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The Best Black Metal Album
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At the same time more adventurous and more concise, this Shadowplay For Yesterdays, A Forest Of Stars's third album, is without doubts the band's most astonishing work so far. This black metal of the most original kind features all the trademarks of the band - great riffs, haunting violins, eerie Victorian atmospheres and so forth - coupled with fantastic songwriting and a dark backstory. So don your Victorian costume if you have one, and enjoy this 2012 landmark!
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Slowly developing tracks lull you in before giving way to a furious torrent of frenzied riffing and howling vocals. The tide-like build and departure of intensity prevent the epic length tracks from becoming stale. Cold Of Ages is a grim and frostbitten affair.
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Fans of this lauded and constantly shifting French chimera were treated to two releases this year. The follow up EP in the Liber series, which focuses on the band's more primitive side, has built on the first incarnation and improved it immensely. Denser, more dynamic and varied this is an absolute maelstrom of sound and technique known almost exclusively to this band.
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A complete re-recording of Darkspace's first demo. It's difficult to overstate how effective this overhaul has been, so much so that the EP's first track may well be Darkspace's greatest song to date. An unforgettable journey into and beyond the cold void of the cosmos.
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Mories de Jong continues his never-ending journey through terrifying music and Eschatological Scatology is another piece of his colossal jigsaw. Rarely has madness, chaos and disharmony sounded this good yet everything remains contained and meticulously thought-out in order to explode right in front of the listener's ears with disgustingly forward-thinking and multi-layered black metal.
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Take a drink. Another French black metal band, another great release. Not as wistful as Alcest, not as out there as Deathspell Aus Nord, this is closer to good old raging and dissonant black metal. Sometimes straightforward and unrelenting is the way to go.
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French black metal with an industrial edge, Reverence have long promised us an album worthy of their scene and their peers and with The Asthenic Ascension they well and truly nailed it. An exceptionally varied, deeply layered and exploratory record bolstered by skilful execution and rich production values. Another front-line warrior in the unstoppable French black metal army.
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Raging black metal gives way to stark, almost jazzy, interludes, before the band resumes a ferocious assault on your earhole. The music is also presented in such a way that it feels simultaneously murky and massive, sprawling. The net result is a pretty great sonic spectacle. The shifting moods from ominous build up to blasturbation and back again never allow you to get entirely settled. The moment you feel in place, the floor falls out from underneath you again. Phtagn!
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Despite its kvlt status, Verdunkeln's unique take on black metal is surprisingly accessible without being dumbed down. In the vein of their demo and debut, Weder Licht Noch Schatten is simultaneously dreamy, hypnotic and gritty with an underlying fury that can only be believed upon hearing.
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Wilds Forlorn is a one-man project of Yuri Thenus, and he must be some musical genius floundering in misery when writing this album. As the enticing cover art suggests, the spellbinding instrumentation lulls the listener into a hollow vortex of atmospheric black metal with depressive undertones, leaving you stranded in bleakness as it strips your soul naked.
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