永遠の悪魔 Eternity Devil - 実存的恐怖 (2021)

Ethereal take on very modern electronic music, this is 永遠の悪魔 Eternity Devil, a Hungarian artist who makes "dreampunk and other aesthetic music". This year they released at least two albums, one of which is this highly interesting 実存的恐怖.

The album's title translates to "The horror of Existence" which neatly corresponds with the short poem included at the album's site. the inspirations taken from death and the fragility of human life are clear here. The artist uses them to make the most ethereal kind of electronic music that is close to vaporwave but also ranges from ambient up to heavier industrial sounds (especially in the great Vacuum of Space). And in every second it amazes with the ethereality and psychedelia, both dripping from this weird music. On one hand, the compositions seem to be kept in similar pace and are rather homogeneous, on the other, when dived deeper, the complexity and sweet chaos are staggering. 

実存的恐怖  costs whatever you want to pay.

Check: Vacuum of Space

Country: Hungary

Genre: ethereal vaporwave

Label: vaporgaze

:bandcamp:

:soundcloud:

Hurry Up, Brothers - All Is Beautiful. I'm Okay to be Alive. I'm Okay to Die (2021)

A new post-rock band from US, Hurry Up, Brothers make "noise for the restless" in the form of moody but not too loud or overwhelming instrumental guitar music. Their debut album All Is Beautiful. I'm Okay to be Alive. I'm Okay to Die brings a lot of  uniqueness to the calmer side of post-rock.

The album's title suggests inspirations with emo/post-hardcore music (it really sounds like an ironical response to The World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die) but there's nothing much from those genres in their music. On the contrary, it is more into reflective, not too noisy but extremely artsy experience. The instruments are not hidden behind the walls of noise which in a way sounds like acoustic instrumental and jazzy collaboration but put through a modern post-rock filter. 

Kind of in opposition to the album's title, the band seems to be concerned over the state of the world as it is now, the songs are entitled in a rather meaningful way, especially one of the album's best (and gloomiest) Revolt! This Is an Ecological Crisis. Those vibes of the danger we live in, are present in some of the more unnerving and noisier fragments of the album (particularly the voice samples appearing from time to time), but in general, the overwhelming feeling of the weight put on the aesthetic side of the music is dominant.

All Is Beautiful. I'm Okay to be Alive. I'm Okay to Die costs 5 USD.

Check: Revolt! This Is an Ecological Crisis

Country: Iowa, US

Genre: art post-rock

Label: Perched Words Records

:bandcamp:

:instagram:

:spotify:

WatchCamp May-June'21 with Domus & Dag Rosenqvist, elhombreanormal, LOCKSTEP, Luthia, PARDALS

Domus & Dag Rosenqvist - Transit​/​Sunrise

A collaboration between Domus - Henrik Sunbring-Thobias Eidevald duo, Dag Rosenqvist, a member of the Swedish post-rocking Ef, with the help of Daniel Johansson and his trumpet, resulted in two big tracks of instrumental ambient that smoothly transforms into mesmerizing post-rock. The two tracks cost 20 SEK (2 EUR).

:bandcamp:

:facebook:

:instagram:

:soundcloud:

:youtube:

:spotify:

elhombreanormal - renacentismo

Noisy music from Argentina. The band make a blend of very guitar-based and coarse post-rock with psychedelic rock's vocals and compositions and they show their best at the short EP three years after releasing their debut (?) album. Two tracks cost 7 USD (!).

:bandcamp:

:facebook:

:instagram:

:spotify:

LOCKSTEP - Lockstep 1

What an awesome debut. The Tennessee-based band released a short EP filled with high-quality psychedelic rock meeting noise rock meeting shoegaze with slowcore-like-paced vocals and super dense, mesmerizing guitars. This is the first of a series of self-produced short albums and I can't wait to hear more. Two songs cost whatever you want to pay.

