Black Aleph's debut album, Apsides, is a sonic journey that unfolds through layers of atmospheric weight and textural complexity. Consisting of Lachlan Dale (guitar, effects), Peter Hollo (cello, effects), and Timothy Johannsen (percussion), the Australian trio masterfully blends elements of post-metal, ambient, and experimental rock, weaving together influences from the likes of Neurosis, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Sunn O))), and Earth.

Opening with "Descent," the track immediately sets the tone with a dark, brooding atmosphere that feels almost claustrophobic and ritualistic. The haunting combination of dissonant guitar riffs, throbbing cello lines, hypnotic beats and dark chants instantly draws the listener into a world that feels heavy and foreboding. The use of effects adds an additional layer of menace, making this track a powerful introduction to the album's thematic exploration of space, tension, and inner conflict.

However, as the album progresses, Black Aleph begins to shift gears, leaving behind the almost claustrophobic intensity of "Descent" for a more expansive and contemplative sound. The influences of Arabic music become more apparent, especially in tracks like "Ascension," where the intricate, almost hypnotic rhythms blend seamlessly with the ethereal, echoing sounds of the cello. This shift in tone creates a dynamic contrast, allowing the music to breathe and open up, transforming from moments of tension into waves of introspective calm.

This album is a bold and adventurous exploration of sound, texture, and atmosphere. The lack of traditional song structures gives Apsides a fluid, organic quality, but also a sense of unpredictability. It's a journey through sonic landscapes that feel at once alien and familiar, with every moment offering something new to discover. For fans of dark, atmospheric music with a profound emotional depth, Apsides is an essential listen. (8/10)

Jason Hicks

Band info: https://blackaleph.bandcamp.com

Label Info: https://www.artascatharsis.com

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I should like Perigea Antahkarana more. The latest from Wolvserpent, it hits plenty of the targets of what I enjoy: blackened doom, drone, expansive instrumental choices, voices that sound like they’re being astrally projected into the studio from the sixth dimension. Maybe it makes sense that my favorite track, “A Breath in the Shade of Time,” hits most of these, but at the same time, I’m actually confused. While I enjoy extreme music of all kinds, I’m a big rock guy, in terms of rhythm, momentum, the tension inherent in even a simple bass-drums-guitar lineup. And “A Breath” is almost entirely void of these things, instead consisting of about ten straight minutes of feedback drone overlaid with chanting vocals, opened by expressive cello work and closed in a harsh sound collage.

But, somehow, that’s the most exciting the record gets. The first and last ‘real’ tracks are fairly standard issue doom, super slow and very protracted. You could stretch an entire powerviolence album between the strums on closer “Concealed Among the Roots and Soil,” it takes so long with its time. This style is gratifying, certainly, or otherwise bands wouldn’t still be playing it. But so much more can be done with it: look at something from just this year, like Northless’s World Keep Sinking, or maybe 2012’s Longing by Bell Witch.

Wolvserpent prove this themselves with “A Breath,” which tries so many new things and ultimately succeeds at all of them. “In Mirrors of Water,” while carrying more of that doom baggage, nonetheless throws in a blackened barrage for good measure, varying things nicely. I don’t doubt live that I would want the exact opposite, desiring the crush of their standard-issue doom as opposed to drawn-out amplifier torture. But listening at home, the latter proves much more interesting to me, holds a greater draw. I can’t tell you why, it just is.

This is why I wished I liked Perigea more than I do. It’s certainly a well-made record, and Wolvserpent is a band that knows what it’s doing, but the things I want to excite me just don’t. Most of their atmosphere, being campfires and birdcalls and wind, is pretty par for the course in the genre, and there’s nothing about their riffs that puts them apart from most other riff purveyors. It’s not a bad record by any means, and if this style is your bag Wolvserpent do more than most with it. If only there was a little more of the strangeness of “Breath,” less of “Mirrors’” standard-issue riffs.

Rob Rubsam

Band info: www.facebook.com/wolvserpent
Label info: www.relapse.com

Rob Rubsam is a freelance writer and itinerant resident of Upstate New York. His writing about music has been published at CVLT Nation, Tom Tom Magazine, The Rumpus, Burning Ambulance, and others. When not contemplating giant squids or erecting a standing stone in his backyard, he tweets at @millenialistfun. Do not contact him with your black mass-related inquiries, please.

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To call the latest from Kwaidan “metal” isn’t very accurate in my opinion. Make All the Hell of Dark Metal Bright does have metal in the title but most of the trademarks of the genre are absent here. What we have instead in an incredibly ambient, somewhat droning album that despite its lack of “metalness” hopefully appeals to the open-minded fans of the genre. Neil Jendon, Mike Weis and Andre Foisy (Locrian) make up the players constructing the layers of sound and space over the album’s six tracks. Even at its most intense, MATHODMB is forty two minutes of relaxing, meditative instrumentals.

The biggest impression left as the album starts with the three part “Three Empty Rooms of Light and Space” is that this is performance art. It’s not straightforward. It’s not obvious. To get the most out of it takes time and contemplation. At times Kwaidan can be quiet and melodic; a mix of instruments and noise at play with each other and soothing ambience. At others, cyclical tribal percussion hypnotizes the listener while guitar, keys and synth carry the shifting moods. From ominous and foreboding to sad and uncelebratory, from the highest peaks to the lowest valleys, from alien landscapes to the majesty of Earth. The tracks blends together seamlessly, especially the leading suite. Pulsing electrobuzz, noisy randomness, mournful guitar, brass, droning synths, piano and all manner of permutations therein are stitched together into one flowing banner of delicate ambience and hypnotic movements. Feel the void on “Space as Support”, the horror sci-fi tone of “Iceberg and its Shadows” and the alien presence of “The Sound of this Bell”.

