If you know me, you are probably aware that I fucking love black metal. There exists an entire ensemble of reasons for why this particular genre, its aesthetics, and of course its lore as well as the discussions around it fascinate me, but I won’t get into them here. This mixtape took its title from a t-shirt Red Apollo made ages ago and is based on a DJ set I played at Kiezsalon last year. It includes some of my favourite recent-ish black metal tunes as well as some pieces that aren’t strictly speaking black metal but in my view share a certain aesthetic or vibual (my humble suggestion for an adjective to the noun »vibe,« take it or leave it) kinship with the genre.
This mixtape is fash-free, i.e. to my knowledge none of these bands or artists hold or promote fascist views or are affiliated with far-right bands, labels, or organisations. All of the bands are from North America and Europe, which is purely coincidental but it makes me think I should put together another mixtape with tunes from outside these economic and music industrial power centres. Most of the songs were recorded from vinyl and hip black metal labels apparently know nothing about decent mastering and/or do not work with good pressing plants, which is why the sound quality greatly differs and there’ll be crackle along the way. Cue John Peel quote.
Anyhow, here it is. You can find the full credits, purchase links and some unnecessary choice words on the individual songs below. Download upon request.
01. Von jeglichem wort – die zeit ist groß und dringend (Um außer uns im leeren nichts zu suchen, self-released 2023)
I still have some chapbooks floating around from the time when this project was dedicated to poetry that was interrogating the language of fascism and its predecessors (in a, to be clear, non-affirmative, Theweleitian way), but my relationship with this bloke goes even further back. In fact, I have to thank him for helping me appreciate black metal as an art form. His approach strives for an abstraction of the genre’s aesthetic elements in an ambientish way that doesn’t regurgitate »Filosefem,« which is always a good thing. He’s banging out too many albums to count, but I recommend you check out at least twelve of them. This is a vinyl-only bonus track from one of his first self-published records.
02. Melanchoholics – Disgusting However Fascinating (last songs, licht-ung 2020)
Look, this isn’t a black metal tune, really, and I’m not sure if this group, whose mastermind apparently died in 2010, shortly after the completion of the band’s last album and a decade before the release of these pieces on weirdo-noise institution licht-ung, was at all very interested in the genre, though the grindcore-minded flipside suggests that it must have been at least on their radar. So yeah, this is 100 % a vibual pick, however the title of this wonderfully eerie tune makes for a pretty good description of what black metal is all about for a lot of people, huh?
03. Ragana – Desolation’s Flower (Desolation’s Flower, The Flenser 2023)
And yes, yes, this is also more of a screamo tune than anything else, or at least Thou by way of mid-2000s Funeral Diner spin-off bands or whatever. Ragana even nick, er, pay homage to a Mogwai tune on this album, so this is neither your usual nattefrost trve kvlt record nor the Nuyorican hipsterism stuff that the folks at Pitchfork loved in the early 2010s. Though I wasn’t really interested in the band before, Desolation’s Flower was a clear 2023 highlight for me. I think what I appreciate about Ragana and especially this album is that they capture the sense of heroic melancholy that pervades so many black metal milestones without ever being, you know, super duper cringe.
04. Locrian – Eternal Return (Return to Annihilation, Relapse 2013)
Locrian are one my favourite bands of all time, period. Along with projects such as Wolvserpent or Horseback, they belong to a generation of—in some cases loosely connected—bands that followed a more syncretic approach and drew on the overall aesthetics and some formulas of black metal while also enriching it with elements from other genres, in this case drone and noise as well as even prog rock. These groups ended up being categorised as »bleak metal,« a term about which I’m still somewhat on the fence (it’s good wordplay, though). Anyhow, this is one of my favourite Locrian tunes, one of the shortest in their catalogue. What I appreciate a lot about Locrian on a thematic level is that they seem to perfectly capture US-American black metal’s main inspiration—urban decay—while also giving it an ecological spin.
