A new delivery of locally-trademarked version of fast and atmospheric black metal, galloping hooves drum kick and epic trance-riffs, which tend to be complex attacks on simple memorable structures.

Eight tracks of mumbling candy doom, exuberant depressive songs of wailing sweetness.

Some context for this review: I wasn’t vastly familiar with either performer here. I’d not really listened to much Current 93 until a week before the gig, and until a couple of months ago I’d never knowingly heard a Nurse With Wound album. . .  though …

A fantastically ambitious, powerful, yet mysterious and understated performance, far beyond the excellent Konoyo album. . .

Grabs you like a demonic robot trying to making a cocktail out of your shredded brain.

Like the beautiful monochrome cover image, this is a striking vision of black metal architecture.

A great split by two Dutch masters of serious, experimental and intense black metal.

New full-length Mineral Bearing Veins mixes Irish folkloric spoken word, noisy ambience, field recordings, harsh chaos and black metal in a dense and unique brew.

From a duo of drums and guitar this is powerful sound which compels rigorous intellectual commitment, physical-material-sonic engagement, exuberant enjoyment and radical freedom.

New album of blissfully desert-scorched jams from Yawning Man that comes over as an effortless joy to hear.

The Oregon transcendental doomsters Yob return with their raw, heart-filled record named ‘Our Raw Heart’.

Great split from two distinctive bands from the extreme underground on opposite sides of the world.

A solid record from a band who have carved out a distinctive space in dealing with harsh and difficult subject matter with bright and quirky aplomb.

Several hours’ worth of new Bong, powerfully manipulating the the fabric of time and rhythm, underwritten by the ever-present pure amplified doom drone.

Singer Milena Eva appears as if with puppet strings pulled from another dimension – an uncanny marionette, hands and eyes drifting with an otherworldly automatism . . . The songs, in addition to some great heavy post-metal dringing chords, are a balance of a skewed declamatory lines and then crystal shards of melody.

It’s wildly powerful. Halfway through, evidence appears to suggest that someone farted near me. . . they probably had no choice. The noise must be bothering the trains above, vibrating them off their rails.

While presence at the live event where this was recorded may have allowed attendees to participate in that exploration of space in the moment, unfortunately here the ‘no specific goal’ is what shines through.

Whatever one’s depth of knowledge about the mechanisms behind the music, here we have an intriguing collection of sonic constructions.

Insect Ark’s ‘Marrow Hymns’ is great once you’ve snapped into it, an accessible and interesting mix of doom constructions, with the signature element being various kinds of glisses and slides.

Legitimately up there in impossible this-can’t-actually-be-happening desert rock heaven with watching, on New Year 2012, Brant Bjork and a barefoot Scott Reeder play ‘Whitewater’ for maybe the last time together.

Twenty-five years ago, on the 3rd of February 1993, Seattle-based band Earth released their first full-length record, ‘Earth 2: Special Low Frequency Version’. The ultra-extreme yet weirdly ambient, intensely embodied but marginal and fragmented subgenre of drone metal was born.