N.B.B.M.N. is Nothing But Black Metal November, a themed short reviews column which I’ve been doing since 2015 in various venues, initially inspired by friends of mine who’d often spend November only listening to black metal and generally catching up on the releases they’d missed throughout the year. This first entry covers as many November 2024 releases as I could process in a 24 hour period without wanting to die (er, more than usual.) // In an attempt to be more conversational these are more easygoing and casual than longform reviews, so relax and think for yourself. — If you find something you dig go tell the band on social media and support them with a purchase! If you’d like your music reviewed, read the FAQ and send promos to: grizzlybutts@hotmail.com

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North Yorkshire, England-based black metal quartet ANTE-INFERNO return with a third full-length album themed on mental illness, intrusive and antisocial thought relating to personal experiences which read as suicidal ideation. ‘Death’s Soliloquy‘ is more directly obsessed with death but that doesn’t limit the band’s stylistic focal point upon depressive or wrathful tones, in fact much of the album is spent producing a modern form of woodsy melodic black metal and typically is at its best in solid longform (~8-10 minute) chunks of song. You might recall I’d written about the band’s first album back in 2020 finding it somewhat rote but nicely polished and in direct comparison I’d felt like there was much more of an effort to stand apart here in terms of giving a bit more agony to the vocal performances while still catching the edge of atmospheric/post-black textural threads in their guitar work. In fact the standout element here, the most improved part of the band’s vision is inarguably the compositions writ for two guitars and how they harmonize and thread together into dramatic movements. The really stomping stuff will probably hit hardest, a la “No Light till Life’s End”, to start but for the most part the longer pieces have more staying power for their exploration of dramatic peaks and slow building movement. This band’s work hasn’t really moved the needle for me in terms of standing out in the crowd but the care given to their whole presentation helps to make ‘Death’s Soliloquy‘ entirely pleasant in passing listen and appreciably dark when examined for its themes.

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Lisbon, Portugal-based quartet FILII NIGRANTIUM INFERNALIUM follow up the grand successes of ‘Hóstia‘ (2018) with an even more wilding course through blasphemic dementia braced in speed/heavy metal but built from all-generational black metal habits. There’s been no sense pigeonholing this band’s efforts, which stretch back to the late 80’s, as the broader reach of their maniac unleash persist with a focused spiritedness that is raw, evil and tanking around with a huge set of “heavy metal” balls at all times. This time around Belathauzer is slinging it harder than usual with his wailing vocal and unpredictive set of riff/songcraft but we’ve algo got guests from the Portuguese black, death, and heavy metal underground contributing guest spots throughout. There is a wild-ass thrill to be found here and that seems to be the major point of ‘Pérfida Contracção do Aço‘ to deliver black/heavy metal with mean, mayhemic energy that demands the attention of the listener and puts on a show. If you’re all about introverted, singular black metal sophistry this is maybe the antithesis as a direct attack upon the senses which also plays directly to the classic metal mind at all times. To ensure this all works we get a bit of “everything” in terms of black, death, thrash, doom and trad metal weirdness all factoring into the full listen. All ~45 minutes of this record kill it, so don’t skip out until you’ve at least made it to “Vatincanale” to ensure you’ve gotten the full effect.

https://osmoseproductions.bandcamp.com/album/p-rfida-contrac-o-do-a-o

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Porto, Portugal-based post-black/melodic metal quintet GAEREA initially surfaced taking heavy liberties from the scenery surrounding Mgła and perhaps the peak of ‘The Satanist‘-era Behemoth inspired takes on semi-dissonant yet melodic ‘occult’ black metal as they’d breached total underground status beyond their 2018 debut ‘Unsettling Whispers‘. I’ll be frank in suggesting I found nothing at all special about the two full-lengths that’d followed once they’d signed to Season of Mist as their work/aesthetics went from derivative style toward increasingly generic, larger stage “festival” black metal. The alternative to this “false daylight vampirism” is perhaps the far more sincere Uada, though there are many, many choices to consider elsewhere. The final boss and their step away from underground black metal facade into this strange modern post-metal produced, kinda contemporary melodeath sounding fourth LP has been a long time coming and ultimately disappointing considering they’d had some interesting designs of their own early on; Anthemic depression is the sum of the experience here, something ever-chiming with melodic interest and barked flatly ’til the overblown layers of vocals/guitars wash everything with an ugly generic sheen that offers little relief from blown-out production values. I can’t imagine going to see this band live and recognizing a single song from this 50+ minute album beyond the strange alt-metal trod of it all. Not at all for me, though I enjoyed the album artwork and the style of the artist (Nathan Lorenzana) quite a bit.

