Besna - Krásno (2025)

After three years since their debut, the Slovakian outfit Besna shows us their sophomore album called Krásno. The Black metal here is only marginally seasoned with the "post-" suffix and while usually it makes me throw a bit, in this case the band's music works really well. I think it's also darker than before, but maybe it's because the world grew darker as well.

The title of the album translates to "Beautiful", which is slightly surprising. There must a good deal of irony in that as the worldwide situation is far from being beautiful (the band supports the Ukrainian war effort for example, and this crisis is nowhere close to an end, but the point is that the artists are aware and focused on what's going on, politically speaking). The lyrics supports this thought as, among traditionally metal-kind of poetry, there's this sentence (taken from the title track): "Indifference feeds hopelessness, indifference only feeds hopelessness". Indeed.

Musically speaking, the message is conveyed in the blackest of the ways: angry screams, guitar noise and fast melodies. My favourite track is the most deceiving one as Oceán prachu sounds like a peaceful instrumental interludium for the most part, but suddenly develops into pure musical anger. Again, indeed.

Krásno costs 7 EUR.

Check: Oceán prachu

Country: Slovakia

Genre: (post-) black metal

Besna - Zverstvá (2022)

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Soulless, Sadness - burning as the first light (2024)

Damián Antón Ojeda, professionally known as Sadness is already a well-known name for any fan looking for the blackgaze scene's underdogs. The Mexican artist releases a number of shorter and longer albums a year and towards the end of 2024, he joined forces with his lesser known, but at least as interesting, Indonesian counterpart, Soulless. 

The album is opened by an intro that sound more like a melancholic ambientish piece, but soon enough bursts into Sadness' signature noise. It is made with harsh noise of guitars that is hidden behind the silky flow of piano keys and, finally, vocals. Those are rather fresh-sounding, hopeful, energetic, providing a pleasurable contrast with the music, beautiful in its melancholy. His second track feels like a complementing piece, an ornament underlining the importance of every edge of your name, burning.

The part of the split provided by Soulless has a slightly different taste to it. While it is also a prime example of underground blackgaze music, the vibes are changed: the black metal vocals add the element of anger and depression that, when juxtaposed with the synthy, flowy music, always brings a tear to my eye. The euphoric parts come to the picture in the second track by Soulless and they make the whole blackgazey picture absolutely complete.

burning as the first light costs 4 USD.

Check: every edge of your name, burning

Country: Indonesia, Mexico/US

Genre: synthy blackgaze

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Loather - Eis (2023)

While I first posted about the Austrian band of Loather back in 2018, this year's Eis is their first LP ever. And it was quite worth waiting for since the album is a great example of rough and heavy music that is also particularly mesmerizing.

The band's road to the debut release has been rough with pandemics problems and line-up changes along the way. Luckily they made it. And Eis is filled with captivating music. From the very first notes, it attacks the audience with rough guitar sounds and heavy and dark atmosphere. The lo-fi vibes add to the sincerity of the album, making it even more striking I feel. On Eis, the band dances between black metal and shoegaze quite regularly and with fantastic grace too. Some parts are clearly (post-) black metal with angry screams and fittingly aggressive guitars, but some other are smoothed down by attractive, almost dreamy vocals. Still. very, very loud. And really, really good.

Eis costs 7 EUR.

Check: Mortuary

Country: Austria

Genre: post-black metal

Label: Vendetta Records

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Soulless - The Supreme Resurgence (2023)

I've been experiencing a lot of great quality blackgaze music recently. And this week is no different thanks to the Indonesian project Soulless. This year the artist released their fifth album (after 2020's cooperation with Sadness among others) and called it The Supreme Resurgence.

I'm extremely keen on this music genre, especially recently. The shoegaze's flow and blissful atmosphere meeting the pure noise of black metal fits perfectly into my moods. And Soulless definitely nails the genre's requirements with their fast and atmospheric loud music. The artist reaches the very pinnacles of airiness in the synth-heavy compositions like the very fittingly titled Let There Be Dreams. I love how slowly some of the tracks develop from the airy ambients into the massive, monumental passages of loudness and ethereality. One of the best albums within the genre this year, no doubts about it (although it was recorded three years ago).

