Mond vol land or ’Mouth full of earth’. That’s what that means in Dutch and it’s the name of a Black Metal formation from the hilly forest area called Montferland near Arnhem that, according to legend, was created by a bunch of giants. And indeed, the Dutch are tall people, so who knows, perhaps some early species did munch away on a load of sand and then shat it out somewhere on a big pile and forests started growing. It’s not impossible.

Anyfuck, back to the band, we find that it was formed in 2006 by Martijn and Mickeal, the latter also active as a session member in the Folk Metal group Heidevolk. Currently a four-piece, the band works in Dutch or Dutch dialects and its lyrical content is about the region in which it has its origins. My own roots aren’t far away and it’s an awesome fuckin’ place to sing about! Very recently the band released a three-song EP for promotional purposes that is absolutely delicious. And free too. Kudos to Islander of NCS for pointing me at this.

Remember Oak Pantheon? The American atmo-melodic Black Metal outfit is working on an upcoming album and have sent out a little poll they could use our help with. There are three songs that they are considering to release ahead of the album as a teaser. The problem is they don’t know which yet.

So, what they’ve done is upload a reel with preliminary fragments of each of the three songs and it’s up to us to tell them which to prepare for the promo. There are no lyrics yet, but even the purely instrumental content is extremely convincing of the idea that this upcoming album may well blow its predecessor straight out of the water. And if you don’t remember, that was already an absolute masterpiece.

Anyfuck, what you need to do now is listen to this player, determine which of the three bits you like best and then go to their Facebook and select corresponding selection. Simple!

Our most active link dumper Motig once spoke the now-legendary words “I guess I do shit links”. From this sprang the discussion on whether he shits links or whether he submitted shit links. In relation to this, today’s post proves that he certainly doesn’t submit shitty links here. Woods of Desolation are one of the many gems Australia holds as a Metal-country, and with their latest studio album Torn Beyond Reason.

I’d actually heard of Woods of Desolation from another source, namely Threnodies’ Sound in Autumn Woods Sampler, roundabout the same time I received an e-mail with Motig’s links. The name Woods of Desolation sounded famous and the fact that I had to cover them, made me pluck the song Darker Days of that sampler. The song was quite good, certainly worth its spot, however, while playing some other songs, I just realised how magnificent this album actually is.

With the sixth issue of this series, we continue to stay true to the series’ title, aswe’re still dealing purely with One Man Shows. Still female perpetrators as of yet. If you’ve got a good suggestion, drop us a line!

Today saw the release of Alcest’s long awaited (at least by me) third full-length, with a long French name I do not care to write again, but which translates as The Voyages of the Soul . Pretty interesting title. As of today the whole album is uploaded on Youtube, so I’m just picking out some of the highlights for you to listen to, before you buy this beauty.

Ok, wait. I won’t get you any highlights because there are none. This is one big fucking highlight to me. So at the end I will just dump you a link to a Youtube playlist with the whole album and I’ll wish you a whole lot of epic fun with this for the next hour.

So, after our recent announcement of the list of lists, today marks the first part of three of our list. We’ll start with a grouping of six albums. Albums that are ‘good’, to such an extent that they should really be in any Metalhead’s collection.

These first six are in no particular order. In fact, to express this, I’ve put them in alphabetical order based on band name – and so actually they are in a particular order, but it has nothing to do with how high I would rank each.

By the way, to cover my ass, my list entries may not necessarily match up 100% with the grading given or the reviews themselves. The reason is time. Sometimes hearing something the first few times can be an amazing experience, but as time passes and you hear something more often, the experience wears off. Obviously a review should incorporate this possibility, but the simple truth is you can never be completely right or accurate. And tastes and preferences shift, in my case quite heavily over the course of this year.

So, what this list captures is longevity. An album’s capability to continue to capture its listener. In that sense, these are all albums that will stay interesting. Albums that need to be taken out of your huge motherfuckin’ album rack regularly or from time to time, because they will keep on tickling pleasure bones.

Remember the one and only, truer than trueNahktism from Washington, the States? They are back with some new work, and it seems to have pulled to something which appeals to me. Baptised and Drowned is faster, more raw and more solid than previous songs I’ve heard previously. I believe this band is certainly something to watch in the future.

Although it’s still instrumental, Baptised & Drowned certainly shows a development in Nahktisms work, and that’s something for which I’m always in. Especially the more raw, slight melodic and atmospheric (as far as that goes without keyboards) approach stands out and it has a really primal feel to it.

We have some news today. Well, you can’t exactly call it news, since it’s a week old already. But that’s for a reason, because in that week, I only sat in my room, in the dark, while spinning the video 24/7, without being able to get up and do something. So my apologies for that.

So we’re talking about Alcest, who are a French Black Metal duo which has had some coverage over here already. That’s actually the place where I heard them first, and since then I was enchanted by their music. They recently released a video for their single Autre Temps, which I must say, almost equals my favourite song Souvenirs d’un Autre Monde.

This album has been described as Post-Black Metal, and, although I’m not sure what that means, I’m happy to go along with that. Whatever Post-Black Metal may mean, all I know is that Resilience is an album full of brilliant Atmospherical, Technical and Electronic Black Metal.

Résilience is the french word for, you guessed it, resilience, which means something like flexibility. I’ve been wondering what this title meant, but as I couldn’t make any sense of the lyrical content of the album, I thought it must have to do with the listener. As I discovered, one has to be a very flexible listener in order to appreciate the music, and personally, I had some trouble shaping myself to this album. It took me two months to actually start on this album, but yesterday night I saw the light, and I journeyed into the magic land of Smohalla.

So, the list currently stands at three LPS and three EPs with Part 4 adding another of each.

The list so far:
10. – Savage Messiah – A Plague of Conscience
09. – Blastanus – Collapse
08. – Meankind – 22.Zero
07. – The Apocryphal Order – S/T
06. – Incise – From the Crypts They Rise
05. – Immolation – Providence

04. – Ära Krâ – Ferne Tage