Jours Pâles - Tensions
Review by RaduP

 

Most of the comments on this album's stream from a black metal focused YouTube channel are complaining that this is not actually black metal. Contrast that with the fact that we nominated the band's previous (and debut) album in our black metal category for the awards despite having melodic black metal and metalgaze categories.

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Hoofmark - Blood Red Lullabies
Review by RaduP

 

Hoofmark's Evil Blues was already a very weird take on the recent country black metal surge, but Blood Red Lullabies makes proper genre categorization even more elusive.

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SpiritWorld - Deathwestern
Review by RaduP

 

"Western black metal had its turn now it’s time for western death metal." - a fellow user who was smarter before I was.

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Deströyer 666 - Never Surrender
Review by AndyMetalFreak

7.9

Here is Never Surrender, the sixth release by the blackened thrash act Deströyer 666, which yet again provides us with more stellar headbanging material, with some of the catchiest riffs and tastiest guitar leads you'll hear this year. So Never Surrender seems a fitting album title, I say, as the beastly wolves certainly have no indication of surrendering their devastatingly ferocious bite just yet.

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Monolithe - Kosmodrom
Review by musclassia

7.8

It’s unfortunate that Monolithe have become lodged in my head as ‘the band that does weird stuff with their song lengths’. Admittedly, the extent to which they have placed patterns in their track lengths on each album does mean that they have no one else but themselves to blame for that, but nevertheless, the consistent quality of their music across records, including this one, does make anything that draws attention away from said music an unnecessary distraction.

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De-Solación - Necro-Misterio
Review by X-Ray Rod

9.0

One of the murkiest, deadliest rituals of the year.

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Mournument - Smouldering Into Dust
Review by BitterCOld

7.8

Amusingly, I fired Smouldering Into Dust up for another round while typing the review and midway through the opening track, “On Rain And Thunder” a freak hail & thunderstorm set off, killing our power. Talk about setting the mood.

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Jordfäst - Av Stoft
Review by Netzach

8.5

Another day, another black metal album with disturbing lyrical content recommended by Nejde. Jordfäst plays a stripped-down, thrashy sort of Viking black - sort of as if Moonsorrow copulated with Watain. Despite the vast lengths, these two songs are mostly riffs upon riffs upon riffs upon excellent vocal delivery.

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