“Venereal Dawn” is controlled, black and extremely creative.Ĥ: John Bassett – Unearth (Stereohead Records) As some people have a way with words, so these Germans have ways of making nightmarish journeys into disease-ridden chasms seem like an adventure. Once again, Dark Fortress drag us through the black metal miss with “this musical expression of dark abysses”. The result is something extravagant and luxurious.ģ: Dark Fortress – Venereal Dawn (Century Media) “Horizons” is fearless as unashamedly commercial songs and sounds mingle with progressive metal imagination. Its creepiness and eccentricities reinforce the message and serve to enrich this all-embracing journey through the darkest of territoriesĢ: Anubis Gate – Horizons (Nightmare Records)Īnubis Gate pull off a metal album with soaring melodies which take us high into the sky and beyond. This completely stunning album from Poland marches on defiantly, with twists and turns at every grisly corner. Mysticum have fused industrial blackness here with manic zealousness and Planet Satan proved a total assault of the senses.ġ: Vesania – Deus ex Machina (Metal Blade)Įnveloped in an outwardly symphonic black metal cloak, “Deus ex Machina” explores the genre in its entirety. Threatening to never arrive, when it did it was with a drug fuelled crash bang and wallop. Triptykon’s exercises in profound doom and gloom may well be a vision of hell but few can better them. Jameson has forged his personal annus horribilis into a challenging and ever changing album which showed no limits to genre conventions.ĩ: Triptykon – Melana Chasmata (Century Media)Ī frosty and suffocating exercise in suffering and one that has scope to suck the life out the unwary. From innovators to leaders within the USBM scene N. ‘Splinters’ really gets under the skin coating everything in a thick, scummy layer of crustīrutal and experimental in equal measures Krieg have really come of age here. Like the greatest sci fi film never made this is a chilling event horizon of an album.ħ: Vallenfyre – Splinters (Century Media)Ī gritty exercise in old-school dirty death spat out by battle-scarred scene veterans reliving the heydays of the 80’s. Gorgeous, sublime and beguiling this is ultimately a passionate display that made my heart literally melt.Ī trip to the outer limits that proved absolutely compulsive as it sprawled like a fantastic voyage to the far flung darkest edges of the universe. Yes a surprise ‘happy’ entry but the symphonic charge of Stream Of Passion called and could not be ignored. Exuding a dreadful and decrepit atmosphere this is a real anti-human necromantic ritual heralding mankind’s ultimate destruction.ĥ: Stream Of Passion – A War Of Our Own (S/R) Ugly and harsh, discordant black metal from Norway’s innovators with a cold and calculated feel about it. Ave Satanus!Ĥ: Mayhem – Esoteric Warfare (Season Of Mist) It’s a welcome return from Brummie industrialists Godflesh whose purification rites are as potent and acerbic as they were before their sudden demise.ģ: Behemoth – The Satanist (Nuclear Blast)Ī triumphant and two fingered salute to the disease that could have prematurely ended his life Nergal and co returned with a work of epic and biblical proportions which literally brought the walls tumbling down. Moving between passages of genre-shifting heartfelt fragility and tumultuous discourse ‘London’ conceptually bristles with urban paranoia, taking the listener on a wild emotional ride through the underbelly of its heaving city.Ģ: Godflesh – A World Lit Only By Fire (Avalanche)Ĭleaning the streets once more and baptizing the world in fire. There are no right or wrong answers, it’s all down to personal choice and if you discover something you missed from these lists it’s all the better and our job is partly done. Until it does, enjoy all our varied choices from 2014. No doubt there will be plenty of surprises along the way and it is never boring wondering just what is going to come next. 2015 is already threatening to continue in this way and we will embrace it all with open arms. It would not have been too difficult a task to actually put together a top 40 this year and I felt myself facing an insurmountable challenge just honing things down to 10 choices especially as good albums did not stop arriving even at the dying end of the year. What a year as far as music was concerned, even if everything else is pretty much shit it is the tonic that keeps us going through it all and there has been no shortage of choice.
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