Black Metal

WAMPYRIC RITES and the votive violence of MOLOCH come to bitter black metal fruition, as they conspire to create a fresh rot split incantation by name of “The Serpent Cult of Darkness” that is to be soon unchained beneath the tabernacle of snake seer sorrow. Carving ritual dagger between unrelenting raw brutality and brooding melodic melancholy, “The Serpent Cult of Darkness” is an engrossing journey into the venomous hearts of the necroverse; with both Wampyric Rites’ tradmark terror of lonely tremelo soundscapes and Moloch’s carnal essence of atmospheric synth solace complementing each grimoire of spell grim grume in cacophonous perfection. Encapsulating modern raw black metal in horrendous harmony, “The Serpent Cult of Darkness” leaves no victims of embryonic existence safe from its immolating flames, with only the virility of the celestial ophidian left to engulf what remains of ephemeral reality and those feeble mortals still clinging to its withered bosom.

Black Metal

Two of Finland’s black metal hordes unite to compile and recite “Dead Christ Prayer,” an eight-track split release that represents both the country’s unique tradition and its future. Witchcraft, whose style pays reverence in no subtle way to the great Beherit, returns to expand its imprint and demonstrate its continued adherence to the unrefined bestiality that its primary inspiration pioneered thirty years ago. Its co-conspirators in Aske first inhabited the same time and space as Beherit, but then began an eighteen-year hiatus in 1998, returning in 2016 to embark on a second blasphemous stint of new recordings, which have culminated in this effort. “Dead Christ Prayer” thus presides over the exsanguination of the lifeless body of the false savior and the ensuing transfusion ritual, combining the old blood of Aske with the new blood of Witchcraft to perpetuate the cycle of evil.