Latest Reviews
There are way too many records released every week - which one should you listen to? We want to help you by reviewing lots of records every week and you can also check out a little teaser before reading the whole thing. And if you want to, you can also browse through our archive and have a look at the amazing records you might have missed out on.
Page 9 of 35
-
Am Himmel - As Eternal As The Starless Kingdom of Sorrow
04 Jul 2022 - Thorsten
Atmospheric Blackened Drone Metal, ShoegazeIn some ways the debut full-length of new Dutch project Am Himmel (English: In the Sky) is hard to pinpoint – it could be called drone, maybe industrial, definitely shoegaze, certainly black metal but maybe it’s just a brilliant debut by this semi-anonymous band? It surely deserves your attention, dear friends of the obscure blackened drone metal!
Continue reading > -
White Ward - False Light
03 Jul 2022 - Thorsten
Avantgarde Black Metal, Jazz Metal, Post-Punk“Cronus“ and “Downfall“ will be the tracks that many former fans rally against when it comes to the latest record by Ukrainian extreme metal masters White Ward. That these fans never really understood what this band is about and why these two tracks function perfectly in the context of this more than open-minded band must be explained in detail. Nevertheless, one thing is sure - False Light will be one of the most talked about records of 2022!
Continue reading > -
Saor - Origins
02 Jul 2022 - Thorsten
Atmospheric Black MetalChristians perceive their god as a holy trinity. Shakespeare had Macbeth encounter three witches. The new Saor record has three steles on its cover. Those ancient upright stones with ritualistic markings are glowing in that typical Scottish blue that one can also see on the cross of St. Andrew, the Scottish flag. Andy Marshall is back with his Caledonian metal project! Fàilte air ais, Saor!
Continue reading > -
Thūn - II
01 Jul 2022 - Knut
Doom Metal/Heavy MetalLooming on the horizon is a foreboding Lovecraftian apparition who is ready to take on the natural world´s enemies with an unknown ferocity. It will probably be one of The Great Ones, might be Cthulhu, Amon-Gorloth or Atlach-Nacha. The band Thūn is back with the second volume of dystopian doom metal one year after the first chapter. And the music has grown heavier and angrier with an eleventh-hour-feel looming over the heavy sonics with lyrics like “It is an insult to the heritage of thought, delimitation of information, follow belief without evidence.”
Continue reading > -
Devils Tail - Desolation
28 Jun 2022 - Thorsten
Black MetalThis record was kind of a surprise to me – because I was listening to it over the speakers while working on a few other things and it seemed to be nothing but another black metal record. Then I put on my headphones and was really surprised – because now it seemed like a whole other album. So take my advice – give Desolation a spin but listen to it with some good headphones. There are a few things hidden in there!
Continue reading > -
Wyatt E. - āl bēlūti dārû
27 Jun 2022 - Thorsten
Ritualistic Far-Eastern Psych-RockThe long-gone times in Mesopotamia, the land between the two rivers, seems to be more on a cultural ascend again. Last week we had the premiere of UR, earlier we featured Dakhma and their Zoroastrian Black Metal and now we got Wyatt E. from Belgium. Their latest record, āl bēlūti dārû is surely a mesmerizing masterpiece – one should not underestimate the effect these 37 minutes of music can have on you!
Continue reading > -
The Lord - Forest Nocturne
26 Jun 2022 - Thorsten
Horror Soundtrack, Noise Rock, Drone, DoomWhen choosing not to use perfect pre-released singles with Robin Wattie (Big ǀ Brave) and William DuVall (Blast, Alice in Chains) one must be really confident in his other songs. Greg Anderson aka The Lord surely is – and he has every right to be as the full-length debut Forest Nocturne turns out to be a highly emotive, fully enclosed universe full of soundtrack-like density, Carpenter-esque horror and songs to be afraid of. Or to be afraid of missing. Or both.