I will admit my experience with music of this nature is limited but that does not diminish its impact. In fact, it may enhance it as it could very well make a convert out of the like minded. While not overtly engaging, the listener is nonetheless affected by the moods and tone created by Kwaidan. Make All the Hell of Dark Metal Bright serves equally well as background music as for relaxation and focused solitude. It may not be metal but there is plenty of darkness as well as light to be found. You just have to take the time to look, and accept it when you find it.

Matt Hinch 

Band info: www.facebook.com/kwaidanofficial
Label info: www.batheticrecords.com

Matt Hinch lives an unassuming life on the backroads outside Forest Mills, Ontario, Canada. He packs in as much metal as he possible can amid factory work, raising three daughters with his wife and working the land. In addition to Scratch the Surface Matt also writes for Hellbound, Ghost Cult Magazine, About Heavy Metal and his own blog, Kingdom of Noise. Keep up with him on Twitter @MetalMatt_KofN.

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Toronto ambient metal duo Northumbria, featuring former Holoscene members Jim Field and Dorian Williamson, have recently released a video for the song "Black Sea of Trees", which was filmed by Marc Forand using time-lapse photography.
The song, originally recorded in 2012, merges some slow-shifting guitars drenched with distortion together with a nerve-wracking droning feedback, resulting in a hypnotic, yet disquieting sound that seems like the appropriate soundtrack for the images the video portrays. Check out the video below.

More info at: www.northumbria.bandcamp.com
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Experimental, dark ambient / noise trio Locrian have premiered their new video for 'Exiting The Halls Of Vapor And Light', off of their new full-length, ‘Return To Annihilation’.
The video is an abstract interpretation directed by George Moore of the instrumental track that appears on their new effort, a two-part concept album inspired by the band’s love for prog-rock progenitors Genesis, Yes and King Crimson. Check it out below and read Dean Brown’s review of ‘Return To Annihilation’ here.

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As one of the most industrious experimentalists in underground metal, Locrian are quietly revered as a band that holds a weight of artistic integrity. Since 2005, the core of Locrian—talented instrumentalists Terence Hannum and André Foisy—have spread an urban disease across every audio medium known to man. Locrian have also chosen their artistic steps with care and consideration, and because of a reluctance to dilute their ethos and the quality of their prolific output, Locrian’s notoriety has increased dramatically over the last number of years. Shrewd collaborations with likeminded artists, the joining of percussionist Steven Hess in 2010, as well as the 2012 reissue of ‘The Clearing/The Final Epoch’, have culminated in the band’s signing with Relapse for their latest full-length, ‘Return to Annihilation’.

Decorated with a misty, grey image of a parking lot occupied by a lone shopping trolley, the cover provides a clue as to the high-concept of Locrian’s Relapse debut. ‘Return to Annihilation’ is split into two parts with inspiration bleeding in from Walter Benjamin’s ‘Arcades Project’, Thomas Browne’s ‘Hydriotaphia’, Samuel Delany’s ‘Dhalgren’, and Genesis’ 1974 prog-rock landmark, ‘The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway’. A scholarly knowledge of these works—which crosses cryptic literature, cultural criticism, and prog-rock tales—is not detrimental to the listener’s experience of ‘Return to Annihilation’, yet detailing the influences that feed this particular apocalyptic concept is necessary to cast light upon the intensive efforts Locrian have gone to create this album.

Beyond conceptual and visual lines, the music contained within ‘Return to Annihilation’ is just as indicative of the repulsive repetition and near-devastating degradation of the modern world. It is a concept wrapped in an aural critique that mainly relies on synthesized effects and loops melding with disengaged guitars (electric, acoustic and bass), cyclic percussive churns, and the rare emergence of a ghostly vocal. The band mines the obscure and experimental depths of post-black metal, electronic, krautrock, prog-rock, shoe-gaze and drone to create free-standing structures where dissonance and elegance meet as a cohesive whole. ‘Part I’ of ‘Return to Annihilation’ spans “Eternal Return” (a surprisingly hopeful sounding shoe-gaze song) to the three-part title-track. The juxtaposition between earthy acoustics and cold synth-drones throughout ‘Part I’ is seamlessly arranged, and the atmosphere is sinister in an unassuming way as the instrumentation carries with it a dark, intangible tension. ‘Part II’, according to the band’s concept, is the reflection of internal (the protagonist) and external (world) disorder resulting from the appearance of two moons in the sky. The skin-crawling doom of ‘Panorama of Mirror’ captures the mood of such pandemonium, before the four-part finale ‘Obsolete Elegies’ pulls the acoustic and electronic moons together as one with its resounding riff-led climax.

What you will notice after repeat listens of ‘Return to Annihilation’ is that the often visceral nature of Locrian’s past releases is sacrificed to suit the narrative, which is dictated eloquently to the listener often without the need for words. It is an album that exists in many dimensions and, as is the case with all great conceptual art, the thematic and sonic layers lend plenty to consider and envelope oneself in. ‘Return to Annihilation’ is an appropriate accompaniment to watching the world collapse around us, whether it occurs because of a catastrophic event or a slow erosion.

Dean Brown

Band info: www.facebook.com/LocrianOfficial
Label info: www.relapse.com

Dean Brown is a metal scribe based in Ireland. He is currently a contributing editor to the North American cultural magazine Popmatters and he regularly throws words for a number of other reputable loud noise publications such as About.com/heavy metal, Soundshock.com, MetalIreland.com, MoltenMagazine.com, amongst others. He has a strong affinity for music that shakes souls and leaves debilitating tinnitus in its wake and such obsession has left him financially and medically crippled, but he wouldn’t have it any other way. Follow Dean on twitter @reus85

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