The Supreme Resurgence costs 7 USD.

Check: Let There Be Dreams

Country: Indonesia

Genre: blackgaze

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Perfumed Saturnine Angels - Saccharine Curses Exhaled in the Wind (2023)

I know Garry Brents as Gonemage, the music project that combines black metal with chiptune and it's as crazy as it sounds. The project conceived as a duo, now, after Brandon Nurick's passing, continues as Brents solo project with the debut album called Saccharine Curses Exhaled in the Wind as a homage to Nurick's name.

While this time Brents doesn't use the electronica samples and, overall, sounds more "serious" for the metal music fans, his work still surprised me a lot. There is something in the quality of the sound (and particularly his vocals) that makes me feel like I've got hit in the head with the audio wave. It's loud and it's overwhelming in the best possible way. But the compositions are far from being homogeneous walls of noise: they are experimentally diverse with mathrock-like pace changes going from slow guitar-only passages to fast and angry, energy-fueled madness as rapidly as you can imagine. 

And I have to mention that: the cover art is at the god-tier level.

Saccharine Curses Exhaled in the Wind costs whatever you want to pay.

Gonemage - Handheld Demise (2022)

Gonemage - Mystical Extraction (2021)

Check: Trash Judgement

Country: Texas, US

Genre: math black metal

Label: Zegema Beach Records

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Sáasil - Ephemeral (2023)

Sáasil is a duo that comprises of artists the are already quite well-known for the readers of this blog: Carlos Herrera Quifes (Non Somnia) and Victoria Carmilla Hazemaze (aka Nox Victoria or Oculi Melancholiarum). Both appeared with their solo music on this blog and so their 2023 joint debut should really be inlcuded here as well.

The Mexican artists blend in what each of them has best to offer: the neoclassical, extremely  airy post-rock of Non Somnia and melancholic blackgaze of Oculi Melancholiarum. The results are as good as the could be. The black metal part of this music has this lo-fi atmosphere that makes the whole thing more honest and even more nostalgic. And the guitar-oriented music is not always too loud, there's more focus put on the subtle, softer sides of the compositions and this has to be the post-rock influences. This results in music that is both dark and airy, loud and atmospheric, filled with various emotions and properly distant.

Ephemeral costs whatever you want to pay.

Check: Narea

Country: Mexico

Genre: lo-fi blackgaze

Label: These Hands Melt

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Tjaktjadálvve - Echoes on a Windswept Plain (2023)

The Australian-born and Sweden-based artist known as Tjaktjadálvve is the new addition to the Italian post-metal-oriented label Flowing Downward. His new, and as it seems, debut LP called Echoes on a Windswept Plain is kept in the crushingly noisy but ethereally beautiful atmosphere.

It's fast, it's loud and it's airy: the music on the album check all the must-haves of a good blackgaze sound. The incredible flow of the tracks, heavy guitars and the black metal vocals go together splendidly, making one, coherent, brutally beautiful sound. The long composition don't waste too much time to peak and then, the deafening, synth-rich sound goes on and on, making the audience stun for long minutes. Those longer compositions are divided by shorter breaks to catch some breath and create even more atmosphere, only to go on again with the beautiful noise on the other side of the sonic valley.

Echoes on a Windswept Plain costs 4 EUR.

Check: Echoes on a Windswept Plain

Country: Australia/Sweden

Genre: blackgaze

Label: Flowing Downward

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Gonemage - Handheld Demise (2022)

I already know what to expect from Garry Brents, but it doesn't mean I'm always ready for the chaotic attack he serves on each of his albums. Handheld Demise is only a proof for this as from the very first notes, Gonemage's chiptune black metal overwhelms the listener's ears.

