Earlier this spring, SCHEUSAL released their debut album, Urwahn, the so-far-mysterious entity strikes while the iron's red-hot with Fressfeind. Thankfully, not much has changed here on this second full-length. Pure 'n' proud Teutonic black metal is still the order of the day, but just like Urwahn did so stridently, Fressfeind further twists SCHEUSAL's unique iteration of German steel. Maybe going the martial-folkish direction more thoroughly, maybe running routes that are even more restless - whatever headspace you enter Fressfeind, the one-man band goes for the fucking throat, mischievous as ever. Indeed, that apt descriptor encompasses the mainman's vocals again, as the same crew of characters - the screamer, the shouter, the hooligan, the imp, the devil - all fight for breath here on this ever-shifting landscape. That landscape is painted with a production that's raw and rotten and yet somehow crisp and crystalline, making these nine screeds of mania all the more absurdly engaging and antagonizing. Alternately melancholic and triumphant, Fressfeind is the sound of SCHEUSAL on the march!
Dunkle, mystische Melodien weben sich schicksalshaft durch die Kompositionen, verschmelzen mit der endlosen Nacht und lassen die Schatten alter Legenden durch die verlassene, von Nebel umhüllte Landschaft wandern.
Svekkelse is the sixth full-length album from the Trondheim based black metal band Gjendød. The second album as a three-piece. Svekkelse continues where the previous album Livskramper quit, but this time, the band has turned it all up a notch. The band never worked with their compositions with such an intensity before.
FROSTEN is the most recent creation of prolific UK underground veteran Azrael, who also numbers such entities as Heathen Deity, Helvellyn, Torver, and now-labelmates THY DYING LIGHT among his many current endeavors. As FROSTEN, the duo of Azrael and session drummer Julian Foster play True English Black Metal.
PROFANATICA require no introduction. Cold 'n' alone American black metal before "USBM" became some dumb rallying term, pushing boundaries and "good taste" with vile blasphemy and even-more-vile music, and simply doing whatever the fuck they want, both in their original early '90s guise and their now-intensely-prolific period in the 21st millennium: there's only ever been one true PROFANATICA.
Formed in that cursed year of 2020, SCHREIGARM are a unique entry into the oft-overlooked but always-vital Teutonic black metal scene: though based in Germany, both members are actually Ukrainian. Such a mixture surely results in a sound that mixes both the austere melodicism of the nowadays Teutonic school and the stargazing mysticism endemic of the Ukrainian form throughout the years. And if 2023's The Mysteries of Fate debut was unjustly underappreciated, then SCHREIGARM's subsequent Mara Comes and Darkness Shall Reign should doubtlessly right this injustice.