:bandcamp:

:facebook:

:instagram:

:soundcloud:

:spotify:

Luthia - Sleepwalker

The Scottish band involved in "exploring the terrain of song, structure, sound and harmony" but not, as one could assume, making ambient music. Instead, they create a unique slowcore/post-folk blend, very artsy and moody music with Irrepressibles-like beautiful vocals and extremely atmospheric spoken word elements.  Two tracks cost 2 GBP.

:bandcamp:

:facebook:

:spotify:

PARDALS - III

Ibiza-based band who create a mainstream yet involving post-rock music. Their tracks are very much guitar-oriented and making the most of the genre's most recognizable themes. They are creating their debut EP and 'm looking forward to hearing them again. Two tracks cost 7 EUR (!).

:bandcamp:

Bukowicz - Madera (2021)

Three years after the Rybnik, Poland-based band debuted with fantastic Dyskomfort w głowie, they showed the follow-up in the form of Madera, a short but packed EP with some memorable fragments from one of the few Polish dreamy music artists.

The band's sound has changed - they began with 100% dense atmosphere-based dream pop and now seem to evolve towards indie rock/post-punk with dreamy vibes. Especially that this EP, as perhaps the title suggests, is influenced by tropical, mellow but also rhythmic music. The beats are clear and composition-leading, there's a big focus on melodies backed up by lively backing vocals. Still, however, their music is carried by the contrast between Jakub Buczek's unique and dark and Aneta Maciaszczyk's airy vocals. Another thing is the lyrics, it's clear that the artists don't take shortcuts and the easiest choices when writing, instead, they opt for more meaningful yet very poetic and difficult to interpret lyrics. Also, they sing in Polish and it's always a big deal.

Race (Niczego się nie nauczyłam) ("Flares (I Haven't Learned Anything)") makes probably the most interesting track here - the re-emerging theme of traveling (a lot of the debut was about finding one's place in the world) and the outstanding spoken word parts make it the highlight of the album together with the most Dyskomfort...-like Powroty z Wysp ("Comebacks from the [British] Islands"). The whole thing is definitely different from their debut and I'm not sure I entirely like the direction the band goes, but, truth be told, the album is difficult NOT to enjoy.

Madera costs 18 PLN (4 EUR).

Check: Race (Niczego się nie nauczyłam)

Country: Poland

Genre: dreamy post-punk

:bandcamp:

:facebook:

:instagram:

:youtube:

:spotify:

Penelope Trappes - Penelope Three (2021)

As the album's title suggests, this is the third one from the Australia-born but London-based Penelope Trappes. Four years after her debut with, of course, Penelope One, Penelope Three is here to enchant the audience with her unique approach to dreamy sounds.

Her music is the missing link between electronic pop and ambient pop - the clear but airy vocals sound over r'n'b-like bass lines that are put through experimental mindset of the artist so they sound familiar but also difficult to quite place them anywhere. There's a lot of blank spaces there, very subtle, ambient sounds all over the compositions and quite chaotic vibes - chaotic in an extremely peaceful and chill way if it's even possible. Just listen to Nervous to understand what I mean. Another thing is the ethereal charge within this music - a lot of backing voices of the subtlest nature, hazy synths and electronic sounds in the backgrounds and, finally, the ghostly vocals that are more warm than fun, more melancholy than energy.

This can evolve into slowcore trip-hop in Red Yellow with its clearer electronic sounds and this kind of vocals I automatically associate with trip-hop. This is the way the artist composed her "album of healing, on which she looks to release herself from fear and into love" and one that is set to be the final part of the triptych of her albums. Reading ABOUT her works is almost as interesting as listening to the music so I highly recommend going to her Bandcamp page and do that on your own.

Penelope Three costs 7 GBP.

