Hail Spirit Noir - Pneuma [2012]

Hail Spirit Noir are something of a rare breed nowadays - a progressive black metal band that doesn't go on pointless meanders around the realms of tedious ambience and atonal 'experimentation' just so they could hit that 70 minute mark for the album and make it 'truly progressive'. Ahem. Rant over. Hail Spirit Noir write SONGS - even the epic 'Into The Gates Of Time' is catchy and headbangable throughout its 13 minute duration. And 'Against The Curse, We Dream' and 'Haire Pneuma Skoteino' have some of the biggest hooks you're likely to hear in metal this year. That's not to say it loses touch of its black metal roots - and for this reason, it's very likely to be well up in lots of people's year-end lists. Hail the black spirit.

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Ravencult - Morbid Blood [2011]

And I am back from my nice, quiet weekend away from all the bullshit.

Feels good man.

Anyway, since I am back behind the keyboard in an official capacity, it's time to get back to the contributing.

What I have for you today is one of the few truly solid Black Metal releases of 2011, which has been a terribly slow year for the genre. Morbid Blood, by Greek Black Metal warlords Ravencult, is not one of those "By the Dark Lords, Black Metal has changed forever!" type albums: that is not how these guys roll. But it is just rock solid, fun as hell and very honest traditional Black Metal.

Kudos off the bat to the excellent cover art, which is what first drew me to the album. It's the perfect color, form and overall level of evil we expect from a Black Metal band. And so is the music: this is classic Mayhem worship, just with better musicianship. At times, it has a strong Punk Rock feel(like the opening track "Sacrilege of Death"), which helps prove my long standing argument that Black Metal was intended to be Norwegian Nationalist Punk Rock before all the real Metal musicians took the genre away from Varg and his cohorts. The production is classic Black Metal: very loud and every instrument and the vocals can he heard, but it's also very distorted and dirty. I love the guitar tone on this record in particular.

Any self-respecting fan of Black Metal is going to dig this. Honestly, if you claim to be a Black Metal fan and don't like this record, you are either a poser or a cynical Black Metal hipster. Which is it?

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Septicflesh - The Great Mass [2011]

Well, this is a modern symphonic and extreme metal album with the complexity of Emperor - who'd've thunk it? This is one of those albums which takes a while to settle in, but identifies itself as having potential from first listen.

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Septicflesh - Communion [2008]

So Septicflesh's most recent release, this year's 'The Great Mass', has been flooring me recently, so I thought I'd post this and that for the purposes of quality and nostalgia. This is certainly easier to get into than 'TGM', but it's simply a different beast on a different album.

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