Makeshift Altars

  Awash in synthesizer, reverby clean guitars, and vocals ranging from tender female-sung melodies to forceful, animalistic snarls, Red Moon Architect returns with a fuller and increasingly modern production style behind their sound.         The Finnish doomers that are the subject of this review have only popped up on my radar recently - maybe thanks to a new advertising budget with their new label Noble Demon? Whatever the case, after listening to Rise and especially One Shines Brighter off of this release, I thought it appropriate to go back and give some of their older material a listen. In brief, this record is both a deviation from their most recent music - Kuura, a decidedly blacker, funeral-doom release, was just last year - and a 'return to form'. Listen to one of the tracks from Fall, the band's sophomore effort, and hear the similarities. It's fair to say that these guys have managed to cover a lot of musical ground since their first full-length in 2012, and

Just in time for spooky season, Greek Lovecraftian lecturers weave a dreadful tale as old as time and space.     Brace yourselves for something absolutely shocking: everything on this record has been done before, much in the way that any chord progressions in modern pop music have already been done before. But the real important question is, have all these elements and influences been packaged together in this way before? I think not, and this is what sets Prometheus apart from their peers in both the death metal and black metal spheres. After all, who else is bridging this astronomical gap between the two genres with such panache?     When you take either Resonant Echoes From Cosmos of Old or Consumed in Flames (the group’s first outing) at even a casual listen, both the death and black metal influences are obvious: a helping of Nile, a dash of Emperor, two pinches of Immortal, and deglaze the pan with some Morbid Angel. But it’s how all these elements are so harmoniously baked i

     Play this shit outside your house on Halloween and entreat your neighbors to the vast existential despair of the C O S M O S      Sometimes I forget that bands are people, with thoughts and feelings and strange ideas about the world I can't reconcile with my own thoughts. I can read credits on any given album and have them just be names or aliases without context or meaning. I'm not a socialite, nor particularly empathic. And it's funny the things that will snap my brain into realizing people making music can think outside of filling my ears with noise. Like how a celestially horrific release like Kraken Duumvirate's The Stars Below, The Sea Above was released so close to Halloween, in the season of cold rain and wind and impending dread. Very near to the months of seasonal affect. Driving thru the drizzling cold wetness to get out in my tree stand this morning I was listening to this album and couldn't help but feel Kraken Duumvirate had invaded my psyche and

      Throwback Thursday is early this week, everyone! Celebrate with some gnarly tunes laid down before the almighty Yog-Sothoth!     Indeed, I do feel transported to some other dimension where early-2000s death metal never went away or never pupated into its modern form (eagerly awaiting new Horrendous release, throw me a bone). The new release from eastern French Lovecraft acolytes Abyssal Ascendent truly does feel like a time capsule of sorts. Not that we haven't had an abundance of Lovecraftian metal in the interim; H.P. and metal go together like Harold and Maude. Abyssal Ascendent simply feel like they bury their feet in the soil of a very specific time and very specific style of death metal that I don't find myself encountering very much. The early-2000s scene was what I was brought into the world of death metal by, with names like Krisiun, Hate Eternal, and Bloodbath on every heathen tongue. Like most nostalgia-worthy eras, it felt like a simpler time - at least, to my

        Dysylumn's Cosmogonie is a cyclone of deeply-inspired depressive noise that has quickly become one of my favorites of the year .        There, I said it. Proclaiming that something is one's favorite 'x' is always a dangerous proposition when it comes to encountering new material, particularly when it comes to something as close to my cold, Grinchian heart as BLVCK METVL. It's hard to objectively put one album over another, particularly when listening to a wide range albums in a variety of styles in what could broadly be called 'extreme metal'.  That being said, after multiple listens of this three-cassette/triple LP(!) release from Signal Rex records, I'm happy to report that this thing fucking kills. It's titanic to be sure, weighing in at over 80 minutes, but in that time the French duo succeed in developing a truly unholy atmosphere in which nary a second is wasted; while it's no secret that I very much have a soft spot for the more bl

