Undergrind Metal

Obscuring Veil – Fleshvoid To Naught March 2019 – I, Voidhanger Records Mories, famous for having recorded half of the avant-garde/experimental black metal released since 1996, participates in his second release this year, Fleshvoid To Naught. Released by the folks who distributed Tchornobog and the Spectral Lore/Jute Gyte split, the album has a legacy to honour – while less abrasive than other similar acts, Obscuring Veil is more than the sum of its multinational parts. After a quick intro, Fleshvoid To Naught picks up and delivers some of the most dissonant black metal in recent memory. The drumming has the kind of micro-intensity you'd usually find in jazz, with fast but subtle cymbal sections and an overall tactful approach, mostly leaving blasts behind for a more technical and original style. There's something approachable and conventional about it, maybe the mix of relatively simple time signatures and recurring power chord strumming, which make for a ...

Noctambulist – Atmospheres of Desolation January 2019 – Blood Harvest Records Atmospheres of Desolation is the most dense and opaque record I've listened to this year, bringing me back to my early exploration of dissonant black and death metal, where I learned to swim in the thick pools of quicksand distortion and breathe the noxious fumes of dissonance. Noctambulist have crafted a trying experience, as wading through the waist-high marsh they recorded requires full attention – from the hellish arpeggios burning my lungs to the muddy technical chuggs pulling at my legs from beneath, Atmospheres of Desolation does its best to test my sanity. Despite the obscure, swampy aesthetic they've cultivated like a jungle garden of poisonous plants, Noctambulist show technical prowess, but with enough restraint as to not become musical masturbation. Kick drums using start/stop patterns, guitar work that needs no leads to show off creativity or precision, and overall tight ...

Drastus – La Croix de Sang March 2019 – Norma Evangelium Diaboli Being picked up by Norma Evangelium Diaboli and being held to the same standards as the legends of dissonant black metal, namely Deathspell Omega and Teitanblood, is both an honour and a curse, as you'll inevitably end up being compared to said masters. While Drastus isn't nearly as chaotic as Deathspell Omega, it certainly isn't your average 3 rd wave Bandcamp project – they've nailed the whole uncomfortable, smothering vibe in a similar way to Hexis, weaving chromatic shifts disorienting and confusing. Songwriting is Drastus's forte, exchanging riffs and hooks for a more fluid, almost liquid approach to composition. Not nearly as angular or obtuse as its predecessors, La Croix de Sang feels more like a death by drowning than by a thousand cuts – the mesmerizing cyclical melodies are unending and darken with every revolution, like a light dying from above as one sinks to the depth...

Light Dweller – Incandescent Crucifix January 2019 – Unsigned When checking out a one-man bandcamp release, you'll often end up either discovering something strange, or something forgettable – Incandescent Crucifix is the former, and one of the best blackened death metal albums I've heard so far. This isn't your average Behemoth clone, as Light Dweller takes a much more experimental and technical approach to the genre, with songwriting reminiscent of Wormed given the contrast between one section and the next, and riffs ranging from quasi-math/black to the more dissonant side of technical death metal. It's a dense album, with chaotic composition and an unorthodox take on the rules – there are none of the sweeps or noodling you'd expect from something labelled technical, with all the creative effort being thrown at the sinuous riffs and dissonant chords. The vocals and drums are the only constants on the record, the rest being ever-changing, like som...

The Secret – Lux Tenebris Aug. 2018 – Southern Lord Recordings 8 years after the release of the masterful Solve Et Coagula, and 6 after Agnus Dei, The Secret return with a short EP, and what they've lost in chaos they've gained in focus. The introduction to Solve Et Coagula, Cross Builder, was my favourite part of the record, and since Agnus Dei they've been distancing themselves from their simpler past and developed a more mature, blackened style. Despite this, The Secret is still as aggressive as before – it's as if they took a grinding approach to writing black metal, with production putting the drums further up front and playing dark arpeggios with a tone reminiscent at times of the legendary Boss HM-2. Their songwriting has taken a turn for the better, with much more dynamic and contextually surprising composition. Building crescendos like none other, before slowing down, building into arpeggios and reconstructing a previous riff – this is ...

Hexis – XII Hexis have been impressing me ever since Abalam back in 2014. Their splits with This Gift is a Curse (2015) and Primitive Man (2015) introduced me to both of those bands, and they've always been part of the best in the catastrophic, dissonant blackened scenes. XII is similar to previous albums, with their classic suffocating sound of tremolo-picked pieces of hatred and despair staying untouched. That being said, there are some slightly heavier elements, as well as slightly more focussed songwriting which help XII stand out. Hexis has the habit of writing very short songs, but quite a few of them – it almost feels as if they divided their albums into chapters rather than wrote individual pieces. Everything flows, there are no breaks or interludes – it's a grindcore-esque approach to black metal, except with actual continuity between songs. By doing this, they turn their albums into dense, impenetrable slabs of hatred in which one must either dive and a...

Five the Hierophant – Over Phlegeton Dark Essence Records – 2017 There's a rare breed of album which instantly becomes a cult classic, and I can confidently say Over Phlegeton is one of them. Experimental, weird, bizarre, none of these words come close to describing just how extraordinary and interesting this record is. If I had to draw parallels with another band, I'd say it's a heavier, more mature version of Mamaleek, with many similar elements such as the ethnic percussions or non-traditional scales, but with a much darker visage and more detailed composition. There have been incredible avant-garde metal albums using unconventional instruments, but none have been so tactfully used as the saxophone is on Over Phlegeton. Played as a full instrument and not a token nod to some jazzy experimentation, Five the Hierophant explore the extremeties of what the sax can do – from screaming leads floating above the guitars to wailing voices in the wind, passing by hear...

DSKNT – PhSPHR Entropy Sentient Ruin Records – 2017 DSKNT has been active since 2013, and somehow I only discovered them recently. As a fan of catastrophic black metal à la Deathspell Omega or Plebeian Grandstand, I was delighted to find another band in the relatively barren field of good avant garde black metal. The album kicks off with the best kind of strange, unnerving riff that sends a warning to the listener – you're in for a project with greater amplitude than most. Almost all of the riffs, excluding one or two in the latter portion of the record, have been soaked in the bath of avant garde, dripping with experimentation. Not scared of narrative composition, giving us a trip into his strange maze of a mind, Asknt creates sinuous riffs, with jagged edges and unnatural angles, but with more focus on the sinues and flow than similar artists, who often go for a slightly sharper aesthetic. There are moments of clarity, descents into madness, and long trips across ble...

As soon as the album started I knew this was going to be a good one. There were a couple of surprises, but the introduction doesn’t lie about where this record is going. As an avid fan of catastrophic black metal such as Plebeian Grandstand (which have a very similar feeling at some moments), the opening was a welcome apocalypse of guitar noise to my ears. As soon as the vocals hit, I instantly saw a dying, tortured man dressed in rags. The cymbal work caught my ear, and the man behind the kit knows what he’s doing. More about him later. Clean vocals come into play after a couple of minutes, and took me by surprise. I was hoping they wouldn’t be there – I often find they’re out of place – but by the middle of my first listen I was converted. They’re not eerie at all, it’s more of a melancholic hopelessness, which works with the way the album’s written. It’s worth noting the singer’s range is also quite decent, managing to hit those rare lower octaves. While the songs themsel...