Original artwork by Sophie Penrose.

The show is at The Lexington on the Pentonville Road, less than five minutes walk either east from Kings Cross/St. Pancras or west from Angel tube stations.

Advance tickets can be secured online.

Let the world of social media know where you will be on May 3rd by joining the event pages on either Facebook or last.fm, if that’s your kind of thing.

Here is a brief taster of what is to come:

Bosse-De-Nage: Website // Bandcamp // Facebook

Click here to view the embedded video.

Sump:  Last.fm // Metal Archives

Click here to view the embedded video.

Michael Bukowski, an illustrator from Philadelphia, has been working away at a library of sketches since the turn of the decade. His goal is to create a complete bestiary of the beings that inhabit Lovecraft’s stories. His site, Yog-Blogsoth, has already catalogued hundreds. His ideas are calculated guesses as to HPL’s imaginings; he gathers visual cues by scouring the man’s library of work. Monsters described with scientific precision match up perfectly to their animated counterparts. Those with barely an adjective or setting to their name are revealed in a style undeniably Lovecraftian.

Bukowski never oversteps his welcome and never depletes from HPL’s glorious manipulation of the unknown. His work actually accentuates the Lovecraft’s ideal: weird, grotesque and disturbing limbs, colors and scales. Bukowski’s independent work, featured on Last Chance Illustration, is no less worthy of your attention either (as I hope the header and thumbnail prove!).  LURKER took some time to talk with Michael about the work of Lovecraft and how he gathers his information. What follows is a wealth of information on Lovecraft, his contemporaries and a treasure chest of links and further reading.

What made you decide to start illustrating the creatures in Lovecraft’s work?

M- Well, I think I was rereading The Horror In the Museum, a story Lovecraft wrote for Hazel Heald, and I came to the description of Rhan Tegoth and couldn’t really imagine what that thing looked like. It’s a really crazy, detailed description, but it’s SO detailed that it’s hard to visualize. I decided to try to find an artist representation of it and came out short. Then, I sat down with the story and slowly went over every aspect of the creature and drew it myself. After that it was just a fun thing I did whenever I reread a story. I would doodle one of these mind-boggling creatures. At some point I got asked to do a show of these pieces and even once the show was over I couldn’t stop. It then evolved into the blog, and the zines.

Record cover for Drunk ‘Antwerp City Thrasers’

Lovecraft’s descriptions and passages all revolve around some aspect of the unknown. So aside from the now archetypal image we have of Cthulhu, there is a huge visual gap in the mythos of Lovecraft. How do you go about constructing images from the sparse descriptions? 

M- For all the briefly mentioned monsters and hinted at horrors there are a few things that get paragraph long explanations. The anatomy of the Elder Things is laid out in three huge paragraphs filled with minutia. The same goes for the Great Race of Yith. So, once I got the feel of those things, I had a good jumping off point for stuff he just mentions casually. I guess I also draw inspiration from some of the historical mythology he references. I call those Old World Gods on my blog. He wrote about biblical demons, Greek and Roman gods/goddesses, Aztec and Mayan gods, a plethora of Egyptian gods and even an Aboriginal god. Once you throw all that stuff together you get a general idea of what he was envisioning and the world he was creating.

I also think it’s important to note the authors that influenced Lovecraft. Those that preceded him and were his contemporaries had a huge influence on his work and overall mythos. Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard, William Hope Hodgson, Arthur Machen & Robert Bloch have all made their way onto my blog.

The King in Yellow (Hastur)

Given the lack of detailed descriptions in Lovecraft’s work, I’d say you’re the first to attempt to put a face to the mythos. What might you say to those that think the influence of Lovecraft lies in his use of the unknown? 

M- There have a been a few people before me to attempt this, though I don’t think any of them were dumb enough to be as thorough as what I’m working on. For instance, Petersen’s Fieldguide To Creatures Of the Dreamlands is pretty excellent, even if a bit goofy. And the Call Of Cthulhu RPG guides have some cool illustrations of creatures. In fact, one of my main goals is to treat this like a cross between an old medieval bestiary and a monster manual. Which is also why there’s a TON of nudity on the blog. I’m trying to present them as animals that an explorer would have seen. When you see etchings of tritons and sea-pigs, they’re not wearing dresses or pants.

But I guess to answer your question I think HPL does rely on a combination of the known and unknown to draw you in. For instance, whenever he wrote about the Necronomicon, it would be in a list of other books, most of which were real. So, if you’re reading the story, you could conceivably be fooled into thinking this was a real grimoire. Same goes for the monsters. He gave painfully exhaustive characterizations of some things and then is just like “not altogether crows, nor moles, nor buzzards, nor ants, nor decomposed human being”.

M- So far it’s been great! In 2011 i09, Boing Boing, MTVGeek and a bunch of other sites picked up the story and the blog blew up. I even got a few small press publishers interested in doing a book version.

