Swedish black metal legends Dark Funeral are soon celebrating thirty years of existence in the scene led by their guitarist Lord Ahriman, the only founding member still in the band after all these years and driving force behind their black metal machine. This is Dark Funeral´s seventh full length opus and it contains nine songs of fantastic melodic black metal. Although I love the legendary old material, this band is like fine wine, their albums in my opinion get better and better with years. This album totally reminded me of one of my favorite bands Dissection and the hole they left when Jon Nodtveidt left this world. Now, no despair anymore, Dark Funeral deliver their music so mighty and strong, there is no fear the hole will be still here. This is melodic black metal par excellence and a lesson how it should be done. Although fast songs with blast beats and thrash influenced drum parts are my favorites like Nightfall or When Our Vengeance Is Done, the slower heavy hitters like Let The Devil In are the treasure of this opus, being anthems that hit you straight into your black heart. Heljarmadr´s vocals are superb, you can make out the lyrics but they are aggressive and he is for sure one of my favorite black metal vocalists in the scene. Go get this one, you will not be sorry.
International Black Metal Band NASTERGAL struck a deal with Wormholedeath for their EP “Solitude”, due for release on May 13th, 2022.
The band speaking of signing the EP,“Nastergal is proud to say we have signed with Wormholedeath. We are excited to work with such an amazing label and are looking forward to many years together. Our “Solitude” EP is Nastergal’s first release and features musicians from across the world. For us this is the next step into a realm of extreme metal, having played in various death and black metal bands in the past. We are very thankful of Wormholedeath for giving us this chance to share our music with the rest of the world.”
Nastergal is an international black metal bandstarted by Jacques Valentyn (guitars) and Riaan Coertze (drums) and completed with the help of Marco Toba (bass) and Evgen Zoidze (vocals). The music draws its inspiration from bands such as Dark Funeral with lyrical content influenced by the works of Friedrich Nietzsche. Nastergal proudly presents a unique take on the Black Metal genre with their own unique sound. They are committed to the music they create and strive to deliver the best to their audience. The “Solitude” EP explores the dark world of self realization and war in the mind of Zarathustra as he struggles to validate himself in a world filled with deceit and ignorance. The underlying argument is that all human values are created by humans, rather than gods, or nature, or some underlying fundamental reality.
Cover & Tracklist
1. Solitude 2. Eternal Winter 3. Hermit 4. Beyond Good and Evil
I remember Agathodaimon well from second half of the nineties when they released their great albums Blacken The Angel and Higher Art Of Rebellion, both being a masterpiece of gothic influenced vampiric black metal with long songs, perfect mixture of black screaming and clean vocals and great melodies bringing something progressive and fresh into the scene. They released six albums and disappeared and now they are back with new opus and new line-up, but the constant backbone is guitarist/vocalist Sathonys. New opus contains 10 songs of beautiful melodic atmospheric black metal with great songwriting, fantastic melodies but the one thing that really stands out for me is interplay between Ashtrael´s shrieking voice and Sathonys´ clean and gothic voice thus delivering the skinprickling atmosphere of almost touchable darkness. The songs are not so long as in the first albums, but they tell the story of persistence, emotions, darkness, a bit romantic gothic vampirism and longing, eros and thanatos. My personal favorites are Mother Of All Gods which features ex member Vlad Dracul, also Ain´t Death Grand and both In My Dreams conceptual songs. Welcome back Agathodaimon, with a strong return album.
KRAYKULLA-WEBZINE 