Continue reading > -
Nechochwen - Kanawha Black
25 Jun 2022 - Thorsten
Atmospheric Black Metal, Blackened FolkThe Kanawha river is a tributary river of the Ohio River, flows through West Virginia and it was named according to the Iroquoian language spoken in the region meaning “water way”. When a black metal uses such a name for an album, you already get some idea that they will not be talking about Sci-Fi-battles or medieval castle sieges. Nechochwen from Ohio fit that idea perfectly with their fifth album called Kanawha Black which is a must-listen for all fans of this kind of mix between black metal and traditional folk!
Continue reading > -
James Romig & Mike Scheidt - The Complexity of Distance
24 Jun 2022 - Thorsten
Neoclassical, DoomWhenever two genres are brought together by artists and musicians from very different backgrounds that will create a certain tension and friction. Listen to this mighty record by James Romig and Mike Scheidt and you can witness the friction crawl through the speakers or headphones and form that blurry oscillation that will create grainy dark pictures before your very eyes.
Continue reading > -
Woorms - Fatalismo
23 Jun 2022 - Thorsten
Noisey Psychedelia, Stoner, SludgeOkay, to kick the big elephant from the room, this record is big, or rather: it should be big, because it works like a time machine back to late August 2002, so nearly twenty years ago. Back then an already somewhat established band released a record that many still consider groundbreaking: Songs for the Deaf was the record and Queens of the Stone Age was the band that was immediately catapulted into the limelight of every bigger music magazine. For Louisiana-based sludge-noise trio Woorms, their latest record Fatalismo should be the same. If the world was a fair, a just place!
Continue reading > -
La Reine Seule - Visages
22 Jun 2022 - Knut
Neo-Classical PianoAnd now for something completely different: When the artist´s label announced this album they wrote something like “This is the quietest album we have released.” We can concur with that here at Veil of Sound; the quietest album reviewed as it is an album with eight pieces for classic solo piano by Judith Hoorens.
Continue reading > -
Llyn Y Cwn - Du Y Moroedd
21 Jun 2022 - Dan D.
Dark AmbientLlyn Y Cwn is the one-man field-recording-based dark ambient project of Ben Powell who, as it states on the Bandcamp page, has been making electronic music for over 25 years. Having been aware of Llyn Y Cwn for a couple of years now since enjoying 2019’s Cold Spring debut Twll Du and the follow-up Dinorwic, I was extremely looking forward Du Y Moroedd when I became aware of its release.
Continue reading > -
Dinbethes - Balans
20 Jun 2022 - Thorsten
(Atmospheric) Black MetalThere are some bands that just don’t make it easy on you – Dinbethes might be one of them. Their mix of black metal structures, punk tempi, pagan shouts, doom moments and sometimes even psychedelic parts is not unheard of, not unusual but in some way different and hard to pinpoint. But one thing remains clear – this is, at its core, black metal of the highest standards!
Continue reading > -
Kalkas - Envoûtante sève
17 Jun 2022 - Thorsten
Post-Metal, Noise-RockEnvoûtante sève (or “Bewitching Sap“ in English) is the title of a five-track debut by Swiss doom-psychedelic-noise-rock Kalkas from Lausanne, located in the Francophone part of the country. It has five supporters on Bandcamp today (June 17th, 2022) and that needs to change as more people need to find out about the band, their record and their anger at the people who cause our planet to rot away!
Continue reading > -
Aptera - You Can't Bury What Still Burns
17 Jun 2022 - Knut
Heavy Metal/Doom MetalFormed in Berlin in 2018 with members from Italy, Belgium, USA and Brazil, Aptera is a showcase of what synergy brings when accomplished musicians unite. Through this album the band discharge anger, compassion, despair, remorse and sorrow. The record is released by a firebrand of musicians wearing their hearts on their sleeves. It is quite hard to believe that this magnificent album is their first full-length. It is what heavy doom-induced metal should be: Engaging riffs reinforced by a diverse rhythm section, robust vocals and at the same time highlighting many ideas and influences from ancient Greek, Roman, Celtic and Norse myths and legends, but also current events, loss, resilience just to name a few.