Check: Awkward Matriarch

Country: UK

Genre: ambient r'n'b

Label: Houndstooth

:bandcamp:

:facebook:

:instagram:

:spotify:

An Autumn for Crippled Children - As the Morning Dawns We Close Our Eyes (2021)

They did it again. The Dutch mysterious post-black metal An Autumn for Crippled Children released another great dose of gloomy anger in the form of heavy music. After last year's All Fell Silent, Everything Went Quiet they follow up with the same level of emotions on As the Morning Dawns We Close Our Eyes.

This is a rather short one. Only half an hour but if it's so packed with the post-metal blizzard, it doesn't matter how long it is. It opens very fast with very heavy metal-like guitars and extremely black vocals. And these vibes don't leave for the next 30 minutes. It still feels like post-metal though: the screaming vocals are withdrawn and layered under the guitar noise, there's firm atmosphere and post-rock-like structures too. But it's very, very energetic - to the point where you want to start screaming yourself. The artists know how to spread the emotions through sounds and they do that so well.

There's some additional flavours like slightly sacral themes in the album's best track Splendour Unnoticed or interesting piano intrusions in Last Night I Believe You, but in general it is all about the tidal wave of slightly more post kind of metal and I'm here for it.

As the Morning Dawns We Close Our Eyes costs 10 USD.

An Autumn for Crippled Children - All Fell Silent, Everything Went Quiet (2020) EN

An Autumn For Crippled Children - morfine EP (2017) EN

An Autumn For Crippled Children - Eternal (2016) EN

Check: Splendour Unnoticed

Country: The Netherlands

Genre: post-black metal

Label: Prosthetic Records

:bandcamp:

:facebook:

:spotify:

Innesti - Filament and Place (2021)

Innesti, the Illinois-based ambient artist creates some particular kind of extremely ethereal  soundscapes. The almost an hour of which is included on the new album entitled Filament and Place, is filled with field recordings that make it depict the reality around us so well.

This is that kind of music that forces you to get quieter facing the dreamy wave of peaceful music, as the artist describes it, "ethereal, minimal ambient soundscapes created with field recordings, organic synthesis, fading light, and experiments in dreaming". This oneiric feel of the whole album, the way of stretching the compositions to make it sleepy-like while filling them with extremely airy sounds everywhere, makes it the dreamiest ambient I've heard recently. 

Porya Hatami and Valotihkuu, ambient artists I respect a lot, were also involved in creating this album and it only makes me like it more.

Filament and Place costs 5 EUR.

Check: Filament and Place

Country: Illinois, US

Genre: dream ambient

Label: DRONARIVM

:bandcamp:

:facebook:

:spotify:

Lost Films - Vauxhall (2021)

Lost Films is a duo (or at least it seems it is) out from Russia focused on making very cinematic music that feels like a great and climactic soundtrack to a movie that never was. Their new album called Vauxhall brings a lot of nostalgia to the audience and this is its best side.

The music here is mostly instrumental ambient/post-rock with clearly old-school vibes: there's no fast pace, no heavy sounds, it's mostly reflective and relaxing while still hugely atmospheric. There's a place for accordion sounds, for violins, a lot of keys. And the most outstanding elements: movie-like samples with dark voice reciting in Russian. It does sound a lot like movie music and it's no coincidence but the project's theme. They introduced themselves saying "cinema starts with the arrival of the train. Old vauxhalls where we used to have our promenades listening to the music before setting on a journey to the outermost region of the country and self" - these words show the main ideas behind the music here: retro vibes, slow pace and fascination with cinema. 

Vauxhall costs 7 USD.

Check: Moskva

Country: Russia

Genre: slowcore instrumental

:bandcamp:

When Waves Collide - Chasm (2021)

When Waves Collide are a French post-rock band that is in fact debuting with their first longer album called Chasm. However, they sound as if they'd been doing instrumental music for years now, the compositions they are showing now are top-quality examples of what post-rock should look like.

