Bizarrekult from Oslo, Norway released their new opus with Season of Mist. This opus contains 8 beautiful songs of melodic, visionary progressive black metal with many nods to old school Norwegian black metal like in perfect mix of aggression of raw melodic black metal and clean sung atmospheric melodies, almost out of body ethereal in ‘Du Lovet Meg’. I can’t resist the impression of doom and sludge influences I hear in slow but effective ‘Kongen’. The title song is kind of post black metal, almost cold in space atmospheric masterpiece of work. What sometimes bothers me with bands of this genre that they have too few songs and too long songs on one opus, but fortunately this is not the case here. This one is just the right length and so various to make this a listening pleasure. Eerie and gothic like melancholy turns into blasting almost bombastic black metal hymn in ‘Hvis Jeg Bare Kunne…’, this one being my personal favorite of this opus. Vocals are screamed, but more like anguished sad screams than extreme torture. I recommend for you to listen to this opus in whole total, not partly, because only then you will get the picture of this masterpiece.
A Vulture Wake released this new record three months ago, but no matter, never too late for good music isn’t it? This one is in fact an album which contains two e.p.’s called ‘Kingdom’ and ‘Animal’. So, these are 11 songs of melodic punk rock, I may even call it progressive melodic punk rock, influenced with technical skate punk and some hints of melodic hardcore topped by vocals done by none other than legendary Chad Price (ALL/Drag The River) whose rough and recognizable melodic voice carries the listener to other dimension full of personal emotions, hope, giving other chance and also fear, sadness, blood and anguish. This collection of songs mixes agony melancholy and melody in such a great way that I listened to this one couple of times in a row to be able to hear some of the excellent songwriting and musicianship on this record. My personal favorites are: ‘Blood’, ‘Lost Cause Of The Year’, and ‘We Are Living In A Dream’. Excellent!
Ach Germany! Bringing so much great bands and projects every day and week and month to our black hearts. Leipa is a one man band/project from Bavaria active since 2021 and this is the second full length opus. This one contains 7 songs with lyrics in German. Music of Leipa is melodic black metal, with lots of emotion and atmosphere reminding me why I love this music so much. Guitar melodies are melancholic, sad, even when aggressive blast beats prevail in song parts of almost every song on this opus. Vocals are screamed but not too extreme so you can understand if you happen to speak German as I do. Now, some would call this depressive black metal. Maybe it is, but only in lyrics which deal with personal thoughts, demons and really, why try different roads when all roads lead to nothing in the end. Besides aggression there are also some calmer more atmospheric parts with some spoken word and listening to this record I can not really help myself but if I must compare Leipa to some band that reminds me of it would be Nocte Obducta. This is melodic atmospheric black metal par excellence, so check this one out.
KRAYKULLA-WEBZINE 