Into the Coven
Into the Coven: Erzfeynd & Celestial Sword 12″ Split Premiere
Premiere for the upcoming Erzfeynd / Celestial Sword split.
Premiere for the upcoming Erzfeynd / Celestial Sword split.
Beneath the land of warriors and magicians where Marco resides and compiles best of traditional heavy metal releases of the past, are the moldy catacombs where darker parts of Ride Into Glory dwell and the occult tunes echo. Here in our coven, we wanted to make a list of best releases of the year of the plague (Best of 2020).
An interview and album premiere for Apochryphal Revelation’s new album “Primeval Devilish Wisdom”.
An interview and album premiere for Occult Burial’s sophomore album Burning Eerie Lore!
Nine years after the previous album “March into Firelands”, Flame is here again with this EP from Finnish label Primitive Reaction and this is, while fairly short, a very welcome addition to their discography. Even the first listen shows that their frostbitten and dark sound is still there and the steel remains.
Full album premiere for Draghkar’s At the Crossroads of Infinity, featuring an interview with primary songwriter Brandon Corsair.
…A band quietly releases an album that sonically sits somewhere between the influences of Bathory, Nifelheim, Tormentor, Dissection, and Mercyful Fate, which successfully conjures the evil atmosphere of spending a night in an abandoned castle in Transylvania where shadows play mind games to trick you that you will never see the sunrise again while wolves are howling outside. And the album goes completely unnoticed, standing against all modern fads and trends, waiting to be discovered.
Something that people in underground metal circles love to do is to trace back the sound of a new band to find the origins of influences. What lies at the root is Black Sabbath if you go back enough but the trace lines at this point have branched out so wide that the full map of modern underground metal would be represented with no less than a forest. A particular branch that we are interested in here is the one that goes from ‘80s metal to Mortuary Drape, then to more extreme acts such as Cultes des Ghoules, Spite, or in today’s case, Ljosazabojstwa.
As black metal began to arise as a global movement in the early 1990s, regional scenes began taking hold. Beyond the infamous Norweigan one, many small regional scenes emerged in Sweden, Finland, Greece, Brazil and perhaps most curiously, the Czech Republic. The scene in this country had its origins in the 1980s as underground tape trading managed to expose a handful to the occult sounds of Venom, Bathory, and Mercyful Fate among others in spite of the restrictions under the iron curtain.
From the ashes of several previous bands and the eerie corners of Sweden came Head of the Demon. In the eighth year of their existence, they are about to release their third album, aptly named as Deadly Black Doom, on Walpurgis Night, the 30th of April.