“Blut Aus Nord is not available for interviews” proclaims the press release accompanying Disharmonium — Undreamable Abysses (Debemur Morti), the band’s fourteenth full album since their inception in the mid-nineties. That Blut Aus Nord are conspicuous about being enigmatic says a lot about their attitude.
Desertfest, GloomyLightsPhotography
2022 is a special year for desert rock / stoner rock / doom metal extravaganza Desertfest London. The event, which takes place across multiple venues in and around Camden and has become a mainstay of the UK heavy music scene, was cancelled in 2020 for obvious reasons and then rescheduled as a special 10-year anniversary event for 2021. Inevitably, the 2021 festival was again cancelled, so the 2022 edition is not only the first Desertfest London for three years, but also a chance to celebrate in earnest a “Decade in the Desert”.
De Arma’s new three-track EP Nightcall marks something of a turning point for the Swedish gothic rock band. Following their 2021 album Strayed in Shadows, the band have now signed a multi-album deal with Silent Future Recordings, for whom Nightcall is the first offering.
QAALM is a new band featuring members and former members of Act Of Defiance, Harassor, and Seven Sisters Of Sleep. Described as atmospheric funeral doom, the LA-based group worked on writing and recording throughout 2020 and 2021, and Resilience & Despair (Hypaethral/Trepanation) is their resulting debut album. Continue reading
Bhleg are an enigmatic and mysterious Swedish group who meld a kind of progressive black metal with traditional European folk music. Fäghring (Nordvis) is their fourth full-length offering and completes a “tetralogy” of records which began with Draumr Ast in 2014. The band consists of three members known only by single letters — S (who primarily plays guitar and bass as well as some vocals, but also adds traditional and unorthodox instruments including lyre, hurdy-gurdy, mouth harp, keyboards, bullroarer, birch trumpet, frame drums, birch sticks, and stones), L (lead vocals) and H (drums). Their promo photos and album cover show the members amongst woodland, hidden beneath cloaks and flowery headdresses, holding traditional instruments and strange blood-soaked wooden dolls.Continue reading
GGGOLDDD, based in the Netherlands, have for the past decade been releasing material that defies genre conventions and blurs the boundaries between all manner of musical styles, from Metal, to post-Punk, to Pop, to Trip-Hop. Their fifth full-length release, This Shame Should Not Be Mine (Artoffact Records) is based around deeply personal themes to vocalist Milena Eva, who uses this record, conceived during the 2020 lockdown, to address traumatic events including sexual assault.
Vexier, the sophomore full-length from Switzerland’s enigmatic post-metal / doomgaze / experimental rock outfit E-L-R (Prophecy Productions), is a record that takes its time to get where it needs to. The record features five tracks spanning a total of 45 minutes; the shortest song is more than six-and-a-half minutes.
Sylvaine is the pseudonym of Norway’s Kathrine Shepard, a classically trained composer, singer, and multi-instrumentalist. Since 2014 Shepard has been releasing albums as Sylvaine, of which Nova (Season of Mist) will be the fourth (not counting a 2020 split with Unreqvited).
Emma Ruth Rundle seems to have become an artist with a licence to shift around stylistically as much as she wants while still maintaining, and continuing to build, her devoted fanbase. Last year’s revered collaboration with Thou — May Our Chambers Be Full (Sacred Bones) was dense, heavy, aggressive and complex. Whilst everything Rundle turns her hand to shares a certain delicate and fragile emotional openness, Engine Of Hell (Sargent House) in most other senses explores the opposite end of the Emma Ruth Rundle sonic spectrum.