The Welsh death metal giants attempt to reinvent the wheels on their sonic war machine.     Let’s just get this out of the way first: I have been absolutely thrilled with everything Venom Prison have put out thus far, and I’m going to try not to gush, but that being said, I’m also not going to promise anything because this group seems to knock it out of the park with every single release. Though their sound has matured through the years (hence this rerelease of newly recorded old material plus two new tracks) I have never found anything to dislike about the band’s direction, whether artistically or sonically. And I feel I can tell you, dear reader, that this compilation album is no exception.     My first exposure to the band came with their first full-length, Animus , which had a lot to say for a group so newly-formed (although still hot on the heels of two prior EPs). The album came screaming onto the scene with a very raw but well-articulated sound, the basis of what would make

I       I recently had the privilege of probing Neil Purdy of Luna's Call on a few questions I've had floating around in my head since the release of the monumental Void  back in August. This release has quickly become one of my favorites of the year and I felt it appropriate to get in contact with him. So without any bullshit, here's what I had to ask, and what he had to say: Makeshift Altars:  Since the release of Void, what have Luna's Call been up to, and what are your plans? Neil Purdy:  With the current state of the world it’s very difficult to plan for live appearances, so we’re trying to focus as much as we can on our online presence.       We recently launched a Kickstarter project where fans can pre-order Void  on vinyl and we reached our goal within five hours.  When imagining the album as a finished item and the track order, a vinyl release was always thought about and how it would work best. The album artwork alone longs to be displayed as a larger format o

  I don't have a witty tag line for this one, sorry...     Mostly because I feel like wit is lost on this record, and going about describing it in broad terms is reductive to its immensity. Serpent Column, the one-man behemoth of black metal, surfaced several years ago with the release of Ornuthi Thalassa, followed thereafter by the critically acclaimed Mirror in Darkness  in 2019. I've been personally following Serpent Column since immediately prior to Mirror  and have enjoyed the rapid progression he has put to record; following that album immediately with Endless Detainment in early 2020. To that end, we arrive at what Serpent Column has described as the "end of a cycle" in his interview with Terminus, the release in question: Kathodos . The album title here meaning "descent", Kathodos  truly does feel like an album meant to delve deep, whether it be toward some conclusion of musical or philosophic thinking, and rise again out of that hole.     Serpent Co

      Another crushing release from transatlantic record label Transcending Obscurity, Jupiterian's new full-length Protosapien is a hybrid sludge/doom/death excursion that, while never overstaying its' welcome, never feels anything less than planet-sized.      At just under thirty six minutes, the Brazilian band's content is here probably best digested as a whole record, which is why in my discussion about it here I'll be giving my more general feelings towards it as a whole. Opening with the sounds of massive electronic percussion and buzzing flies - I pictured corpses rotting on a battlefield with drums and horns in the distance - the atmosphere is quickly set for Jupiterian to serve up their unique blend of despair-laden metal. The production on this record is exceptional, sitting neatly between something professionally-cut  and the more raw sounds of a lofi black metal tape. The guitar tones are guttural and crunchy on the low end, able to to drone and chug on as

A new contender in the contest to sound like a hive of angry bees is on the scene…      and Cryptae are their name. Formed by two members of other such unlovable, misanthropic bands as Plague Organ and Dead Neanderthals, Cryptae have gone about positioning themselves as a new breed of experimental death metal. With the gurgitation of their forthcoming album Nightmare Traversal, the ne'er-do-wells in question have given us a glimpse into their just-barely-musical world. And, I've got to say, they've pretty aptly named this monster; it is a nightmare to traverse.       I mean that in the most lighthearted way possible. If you've heard anything from Plague Organ or Imperial Cult you may have some inkling of the beat down you're about to receive. Although less monolithic than his recent releases under other monikers, Marlon Wolterink's stylistic presence dominates everything to do sonically with Cryptae (though he is only mentioned as engineer, he is present in all