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

Death Metal

“The Supreme Force of Eternity, the debut album with some old obscure demo tracks as a bonus. That’s actually also what the main material is too. But re-recorded in 1998 versions of previously old demo material from the first era in the early 90s. So in a way it’s a collection of older re-recorded material from the early years of the band. Hence the material differs somewhat from the second album “Enter the Realm of Death”. But it’s still a classic release in the history of Runemagick.” – Nicklas Rudolfsson

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

A cross-generational meeting of two very old souls, Wandering Forlorn brings together two Australian hordes who’ve been following the voice of blood longer than most have been alive. RUNESPELL mainman Nightwolf has been forging steel in the glare of burning churches since 2017. In feverish succession, his three albums for IRON BONEHEAD have poignantly presented pagan black metal in an authentically old yet refreshingly new hue, and with his three equally epic tracks here, RUNESPELL shows that the fire is far from extinguished – in fact, its flames soar ever higher like spears hunting heaven. By comparison, FOREST MYSTICISM put Down Under paganism on the map nearly 15 years ago and then retreated into the shadows in 2011, honor intact. Come 2018, the Hearken EP indeed hearkened the band’s rebirth, and the three stout-yet-sumptuous tracks here continue that noble trajectory. And aside from a single-track split last year, Wandering Forlorn marks the most extended FOREST MYSTICISM recording since the no-less-considerable Hearken, a true fire of awakening.

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

The cul album from 1991 available again on LP.