 

The album tells "the story of a civilization at the edge of collapsing. Human void or geologic fault, one falls into it all hoping for a sign". Those apocalyptic vibes are reflected in ancient terminologies in the song titles (after all, the myths about the end of the world are ancient texts that MAY have importance today as well) and in the darker sound of the post-rock here. There's the sense of unnerving wait for something to happen while knowing it is going to be disastrous. It is sown into this mainstream-sounding post-rock that is enriched with the bits of monumentalism and darkness that make it so inspiring (Cataclysm makes the peak here). 

That said, there's a few moments of toning the post-rock down into more dark ambient areas but towards the end of the album. In general, it is more about emotions of the catastrophic events about to happen or happening at the moment, it's about fear and the adrenaline rush, less about grief. I like how it is depicted in the exciting Omen and in the short, more electronic finish in Stranding.

Chasm costs 6 EUR.

Check: Cataclysm 

Country: France

Genre: dark post-rock

Label: Antigony Records

:bandcamp:

:facebook:

:instagram:

:soundcloud:

:youtube:

:spotify:

Oslo Tapes - ØR (2021)

I have my private theory that if there's a name of a city in a band's name, the artists are not from there. And so Oslo Tapes are from Italy but they surely sound like they are inspired by Scandinavia. Their third album only builds on those inspirations with the title, ØR, meaning "dizzy, confusing" in Norwegian. Perfect word to be used here to be honest.

As it strongly suggests, Marco Campitelli and his band make a very noisy and form-fluid psychedelic rock, let's say noisier Rakta-like vibes. The only thing more psychedelic than the music itself is this sentence taken from the album's description: "[it's] a dizzying ride through a feverish dreamscape of imaginary Norwegian highlands painted in cubistic shapes". This music is all about the mesmerizing, trance-inducing guitar passages filled with feedbacks and reverbs. It's also so noisy you can feel it in your teeth, like grainy sand getting its way through your body. There are vocals as well, but they are withdrawn and hidden under the guitar haze, often resorting to whispering like in Zenith.

This works both when they decide to go on with a ballad-like dreamscape (Kosmik Feels) or a full-blown, drums-fuelled psych-rock experience - Bodø Dakar works especially well as the latter with its crazy drums-work (this is the Rakta vibes I sense so much), lively and emotions-filled chanting and tropical traces enrich the general atmosphere of this song. Or in the extremely engaging finish in the Obsession Is the Mother of All (that sounds like it was Ride-inspired perhaps). But the vibes of the whole album are best summarized in Norwegian Dream - the perfectly satisfying psychedelic soup of haze, I love it.

ØR costs 7.99 EUR.

Check: Obsession Is the Mother of All

Country: Italy

Genre: noisy psychedelic rock

Label: Pelagic Records

:bandcamp:

:facebook:

:instagram:

:spotify:

Colision - Lost Ghosts, Vol. 1 (2021)

Two years after showing an extremely interesting debut album HEALING IS NOT LINEAR, the French band Colision (watch for the spelling) are back with a new EP that includes some quality noisy guitar sounds and dreamy loudness of the best kind. Let's try Lost Ghosts, Vol. 1.

The EP is so short it could as well be a single or perhaps a part of something bigger, like the title suggests. It features music kept in similar vibes as the previous album - psychedelically diverse approach to noisy genres like shoegaze, noise rock, etc. The guitar sounds are extremely heavy, ready to crush the audience at any time but also have these smooth vibes that characterize more shoegaze-only artists like 93millionmilesfromthesun for instance. Also the dispersed, hidden and very ethereal vocals point in this direction. However, the compositions have something wild about them. The pace changes all the time as do the ideas what a particular track is about. It's not the chaos of mathrock but definitely some influences there, especially that there are also more furious, metal-like vocals in the backgrounds, adding up to the eclectic ethereality of the compositions. 

Lost Ghosts, Vol. 1 costs whatever you want to pay.

