92nd part of the short reviews.
WYTHIR – Conquest
Year: 2023
Label: self-release
Rating: purity
A small gift to HATE FOREST fans from the US project, created by a young musician nicknamed R.W. 10 minute EP, consisting of two tracks, is a fairly successful tribute to the Ukrainian band. The style of music, the sound, the atmosphere-everything fits. Give it a listen. The EP can be picked up for free on Bandcamp:
BLOOD STAR – First Sighting
Year: 2023
Label: Shadow Kingdom Records
Rating: 7 / 10
Traditional Heavy Metal on a space-fantasy theme. The sound here is one hundred percent from the XXI century, but it turned out pretty well. Somewhat reminiscent of the brilliant “Brave New World". On the vocals, a girl with a pleasant low timbre, who understands the possibilities and limitations of her voice well, and therefore never lets out a squeak. A good album worth listening to.
BLASPHEMATORY – The Lower Catacombs
Year: 2022
Label: Nuclear Winter Records
Rating: 7 / 10
US Death Metal with an otherworldly ropy sound in the style of early GRAVE, INCANTATION, DEAD CONGREGATION, DISMA etc. From members of countless bands, including ABAZAGORATH. Total darkness and the stench of death - everything is as it should be. Of course, it's a bit tedious, since I've heard exactly this kind of music a thousand times already. But it is done responsibly and efficiently, so it's a worthy release.
MRAKOMOR – V dekádách dekadence
Year: 2023
Label: self-release
Rating: 4,6 / 10
I was asked to write about this EP by a Czech musician, who, according to him, is a long-time and devoted reader of Bagnik Zine. I doubt the latter a little, because otherwise he would have known about my attitude towards DS"BM", but I always try to fulfill requests, so here we go. MRAKOMOR, as it turned out, has been around since 2006, that is, since the heyday of the style. However, he has been on hiatus for the last 10 years, and for some reason decided to return in 2023. I hope this does not mean that the trend for depressive namby-pamby is returning. One way or another, the creativity of MRAKOMOR does not differ from the style samples of ten or fifteen years ago. A shitty home recording with a terribly loud sound, scanty vocals (well, at he doesn't shriek like a dog that was cut alive, thanks for that), primitive mournful riffs - everything is as we (don't) like. In the fourth track, there is a keyboard part, if you can call it that, which makes the sound a little better. Of course, in my life I have heard a lot of much, significantly worse DS"BM" records. Against their background” V dekádách dekadence " does not look that terrible. But in general, of course, I don't understand who needs it and why.
WAMPYRIC RITES / FUNERAL FULLMOON – Spectral Shadows of the Forgotten Castle
Year: 2020
Label: Inferna Profundus Records
Rating: 6,8 / 10
One of the many releases of a talented Latin American plagiarism club called Pure Raw Underground Black Metal Plague. Here we have a very clumsy "vampyric" Black Metal which Inferna Profundus Records has undoubtedly been obsessed with lately, but we must give it to our Southern American friends: they managed to embody this theme in a traditional sound better than most thematic groups. Tracks from WAMPYRIC RITES show hunger and the blood fury of vampire nature, while FUNERAL MOON focuses more on eternal themes like solitude and the sadness of endless existence. The minimum program has certainly been completed, although I still have a feeling of some kind of falsity of the vampire theme In Black Metal. Maybe because all these vvhampyrrhick bands simply do not differ from each other?