Black Metal

CANDELABRUM hail from Portugal, renown in the past decade for its polarizing raw black metal scene. The nameless mainman behind the band has been involved within that scene for many years, and even before his native scene found worldwide recognition. And even within that scene/idiom, CANDELABRUM stands alone, enigmatic and electric: his works are slavishly reverential of ancient black metal whilst simultaneously unorthodox. The band’s two albums to date, 2016’s Necrotelepathy and 2018’s Portals, are equally astounding modern classics which emit a strangely shimmering quality amongst an explosion of emotive rawness. Both albums are immersive and mesmerizing experiences unto themselves.

Wisely prizing quality over quantity, CANDELABRUM only emerge from the shadows when a new experience is fully formed and ready to curse/haunt/liberate the listener: at long last, Nocturnal Trance. Truly titled, this third album is a strident synthesis of its monolithic predecessors as well as form meeting content. Conceptually, Nocturnal Trance deals with the same theme of Necrotelepathy and Portals: death and the passage to a different plane, beyond. On those previous CANDELABRUM records, the figure on the front cover is always “moving” – crossing the passage, as it were – but this time, the mainman chose to clearly portray the passage from absolute darkness to an ominous monochromaticism: both a blinding light and a complete lack of it, going beyond darkness and back around to an absence of literally everything.

Black Metal

No one could expect CULTES DES GHOULES to create another Coven, which clocked in at nearly 100 minutes across two CDs or three 12″ vinyl records; they would never want to do that anyway. Instead, the coven dives headlong into the spacier crevasses of their inscrutable, always idiosyncratic sound. Like the blackest of magick, willed into being through both inmutable will and unselfconscious abandon, “Sinister” opens up – WIDELY – and again stretches sulfur and brimstone to their breaking point, with four of the five tracks topping ten minutes (or more) in length. Within, largely tribal/ritualistic drumming guides this “Sinister” spelunk into supernatural horrors yet witnessed; loose and lawless but always with torch in hand, the collective canvass teeth-gnashing gnarliness and haunting, stripped-back tension alike. It’s not “weird” black metal because it tries to be – it just IS, like always.