Check: swim while it rains 

Country: France

Genre: mathrock shoegaze

:bandcamp:

:facebook:

:instagram:

:spotify:

Ian Nyquist - Endless, Shapeless (2021)

The Irish artist Ian Nyquist released his second (it seems) album under the experimental umbrella of LAAPS records. This is some music for the people who seek something that can be described and want to truly feel it. Perhaps they should reach for Endless, Shapeless.

This is a disturbingly chaotic music in a sense that it doesn't go in one direction for a longer time.  That's probably the reason for the "shapeless" in the title. There's a lot from ambient and electronic music as well as neoclassical bits (violins provided by Cornelis Jordaan and cello by Kristin Nyquist). Especially the electronics sound very tasteful and impactful in a non-invasive way (if it's not an oxymoron) - but this is what I take from songs like Plateau.  And of course the whole experimental stuff that includes unnerving and uncomfortable sounds like it is in Field & Cliff in which they are not soothed even by the ethereal backing vocals that support the composition.

The album comes to an end finally so the title's first part is an exaggeration but there are moments in life in which this album could play on endlessly providing the perfect soundtrack slowly dissolving into neoclassical soundscape.

Endless, Shapeless costs 6 EUR.

Check: Plateau 

Country: Ireland

Genre: experimental ambient

Label: LAAPS

:bandcamp:

:instagram:

:soundcloud:

:spotify:

93MillionMilesFromTheSun - Why Do We Fall Apart (2021)

Yes, Nick Noble and his 93MillionMilesFromTheSun is back with another brilliant album. I can't stop posting about those releases as the project's sound is so unique and satisfying and yet still not that well-recognized. And perhaps it usually seems similar but I recon it's the point, those mesmerizing vibes of shoegaze are not something I'd change.

This is how I see Why Do We Fall Apart anyway. It sounds like a truthful continuation of all the previous works under this moniker and I seldom see it as a disadvantage. If you have something awesome, why wouldn't you want more of it? The new material gives us the heavy and deep layer of shoegaze haze we know and love, the noisy soundscapes go on through a whole hour and never start being less exciting. The melodies have to be carefully listened to to get the grasp of their catchiness (Everything Undone being the best example here) and when you do, it's very satisfying.

The whole album is filled with the notion of sadness and life-going-really-bad feeling. This music is the perfect way to convey this without sounding too pretentious - it's like that and we make songs about this but this message has to be found within them. And everything is drowned in the most beautiful haze.

Why Do We Fall Apart costs 7 GBP.

93millionmilesfromthesun - Victory Is Ours EP (2017)

93millionmilesfromthesun - The Lonely Sea & The Sky (2017)

Check: Everything Undone

Country: UK

Genre: melodic shoegaze

:bandcamp:

:facebook:

:instagram:

:spotify:

The Last Summer for Lucy - Congratulations to the Millionth Visitor at the South Pole (2021)

This is some fine comeback here. I posted about the German band The Last Summer for Lucy three years ago when there was nothing about them across the Internet and now, when there's the second album available, there's... still no info. But it means I enjoyed Congratulations to the Millionth Visitor at the South Pole even more, thanks to the pinch of mystery around the project.

Their music evolved from what I remember and it got better quality production-wise. It's still filled with interesting concepts for instrumental music compositions and although guitars are what drives the music here, it's not always the case. The guitar soundscapes are sometimes broken with quite eclectic elements like the heavy synths and then the choir-like samples in Theme for Sale or the instrumental ambient-like fragments of We Come in Peace or delicate electronic sounds all over the place.

The album's title refers to the cold and (usually) empty landscapes of the north (and so does the opening track's one) and there's some of the heavy atmosphere of the northern desolation present here (perhaps the best one in the massive finish in Sleep If You Can), although the album is way too eclectic to stay in one place for a longer time. Good stuff.

Congratulations to the Millionth Visitor at the South Pole costs whatever you want to pay.