Just like his artworks suggest every time, the music here sounds like taken from a particularly unnerving but also entertaining computer game. The pace is always as fast as Sonic's speed runs, the energy must be the result of some sort of life boost while the black metal's aggressive sounds simply overflow the computer-generated tunes. As the artist summarizes it, "Black Metal/Chiptune convergence set in pixelated dream realms". The results are absurdly chaotic, but this is the very best feature of Brents' music. The game references are sometimes even less subtle when the artist reaches for sounds that everybody knows from their favourite oldschool games (as it is in The Suffering and Endurance). 

On the other hand, thematically and lyrics-wise, it is very much the metal gloom that rules on the album. This clash is what makes the project so special, perhaps the most unique one within the black metal community. 

Handheld Demise costs 3 USD.

Gonemage - Mystical Extraction (2021)

Check: Father Time's Grandfather Clock

Country: Texas, US

Genre: chiptune black metal

Label: WereGnome Records/Xenoglossy Productions/Fiadh Productions

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olim - Ursine (2022)

Olim, or Joe Caswell, creates his solo music to channel the complicated feelings that make up blackgaze and atmospheric black metal genres and produce the "soaring passages of epic post-black melodies that are simultaneously melancholy and uplifting". On his second album under this moniker, Ursine, those are particularly striking.

And it's absolutely obvious that Caswell knows what he does. The compositions here are atmospheric in every meaning of the world while still being pretty fast-paced. The music is overwhelming and monumental, taking no time to develop, but, instead, attacks the audience with the heavy and rhythmic sound from the very beginnings of the songs til the very ends. But, blackgaze-like, the music feels also extremely smooth and inviting. This makes it a perfect trance-like experience as it's really difficult to stop listening until the very end. Ultimately, this is an album that can be enjoyed by both black metal and shoegaze fans equally and I'm here for it.

Ursine costs 4.5 EUR (6 CAD).

Check: Light Crept in Where Once Was None

Country: Canada

Genre: atmospheric black metal

Label: Flowing Downward

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Hegemone - Voyance (2022)

The Polish monumental metal outfit Hegemone is back with their third album called Voyance. They came back two years after their last release called We Disappear, "shaping their already bleak and oppressive sound into something even more grandiose, desperate and terrifying" and it works like a (terrifying) charm.

This is the metal sound I find very alluring. There's no time spent on building up the atmosphere and slowly getting to the higher notes; Hegemone's music is already as monumental as possible, from the very first seconds. This doesn't make it any less atmospheric, quite the opposite, the mood here is simply sweeping the listener out of their feet. I can't comprehend how consistently heavy, blackgaze-like smooth and pitch-black dark the Poznań-based band's music is. It feels overwhelming in the best way, the audience can hardly do anything but soak this heaviness in awe, having their chests crushed and eyes getting wet.

This is the most attractive way of serving such a gloomy music. Even the desperate-sounding, bleak, very black metal-like screams only underline this fact. This dead feeling finds its pinnacle in Sermon, a track that dies towards the end into a poignant, bass-heavy soundscape. But the album goes back to exploding with aggressive sounds very soon and it's something the band is very capable of doing.

Voyance costs 6 EUR.

Check: Odium

Country: Poland

Genre: post-black metal

Label: Brucia Records

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The Ever Living - Artificial Devices (2022)

Four years after their debut album Herephemine and its instrumental version, the British artists The Ever Living are at it again. And "it" translates into "retro-futuristic metal from outer space" as the band themselves state, and that's what reigns on their new album Artificial Devices.

Their heavy music oscillates around the super-well flowing post-metal backgrounds and angry-sounding, very metal-like vocals. The "space" part of heir description is certainly referring to the electronica- and synth-heavy base of their music, it's the key ingredient for the smooth and utterly engaging kind of metal sound. It feels very modern and can be easily compared to what Deafheaven or Violet Cold offer in their works, but slightly less extravagant. It's very well audible all over the place, like in the album's most popular De-Emulate with its slightly oldschool electronica samples or very much electronic You've Come to the Right Place.

And the British make it work in various ways. It is mostly this kind of faster post-metal the heaviness of which is ready to crush the audience while the vocals keep the dark energy going. But in some places, like in a beautiful Ruminance, it is more into the slower, melancholically painful kind of metal and I love it and I cry with it.