05. Agriculture – Living Is Easy (Living Is Easy, The Flenser 2024)
Agriculture, on the other hand, seem to be really captivated by the ocean and have invented their own little descriptor: ecstatic black metal. I feel a lot of second-hand embarassment when I hear stuff like that, but they’re pretty good and any band that gets Patrick Shiroishi to jam in the studio with them (on another tune, I might add) is potentially interesting. They’re a good band, I like their tunes, and there is little more to say about them, so this blurb stops here.
06. Botanist – The Reconciliation of Nature and Man (Collective: The Shape Of He To Come, self-released 2017)
If you already think that the metal scene is pretty petty, let me up the ante a little. Until 2020, this group was not listed in the The Metal Archives, the most important database for this rule-breaking community, because they have never used a guitar on their recordings, been working with a hammered dulcimer instead. In the early 2010s, Botanist were also were the victims of attempts of constructing a hype around, I do not make this up, »green metal« along with vaguely ecologically interested groups such as Wolves In The Throne Room, because Botanist is a sort of conceptual project about a lunatic with a green thumb.
07. Feminazgul – The Rot in the Field Is Holy (No Dawn For Men, Tridroid 2020)
Now we’re talking. Feminazgul are part of a new wave of decidedly queerfeminist bands that often get lumped in with the rest of the RABM (red and/or anarchist black metal) lot, though that term obviously refers more to certain ideological cornerstones rather than describing the music itself; there isn’t one defined RABM sound either. They’re one of the most interesting projects that have emerged in recent times, and this absolute banger should emphasise why I think so. Its theatralicity is quintessentially black metal, the means are unusual. And it’s a fucking earworm, innit?
08. Altar of Plagues – God Alone (Teethed Glory and Injury, Profound Lore 2013)
Also Altar of Plagues—a band project featuring James Kelly, who released sombre hypnagogic slo-mo pop on Tri Angle under the moniker Wife because the early 2010s were a wild time—were a sort of darling of the hip indie press during their relatively short time in the limelight, obviously drawing a lot of comparisons to Liturgy because they, get this, didn’t rely on the blast beat so much. Their big hit will forever be my favourite tune of theirs because I am a normie.
09. Scarcity – In the Basin of Alkaline Grief (The Promise of Rain, The Flenser 2024)
One of those blokes is the conductor of the Glenn fucking Branca Ensemble, which is saying something about the current state of genuinely interesting US-American black metal, specifically the kind emerging out of New York. Don’t get me wrong, I think this is a good thing as long as it results in absolutely mind-melting stuff like this tune. I wasn’t a huge fan of the rest of the album or the band’s previous work for that matter—all very solid and interesting but not outstanding—however this just slaps and slaps and slaps because it treats the guitar very differently from how it’s usually handled in the genre, or anywhere else for that matter.
10. Jute Gyte – Yarinareth, Yarinareth, Yarinareth (Oviri, self-released 2017)
Speaking of which, do you have a minute or roughly eleven to speak about our black metal saviour, Jute Gyte? I first came across Adam Kalmbach’s work thanks to his 2017 release The Sparrow for Blue Tapes, a label whose owner once told me he does his A&R work based on ideas he has and then looks for people who have already put those into practice. In this case, he was apparently looking for microtonal black metal, a concept so self-evident it’s actually insane to think that there’s not about a thousand more projects like this. Even if there were, I don’t think they’d compare to the frantic mania of masterpieces like this one. Oh, Kalmbach also makes fantastic IDM and ambient music, of course, which comes through here a little bit as well.
11. Imperial Triumphant – Merkurius Gilded (Spirit of Ecstasy, Century Media 2022)
I’ve stayed away from Imperial Triumphant for the longest time because the pitch for them—some dudes from New York with lofty musical ambitions and a slick corporate identity—sounded not at all interesting to me as someone who has never enjoyed Genesis or has even heard a single Ghost album. However, I caved in at some point while browsing through the catalogue one of my go-to mailorders and this album got me hooked. It has the strange chaotic murkiness of 夢遊病者, but also jazzy chords and some pretty sweet saxophone parts, which is cool? The choral bits here sound like Metropolis looks like, if that makes sense?
