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Occasionally your Bandcamp Feed explodes with activity all centred on one release in particular. Sure there's still snippets of kvlt BM demo's and rarefied DM floating about as per usual but there are those moments when roughly 60% of your "followed" fans have all bought the same thing. Ingurgitating_Oblivion are the artist of the moment for this scenario.  Over the past weeks their second full length appears to have been shifting like hot cakes.  Not a day has gone by this past week whereby I haven't seen somebody else buy this record with the deceptively painted shiny female figure that looks at first glance to be a photograph but is in fact a really well done piece of art. The surprises don't stop with the cover art.  "Vision Wallows In Symphonies Of Light" has a very grandiose title and a quick read of the track listing reveals more of the same with amazing titles such as "A Devourer Of Fitting Shades Who Dwells In Rays Of Lights...

I am reliably informed by more than one source that this is "post-millennial, Luciferian orthodox black metal".  I have no idea what that means as I never really take too much time to reflect on what sub-genre of an already existing sub-genre the current opus I am listening to falls under.  For the purposes of this review this is simply a black metal record. That isn't to say that this is all that there is to "Atra Lumen".  There's also some decidedly death metal moments floating around on here along with some doom laden riffs to boot.  For all it's atonal chords, "Atra Lumen" has some real bite to it also.  Yes, there's tremolo galore on here (and superbly done too) but this plays like a ritual all in itself, just as one incantation seems to be taking the centre stage something else seeps in out of the ether to take the ceremony off in an even darker direction. Listen closely and you'll hear stabs of symphony and choral mom...

Melodic black metal by its name is almost a paradox by definition.  Many a trve kvltist would argue that black metal was never mean't to be accessible let alone melodic, yet it is fair to say that a lot of my BM collection gives a firm nod of recognition to the more melodious aspects of the genre. Orm now join that group in my collection with their frankly superb debut full length.  The album starts immediately with no requirement for an intro deemed necessary as "Blood Of Your Blood" attacks the listener like a marauding horde of pillaging vikings.  Immediate though it is to start as it builds as a track it does so intelligently, pacing itself well and adjusting tempo appropriately enough to hold the ear throughout its seven minutes plus runtime.  There's black vocals throughout this opening track but as it draws to a close there's a choral backing vocal tempered perfectly in the atmosphere of the music. As the track closes it uses harrowing riffs in an almos...

So a whole four months into 2017 and I finally get round to a blog post.  Yey, go me!  Painful though it is to admit life just gets in the way all too easily nowadays and so the pleasure of sitting down and reviewing the music that accompanies most of my day is a luxury I can't always find the space for. Thankfully, the time I have spent with the latest release from Black Harvest has been very rewarding and memorable to the extent that it has earned the accolade of this year's first review. The first thing obvious once the quick picked strings of the intro subside is that there's an energy, a raw freshly unrestrained emotion to this sound.  As "Denial" jars and jolts its way through a varied and pacy five and a half minutes it is as instant on the senses as that first coffee of the morning or first beer of the weekend on a Friday night.  It's immediate without being overly accessible, memorable without being predictable and varied without being confusing. ...