended.

Alert to all fellow fanatics of demonic French black metal! Issued in a limited edition of 500 copies and already sold out at the source just like the Drastus Roars From The Old Serpents Paradise CD that we listed in the last update (which sold out here at CBLAST within 24 hours of the list going out!), C.Y.T's Configuration Of A Yearned Twilight is a similiarly frigid and inhuman blast of damaged, Satanic French black metal from the Flamme Noire imprint. Lately, the French black metal scene is starting to become more recognized for it's awesome weirdness and individuality, sort of comparable to the 'x-factor' that Japanese bands seems to have that makes their music inherently bizarre and cool as fuck. Featuring a member of Drastus, C.Y.T's vision is one of the more sinister I've experienced thus far, a sexually charged feverdream of gleaming Industrial ambience infested with razor blasts of hypersonic blistering BM, awesome ferocious riffs and dissonant guitar textures spit out like venom over the drummer's kinetic beats, who delivers a combination of light speed blastbeats and convoluted, super complex polyrhythms. It's an unearthly sounding blackthrash, harsh, fractured, the singer psychotically switching between a ranting hateful rasp and psychedelic chants hurled into the void, comparable to Deathspell Omega's recent music but even spacier, ""math-ier"", more atmosperic even, an impenetrable veil of fucked up sonic ultraviolence. This album is inredible and an absolute must for fans of fucked up, far out French BM, which makes it frustrating that we have a VERY small quantity of this available!

First off, Carrion Wraith scores points for their badass ultra-detailed logo. As you know, a killer logo is usually a portent of good music, and Carrion Wraith's thick, bloated root-like lettering that winds downwards like some sort of demonic tuber into what looks like a possessed deer skull is cool enough to set the bar pretty high. These French Canadian black metallers come though with the goods though, delivering seven lengthy songs of icy, distortion-drenched blackened misery. Singing in both French and English, vocalist Monarque delivers his visions of forest-demons and black woodlands ruled over by an undead Deer Lord ( also called the Carrion Wraith - uh, just read the booklet...) in a proper phlegm-spewing rasp, and the music is thick and hypnotic and buzzing, the distorted guitars cloaking dreary riffs and melodies in harsh trebly fuzz. The minor key riffs often have a blurry, dissonant quality that reminds me of Xasthur, but this tends to be much faster than Malefic's depressive black metal. Switching between blastbeats and punky mid-tempo rhythms, Carrion Wraith lace their sorrowful black buzz with bits of black ambience and lengthy field recordings of water birds and forest life, but mostly this is about awesome, heart-rending epic melodies, and every one of these songs is filled with them - my favorite being the utterly moving "L'Abysse De La Folie", which has one of the saddest-sounding black metal melodies ever. Definitely recommended for folks into Xasthur, Silencer, terminally downer black metal in general, and undead deer wraiths.

Back in stock, this time in a new gloss-finish jacket.

There's something special about how the French are able to take a sound that has been beaten to death - that of the apocalyptic metallic dirge that Neurosis pioneered on their Through Silver In Blood and developed further by Isis over the course of their first few albums - and twist it into something both bleaker, darker, and at the same time elegant and stentorian. Just off of the top of my head, there's Overmars, Year Of No Light, Omega Massif and HKY, four bands who all trace their cyclopean sludge metal sound back to Neurosis's revolutionary art-metal, but who all sound radically different from one another and from the more straightforward music that most of their American peers have been creating. From HKY's cosmic industro-doom psychdirge to the sky-reaching Disintegration worship of Year Of No Light and the blackened avant sludge opera of Overmars, it's obvious that French metallers are some of the best at taking this omnipresent sound and reinventing it in a way that few others are capable of doing.

