Rating: 4/5
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‘StormDragon’ has a strange balance of traditional black metal production quality and inventive melodic modernity, utilizing both progressive harmony and a few heavy metal hooks.

Rating: 4.5/5
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“…[M]ore of what you would expect from Alcest: that droning shoegaze place caught between joy and melancholy. The vocals are wondrous and mellow. You might think the drums would fall to the background like they do with a lot of post-black metal, but they’re way up there, produced well, and dynamically engaging.” ~Breath of Mozym

The Breath of Mozym utters his infernal list for the tenebrous masses.

Rating: 3/5
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‘Hymnes de la Montagne Noire’ is a decent black metal album, but leaves much to be desired in terms of composition—the songs are too long for not having an epic flavor, and often run together without establishing any defining hooks.

Rating: 3/5
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The Breath of Mozym emerges to not only rate, but write a fucking SONG for this review!

Rating: 4.5/5
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Shining’s “Live Blackjazz” showcases expert live fusion of the two genres Norwegians are best at—free jazz & black metal—and is a brilliant look at what music can do in this next decade.

Rating: 2/5
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If Abhor releases another album, I truly hope they stray from stereotypical symphonic black metal and concentrate on forming an acoustic niche.

Rating: 4/5
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“True Traitor, True Whore” serves as a welcome comeback for America’s best one-man black metal project.

Rating: 4.5/5
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Where the second wave of black metal was evil, Satanic, and all about the supernatural, WITTR have spearheaded a movement which spreads its roots deep into the soil of our planet. Be it through sound, lyrical content, or art, this third wave can be summed up with one word: organic.

So it’s blackened Southern bluesy sludge by a bunch of French dudes? I know everyone lately opens with similar description, but if you’ve heard Glorior Belli, the badassery is obvious. After a full opening of “Dark Gnosis” from ‘The Great Southern Darkness’ and a bad joke from me, we get FULL-ON deep regarding their obscure name and origins, the underlying thread between Scandinavia and the Mississippi Delta, and how Julien channels his beliefs through the music. Then, just to reel it back a bit… questions about booze.