Artificial Devices costs 9.5 EUR (7.99 GBP).

Check: Total Impasse

Country: UK

Genre: modern post-metal

Label: Chronism Records

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Bipolar Architecture - Depressionland (2022)

Bipolar Architecture are from Turkey but they live and create their music in Germany. Although the band is debuting now, some of its members have experience from a death metal band Heretic Soul and it's audible as Depressionland sounds like a complete work made by people who know what they want.

Although their album is said to be combining a variety of music flavours: "both post- and prog-metal, with flourishes of djent, black metal, and even spacey post-rock" into a complex and artsy blend, their music force comes from the deep aggressive feelings they need to release in the sonic way. It is very audible especially in the angry vocals. The pace is not really extreme, the compositions take their time to properly develop and so make me think more of post-metal genres with hints of blackgaze's synthy walls of sound. Their sound is simply too spacey and atmospheric to be regarded as "just" black metal and I love it.

Given the background of the band and the album's title, my first thoughts were that they aim to criticize their new homeland through the lenses of broken expectations or, perhaps, the old one from the perspective of the Western pointo of view. But in the end I feel like it's way more universal: depressionland is all over each of us with everything that is going on nowadays. It's good it was articulated in such a tangible and angry voice.

Depressionland costs 7 EUR.

Check: The Tragic Protagonist

Country: Turkey/Germany

Genre: fierce post-metal

Label: Talheim Records

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Altair - Siempre habrá luces en otro lugar (2022)

The third album from the Spanish Altair is here. After the fantastic Nuestro enemigo back in 2019, Siempre habrá luces en otro lugar makes a perfect comeback to the angsty and energetic world of the band's post-hardcore music.

There's something in Altair's music that keeps me interested in their releases despite the fact that I'm not really a post-hardcore person. However, the screamy vocals here sound honest and very, very engaging. They sound like a true scream of anger and desperation without forgetting about being part of a music composition. And true to this vibe, the album starts with screamed out "The circle does not stop/ The rust of the years flies over me, creating a dense black sphere", tons of self-conscious thoughts of a human being that can be universally relatable. And anxious over. 

This atmosphere breaks at some point when in Divino tesoro the music suddenly becomes an out-of-place pop-rock derivative, but it doesn't last and the whole song dies in static noise. The whole album combines post-hardcore's desperation and, curiously, hope as even the title that translates to "There will always be lights somewhere else" can be read in two different ways.

Siempre habrá luces en otro lugar costs whatever you want to pay.

Altair - Nuestro enemigo (2019)

Check: Réplica (nadie por quien llorar) 

Country: Spain

Genre: desperate post-hardcore

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Gnolpths - Nodt Vemn Rogten (2022)

Gnolpths is a side project from the musicians of Noctriulm, Australia-based black metal outfit. While the names are completely new to me, the music included on the second EP of the former, one called Nodt Vemn Rogten, certainly caught my attention and can hardly release it.

Their "raw depressive black metal" shares a lot of features of post-metal music and I'm here for it. You can say that the artists have no issues with creating very loud and very energetic compositions dominated by noisy guitars and metal-like drums. The post-metal's vocals that haunt the backgrounds of this music are the cherry on top of this music that is both aggressive and melancholic at the same time. Long, drums-dominated parts (like in Nesil Dodt Ni) and the ghostly, Amenra-like vocals make the EP a unique experience. Rapid and spiritualized, especially in the really loud finish in Fikett Erog.

Nodt Vemn Rogten costs 2 EUR (3 AUD).

    

Check: Fikett Erog

Country: Australia

Genre: post-black metal

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Besna - Zverstvá (2022)

Besna are from Bratislava, Slovakia and create "mournful melodies and mad screams from the Carpatian underneath". Their heavy music is complimented by folk inspirations and a good deal of atmosphere building. We can now check it out on the band's debut album called Zverstvá.

