Causam are hailing from Switzerland and this is their first full length album. This record contains eight songs, one being intro. Music of Causam can be described as fast yet melodic black metal. Their music creates atmosphere of aggression, sorrow, despair, yet at the same time melancholy with excellent melodies and guitar work. Drumming is mainly blast beats, yet turning at times into beautiful atmospheric passages just reminding me why I love black metal so much, being best music for expressing all of your emotions. My personal favorites are Beauty of Decay and Eternal, although all of the songs are just excellent. Vocals are black metal screeching but being perfect and fitting fantastic to the song structures. The lyrical themes are more deep and personal than in your face Satanic verses and the mixture of epic music and great lyrics make this one of the best black metal records that came out this year until now.
Panchrysia from Belgium recently released their new studio full length album and I listened to it and reviewed it for this webzine.
These guys have been around since 1998.and they delivered their quality black metal upon the unsuspecting world. This time on this album Panchrysia delivers 8 songs of atmospheric, brutal, but still melodic black metal. The lyrics are in English and as I understand deal with ancient myths and prophecies of the end of the world. I love the atmosphere of “Kairos”, how the song evolves between almost dark and calm atmosphere of death and nothingness into full blooded aggressivity and despair that only black metal can provide. The song structures are epic as “Rats” can prove when you listen to it, and for me that is the absolutely best song on this record. I must say hats off to the guys because they managed to retain a great deal of originality in today´s scene when a lot of the bands just become clones of each other. Don´t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong being a clone if you sound and make great music, but the road this band chose is much more difficult and I respect them for that so much more. Great album!
Second To Sun are hailing from St Petersburg, another mighty band from the awesome Russian underground scene. This album is in fact re-release of their previous album, which was instrumental only, but this time the guys recorded the vocals and I had a privilege to listen and review it for this webzine.
This record contains 10 songs of melodic post black metal with some groove metal influences and in whole it sounds really dark and dismal. The production on the record is awesome and sounds really mighty and takes you to some dark places whether you want to go there or not. Although the bio of the band says that they are like purveyors of groove post black metal, you scene purists don´t give up on this record because this is black metal pure with bleak and great atmosphere of despair, anger and depression. I loved “Region 13” being for me the best song on this record but I also loved “The Fool” and its rolling rythms complexity and some eerie background sounds making it sound awesome. All the other songs are also excellent, so check out this record you won´t regret it, cause it is a fine piece of Slavic metal.
