Black Metal

Collier d’Ombre transcends musical boundaries, seamlessly blending genres, all while etching its essence with a profound and audacious Black Metal identity. Each track intricately carves through stylistic barriers, creating a sonic landscape that defies convention. The flesh of this album bears the marks of the deepest Black Metal roots, boldly intertwining tradition with inventive expression.

Black Metal

Although it had a very troubled birth, all detailed in the liner notes included with those different versions here, CRADLE OF FILTH almost-album-length 1996 EP V Empire, Or Dark Faerytales In Phallustein proved to be a superb triumph over adversity. Despite all their legal problems, line-up changes and insane pressure after the gigantic success of their debut album, the Brits nevertheless managed to write and record a slab of new even grander songs, next to a new version of the already classic ‘The Forest Whispers My Name’, some would argue even bettering their debut in the process.

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.

Black Metal

Originally released in the autumn of 2005, of DARK FUNERAL’s fourth album, Attera Totus Sanctus, was arguably the band’s fastest and fiercest record ever – which is all the more remarkable given the band’s longevity to that point. Where most bands soften or slow down as they get older – or break up, respectably, before ruining their good name – DARK FUNERAL proved that age is just a number and made their razor-sharp yet always-melodic sound that much more nuclear-powered. In fact, that they were able combine such amazingly blitzed speeds with melodies that are highly memorable, even at those speeds, is something that’s black magick indeed… And another fiery album cover proved that nothing could extinguish DARK FUNERAL’s inferno!

At long last, OSMOSE will do DARK FUNERAL’s back catalog justice with the first of many reissues. This version of Attera Totus Sanctus will faithfully reproduce the original, now finally available on vinyl for the first time in nearly a decade.

Black Metal

Originally released in the spring of 1998 on the pivotal No Fashion label, DARK FUNERAL’s second album, Vobiscum Satanas, consolidated the strengths of the band’s classic The Secrets of the Black Arts debut – shockingly fast execution, exceptionally memorable melody, and plenty of icy atmosphere to spare – and made the whole attack tighter and more concise. The production, too, once again courtesy of Peter Tägtren at Abyss Studios, became razor-sharp, highlighting these subtle developments. As such, many quite rightly consider Vobiscum Satanas the equal of The Secrets of the Black Arts. Either way, between this pair of albums did DARK FUNERAL establish themselves among THE top black metal bands of the late ‘90s.

Death Metal

In 1991, Dark Opera was formed in Łódź, Poland, the very same city in which the band’s compatriots of similar ilk in Pandemonium had united approximately two years earlier. Dark Opera’s first year of existence was plagued by several lineup changes, but it stabilized later that year when the band began to write its own songs and played its first live gig in Łomża. The following April, Dark Opera recorded its first demo, “The Day of Pariah,” at Ariadna Studio in Łódź. Originally, this cassette was self-released, but the band was later signed by Carnage Records, who released a second iteration of the tape with alternate artwork. In 1993, the band added a second guitarist and recorded its first and only album, “Calling the Legend,” in April of that same year. Like the demo that had preceded it, the album was released by another Polish label, Baron Records, who made it available on cassette format only. Like the aforementioned Pandemonium, Dark Opera’s music was reminiscent of the great Samael and others like Alastis and Taranis, but it also incorporated a somewhat greater influence from both death and doom metal. Nuclear War Now! is proud to be the first to reissue both Dark Opera recordings on vinyl and thus continue its neverending objective of rekindling the great fires once set and then left unattended in the most obscure caverns of the underground.