The band has this unique ability to successfully combine the aggression and rapidness of black metal with catchiness and attractiveness of the tunes. Yes, it is extremely loud and guitar-heavy, there are only metal-like screaming vocals, it does sound violent and desperate and its this music's advantage, no doubt about it. But there's also a good flow, the compositions are very much engaging and entertaining, not only for the metal music lover - also post-rock aficionado would find it very appealing.

Besna seem to take inspirations from the might of nature (in L'adovec with its touching similes: "A snowflake falls, followed by another/ A blizzard of lies/ Beneath a ton of sediment/ the truth is altered") and folk art. The latter is not only about the beautiful cover art that uses a minimalist take on eastern folklore, but it's also about the construction of the songs that, when you think about it, is not so different from the traditional folk music.  

Zverstvá costs 4 EUR.

Check: Spev Drozda

Country: Slovakia

Genre: atmospheric black metal

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KAATAYRA - Inpariquipê (2022)

Caio Lemos comes from Brazil and creates his music under the moniker of KAATAYRA. And it's quite outstanding what he does: the blend of psychedelic rock and black metal makes the last year's Inpariquipê really special.

He also calls his music "acoustic black metal" and I can understand why: the whole compositions are based on the repetitive passages of drums and... pretty exotic-sounding tropical music in the backgrounds. The psychedelic music's ability to mesmerize the audience is all over the place here, which makes the compositions suck the listener in with ease. This tropical component is also extremely interesting; it needs no explanation that black metal is usually connected with cold places (geographically speaking) and when a project's from a country like Brazil (and the South American metal scene is also very strong), they usually embrace the Nordic themes as well. Kaatayra is an exception here; every second of his music says that he's very well connected to the tropical reality around him and I appreciate that.

So where's the metal part in all of this actually? The artist's fifth album is filled with instrumental music mostly, but there are fragments that include his desperate, angry vocals. Still, they feel like they are put in the backgrounds, sounding more like shouting in a wilderness with much anger, but not so much power when compared to the forces of nature. It's perfect in Dundararaiê where the metal vocals additionally get a tribal treatment only empowering the mesmerizing features of the whole album. 

Inpariquipê costs whatever you want to pay (if you buy on the artist's Bandcamp site).

Check: Dundararaiê

Country: Brazil

Genre: tropical acoustic black metal

Label: Weary Bird Records/Pest Productions

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Hope Drone - Husk (2021)

The Australian band Hope Drone works as a collective for some time now (10 years!), but recently they found they needed some change in their sound and this change (make their music and their name more fitting together) is something that turned me back to them with their new album Husk being a really solid take on offstream metal.

As far as I remember, the band's previous releases didn't quite strike a chord with me "Strange times call for new perspectives and the chaos of the last few years has given rise to our new release where we set out to experiment" - this change of sound involves putting more focus on bass and drums at the expense of guitars and vocals that got transferred more into the backgrounds. This made their music more ambient/drone metal with its hazy atmosphere and soundscape-like values. And even that the pace of drums is usually very much black metal, the general impression left by their music is the massiveness and weight. The album consists of four tracks only, but they are long enough and written in such a way to slowly develop and impress the audience with heavy and satisfying finishes (so well-done in Existere) and leave it wanting even more.

Husk costs whatever you want to pay.

Check: Existere

Country: Australia

Genre: drone metal

Label: Moment of Collapse Records

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MØL - Diorama (2021)

They debuted on the world's stage (and on my blog) back in 2018 with the spectacular dose of post-metal experience in JORD. Now they show a follow-up in the form of very heavy and very noisy Diorama. The Danish band managed to get a circle of devoted followers who will not be disappointed with the new material.

The new album seems to be a bit more massive I think and more vocals-heavy too. Maybe it's just an impression but there's so much of Kim Song Sternkopf's vocals that sound very emotional with those desperate and angry vibes all over (and also horror-like, very metal ones in Tvesind). Super interesting is balancing them with contrasting, ethereal female guest voices of Mirza Radonjica and Kathrine Shepard in a couple of songs. The rapid Photophobic slowers a bit in the middle to make room for Radonjica's airy vibes and feels even faster afterwards. The change of pace feels really well also in Vestige, a brilliant track that won't leave anyone standing still.