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All manner of old, new and revered hands feed input toward this twelfth full-length album from long running Russia-borne black metal act BLACKDEATH who produce their (arguably) most esoteric and avant-garde release to date in ‘Mortui incedere possunt‘. Their third album produced by T.T. of Abigor and the first to feature guitar work from the fellow who runs Heidens Hart Records this release is still appreciably confrontational in its scarifying presentation as they follow the conceptual two-chunk cinematic girth of ‘Also sprach das Chaos‘ (2021) with a song-based format built around anti-kosmische illustrations of reality and the kinetic post-punk dementia of Voivodian jaggedness. Up front we find wordy, bespoke rhythmic chant-and-snarl leading the way with diagonally set chords ringing and rambling statements tripled in effect by way of additional vocal layers, almost approaching folken tirade amidst Ved Buens Ende-type energy through a spiraling orthodox black paced fixation. There is a demented croak and wandering bass guitar drift circling the tornadic force of this album which seems unwilling to let go of its leading role beyond the mid-point, tensing the shoulders between the horrific tension of “Die größte Kraft” and the ugliest release in the second half of “Verwünschung”. I couldn’t help but appreciate the ungainly, weirding sensation of these performances clashing and knotting together in unwilling bondage, a circus of sadistic pain, and I think this is the best way to describe at least part of the intent here, the vivification of unnatural life in cyclic horror and the chaotic repeating feedback of creation… something like that. There is depth to glean from the lyrics here, a vital part of the experience, but more importantly this time around I’d appreciated just how willing Blackdeath were to scrape every nerve loose and engage the senses of the listener for the duration of this album. The challenging spirit of this release ensures I’ll return to it time and again ’til I’ve sated the curiosity and compulsion it delivers.

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From south-central Mexico to Malmö, Sweden the journey of musician J.Z.L. and his vision for NIGRUM continues to escalate its treatment of ancient black metal, turning their backs to moderne sensibilities and speaking directly to the visions lifted from the smoking skull on this second full-length album. ‘Blood Worship Extremism‘ naturally features the restlessness of early 90’s Swedish black metal in the same way certain Watain releases might’ve, a controlled sensation of chaos which speaks to blazing riffcraft more than reckless unpreparedness. In fact the broader oeuvre of their riff-and-blast approach quickly expands into more skillful, sometimes melodious reach as the call for variety of muse and texture is met. Putting the dirging, over-focused harassment of “Ineffable Empire” next to the fjord sighted Bathory-isms of “Where Mountains Collide” doesn’t initially make sense, and the shared effect is still a bit jarring but the whole of the experience does eventually meld into the greater presentation here as Nigrum showcase many potential shards of their devotional black metal ideation. For my own taste this album only improves as we press on into the second half with standouts like “Telestic Gateways” catching the ear not only for their emphasis on the wandering station of the bass guitar but for the play with a dual guitar tone dynamic which is well cultivated throughout the full listen. “Splendour of the Old World” is probably the big deal piece, the late album cut that’d done most of the convincing for my own taste but its pairing with the more ‘epic’ rushes of closer “Murderer Dweller” helped to solidify my interest. The verdict is still out as to whether this record outdoes the first in terms of shocking energetic ruin but no doubt this second album shows a more ambitious maturity of form which still rings true to the ‘old school’ black metal ways.

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Though I’ve never been the biggest fan of San Clemente, California-based artist Blake Judd‘s work in NACHTMYSTIUM there’d been no getting around the popularity enjoyed by the group at their peak around the early-2010’s as they’d often been tagged as “psychedelic” black metal either for the sake of heavy rock fueled excess or the drugged state of mind much of it’d been pulled from around the Century Media years. I’d enjoyed parts of ‘The World We Left Behind‘ but was always more of a fan of Twilight and their own tangent, so, I can appreciate the revival of this band’s later-era signature on this twelfth LP but there’d been no personal hype on the walk-up. Writing anything about ‘Blight Privilege‘ at all might raise a few eyebrows and they’d tried to pump up some interest with the attention grabbing video for “Predator Phoenix” but this record is overall pretty tame and expected with some country-tinged riffs and plenty of sleepier mid-paced grooves making up the bulk of the interest here. In that sense if you’re looking for more Nachtmystium in plain continuation of their overall directive this is a reasonably polished version of that though as a less invested listener there wasn’t much that’d caught on here for my own taste beyond recognizing their name/reputation.

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Portuguese black metal duo EVERTO SIGNUM return after a ten year gap here with their second full-length album and I figure most folks haven’t heard of them at this point beyond the association with their collective Monumental Rex which you might recall includes funeral doom metal group Carma. For these sessions they’ve enlisted Gaerea‘s drummer Diogo Mota who offers sharp and slapping precision to these at times double-bass heavy mid-paced songs which, to my own ear, recall an array of old and new black metal minded techniques where doomed riffs, prominent bass guitar, sparse keyboard directed movements and bursts of ex-death metallic energy make for a blend of bestial and refined traits presented with clean yet uncomplicated production values. “Dragon” probably best exemplifies how much ground they cover in terms of style with riffs that range from gunning barbarism to choir-calling dramatism. What sets ‘Beastiary‘ apart is probably the level of focus they maintain for their more extended pieces, carrying ~8-10 minute songs with a violent enough thrust and still managing some manner of melodic intent. Though it the full listen didn’t stick with me it was still a compelling enough sound, well developed but still primitive has black metal ought to be on some level.