As far as individual creatures that get a lot of attention Cthulhu obviously got a bunch of feedback. Most people thought my Cthulhu was too slovenly, haha. But HPL described him as lumbering, grotesque and pulpy. I guess people are used to seeing a buff guy with a tentacle head as a representation of Cthulhu. I think that’s bullshit. The weirder/grosser the better.

The zines have also been really well received. Every edition of every Volume has sold out within a week of me posting them (I do still have 5 copies of the second edition of Volume III available).

Nyarlathotep

You’re preparing the 4th volume of Illustro Obscurum, which is like a compendium of your drawings and Lovecraft quotes. Can you tell us a little more about this?

M- The printed versions of the blog came about because the small publishers that initially contacted me put the idea into my head and then realized that putting out a full color art themed book with quotations (MOST of which are public domain) would be too expensive. The logistics are a nightmare. I also have a very specific way I want to present this work. Like I said before, I want it to feel like an old bestiary or grimoire meets a monster manual. So I wanted ragged edges to the pages, I wanted faux staining on each page, enough room to give the illustrations to breath, and a bunch of touches to make it personal.

As far as the actual process… I lay out the whole thing, then get them printed by a local shop in Philadelphia. They’ll print larger than 11″x 17″ for me so that I can tear the edges and still have the image size be 11″x 17″. I also get each cover printed by Awesome Dudes Printing here in Philly. Those are also printed on slightly large pages so I can tear them. After that I put it all together, staple them and use gaffers tape for faux binding. I’m happy with the end result, but my eventual goal is to have ALL these creatures collected in a hardbound volume complete with silver embossed faux leather covers and a silk ribbon. It’ll be nuts and extremely expensive to produce but I think it’d be worth it.

M- I can’t choose! There are so many fun ones! I did really like drawing The Thing In the Moonlight because it was so creepy. All the creatures from Dream Quest because they were so varied and nuts.

Ossadogowah

Does your musical taste follow from your literary taste? Care to share some bands you’ve been enjoying recently?

M- Kinda… While I think my work is dark, creepy and gross, it’s also full of bright colors and clean lines. And I don’t know if my musical tastes line up with that… I’ll ramble off what I’ve been listening to recently and you can decide for yourselves.

Judas Priest – almost their entire catalog
Anasazi – s/t & I Saw the Witch Cry
Thor – Only the Strong
Assembly At Dusk – demo
Behexen – Nightside Emanations
The Plasmatics – almost all
Wooden Stake – Dungeon Prayers & Tombyard Serenades
Marduk – Serpent Sermon
Twisted Sister – first 4 LPs
Crimson Scarlet – s/t 7″

Also a LOT of horror movie soundtracks (Fabio Frizzi, Goblin, etc) and podcasts. I wouldn’t be able to keep up with the history and research of all this without The H.P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast and the Clark Ashton Smith themed podcast, The Double Shadow.

Atlach-Nacha

Can you tell us a little about your art outside the domain of HPL? Are you working on any other projects?

There’s a sublime moment that hits at about 5:30 AM. Maybe you stayed up all night working. Maybe you’re drunkenly weaving your way home from the subway stop, or passing by rows of empty houses in the car of a friend who you hope has sobered up. Maybe you’re chemically enhanced and partying boldly onwards, bodega tallboys in each hand. Your exuberance is tinged with exhaustion, and perhaps a sense of unfulfilled possibilities from the waning night. You wonder why you are still awake. And then the sun rises, and you remember it’s summer and you see it’s going to be a beautiful day, and all your pent-up yearning mingles with delight. You might take a walk. You might get a coffee. You might just fucking not go to sleep. Your head is lighter than air, and that’s ok because you can feel the wind carrying you into the morning.

A song gets stuck in your head. There’s a marching beat behind each step. Where’d you hear it before? What’s that band again?

It’s Bootblacks, dude. They’re my favorite New York band, and when I lived in Brooklyn I saw them live every chance I got. They played straight-up goth rock, dissonant spasms of anger and lust rooted in The Birthday Party and early Siouxsie. But when their long-delayed debut album came out in the summer of last year, it was already obsolete—Bootblacks had dropped most of the songs from their set. When I heard their new material I could only describe it as “kinda like New Order.” They incorporated more synth parts, and wove programmed beats around live drums. Above all, they were exploring new atmospheres.

Narrowed, Bootblacks’ first recording since that full-length, is the sound of a nocturnal band pushing into the alien brightness of the morning. It’s powerful but serene, joyful yet deeply melancholy, and in that sense it’s very much like early New Order, who found themselves “seeing the light in the shade of the morning sun” with some regularity. But the better comparison, musically, is with the somber, spacious post-punk of unsung UK bands like The Chameleons and The Sound. Their influence is strongest in Alli Pheteplace’s guitar work. She plays with a light touch here, concealing her hand behind heavy doses of reverb and who knows what else. She hits notes other guitarists pass over. She shapes chords in a way that is entirely her own. With those strange harmonies, those shifting patches of brightness and shade, she paints a new sound-world for Bootblacks.

