black metal

Record #993: Alcest – Les Chants de l’Aurore (2024)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

No photo description available.If Alcest had hung it up after Ecailles de Lune in 2010, there’s a good chance they would have still been recognized as one of the most influential bands in metal. After all, they were the founders of the Blackgaze movement that Deafheaven imported stateside, inspiring legions of copycats. In many corners of metal’s various subgenres, it’s impossible to escape the French pioneers’ influence. Their name has been printed on more hype stickers for other bands than just about anyone I’ve ever seen.

But amazingly, not only did they continue past that masterpiece, but they’ve released a few more since. While Shelter’s more subdued palette may have disappointed fans of their harsher side, each record since then offers a strong contention to being called their best.

Maybe it’s recency bias, but Les Chants de l’Aurore (French for The Songs of Dawn) might actually offer the most compelling argument.

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Record #973: Kvelertak – Endling (2023)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

“Rock and roll don’t come from your brain, it comes from your crotch.” Thus spake James Franco’s Daniel Desario on Freaks and Geeks, and though I might disagree with the universality of that sentiment, there’s no denying that rock and roll emanates from a primitive place deep inside of us (how else do you explain the success of Limp Bizkit?).

While there’s no shortage of subgenres taking themselves too seriously, perhaps the biggest offender is black metal. Through all the corpse paint, church burning, and inter-band homicide, it often seems like there’s no room for levity in the scene. Even in the less purist offshoots like blackgaze, everything is delivered with complete sincerity.

Then there’s Kvelertak. Dubbing themselves “black ‘n’ roll,” the Norwegian sextet takes the blistering sonic assault of black metal and injects it with a heaping dose of crotch-thrusting rock and roll.

You might as well call it Blue Öyster Kvlt. And if there’s any question, it rules.

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Record #943: Agriculture – Agriculture (2023)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

“Ecstatic black metal” seems a bit like an oxymoron. If you were to ask someone to describe black metal in one word, “ecstatic” might not come up very often. In fact, if you were to create a relevant Family Feud category, guessing it would land you a big fat X and a Steve Harvey overreaction.

Yet when you listen to Agriculture’s debut full length, it makes perfect sense that they would describe themselves as such, using the white-hot sonic bombast of black metal as a vehicle for transcendence and jubilation.

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Record #937: Conjurer – Pathós (2022)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

If there’s one thing the metal community loves, it’s hyperbole. There are thousands of metal records that come out a year, and they are all described with superlatives.

For instance, let’s look at Conjurer, who the internet has decided to call “The Saviors of British Metal.” No matter how hard you roll your eyes at that, Conjurer is rolling theirs harder. They’ve said a few times that they don’t consider themselves to be doing anything all that revolutionary.

Still, listening to Pathós, you might think that the internet hyperbolists are on to something.

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Record #929: MØL – Diorama (2021)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

I’m not sure exactly who it was that drew such rigid lines around metal. While pioneers like Sabbath and Maiden were wide open to other influences, somewhere along the lines, metal shored itself up and went to war with other music. It’s not just softer styles either—metal fans and hardcore fans often come to blows with one another. Even subgenres within metal itself have split into warring factions.

But there is a growing movement in heavy music in the last decade or so to lay down the purity tests and elitism and infuse a wider range of influences into their work. One of the most exciting acts in this realm that I’ve discovered is the Danish quintet MØL. While they might lazily be tossed under the blackgaze umbrella for lack of better categorization, there’s a lot more going on here than Alcest worship.

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Record #913: Mount Eerie – Wind’s Poem (2009)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

May be an image of record playerMount Eerie is one of those bands that I’ve mostly known just by reputation. For years, I’ve heard the name of Phil Elverum’s project thrown around alongside acts like Bon Iver, The Antlers, Sun Kil Moon, and other songwriters offering emotional devastation to hushed instrumentation.

So when I heard Wind’s Poem playing over the speakers at Ignition Music in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Mount Eerie was pretty near the bottom of the list of names I expected to hear attached to the bursts of black metal noise I was hearing.

I bought it on the spot, and find more to love about this record every time I hear it. Continue reading →

Record #864: Fen – The Malediction Fields (2009)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald / 1 Comment

Of all the variables in the careful calculus I use to decide what records to buy, Opportunity is perhaps the one with the most gravity. True, I often hunt with laser-focused intentions. But other times, a record will simply present itself to me in an opportunity that I cannot resist.

For instance: I had heard London blackgazers Fen before purchasing this record—how could I not? They pop up in the “Fans also like” section of just about all of my favorite metal bands. If I’m honest though, none of my preemptive listens compelled me to track down any copies.

But then, while foraging through the shelves of Amoeba Records in San Francisco, I found a copy of their debut full-length for an agreeable price. And I couldn’t have been more thrilled. Listening to the album in one earbud as I continued to browse, I was taken by the sweeping post black metal epics which affirmed my decision to buy over and over again.

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Record #850: Cremation Lily – Dreams Drenched in Static (2022)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Album art is a funny thing. As often as the warning is given not to judge a [record] by its cover, sometimes the visual aesthetic of the record perfectly matches the sound contained therein.

Take for example Dreams Drenched in Static, the new album from Cremation Lily, the solo project of Zen Zsigo. Soft images of waves, grasses, and sand dunes are torn apart and combined to form a jagged abstract collage. It’s a stunning visual representation of the sounds on the album: gentle elements like ambient guitars, floating keyboards, clean vocals, and laid back drum machines are chopped and manipulated and pasted together to create something that is harshly overexposed and monstrous. But at the same time, beneath the hiss of white noise and squeals of feedback is a sort of zen-like peace, like the warm embrace of the snow after an avalanche.

(And if it sounds like I’m just parroting the promo email from The Flenser, that’s because they quoted me in it).

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Record #848: Glassing – Twin Dream (2021)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald / 1 Comment

Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine famously adheres to the theory that when a person is subjected to high volume noise for a long enough time, they enter a zen-like state. The harsh tones and oppressive volumes transform into an almost comforting embrace, like being covered in a blanket of snow after an avalanche.

Experimental Austin metallurgists Glassing are masters of this sort of alchemy, manipulating abrasive tones to create songs that are somehow staggeringly gorgeous. While I recoiled at my early, brief brushes with the band, I was encouraged to give Twin Dream a more earnest listen.

It became one of my favorite records.

Read more at ayearofvinyl.com #glassing #postmetal #doomgaze #blackmetal #blackgaze #sludgemetal #vinyl

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Record #741: Alcest – Le Secret EP (2005/2011)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Even legends have to start somewhere. Through years of bouncing around the European black metal scene, Neige was dissatisfied with the ability of the kvlt to properly express what he had to say. Between other projects, he spent his time crafting otherworldly overtures that transcended the narrow confines of traditional black metal. In 2005, he released a pair of tracks under the name Alcest, a name he had used for another project as a teenager.

But Le Secret, that first EP, sounded nothing like the scorched-earth, burnt-church trad-black of his previous band. In fact, it didn’t sound much like anything else that had been released up to that point. The 2011 rerelease, reissued upon the success of the incredible Écailles de Lune, features rerecorded versions of each track with more resources to fulfill his original vision. But even in the face of the clearer versions, this EP demonstrates that Neige’s idea of what he meant Alcest to be has been unchanged from the beginning.

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