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‘Entering the Shadows‘ is the debut full-length album from German melodic black/death metal project BLACK AEONS which comes from musician Blackheart13 who also features in atmospheric post-black group A Somber Funeral. In this case we’re adding a halfway decent entry to the pile of bands inspired by the long-dead effigy of Swedish melodic black/death metal’s 90’s output a movement which is either largely misunderstood or simply underperformed by 99% of all bands attempting to resemble it. The ‘old school’ melodic death throttled and blackened attack of the old ways was blazing fast-paced, crammed with dual-guitar mastery, and built on riff after riff which’d linked together into intense and melodramatic highs. In the case of Black Aeons we have a mid-paced groove focused semi-melodic death metal act who’ve dragged two or three riffs into each of these ~4 minute songs via simple guitar progressions and given flourish to each with the occasional lead guitar directive. The opening moments of the album are deceptively evocative of the old ways, such as “Dawn of a New Time” where some of that Ablaze My Sorrow or A Canorous Quintet level energy shows up briefly but this is traded away for plain, uneventful mid-paced grooves quickly. The whole stretch from “Relentless Fire” through “Wolves of the Sea” sounds like half-speed Sarcasm (or, early Amon Amarth?) without the riff count and ends up being the breaking point for my own interest on this ~50 minute album. That said there are some decent songs worth checking out here with “Shadows of a Dying Light” and “Dawn of a New Time” standing out as particularly worthy of this sound/reference.

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British melodic black metal act SVARTFJELL centers around the efforts of musician Hearne who’d started the project back in 2023 and makes their debut with a full-length right out the gates. Though the drum sounds are awful in their dryly programmed approximation of extremism this doesn’t instantly disqualify the steadily climbing intensity of ‘I, The Destroyer‘ to start as each of these ~7-8 minute songs are immersive in that they are delivered with great focus and lead by simple enough grooves. The rhythmic layers and lead vocals which feed the sluice of songs like “Black Mountain”, the heavy metal stride of “Will to Power/Strength”, and the sprawling lead harmonization of “A Mournful Setting Sun” suggest some manner of personalized development for the artist beyond plain imitation, a hand tempered by a love for melodic leads and dramatic modern “arena metal” presentation. It isn’t all great, not particularly dark in its read and again the drums and vocals ring are flatly for this type of black metal, lacking in expression. That said, sure, Svartfjell can carry a tune to a majestic place. There is no certain mastery at hand here but hey, in terms of an underground black metal release with a fine eye and ear for moderately ambitious craft you could do much worse than lend an hour or two to this record.

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The last time I wrote about French atmospheric black metal solo project TIME LURKER I’d focused heavily on my own gripes with the standardized sound design of the sub-genre/niche and how it’d held a lot of groups back, particularly bedroom projects which were unsure or unskilled of any given instrument. Seven years later sitting with ‘Emprise‘ suggests, well, time has done well to mature the skill of the artist while the project remains at least half buried in murky waters. Each of the four main songs here nonetheless shows a level of refinement when it comes to minimal yet effective melodic development, usually by way of slow simmering kosmiche black riffs in moderately whirring movement and leads which distract from the DSBM-level shrieking of the vocals. “Cavalière de feu” is an ear-catcher with regard to the lead guitars and eh, “Disparais, soleil” exemplifies the depressive and shrieking nature of the project at full impact. All of this is well and good but I’d felt like closer “Fils sacré” was the song to impress here in terms of being active and charging black metal which follows a grand arc toward its post-metallic apex in the last minute or two. This’d been far more compelling than the rest of the album combined for my own taste. A worthy upgrade to their sound and a well-considered work which does well to avoid the bland diarrhea of atmo/post-black productivity 99% of the time.

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The interesting thing about the oddly clunky throwback symphonic black metal style from German sextet OPUS IRAE is that they kind of pull it off somewhere between the bumbling days of bands like Antestor in the late 90’s/early 2000’s but also the second generation of those acts a la Catamenia where an odd balance between symphonic metal’s power metal cheeriness not quite reaching any sort of melodic gravitas and heavier stuff that sounds homebrewed and satisfyingly weirder for it. Dual keyboard battles, death metal growls, drums mixed far too loudly, and simple guitar progressions make for exactly the right sort of late 90’s feeling mess of a European symphonic metal reacharound and I don’t necessarily mean that as a dig. ‘Into the Endless Night‘ is charming in a cheesy underground sort of sensibility, not likely impress most listeners beyond the Kris Verwimp masterpiece cover art up front but if you’ve a taste for the boldness of peak symphonic/high fantasy black metal-era keyboards there is a lot of gusto and weirdly normie choices of tones that make this feel like a deeper cut throwback. I had the most fun with “Streams of Sorrow” and “The Vision of Resurrecting Flesh”, check those out.

