Runemagick – Beyond the Cenotaph of Mankind (2023) – Review

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Runemagick - Beyond the Cenotaph of Mankind - Album Cover

Runemagick, yet another band that sailed past our mighty lighthouse unnoticed a few times. And that means their two offerings since their resurrection in 2017 – Evoked from Abysmal Sleep and Into Desolate Realms – got no attention. And no doubt about it, too. RMR was a different animal back then. We had too much material on our plates to immediately realize that an age-old DM band had just returned from the undead with a new album.

Runemagick proved to be pretty prolific over time, too. I counted some 13 full-length records since 1990,1 some of those signed … [...] Click to raid more!

Shores of Null – The Loss of Beauty (2023) – Review

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Shores of Null - The Loss of Beauty - Album Cover

Shores of Null forcefully hit our pipeline with their one-liner Beyond The Shores (On Death And Dying) back in 2020. The somewhat clunky title hid a pretty snazzy piece of doom, spiced up by Elisabetta Marchetti‘s ethereal wails. And it turned out to be one of those one-track affairs, a challenge not to be taken lightly. Shores of Null‘s most monolithic 3rd full-length record to date and a great one at that. One that that ultimately made it onto our annual top 10 record list as well. And that’s a difficult feat to pull off, at the very … [...] Click to raid more!

Negative Vortex – Tomb Absolute (2022) – Review

Negative Vortex - Tomb Absolute - Album Cover

I always wondered what I liked better. Brutal, harsh Death Metal, or just vile and terrible Black Metal. And the answer is, it depends. After all, both genres hunt in the same or similar corners of metal’s smelly underbelly. Yet, quite often, Death Metal gives a songwriter much better traction for all sorts of debaucheries. And whilst the blackened folks are steeped in tradition and self-inflicted rules,1 the deathly ones can let loose any which way they choose. Yet again, some of them forgot that just brutalizing the audience like some abominable monstrosity may not necessarily lead to great … [...] Click to raid more!

Celestial Season – Mysterium II (2022) – Review

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Celestial Season - Mysterium II - Album Cover

Okay, Celestial Season announced it. Once Mysterium I released, the band promised more records to come in 2022 and 2023. And that may very well mean two records in one given year. So, sure enough, here they are with Mysterium II, a mere few months after their last marketing event in April of this year. The RMR crew may be damaged by experience, but it also tells us that releasing too much material in one year is dicey at best. Unless you have an abundance of creative energy and stamina to pull this off. After all, many of today’s … [...] Click to raid more!