I'm not huge fan of the clean vocals that appear from time to time; to me they always have some of the alt rock's kitsch, but luckily, they are barely noticeable on the album. What is better audible is the might and weight of the guitar music here; their sound is crisp and satisfying, slowly building up to the extremely massive finish in the album's last track Diorama. I can't not mention the album art that strikes with this kind of attractive artistic minimalism, I like it a lot.

Diorama costs 8 USD.

møl - JORD (2018)

Check: Diorama

Country: Denmark

Genre: desperate post-metal

Label: Nuclear Blast

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LLNN - Unmaker (2021)

One of the hottest heavy post-rock/post-metal names of the last month: the Danish LLNN are back with their third album and, damn, is Unmaker a loud and massive masterpiece. It is filled with the blueprints for post-metal music with extremely heavy guitars, striking compositions and impressive vocals.

The vocals by Christian Bonnesen have those particularly desperate-sounding qualities, they may sound angry or dangerous but I always assume there's some desperation in those and this makes them even more poignant and difficult not to be impressed with. Especially when they lead a composition towards such a touching and loud finish as it is the case with Scion. In Desecrator, on the other hand, they are joined by Matt McGachy, the vocalist in Cryptopsy, and his particularly deep and, honestly, very scary growls, ones that couldn't be more different and still located within the metal spectrum. This is this kind of opposition that makes a song a classic instantly.

But the vocals are not everything. I am more happy with the guitar compositions the Danish proposed on their new release. They strike the perfect balance between metal's uberfast pace and post-metal's massive slowness and, what's the most important, present the perfect quality of noise. There's something in this guitar blizzard that makes it bigger than the compositions they function in. Bigger than music itself. I love how ridiculously poignant and crushing they sound in pieces like Division. The movie music composer Peter Albrechtsen said about LLNN's new album that "[he's] obsessed with music that explores what sound can do to our body, to our mind, to our imagination" and now it's clear why we feel this music with our whole selves.

Unmaker costs whatever you want to pay.

Check: Scion

Country: Denmark

Genre: massive post-metal

Label: Pelagic Records

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Unreqvited - Beautiful Ghosts (2021)

There are artists who produce a lot of albums (and for me, it means more than one a year) and they are all absolutely of the same, high quality. In those cases, I can't really post about all of them, but sometimes you have no choice. The Canada's Unreqvited is one of those projects. They released great albums Mosaic II: la déteste et la détresse and Empathica last year alone and are back with another brilliant thing called Beautiful Ghosts.

There's no mistake in that they call their music "depressive & uplifting" nor that the album's title refers to both the aesthetically pleasing and the mysterious. The artist's signature sound goes together with what is often referred to as blackgaze: the rapid flow of metal music that is being made more accessible by electronica and synth's use. And then there are also sacral-like, very airy backing vocals (so beautiful in Autumn & Everley), drones and neoclassical instruments (so epic in Cherish). One would say that this is this kind of stuff that is surely meant to get lost within metal music, but Unreqvited manages to somehow keep alive both faces of his music: the metal is loud, the ethereal parts are beautiful. Beautiful ghosts. And it's especially well-audible in tracks like Funeral Pyre with all its diversity.

It also very much fits the theme of the release, love, although, as the album's Bandcamp description points, "pop music basically has one universal topic: love, which is probably the very reason why metal bands generally shy away from that subject like the plague". If that's true, Beautiful Ghosts does such a great job to sound like the poppest black metal music ever. That said, it seems that it's not really what the artist wants to be the only sound of their project, as they state on Facebook, "Beautiful Ghosts isn’t necessarily indicative of where the music is going moving forward, in fact, the next thing i’m working on (for a spilt ep) will be the complete opposite". I presume there's gonna be some blacker music soon coming from this direction.

Beautiful Ghosts costs 6.99 USD.

Unreqvited - Mosaic II: la déteste et la détresse (2020) EN

Check: Autumn & Everley

Country: Canada

Genre: artsy blackgaze

Label: Prophecy Productions

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