The latest French band to be added to the list is Celeste, who just released their third album Misanthrope(s) on the excellent German label Denovali, which has brought us a number of quality albums from Daturah, Kodiak, Heirs, and other artful European sludge/metal outfits. Coming from Denovali, I had a hunch that Celeste were going to along the same lines as most of their other releases, which tend to run along the lines of post-rock influenced heaviness, but this is much heavier than anything else on the label, and definitely much, much darker, too. As soon as Misanthrope(s)'s opening track "Que Des Yeux Vides Et S�ch�s" blasts forth from the speakers, you can hear the Neurosis influence on the mighty, chugging riffage and tortured screams, but as the song continues to violently wind it's way onward, the increasingly spiteful tone of the vocals and the sheets of dissonant buzzing guitars that coil around the thunderous tribal drums and hypnotic dirgey riffs, and the holocaustal black metal intro of "Toucher Ce Vide B�ant Attise Ma Fascination" seamlessly falls into punishing sludge with a truly devastating riff that rises up halfway through, it become clear that Celeste are also drawing deep from the oily black pool of French black metal. The nine songs on this album aren't exceptionally long for this style of atmospheric sludge metal, with most averaging around six minutes, but Celeste create some supremely crushing riff-trances in the time they have, combining grinding downtuned Neurosis-esque crush with the sort of dissonant guitar textures that you'd normally expect from a Glorior Belli or Deathspell Omega album. Like most other bands in this style, Celeste also work in some softer extended instrumental sections that build into explosive crescendos of heaviness (as on "Mais Quel Plaisir De Voir Cette T�te D'enfant Rougir Et Suer" and "La Gorge Ouverte Et D�charn�e" - every single song title on Misanthrope(s) is a freakin' mouthful), but even in these more subdued moments, Celeste never get soft, creating tense buildups that put you on edge rather than soothe you with melodic frippery. No, this album keeps it caustic and black as fuck from start to finish, and set the tone with an unremittingly bleak and nihilistic bent to their lyrics, like what Year Of No Light would sound like with their dreamy sludge inverted and drenched in light-devouring malevolence. Clearly, Celeste are shooting for something more than just another attempt at cloning the signature sounds of Neurosis and Isis.

Also available as a limited edition double LP from Denovali, this version of Misanthrope(s) comes in a couple of different colors (our choice), three sides of blackened metallic sludge and epic rock with the fourth side sporting eye-popping silkscreened artwork. The vinyl is packaged in a heavy gatefold cover with printed inner sleeves, a really deluxe, killer-looking presentation all around, and limited to a couple hundred copies.

There's something special about how the French are able to take a sound that has been beaten to death - that of the apocalyptic metallic dirge that Neurosis pioneered on their Through Silver In Blood and developed further by Isis over the course of their first few albums - and twist it into something both bleaker, darker, and at the same time elegant and stentorian. Just off of the top of my head, there's Overmars, Year Of No Light, Omega Massif and HKY, four bands who all trace their cyclopean sludge metal sound back to Neurosis's revolutionary art-metal, but who all sound radically different from one another and from the more straightforward music that most of their American peers have been creating. From HKY's cosmic industro-doom psychdirge to the sky-reaching Disintegration worship of Year Of No Light and the blackened avant sludge opera of Overmars, it's obvious that French metallers are some of the best at taking this omnipresent sound and reinventing it in a way that few others are capable of doing.

The latest French band to be added to the list is Celeste, who just released their third album Misanthrope(s) on the excellent German label Denovali, which has brought us a number of quality albums from Daturah, Kodiak, Heirs, and other artful European sludge/metal outfits. Coming from Denovali, I had a hunch that Celeste were going to along the same lines as most of their other releases, which tend to run along the lines of post-rock influenced heaviness, but this is much heavier than anything else on the label, and definitely much, much darker, too. As soon as Misanthrope(s)'s opening track "Que Des Yeux Vides Et S�ch�s" blasts forth from the speakers, you can hear the Neurosis influence on the mighty, chugging riffage and tortured screams, but as the song continues to violently wind it's way onward, the increasingly spiteful tone of the vocals and the sheets of dissonant buzzing guitars that coil around the thunderous tribal drums and hypnotic dirgey riffs, and the holocaustal black metal intro of "Toucher Ce Vide B�ant Attise Ma Fascination" seamlessly falls into punishing sludge with a truly devastating riff that rises up halfway through, it become clear that Celeste are also drawing deep from the oily black pool of French black metal. The nine songs on this album aren't exceptionally long for this style of atmospheric sludge metal, with most averaging around six minutes, but Celeste create some supremely crushing riff-trances in the time they have, combining grinding downtuned Neurosis-esque crush with the sort of dissonant guitar textures that you'd normally expect from a Glorior Belli or Deathspell Omega album. Like most other bands in this style, Celeste also work in some softer extended instrumental sections that build into explosive crescendos of heaviness (as on "Mais Quel Plaisir De Voir Cette T�te D'enfant Rougir Et Suer" and "La Gorge Ouverte Et D�charn�e" - every single song title on Misanthrope(s) is a freakin' mouthful), but even in these more subdued moments, Celeste never get soft, creating tense buildups that put you on edge rather than soothe you with melodic frippery. No, this album keeps it caustic and black as fuck from start to finish, and set the tone with an unremittingly bleak and nihilistic bent to their lyrics, like what Year Of No Light would sound like with their dreamy sludge inverted and drenched in light-devouring malevolence. Clearly, Celeste are shooting for something more than just another attempt at cloning the signature sounds of Neurosis and Isis.