Short and Quick - August/September 2025 - Black Metal Special
Well recently I've been on a bit of a black metal kick revisiting some old favourites like Paysage D'Hiver, Agalloch, Darkthrone, Leviathan etc. while also exploring records by bands I've never given much time to before, like Antichrist Siege Machine, Blasphemy and Deathspell Omega. So, I thought why not talk about a few of these records here ? I tried to include something for everyone raw lo-fi black metal, atmospheric black metal, war metal, and so on. Since I didn't release a short and quick in August, this will be a sort of double edition with more music then usual. Enjoy !
I discovered Tardigadra when I was browsing through the Eisenwald store searching for some Agalloch merch. Emotionale Ödnis must have been pretty new back then, probably one or two years old. Someone online had compared the band to Paysage D'Hiver, which piqued my interest. However, when I first listened to the record, I didn't really understand the comparison, and I also didn't think it was that great either. Returning to it now, a few years later, I enjoyed it much more, probably because I wasn't going into it with the same expectations. Because while yes this is atmospheric black metal, and it's not completely absurd to compare it to Paysage D'Hiver, this has much better production quality and sounds much more modern. The guitars, vocals and drums are all very clearly distinguishable entities and it's also not nearly as repetitive as Paysage tends to be. This is still a great atmospheric black metal record though, but it is a modern one, with much of it feeling like a more depressive Nocte Obducta, borrowing from Germany's melodic black metal history. Another band that comes to mind when listening to this was Forteresse, specifically the record Thèmes pour la rébellion, as it has similar melodic sensibilities and also has the same kind of grandiose riffing . While I won't discuss the specific tracks in too much detail here, I must mention the final track Verfall,which reaches the absolute peak of emotionality as far as atmospheric black metal is concerned. If you're looking for some quality depressive atmospheric black metal, this record might be for you.
Fallen Angel of Doom... really needs no introduction. It's the second full length record in a style that came to be known as war metal after a few demos by this band and numerous others, including Beherit and Impurity. The only other record released before this was Slaves of Death by Enormity, but it has not achieved the anywhere near the same cult status that Fallen Angel Of Doom... has. So, what exactly is this record and what the hell is a war metal ? Well, from what I've gathered, war metal is just a really aggressive and loud form of black metal influenced by death metal. If that didn't sound kind of stupid, and way less cool and edgy, one might call it deathened black metal or something. And that's what you get on Fallen Angel Of Doom... thirty minutes of extremely pissed off raw black metal whose only purpose is to be as loud and fast as possible. The title track really exemplifies the whole record. The production is cavernous, the vocals are guttural and the performances are aggressive. The song feels like taking black metal's extreme repetitiveness and death metal's sonic aggression and throwing it all together. Or perhaps the band just heard Under the Sign of the Black Mark and thought "You know what ? This is great, but what if it was faster, more aggressive and we added gutturals ?". I may have used the word aggressive like three times in three sentences, but that is kind of the point I guess. If you're looking for music that just punches you in the face for thirty minutes straight, this record is for you.
I first came across Leviathan through the Noisey documentary "Black Metal's Unexplored Fringes - One Man Metal". At the time, I was still new to black metal, and I was endlessly fascinated by that particular documentary. I listened to all three bands featured in it at some point: Leviathan, Xasthur and Striborg. While I enjoyed the material from all three of those bands, it was Leviathan that stuck with me the most. Perhaps this is because Wrest is clearly the most musically talented of the three. To be honest, Scar Sighted was a record that genuinely scared me at the first time i listened to it. I had already listened to The Tenth Sublevel of Suicide, and probably some other Leviathan material, I can't quite remember, which I really enjoyed, especially songs like The Idiot Sun, but this was a new level for me. While that record is quite depressive, somewhat lethargic and maybe even a bit aggressive, musically it's relatively straight forward. Scar Sighted, on the other hand, is a dense unrelenting beast that doesn't let you breathe for even a second. In many ways, this is a logical continuation of Massive Conspiracy Against All Life, a record that saw Wrest explore more complex musical directions than his previous material, something he would partially undo with the more simplistic True Traitor, True Whore. An interesting aspect of this record is that Wrest really switched up his vocal style for many of the tracks on here, often sounding like he's sort of whisper growling compared to the more classic black metal shrieks he used on earlier records such as The Tenth Sublevel of Suicide. This, along with the production really gives the record a dense, claustrophobic feel. A good example of this is the opener Smoke of Their Torment, which combines the whispers with straight-up spoken word, to the point where it very much feels like you are standing in smoke, being tormented by the voices, Wrest's voices, surrounding you. This oppressive feeling is maintained throughout the record, with a deep constant background noise featured in most songs. Another track that I want to highlight here is the ten-minute title track, which consists mostly of melodic stripped-back guitar and Wrest wailing in the background until it explodes into its climax at around eight minutes.
Scar Sighted is a multifaceted, complex evolution of Leviathan's sound, and is worth a listen for anyone who is already the band, or honestly into black metal at all.
I have always thought that Nocte Obductas Teil 1: Zwölf Monde, eine Hand voller Träume deserves more love. Now I have never seen anyone hate on it or anything, but while it's follow-up Teil 2: Seen, Flüsse, Tagebücher, and especially the song Und Pan spielt die Flöte (Desîhras Tagebuch Kapitel III), has become somewhat of a classic in the German black metal scene, I have never seen anyone talk about Teil 1. This is quite sad, as I think it's actually the superior record, even though it doesn't quite reach the heights of Und Pan spiel die Flöte. Compared to the second part, this one embraces an even more melodic approach, and is probably the most conventionally "beautiful" record that I am presenting today. The first track starts and it almost feels like you are listening to Songs of Moors and Misty Fields, it feels uplifting and majestic. Now the record doesn't stay likes this for long, immediately throwing in a tremolo riff and some screamed vocals, but the song never loses the light feeling the record has, mixing the melodic riffing with proggy ambience and folky guitars. For most of the record, the band sticks with this mix of melodic black metal riffs and slower proggy parts that build the atmosphere and take some of the tension out of the music. So, if you're looking for a progressive black metal record, that's comparatively easy on the ears, look no further than this.
Urfaust is another band that I discovered in my late teens when I first got into black metal, and I have loved them ever since. Geist ist Teufel is their debut record and comes from a time when the more sophisticated, doom metal influenced songs of records like The Constellatory Practice were still in the distant future. This is a raw, lo-fi and completely unhinged piece of atmospheric black metal, with about fifteen minutes of ambient music. After all listening closely to Burzum's classic records tells that no atmospheric black metal record is complete without at least one fully ambient track. Well I guess there is also a piece of neoclassical darkwave, but the point is that this is pretty raw, even by Urfaust standards and also completely unique thanks to the vocals which are somewhere between operatic singing and drunken wailing. The abysmal recording quality adds greatly to the atmosphere, with everything sounding as though it were recorded in a cave. Die kalte Teufelsfaust and Drudenfuß are the two central songs on the record with both of them being some of Urfaust's best material. Die kalte Teufelsfaust is an icy, atmospheric black metal song, while Drudenfuß is both disturbing and bizarrely funny, sounding almost like a black metal dance song. Seriously if the rest of this didn't make you want to listen to record in full, at least give Drudenfuß a try. Even if you don't like it, it will certainly be one of the more unique songs you have heard in your life.
If you're looking for something really unique that's still firmly rooted in black metal, you should check out Urfaust. If you do and you're put off by this record, maybe try some of their more polished black metal, such as Der freiwillige Bettler or their doom metal, like The Constellatory Practice.
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