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Trier, Germany-based black metal sextet DER ROTE MILAN return after four years with another impassioned EP and if you’re not entirely familiar with their work consider the contemporary standard for Deutsche black metal with its dramatic, sonorous voice and a focus on cinematically charge melodicism given to some more raw yet brief beating in between and you’ll get the idea. ‘Schlund‘ continues their movement away from typified sounds much in the way a band like Agrypnie or Imperium Dekadenz have but without the ruckus and brazen attack of black metal at the core of their presentation. With this in mind I wouldn’t necessarily consider their work top of the heap but certainly included amongst bands seeking increasingly dramatic fixation that doesn’t necessarily blossom into post-black metal. “Der Keiler” runs the gamut in this sense, offering a bit of everything in their oeuvre and this is the best they’ve got to offer at this point. Stepping into the semi-melodic riffs and chunkier roll of “Der Herr de Schaben” later on the EP falls a bit flat by comparison. I’d probably direct folks new to the back back to their 2019 LP ‘Moritat‘ but I can appreciate how much they’ve geared up their ambitions since then just as well.

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Trondheim, Norway-based trio APTORIAN DEMON is the long-running project of original Keep of Kalessin vocalist and former Mare bassist Storhetsvanviddets Mester who has brought in two thirds of the folks from Gjendød for this configuration of the band. The style here is of course classic Norwegian black metal with its own Nidrosian attitude, a declarative assault one moment and a menacing lurker the next. This album of course impresses by way of its boastful opener and its celebrating of death’s arrival but also for the bass driven pulse further down the road, the intensity of every performance, and the singular vision of each song which use the tenets of the old and raw ways to create black metal cinema on an intimate scale. The stretch of this album read to me as a walk from defiant attitude toward distress and alienation but this’d been muddled by the somewhat throwaway nature of a few songs such as the outtake style riff that makes up the ~1.5 minute closer or the odd neofolk jam of “Sviking” as a point of conclusion. Without any deeper education on their past I’d found this an interesting showing of black metal personality, a raw and unapologetic set of songs which represent the artist in a number of ways and rarely repeat their focus. Exceptional album art, too.

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Cleveland, Ohio-based black metal quartet BURIAL OATH kicks off their third LP in ten years recalling a certain bleak second-gen era of USBM via opener “Void Hunter”, a tension riddled piece which sets a satisfyingly specific tone for the album up front. This is almost immediately subverted for the sake of decidedly more melody driven pieces. By the time we’re getting the cheeky *ding* of the cymbal before the Satanic Warmaster-esque main riff of the title track (“Cycles of Suffering”) there is something slightly dorky about this moment repeating itself as often as it does but they, it an admittedly catchy song that’d helped characterize my first time listening to Burial Oath‘s work. They go on rasping and rattling through a series of similar ~4-5 minute black metal pieces which’ve some manner of loud and rough bashing of their rhythms, rarely exercising atmospheric dynamism so much as just a poisonous accost. This bluntness generally works though I’d found it blunted the otherwise interesting edges of pieces like “Shadows Suspended in Dust” which could’ve gotten a bit more lost-at-sea with its ringing Inquisition-esque arpeggiation. Though I didn’t find this album outright substantive in terms of its composition its arrangements are largely sound and they’ve done a fine job of building up a much more bold characterization of their sound beyond 2018. Again, the album art did a lot of the work getting me to give this one a go.

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UNHOLDUN is a newer black metal solo project from French musician Alexis Chiambretto, drummer for experimental doom metal group Deveikuth and former bassist for Hyrgal. ‘Fœhn‘ follows up on the promise of his 2022 self-titled EP with a reasonable scaling of ambition, taking notes from the soaring melodicism of Quebec’s better known black metal circles and developing his own take on the gallop, stride, and strike style of black metal. The guitar work and its chest-out, arcing arrangements are the big draw here for my own taste thanks to some understated harmonies and a heroic voice but they’ve thankfully not crossed the line into cheerful territory as so many others have in search of melodic variation. This is the sort of guitar driven black metal record which only gets better the more immersed the ear becomes, especially as we hit the longer pieces over on the second half. I’d felt like I was truly in the thick of it somewhere between “Cavernes” and “Nieges eternelles” though if I were to try and sell this record quickest of course the choices of “Forêts” for a single/preview track is well warranted thanks to its dips into pagan black metal stride, amped pacing and stellarly guitar work.

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