Black Metal

Passage To Arcturo was the band’s debut studio offering and was originally released in 1991. Featuring a lo-fi raw take on Black Metal, Rotting Christ also masterfully wove some of their trademark atmosphere and sombre melodies with occult themes to create something altogether unique for the time, with the band over the years becoming one of the enduring premier staples of the whole Black Metal genre.

Black Metal

For the better part of a decade, RUACH RAAH have been plumbing the depths of the black metal underground with an unapologetically primitivist sound, spread over myriad spilt releases on cassette and vinyl. It all crystallized on their debut album, the aptly titled Hate Fanaticism, released to critical acclaim in 2015 by WAR ARTS PRODUCTIONS. But whereas the power-trio’s sound has thus far maintained a strict, almost martial hypnotism, with Under the Insignia of Baphomet, RUACH RAAH’s sound stretches into a roiling, rabid restlessness that unrelentingly attacks and attacks and ATTACKS. Built upon a solid foundation of gutter-dwelling bass and crunging guitar, the drums blast about in shapes most obscene, foregoing the previous, punk-rooted punch for a wholly more dread-inducing and doom-draped sound. Suitably, their elder rawness has been given a massive boost in the production department, sacrificing none of the cruelty but giving a frightening clarity to their belligerent battery.

If Ildjarn, Bone Awl, and rawest Darkthrone served as aesthetic touchstones in the past, now RUACH RAAH have inched closer to the disgust of classic Profanatica, Order From Chaos, and Black Witchery. It’s a payoff that works in spades, hereby making Under the Insignia of Baphomet a glorious new chapter in the band’s mounting supremacy.

Lim. 100 copies

Black Metal

Originally released as cassette by Mahamvantara Arts Records earlier this year, RÜNDGARD’s first public recording is one literally out of time. Mainman Lord Valtgryftåk is a prolific veteran of Chile’s increasingly potent black metal underground, concurrently handling the likes of Pyreficativm, 13th Temple, Gryftigæn, and Winterstorm among others. And while a number of those bands and satellite entities belonging to the Pure Raw Underground Black Metal Plague are indeed the rawest of the raw, with RÜNDGARD does he delve into ancient times, medieval majesty, and grim splendor somewhere between the earliest Nordic works and contemporaneous Polish ones.

Recorded during two periods over the course of MMXX/MMXXI and now featuring a mix & master by Rudrah Studios, Stronghold of Majestic Ruins suitably evokes its namesake both sonically and thematically. Empirically, the recording evokes the ancient passages and memories of a distant land submerged in mist and an interesting story behind ruins. As Lord Valtgryftåk explains, “Originally, this entity is directly related to those archaic dimensional Valdivian forces that still inhabit our realms, those forces from the past written in blood and guarded by solemn towers and fortresses that still remain alive.” And truly, that past comes alive across the album’s succinct-yet-expansive 25-minute runtime, maintaining a faithful respect for the old traditions and the sound of glorious times with an interesting melodic register at the same time very organic. No record-collector-nerd “raw black metal” here: only authentic ancient vintage!

For those nostalgic for forgotten realms and archaic ages, RÜNDGARD returns from a deep slumber with the fortifying Stronghold of Majestic Ruins!

Black Metal

Striking while the iron’s hot, Order of Vengeance follows less than a year after RUNESPELL’s critically acclaimed debut album, Unhallowed Blood Oath, also released by IRON BONEHEAD. Let it be known, however, that there’s not one sacrifice in quality to be found here. If anything, the RUNESPELL aesthetic has become even more iron-girded and iron-willed. There’s a greater sense of urgency on Order of Vengeance – an unquenchable desperation, even – that drives these no-less-grand epics. Whereas Unhallowed Blood Oath situated itself on an axis of melancholy vs. bloodlust, suitably, Order of Vengeance ups the bloodlust considerably…although, of course, the melancholy is no short supply here, particularly on the sparse ‘n’ haunting instrumental “Night’s Gate.” The album length, too, has been padded out to a spacious and all-enveloping 47 minutes, allowing the full mesmerizing grandeur of the RUNEPSPELL aesthetic to take root and consume. More massive, yet more urgent: Order of Vengeance is indeed a new order.

Black Metal

By now, RUNESPELL should require little introduction. Since this Australian entity’s public unveiling in 2017 with the Aeons of Ancient Blood demo – released by IRON BONEHEAD, as well as all successive recordings – RUNESPELL has sharpened its sword and quickly, with three albums arriving like clockwork every year: Unhallowed Blood Oath (2017), Order of Vengeance (2018), and Voice of Opprobrium (2019). Although 2020 didn’t see the release of a full-length, a split album with the reanimated Forest Mysticism tided over the bloodthirsty until the arrival of fourth LP Verses in Regicide in 2021, arguably RUNESPELL’s best-produced and -executed album to date.

Black Metal

Maintaining the same exemplary standards in songwriting and execution, here on Unhallowed Blood Oath, the passion and prowess by which Nightwolf guides RUNESPELL have somehow multiplied tenfold. This is black metal deeply steeped in early ’90s classicism, be it from Scandinavia or France or particularly Poland – again, no sea change there – but to take source material, especially the sort that’s been so widely replicated year after year, and both handily challenge those classics AND resound like an era-relevant relic is no mean feat. In fact, it requires dedication and sacrifice – spiritually, above all, as well as physically – and those are in no short supply across Unhallowed Blood Oath; not for nothing is the album titled that. The seven tracks comprising the record feel strangely far more epic than the compact running-time of 37 minutes suggest, and yet within that mesmerizing maelstrom of alternately grim/gorgeous frequencies lies profound truths, flickering refractions of times distant and as yet lived, of black metal wielded as weapon, totem, and portal simultaneously.

Acid Techno

Saarland’s truest techno goblin RUPRECHT 4500 is coming through with his first full length album. Nothing short of genius blackened techno heresy from the mastermind of SIGFRID. This record goes beyond standard keller synth and travels through the hellish realm of 90’s dance music, carefully arrayed through the lens of the tanzel goblin. Cult techno metal for the stretched imagination…

Black Metal

RUTTOKOSMOS are one of the great “what if?”s of Finnish black metal. The band formed sometime in 2003 and released the five-song Ja minä näin kuoleman demo in 2006 and then the six-song Kärsimys demo a year later. Afterward, nothing was heard from RUTTOKOSMOS ever again. Only one member concurrently played in Divina Inferis, and the other two members either disappeared and played pseudonymously in other bands.

Black Metal

Limited to 200 handnumbered copies. Comes in a gatefold cover with a double-sided printed insert.

Tracks are numbered in roman numerals in sequential order on the back cover.

Black Metal

25th anniversary reissue on vinyl for the mythic debut of paraguayan Black Metal outfit Sabaoth from 1996.

RAC/Oi!

Classic album from 1995.

Limited to 1067 copies.

Black Metal

This is the first SAIDAN demo release, raw and relentless black metal with rocking and furious riffs. Fantastic hate-filled black metal renderings of Japanese tales of vengeful female ghosts. A furious pace, icy evil screams, and haunted nightmare feel.