So many bands have named themselves after some thing or another from Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. By now it would be easy to dismiss most of them as a bunch of unoriginal bums.

Whattamistakadamake in the case of Italy’s Ephel Duath. Named after the mountains surrounding Mordor, they’ve been dealing weird sorts of Progressive “Post-Black” and Avant-garde Metal since 1998. The group started out as a two-man game and is the brainchild of guitarist Davide Tiso and has released a small stack of full-lengths since. They must’ve done something right, because through time they managed to grab the attention of bassist Steve DiGiorgio, whom we should all know from such great Metallic names as Death, Testament, Iced Earth and Autopsy, who can now be heard on the band’s latest effort, a three song EP called On Death and Cosmos.

Also on board are German-born drummer Marco Minnemann and female vocalist Karyn Crisis, also the wife of Davide Tiso and seen with him on the band pic below. Recently the group moved to Polish label Agonia Records and On Death and Cosmos is the first release to be aired through this relationship.

Hot shit alarm, people! I received a promo pack for a highly lovable group of Portuguese Metallers. They are called The Firstborn and play a style that is as familiar and comfortable as it is refreshing and exhilarating.

The Firstborn are from a place called Amora in Portugal and have been making music together since 1999. They are five guys in the most classic line-up possible and have so far churned out exactly five full-length studio albums. Nothing more, nothing less. Their latest effort, following up on 2008’s The Noble Search, is called Lions Among Men and they aired it just over a month ago.

The power of humor should not be underestimated. I got this request today to check out a band’s (actually it’s a one-man project from what I gather) new album. There was a link to a ”silly commercial for it”. I clicked it, thinking I’d get to hear a few tunes that would allow me to let the guy know either ”no, sucks!” or ”yes, but don’t fuckin’ wait for it”. Instead, this thing cracked me up and landed Zelophilia an instant post.

A short one though, ‘cause I gotta run. But I’ll feed you the commercial first. Watch it and then see if you’d care to check out the music after the jump.

I’ve been exploring the web for a while and lately I discovered a lot of interesting new bands, some of which completely blown my mind, as they push the boundaries of what I held for possible. Some of these aren’t completely Metal, but all of them are exceptionally cool and certainly worth of your time. So enjoy the next half hour of Post-Alternative Blackened Punkcore.

Shining

First up are a Norwegian band called Shining, which is not really a name associated with the more serious, dark or violent themes addressed in Metal. It comes as no surprise then that Shining started out as an acoustic Jazz-quartet. However, after two albums, they started taking their music apart and evolved through a form of Jazzy Post-Rock to what they are today on their album Blackjazz, a dark combination of Industrial, Jazz, Deathcore, Alternative and Experimental Metal. In one word, Avant-Garde Metal, whatever that might mean.

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.

Croatia may not be known for its extensive metal scene, but like all countries, it can turn out an interesting gem or two. In this case, 5-piece Avant-Garde Black Metallers Johann Wolfgang Pozoj. They themselves label the music as “Symfocrust”, an odd analogy that only makes sense when you look at the band’s origins.

Formed from the ashes of two Crust-Punk bands, JWP came together with a mutual interest in playing music without genre limitations. This has resulted in a trilogy of releases centered around Croatian / pre-Indo European mythology (Pozoj is Croatian for ‘dragon’). Escape Of Pozoj, the second album, is being reworked by Code666 Records for a re-release from its rehearsal room origins, and it sounds incredibly interesting.

Here’s another offering to put right our lack of French Black Metal. Deathspell Omega was formed in 1998 and have released five full-length albums among many splits and EPs.There is virtually no information available on the members who seem to be masters of secrecy. Early on they made raw traditional BM, but on their third album began to show some serious experimentation. That album, Si Monumentum Requires, Circumspice, also began a trilogy that was completed by 2010′s Paracletus. This trilogy’s concept is of the theological aspects of man’s relationship with God and Satan.

A few days ago Niek posted an album review featuring Griffar a French Black Metal band. In that post he made me realize that we are lacking in our feature of French BM which is an incredible shame. So far we’ve had Alcest and Celeste in addition to Griffar and through just those three you can start to get an idea of the diversity and quality of French BM.

Today’s shining example of unique FBM comes as Glorior Belli a band spawn in 2002 who will be releasing their fourth full-length, titled The Great Southern Darkness, on September 27, 2011. From what I’ve heard of their older material (which ain’t much) it’s pretty straight forward BM, but on their most recent release, 2009′s Meet Us at the Southern Sign, they have stirred in some Blues-y, Sludge-y swagger to delicious effect.