12. Victory Over the Sun – Thorn Woos The Wound (Dance You Monster To My Soft Song!, self-released/Fiadh 2023/2024)
I came late to the party, hearing about this one-woman project only once the vinyl edition of this previously digital-only release came out in 2024. I hope they do a repress soon so that I can spend € 40+ for something that will have terrible sound quality because they compress everything to death when mastering it. This record hits the sweet spot between the sheer abrasiveness of Jute Gyte, the compositional overabundance of Liturgy’s later albums, and, uh, well … it’s still pretty emo in a catchy way, which I sort of dig once in while?
13. The Ruins of Beverast – Ropes into Eden (The Thule Grimoires, Ván 2021)
Hünengrab im Herbst by Nagelfar is pretty much the best German black metal record ever (not like there’s much competition) and I return to it every other year, but I hadn’t properly checked out drummer Alexander von Meilenwald’s solo project The Ruins of Beverast until discovering this record at Bis aufs Messer. What I found was one of the best black metal-adjacent pieces I’ve came across in recent years, so there’s that. This is music with a dramaturgy, folks. (Please note that von Meilenwald and his label have some connections to people and projects that I personally find questionable, however I am under the impression that they do not hold any views that I think are kind of icky.)
14. Unru – Der Hauch der Freiheit (Die Wiederkehr des Verdrängten, Babylon Doom Cult 2022)
I have been following Unru since their 2013 demo, but wasn’t really interested in the follow-up records until Die Wiederkehr des Verdrängten came out, a thoroughly beautiful work to which I keep coming back every few months. As band, they are clearly more about atmosphere than about experimentation—the members come from the hardcore and drone/noise scenes, it seems—but they are really, really good at being, how do I put this, dramatic without sounding too cliché. You see, they’re not only making emoish black metal in the US. We’ve got some pretty cool bands over here, too.
15. Ultha – Der alte Feind (Jeder Tag reißt Wunden) (All That Has Never Been True, Vendetta 2022)
Another point in case is Ultha, who share a member with Unru. The band was a sort of follow-up project to lead singer Ralph Schmidt’s previous crust/sludge band Planks, which I quite liked (great live band) back in the day, so I have been following them consistently. It’s been great to see how this band keeps pushing the envelope while, despite their successes, remaining pretty DIY. After briefly signing with Century Media for one album, they decided to go back to the one-man operation that put out their first record, Vendetta. Their music is all about intensity, and they’re well capable of keeping it at a very high level at all times.
16. Gråt Strigoi – Upon the Darkest Entry, We Dream (The Prophetic Silence, self-released/Realm & Ritual/Fiadh 2024)
Gråt Strigoi weren’t really on my radar before this album dropped in 2024, but it immediately got me hooked. As is the case with a lot of other potentially hip, decidedly anti-fascist black metal these days, this Scottish two-piece has a knack for writing really, really intricate stuff that pushes the envelope of black metal songwriting on a structural level while working with really interesting sounds, which makes them a very good case study why this new generation is fine, actually, and has to offer a lot more than sloganeering. Now more than ever, we can all freely admit that we’ve never really liked Dawn Ray’d on a musical level.
17. White Ward – False Light (False Light, Debemur Morti 2022)
Speaking about politics, it was really fucking weird when False Light dropped in early 2022 because White Ward’s home country was being invaded. I’m pointing out their country of origin here also because the Ukrainian black metal scene is, well, known as a cesspit of nazi ideology—until 2019, the Asgardsrei festival in Kyiv attracted hundreds of die-hard fascists on a yearly basis. White Ward do absolutely not belong to that crowd and only loosely integrate black metal elements into their work. I thought the majestic title track would work pretty well as a finishing note on this mix, also because it makes extensive use of an instrument that had an unlikely, if not inexplicable love affair with the genre in recent years: the saxophone.