Ashenheart: Tales From Eternal Dusk (2025)

From a purely sonic perspective, cassette might be the ideal format for black metal. I started with CDs, dabbled a bit in vinyl for my favorite bands in the genre, but lately I’ve been grabbing cassettes from Bandcamp (usually from the excellent Fiadh Productions), connecting the threads of collaborations until I found Ashenheart and their latest, Tales From Eternal Dusk. The timing couldn’t have been more perfect: had I discovered them earlier, I might have been turned off by their former adherence to FromSoftware video games for their thematic inspiration. But when the band channels second-wave energy with a more modern, intentional spirit this well, I guess you can lay your Bloodborne fanfic on heavy as you please.

ChrisDecember 15, 2025December 16, 2025Leave a comment

Vinyl

Deafheaven: Lonely People With Power (2025)

I can remember Deafheaven in Decibel Magazine way back when their debut Roads To Judah came out in 2011. It was solid, but at the time I had other musical preoccupations so dropped it. Then Sunbather came out and everyone lost their goddamn minds. And with good reason: that cover, the wall of sound that would sprout a literal army of imitators, none of whom could touch the band and only weaken the subgenre to the point where we’re all kind of sick of it. Since then the band have been both expanding and contracting their sound, drilling into their blueprint, blowing it up, and then reassembling it again, all to varying results. But those results were necessary, because after too many listens to count Lonely People With Power might be the band’s best, most honest album in their career. It’s certainly one of the best metal album in 2025, so time to do that thing when I figure out why I think that way.

ChrisJune 2, 2025June 1, 2025Leave a comment

Vinyl

Nite: Cult Of The Serpent Sun (2025)

Only three months into the new year and traditional heavy metal is having one hell of a banner year. First there was Century in January bringing us their debut Sign of the Storm; in February came the streetwise and ripping Mean Mistreater with their second album Do Or Die. And now in March we have the big one: the furious blackened rock and roll heavy metal swagger of San Francisco’s Nite returning with album #3. Cult of the Serpent Sun embraces the spirit of denim and leather, of the NWOBHM and makes sure to inject some lethal dark majesty in its riffs and lyrics, taking the “heavy” part of heavy metal to its zenith. Goddamn do I love this album…

ChrisMarch 19, 2025March 18, 20252 Comments

Cassette

Auriferous Flame: The Insurrectionists And The Caretakers (2024)

Wrapping up extreme metal cassette week by moving away from the death/thrash and charting blacker waters. I definitely recall where I heard of Auriferous Flame, the one man black metal entity purveying in old school but decidedly anti-fascist black metal: Banger TV’s Cassette Cult – the top 10 underground releases off 2023. Mainman Ayloss is also the sonic mind behind Spectral Lore, but the music he peddles as Auriferous Flame is much more second wave worship, albeit with modern melodic flourishes, which is definitely my thing. The Insurrectionists And The Caretakers is listed as an EP with only three songs, but when your first track is an epic 15 minutes and the whole album clocks in at close to a half hour, those labels become meaningless. This thing rocks, so let quickly get into it.

ChrisMarch 7, 2025March 7, 2025Leave a comment

Vinyl

ISLEPTONTHEMOON: Only The Stars Know Of My Misfortune (2024)

Why do we consume what we consume? Sometimes it’s just faith, whether it’s a band, a style, or a label. Sometimes it’s all of those at once, which is what prompted me to buy Only The Stars Know Of My Misfortune, the third full-length from anonymous bedroom black metal artist ISLEPTONTHEMOON. Everything sounds great on paper: one-man DSBM artist incorporates shoegaze and slowcore into their sound, gets picked up by Bindrune and is championed by Panopticon’s Austin Lunn, with a mastering job from Sterling Morrison. I wish the results were as good as that summary, because like a lot of music of this nature, and on this label, equal care isn’t paid to each section of the music, with the resulting album having so many solid moments marred by super compression and a lack of dynamics that sadly is far too common for this sub-genre. There are beautiful moments to be had, but man I wish it didn’t kill my ears to find them.

ChrisJanuary 23, 2025Leave a comment

Vinyl

Hail Spirit Noir: Mayhem In Blue (2016)

The scientific community wants you to believe evolution comes over long periods of time. Millions of years from the sea to the land, millions more from ape to man. Thankfully we don’t have to wait so long in music, and Hail Spirit Noir bare that fact out. Over the course of just over a decade the Greek progressive black metal outfit have gone from traditional (if slightly experimental) atmospheric black metal to Enslaved-style progressive metal to straight up synth soundtrack mavens and the new organic blend of sound that embody their latest album Fossil Gardens. I hit the Randomizer on my Discogs account and came back with Mayhem in Blue, the band’s third full length and breakout album. Listening back to it now I’m finding all the things I love about the genre, its permeability (despite certain bands insistence black metal remain “pure” whatever that means), and willingness to find drama and grace in the weirdest of places. It’s been too long since I heard this album, so I’m happy to set it down here.

ChrisNovember 13, 2024Leave a comment

Consuming the Tangible

We are what we consume

Tag: black metal

Ashenheart: Tales From Eternal Dusk (2025)

Deafheaven: Lonely People With Power (2025)

Nite: Cult Of The Serpent Sun (2025)

Auriferous Flame: The Insurrectionists And The Caretakers (2024)

ISLEPTONTHEMOON: Only The Stars Know Of My Misfortune (2024)

Hail Spirit Noir: Mayhem In Blue (2016)