Germany has been always great black metal scene and Wolfmond Production brings us some really awesome releases. This time it is a new opus by Lost Shade. This is their fourth full length opus being in the scene since 1999. This opus contains ten songs. Music of Lost Shade is fast and kind of raw black metal, but also song structures have some epic warrior battle melodies, with lyrics more oriented towards pagan side of things. Vocals are black metal screaming, not too extreme but I can also hear some chanting and some spoken word in some songs depending on the atmosphere. As I said, this is black battle pagan metal par excellence. Lyrics are in German, but I understand the language so my personal favorites on this one are Ewige Vergeltung, great epic song with such eerie piano song ending, also Hexentanz and Leichenmarsch. It kind of reminds me of old school Mystic Circle in its epicness, but without synth and symphonic passages. Good epic pagan battle black metal.
Germany has vast underground black metal scene and Tot aus dem Wald is one of the jewels of this scene. This one has been in the scene since 1997 led by entity called Das Kakophonieä (All Instruments, Vocals). This opus offers eight old school raw black metal anthems filled with energy of old times and resisting these modern overproduced so called black metal bands. Besides hypnotic almost ritualistic guitar work, there are couple of subtle melodies thrown underneath it all and what I also find remarkable are those dark ambient sounds like some mixture of J-horror and Kurosawa movies. Lyrics are in German and I think they deal with some sort of Asian warrior demons if I am not mistaken. My personal favorites are Oni, wollen zerreissen wollen zerfetzen, and also one called Tengu, die Nase des Todes. This is old school raw black metal par excellence.
I once visited Požega, Croatia in December and it was magic. All those woods, a kind of sinister atmosphere, some invisible spirit of old in the air. Well, Kktz, veteran and legend of Croatian underground scene delivered another release with his black metal entity Tenebrositas. This time, significant news is that on this release Tenebrositas is a duo with Kktz handling vox. guitars and bass and O. handling drums and production. This is in fact one epic tale, song of just under fifteen minutes which indicates a bit of new path for Tenebrositas. It is still fast and raw almost hypnotic black metal with repetitive melody on guitar that kind of rolls through all song parts reappearing again and again. Atmosphere is dark yet fighting, victorious and persisting that dark hordes will prevail one day. Vocals are fantastic as always but this time Kktz tried some new things, by this I don’t mean clean singing but a bit more following guitar melody and melancholy with his shrieks. I love how the opus kind of slows down almost doomy towards the end but then wakes up to promise us another battle. This is in my opinion best Tenebrositas yet, I follow this entity for years in my zine. Recommendation.
KRAYKULLA-WEBZINE 