The Last Summer For Lucy - The Last Summer for Lucy (2018) EN

Check: Theme for Sale

Country: Germany

Genre: eclectic post-rock

:bandcamp:

Lemondaze - Celestial Bodies (2021)

Lemondaze is a British group "inspired by the bands of the 90s shoegazing era" what usually evolves into noisy indie pop, but this time it's a bit different, as the British artists make some solid and dense shoegaze dream pop as they do on their new EP called Celestial Bodies.

The thing is that this is not only indie pop with a dose of noise, the noise here is multi-dimensional, hardly tamed and making you feel you suddenly appeared within a blizzard of noisy guitar sounds (and this metaphor is particularly true for Art Form and the r e a l l y blizzard-like sounds). Even though the vocals are clear and quite well audible, the overall feeling of being true to the original shoegaze sound is overwhelming here. Not to mention that the soft vocals are outstanding - airy but not too airy, quiet but standing out of the noise, sad but beautiful. 

The band say they "translate a dark and intense eruption of swirling guitars underpinned by thundering bass lines and hypnotic drums" and while it's perhaps a bit overdramatic a sentence, it's true. The short EP contains so much good shoegaze vibes, it can't be disregarded. Go try.

Celestial Bodies costs 4 GBP.

Check: Art Form

Country: UK

Genre: melodic shoegaze

:bandcamp:

:facebook:

:instagram:

:soundcloud:

:spotify:

Böira - Cendres ~ Mineral (2021)

The second post-rock band hailing from Spain/Catalonia recently here, this is Böira - a five-piece collective of heavy guitar sounds and very unique compositions. They released their debut album back in 2015 but I hadn't known them before the release of this year's Cendres ~ Mineral. Which is really, really good.

The Barcelona-based band's music is pretty much the perfect balance of lively and adrenaline-packed mathrock and the atmosphere-oriented, darker post-rock. The latter is provided not only by the slower pace of some parts within their compositions but most notably by the absolutely outstanding use of piano/keyboards - they are not only beautiful ornaments like it often is but the core element of the music here without being brought towards synth-heavy futuristic post-rock like, say, Tides from Nebula now. It's a darker, more neoclassical way of piano music incorporated into post-rock, often quite fast, environment, and well done too.

As I said, this is not a dark ballad-like instrumental music, there is pace, energy and heaviness here, at some points, the heavy, almost metal-like guitars take over, as in Obaga or Brot with its similarly metal drums, and carry the compositions until the ever-emerging piano comes back. These are piano-soundscapes but with turned-on speed and heavier impact. 

Cendres ~ Mineral costs 5 EUR.

Check: Postcards

Country: Spain/Catalonia

Genre: piano-led post-rock

Label: Aloud Music Ltd.

:bandcamp:

:facebook:

:instagram:

:spotify:

After the Thought - Endless (2021)

Matt Chapman Jones known as After the Thought, is an ambient/soundscape artist from UK. His discography is already quite extensive and it was enriched by a fantastically moody soundscape on the album called Endless.

Indeed, the music here feels like it could endlessly go on. The guitar and synth-based loops are made into long pieces of drony ambient passages with relaxing and meditative properties. It's monotonous in the best way possible, making the whole album one, long mesmerizing trip. One that you can easily sleep to while at the same time having the feeling of experiencing something beautiful. It's not easy writing about ambient/drone like this, it's way better to have a listen.

Endless costs whatever you want to pay.

Check: #14

Country: UK

Genre: looped soundscape

:bandcamp:

:facebook:

:spotify:

Piedra - Horizonte de sucesos (2021)

I don't usually post here about music older than 2-3 months but I came across this post-rock band from Spain only when they were released by thebravesrecords in May. Not that the album is much older, Piedra showed it at the beginning of the year and it goes without saying that it's absolutely wort any attention.

