Hongo - Demo (2004)

Artist: Hongo
Album: Demo 2004
Genre: Neocrust (Dark Hardcore/Screamo)
Country: Spain

Six tracks of superbly emotional bi-polar devastation.
When I started listening to Hongo a few years ago I had hit a dip in my life. Buncha shit happened but whatever. I listened to them and they were caustic; they made my stomach hurt and physical pain shot through me from their sound. Fucking brutal.
Their sound is chillingly tense and very minor. Slow melodic down tempo parts and furious cathartic explosions mixed in between eachother (Just listen to the first track). Good music for Bad Days.

Get it.

Tsjuder - Desert Northern Hell

Pretty standard Black Metal, decent but raw production. Nothing new brought to the table, but very well done nonetheless. For orthodox black metal, this is one of the better albums of the last few years. Somewhat reminiscent of Marduk but without the blatant emphasis on all-out speed. Nice chainsaw guitar tone. Cool Bathory cover too (Sacrifice).

Rapidshare

Magma - K.A. (2004)

I know most of you grimtards are familiar with Magma, but from what I can tell this little gem has managed to slip under the radar. Maybe because it's about three decades removed from the band's golden era, but rest assured this album is amazing.

Mediafire

Cadaver - Necrosis (2004)

Many of you have heard this band's 1992 album ...In Pains, but I hadn't noticed much attention being directed to this, their rather great swansong. Excellent death/thrash, with a slight technical streak.

Mediafire (sorry, Raj)

Cephalectomy - Eclipsing the Dawn (2004)

This awesome death/grind band from Nova Scotia, Canada, has put out perhaps the funnest album in the world, Eclipsing the Dawn, which could most easily be summed up as a mixture of the craziness of !T.O.O.H.! and the epicness of Lykathea Aflame, but simply putting it that way would do the band a massive disservice.

The album's forty minute runtime is split into eight songs, all of which are written in a more or less linear fashion, much like Deathspell Omega or more recently Ulcerate. But where those bands used that technique to create unnerving soundscapes, Cephalectomy uses it to cram as many jaw-droppingly awesome riffs into every song as humanly possible, and are unafraid of shifting gears before the listener really has time to readjust to what was just being played a few seconds earlier. It takes a few listens to really absorb, but it's well worth the effort in the end.

Mediafire

Vordr - I (2004)

When listening to Vordr, you'd have a hard time believing that they were formed in 2003. These Finns play raw-as-fuck punk-ish old school black metal akin to Von, Darkthrone or, most obviously, Ild-fucking-jarn.

The production manages to keep each instrument discernable, while having an overall ancient, cavernous rawness. Composition-wise, it consists mostly of short (around 2 minutes) tracks, with the odd 4-5 miuntes tracks that are mid-paced, Burzum-inspired numbers. These short lengths work to the album's advantage, as no song overstays it's welcome.

The riffs are fucking simplistic and have that great, evil second-wave fuzz, but they never become too repetitive or tiring. Even though you may not be able to tell most of the songs apart, variety isn't a stranger here, especially if you know a thing or two about early '90s Norwegian Black Metal. The drumming is equally simplistic and Burzum-ish. Double bass and blast beats are lacking, though the drummer knows when to pick up the pace in a punk-ish manner.

So, it has the raw black metal aesthethics nailed, but what about the spirit? Well, Vordr sport a kind of Ildjarn-like nature-admiring misanthropy, wishing nothing but death for modern man and all of his contraptions. With schizoid, "Aske"-ish screams to support it! This minimalist, hateful, sylvan theme permeates the album through and through, from the cold, isolated artwork down to the song titles, such as "Rhythm Of The Storms" or "Fertile Human Waste". All in all, I guess I can imagine these guys living in a cabin somewhere in the woods, splitting logs with nothing but their unadultered distaste for humankind, wearing lumberjack shirts, sitting on their porch with a couple of beers, blunts, and hand-made crossbows on their laps, to protect their property from intruders. They're the kind of manly men that hunt deer by repeatedly bludgeoning them to death with their erect phalluses, while humming "Forest Poetry" and mentally sketching a couple more paragraphs for their "Unabomber"-like manifestos. And that's always something welcome!

Download

-Radu

The Ruins of Beverast - Unlock The Shrine (2004)

Well, boys and germs, here's The Ruins of Beverast's debut LP, Unlock the Shrine. It's a one man band, the genius responsible for this being Alexander von Meilenwald, the drummer for the late Nagelfar. He plays every instrument here, and I gotta say, more drummers should be guitarists. There's an uncanny sense of groove for a black metal record, here, and it doesn't feel out of place at all. The musical synesthesia is just astounding, even though it's quite a thick and layered album. Electronics intertwine with guitars, drums and movie samples to create something new on each track. From the progressive headbangable riff on The Clockhand's Groaning Circles, to the bitter atmosphere of Unlock the Shrine, and even the trip-hop sounding synth on Between Bronze Walls, this album puts most black metal bands to shame in terms of diversity. And, also, it does much more than make you bang your noggin and tap your foot...the artist(yeah, I used this word, Alexander is a true artist, something very rare these days) connects to you on a personal level. Read the lyrics. Bask in the album's atmosphere. It's a moving piece of art that will not leave you indifferent.

Download

-Radu

Drudkh - Autumn Aurora (2004)

Quite often this album gets voted as the second best album in the Drudkh discography next to their first offering 'Forgotten Legends', a sentiment I just can not share.

This album is one of a very few black metal albums that I can refer to as beautiful, the sense of melancholy and the representation of the change of seasons, the depressing yet uplifting feel of Autumn is presented through a series of long atmospheric repetitive guitar riffs and synths that bring forth an organic and fresh sound to the music of Drudkh and to that of the atmospheric black metal genre.

The defining moment on this album comes in the form of 'sunwheel' a surprisingly optimistic and joyful black metal track with a very melancholic undertone that really highlights all the key things I have mentioned about this album, a track which earns it's place as one of my favourite if not my favourite black metal song.


Genre: Black Metal
Download: Rapidshare
Disclaimer: None of the albums I add are uploaded by myself and are intended for promotional purposes only, if you enjoy the album please support artists by buying records.


- RTG