Continue reading > -
Druids - Shadow Work
16 Jun 2022 - Thorsten
Psychedelic MetalDruids is not your average Pelagic Records band – by the way is there something like an average Pelagic band as nearly everything that label has put out over the last couple of years was mighty interesting? But Druids is like a mix of two poles under the Pelagic roster sun – psychedelic a la Oslo Tapes and Sludge as in Pelagic. The band from the middle of nowhere is really great at being heavy and being moody.
Continue reading > -
Zola Jesus - Arkhon
14 Jun 2022 - Thorsten
Electronic, Dark WaveA few weeks ago I started a review with connecting the music to that old and still not confirmed Merzbow-quote that noise is only music that makes one uneasy and that therefore pop music to him was noise. Now I want to talk about a pop record that would probably not make the Japanese squirm because of uneasiness but would soothe his ears: Arkhon the latest release by Wisconsin-based pop-singer Zola Jesus!
Continue reading > -
Blood Quartet - Root 7
12 Jun 2022 - Stephan
jazz fusion, kraut rock, instrumentalDon’t judge an album by the first eight of its nine tracks!
Continue reading > -
36 - Symmetry Systems
-
Blut Aus Nord - Disharmonium - Undreamable Abysses
10 Jun 2022 - Knut
Experimental Industrial Atmospheric Black MetalThe 17th release by this impressive band is not exactly sonorous, something we did not expect anyway. But it is resounding and overwhelming in a disorderly seductive way when the cracks in the dense wall of sound uncover structures, themes and choirs in an endless tangled red tunnel. It could have been the soundtrack to the Upside Down world in Stranger Things Season 4, but each track is a tip of the hat to a story or to a place in the universe of H.P. Lovecraft. The list of metal related bands that are inspired by Lovecraft´s writings is endless and stretches over decades. It began with Black Sabbath rephrasing the Lovecraft-title Beyond the Wall of Sleep to ”Behind the Wall of Sleep” on their first album.
Continue reading > -
Sylvaine - Nova
09 Jun 2022 - Thorsten
Post-Metal, BlackgazeSo first of all, the next one who tells me that this woman sounds like Amy Lee from Evanescence will be meeting his final end with twelve stones. And now to the more important thing: Kathrine Shepard, the Norwegian multi-instrumentalist who relocated to France for her band, has released her fourth album Nova and with it yet another perfect example of where music could end up when we imagine a world without borders.
Continue reading > -
Executioner's Mask - Winterlong
09 Jun 2022 - Thorsten
Post-Punk, Industrial, Noise-RockJay Gambit is a very prolific and productive man – over the years he has produced a vast opus which glitters in various shades from “harsh” to “gritty”, from “brittle” to “powerful”. All of these and much more can be used to describe the songs of his band Executioner’s Mask, which will release their second full-length Winterlong next week!
Continue reading > -
Hundred Year Old Man - Sleep in Light
08 Jun 2022 - Simon
Post-Metal / DoomPost metal heavyweights Hundred Year Old Man return with an astonishing, beguiling new album
Continue reading > -
Enphin - End Cut
04 Jun 2022 - Gene
Industrial, Psychedelic, Electronic, DoomHere come Enphin, new to the Pelagic roster and pretty new to me, but I’ve had myself an early listen and it turns out they’ve got a bunch of albums to date and a solid mission to fuck up your brain. Formerly known as “Mr. Peter Hayden” (is this Hayden a golem not unlike Eddie The Hand?) and following up on the astounding Osiris Hayden of 2019’s end, End Cut comes at us as if out of the late 90’s in the way of heavy-hitting, high concept doom rock. That is my quick and dirty on Enphin, allegedly ending an album cycle here – although doubtfully an idea arc – with the masterful End Cut.
Continue reading > -
Macelleria Mobile di Mezzanotte - This Savaging Disaster
03 Jun 2022 - Thorsten
Doom JazzWhenever one thinks he got a reviewer figured out it is the duty of said reviewer to come up with something unexpected which he likes and which he can convince you of easily. So here is my unexpected review of a wonderful record: Macelleria Mobile di Mezzanotte (what a name!) and their latest full-length This Savaging Disaster!
Continue reading >
Page 9 of 35