Horizonte de sucesos  is filled with great-quality guitar music that brings atmosphere of nervousness that keeps you on the edge of your seat from the very first to the very last notes. The pace changes more rapid than in some other post-rock works but not as fast as in mathrock, the mood is created mostly by very rock-like guitars and some decorations like voice samples in the opening track Consciencia cósmica. But it's very thick. Which is no wonder as the band admits to get inspiration from some particularly gloomy events like the Chernobyl catastrophe, not to mention a demon itself (namely Abraxas in Bajo el signo de Abraxas). But the overall theme of the albums seems to revolve around the space, both the real and the imaginary aspects of it (Skywalker camina conmigo doesn't have to be translated).

The demon track is especially heavy, when the slow, stoner-metal-like sounds start to dominate the song, the chills up your neck get real. This only proves how versatile the band is and how good they feel in changing the mood of their guitar music from nervous and unnerving to energetic and lively and back to crushingly heavy.

Horizonte de sucesos costs 7 EUR.

Check: Bajo el signo de Abraxas

Country: Spain

Genre: heavy post-rock

Label: thebravesrecords

:bandcamp:

:facebook:

:instagram:

:youtube:

:spotify:

Tombstones in Their Eyes - Looking for a Light (2021)

I appreciate the band led by John Treanor for some time now, and I'm genuinely surprised I didn't post about Maybe Someday, a great album from 2019. Thankfully, the time to fix my errors is here as their new album Looking for a Light is a well-done continuation of the psychedelically noisy career they  have taken.

This music is a slow-paced psychedelic rock meeting stoner, very California-vibing heavy and crunchy guitars. This combined results in mesmerizing compositions filled with non-overwhelming but always well-felt noise. Another thing is that Treanor can writer catchy melodies that certainly stand out throughout the album. That said, the clue of the release is the slow, somewhat gloomy and somewhat relaxing mood, so well heard (and felt) in the title track Looking for a Light with its nostalgic theme and ballad-like construction. This makes me think that the project changed its style, slowing down the pace and smoothing the roughness while maintaining the overall psychedelic overflow, its trade mark and pride.

Looking for a Light costs 8 USD.

Check: Looking for a Light

Country: California, US

Genre: desert psychedelic rock

Label: Kitten Robot Records/Somewhercold Records

:bandcamp:

:facebook:

:instagram:

:spotify:

Violet Cold - Empire of Love (2021)

It's good to see that Emin Guliyev and his Violet Cold released another album this year. Not only because his music has this quality assurance not many other projects do, but also because it's been very gloomy times in his country and around the world. So I couldn't leave out his Empire of Love that stands for everything I believe in as well.

Guliyev is based in Azerbaijan and earlier this year he was posting very alarming texts on his FB profile about the war and the situation within the "invading" (although it's obviously not so easy, the history of the Caucasus region is a mess) country. Even if he was not in danger directly, this kind of anarchic and pacifist approach to life is not appreciated during times like this. Not to mention the LGBTQ friendliness and feminism (I love the title of Shegnificant) he shows so explicitly on this album. It's especially good to listen to it.

Let's talk a bit about the music itself too. It's a continuation of what we know from his previous albums - the crazy combination of black metal's heaviness and extremely catchy pop's energy. It is best heard in the album's best track Pride with the electropop, computer-enhanced female vocals singing out the ridiculously catchy chorus and the metal screams balancing the darkness-fun ratio. As we also know it to be the case, the pace here is absolutely extreme, it is especially due to the black metal-like drums all over the place. But there's some new things (or at least not so ordinary for the project's music) as well, the intro in Cradle begins with some traditional folk music and Be Like Magic that includes some dark and dangerously sounding recitation (if not rapping).

Empire of Love costs whatever you want to pay.

Violet Cold - Noir Kid (2020) EN

Violet Cold - kOsmik (2019) EN

Violet Cold - Sommermorgen (2018) EN

Violet Cold - Anomie (2017) EN

Check: Pride 

Country: Azerbaijan

Genre: electropop metal

:bandcamp:

:facebook:
:official:

:instagram:

:spotify: