Lumen Ad Mortem are hailing from Adelaide, Australia, far away scene for us Europeans from Central Europe and I am so glad when I discover hidden gem and beauty from that scene and believe me, there are superb underground bands and projects there. This is relatively new band in the scene, this being their debut opus, but members of the band are veterans of the scene playing of having played in Destroyer 666, King Parrot, Deluge, to name only a few. This opus offers six epic songs of mainly slowed down atmospheric and melodic black metal with some doom influences like for example in ‘Infinite Resonance’, but do not be worried there are also blast beats like in ‘Within the Smoke’ whose aggression turns back again into slower epic songwriting of ‘Ethereal’, with that beautiful epic melodic blast beat ending. Vocals are black metal screams, sometimes, going into death metal grunts and gothic chant reminding me of late great Peter Steele of Type O Negative at times. Keys and orchestrations are grandiose and fit perfectly sometimes at front sometimes backing guitar melodies, aggression and melancholy. This album yet again reminds me why I love black metal so much as a music to express your feelings and innermost battle with your demons. My personal favorites: ‘Ethereal’, ‘Thought and Memory’, ‘Narrow Paths and Stoney Ground’.
Controversial Finnish black metal institution Goatmoon is back with new opus. This one contains eight songs. Why controversial? Because many tie Goatmoon to some not good political themes, but this is not the issue here. The music and atmosphere is. I always admired how Goatmoon under management of one Blackgoat Gravedesecrator who writes music and his friends and session musicians help him at gigs, gets to create such superb melancholy plus aggression atmosphere with such epic guitar melodies coupled with synths and tortured screaming vocals. This is Nordic pure black metal par excellence. I love how Goatmoon progressed from raw black metal roots to more epic black, backed with domicile northern folk synth melodies and inspired by cold and bleak surroundings of the North. My personal favorites on this beautiful record are: ‘Raging With The Lion’s Blood’, ‘What Once Was…’ and ‘Protector Of The North’.
Italian underground extreme metal scene is strong and Ulfhednar are hailing from Rome, Lazio and this is their second full length opus. What to expect here? Well, there are intro plus eight songs on this one. The music is basically melodic, epic black metal but with lots of death metal and even some thrash metal influences, sounding fresh and modern yet at the same time nodding head to the old masters of the genre. Vocals are cool, from black metal screeching to death metal growling, depending on the vibe in the song and main guitar melodies are such epic work, transgressing into thrash aggression and staccato of drums, evolving into more atmospheric visions of the songs. Lyrics are about inner demons and dealing with it. I would love to hear this band play live because I am sure this material sounds just fantastic live. My personal favorites are: Punto Omega, Famelica Brama and Ora Oscura.
KRAYKULLA-WEBZINE 