Not much is known about entity called Leanan Sidhe except that it is from North East, Pennsylvania and it is fascinating how USBM takes more and more quality in the scene with great releases and superb bands/projects. This seems to be debut opus with five songs just under 50 minutes meaning they are longer but in no way boring. The cover easily describes the music, it is desolate, melodic and atmospheric black metal with lots of dark ambient influences in some song parts. This music is meant for walking along lonely road through the desolate woods cleaning your black heart from all that need not be. There is a vibe of melancholy and sadness, especially in awesome instrumental The Black Crow of Morrigan, being almost gentle night song. But, there is also black metal aggression on this album with screaming vocals, whose anguish shows all bleakness and pain. Guitar work is absolutely stunning, melodies are something that stays in your heart for a long time. Also synth and ambient parts are cleverly incorporated into the album as a whole. Great album, provides great feelings. Try the title song if you don’t believe me, you will be in awe.
Pando are entity hailing from USA and this is their new record with Aesthetic Death. What do we have here? This music and this record is definitely not for everyone. These 9 tracks are a soundtrack to apocalypse and ending of the world and I love it. Pando play experimental drone/ambient black metal and noise with some sludge influences thrown here and there in the songs like on of my favorites Total Station Theodolite. What I love is a use of samples together with dark ambient and drone noises, coupled with whispers and screams and it reminds me of some broken down tv that stayed playing after the apocalyptic ending of humanity and it keeps repeating some residual nightmares over and over again. Vocals are screamed, guttural and music is black metal in its foundation, but so much more indeed. There is aggression, there is atmosphere and there is darkness that can almost be touched if you reach out with your hand and close your eyes and open your mind to this dark and beautiful opus. Great record indeed.
Hollowness: “This was the hardest song for us to finish. We edited it multiple times and even re-did the whole song once. After all the trouble, somehow it became the one for introducing this project to the world. The lyrics were made from one of my older poems and adding some wider perspective around it. This particular poem was very personal to me, but somehow it was refreshing to update it now when my own mindset has changed a bit from the time it was made.”
Enough: “This was the first song we did together and after this one the whole concept became much lighter. Originally we were supposed to do ”only” this kind of songs, but then we threw all genres to trash and decided to do what we wanted instead. I really had to go through a lot of practicing for the rough vocals, as I hadn’t recorded that kind of singing before. Also for that reason, waiting to finish this song in the studio was nerve racking for me as I was really insecure about my technique before the session, but somehow just a few weeks before, something clicked and I just started doing it right. All in all, I am super pleased with the outcome and can’t thank Jonne Soidinaho enough for making this one possible and giving me thoughts and teaching for different vocal skills.”
Wither: “This song was supposed to become a love song, but somehow it (too) ended up being a sad story. We started making this instruments first and picked a lyric after some of the instrumental visions had already been recorded to the demo. In the lyric the love is obviously present, but also strong feelings about fear of rejection and looking up from depths before surrendering to completely new phases in life. This was also the only lyric where the original poem ended up completely unedited, just a little repetition here and there.”
Corrupt: “This song will be the last song on the EP. It is a calm but a bit unnerving (in a good way of course) setting with more organic tones, acoustic guitar and I get to use the lower range of my voice. Lyric wise, it tells the story of self development and kind of self appreciation, when you find yourself in the lowest point of your road, you have to choose between destroying yourself by just laying in the fire or saving yourself by letting go of everything you know even though it will be the hardest thing you’ve ever done.”
Rioghan is a solo project performed by singer Rioghan Darcy. Rioghan was founded in 2019 and is based on Lapua, Finland. Rooted deeply in both gothic and progressive metal scenes, she sure should bring something interesting on the table. She started off in 2010 as a poetry and lyric writer, but in 2019 she finally wanted to add some more to the mix and decided to fleshen up some of her words with music. She teamed up with a few skilled songwriters and together they came up with a 4 song EP “Blackened Sky”.
KRAYKULLA-WEBZINE 