Alli’s guitar isn’t out front in the mix, though, and the songs aren’t really built around big riffs. Instead, each member of Bootblacks plays short, looping figures that fit into grander patterns, like samples in electronic music. There are no stock gestures here, no filler elements. The first track, “Voices,” opens with a 4-note synth line that quickly fades into the background, but it’s a brilliant hook that travels with you long after you’ve stopped the tape. Bassist Denis Makarov can write massive, melodic riffs in the vein of Joy Division and Bauhaus, but for most of Narrowed he plays the role of a disciplined minimalist, keeping close to the root notes and finding power in fleeting lifts and falls. Roger Peffley, on the other hand, plays the drums almost like a melodic instrument. He hits with tremendous force and industrial precision, locked in with the electronic percussion tracks, but he’s never just keeping a beat. The snare fills on the chorus of “Instincts” and the crashing escalation at the end of “Perfect Fiction” are all complete musical phrases in their own right, crucial parts of what makes this tape so engaging.

If there’s a melodic center to Bootblacks’ highly textured songs, it’s in the voice of their frontman, Panther. On the full-length his vocals were mostly vehement shout-talking, fitted to his role as decadent raconteur, but on Narrowed he’s found the depth in his voice and become a proper singer. Panther’s best work is on a “Perfect Fiction.” Alli traces an arc of pure longing and regret and Panther matches her, softly, picking up on the key tones. Here, and elsewhere, they’re really playing together, guiding one another and leaving space, so that it’s hard to tell whether the vocals or the riff came first.

It could be I’ve overemphasized delicate moments like these, though. Bootblacks dig in and hit hard throughout. Indeed, the weakness of this tape, and perhaps the inevitable weakness of any attempt to record this band, is that it doesn’t quite capture how hard they hit. When they play live, Roger and Denis are so locked-in that they can focus all their attention on bashing the fuck out of their instruments. Luckily, we get some of that impact on the last track “Birds,” which links Narrowed to Bootblacks’ older material. It’s propelled by a dark bass riff and a relentless, cyclical drumbeat. Alli dispenses with subtlety and wrings her guitar’s neck. Panther bellows some cryptic, brooding shit: “SIRENS. THEY BURN IN FRONT OF ME.” As Bootblacks come together in that final squall of noise, the sun is setting.

Narrowed comes out April 1 on Modern Tapes, a spiffing Chicago label dedicated to minimalist electronics and post-punk. Limited run of 100 hand-numbered copies, kvlt as fvck, etc. You can check out a track and pre-order it through the Bandcamp link above.

Also, here’s a cool music video for “Voices.”

In 2010 Lurker interviewed Mories and found him in open and honest form as he expounded upon his ongoing projects GTT, Aderlating and De Magia Veterum. His latest project Seirom, first realised in 2011, takes on a markedly different musical guise: as densely bright as GTT was intensely dark.  “Seirom was created because I started to feel burned out. I think all the negativity (in my music making) kind of had an impact on me. I needed to do something positive. I also reached a complete dead end with GTT, so I decided to do something completely different. I decided I wanted to do something stripped of negativity. Seirom is mainly about love and beauty. I know. The world is ugly as fuck, but there are beautiful things too. It was time for me to focus on different aspects of life.”

It is immediately apparent when listening to 1973, released on Aurora Borealis in 2012, that the inspiration here is different. Swirling synths and walls of reverb don’t punish or oppress, but act as a medium to draw light into previously darkened corners. Despite this, though, there is still something telling in the music, something indicative of its genesis in the mind of de Jong. “I like big sounding things. Over the top wall-like sound. I like big dramatic gestures…’impact’ though sounds. One review spoke of “an endless pouring of celestial light” which I thought was very appropriate! A lot of times a piece will be very full sounding already, when I decide to push it over the top into endless bliss.”

Blissful is a key word. At times 1973 sounds as if Sigur Ros had had a decent record collection for inspiration: Every track inspires a kind of catatonic contentment, pregnant with emotion and highly wrought melancholy. It emerges as music as affective as GTT, but with markedly different intentions. One gets a sense that this is deeply sincere and personal music, but not expositional voyeurism – rather, it is an intentionally opened window into a life.  This album falls halfway between the Blade Runner soundtrack and shoegaze at its ethereal heights, with a tone set by the mysteriously sentimental artwork.

The obscuring of faces is about ‘not being there’ when listening to the music.

The first Seirom release was 2011s Eremetic, a clear departure from de Jong’s previous work, which emerged with morphing drones, clattering percussion and squealing electronics. From creepy and expansive to frenetic and claustrophobic, it seemed like Mories had a sound and range to match the best electronic experimentalists out there. “Most of my production skills come from messing around doing electronic music. So in a way I’ve gone back to old things.”

Since then Seirom has changed incrementally, gradually letting the light in: slowly the music seems to get swirled away into a regenerating solar vortex. With three releases in 2011 under the Seirom banner alone, an evolution is clear throughout. After a (relative) break Seirom broke forth into the wider consciousness with 1973. Expansive at an hour and a half long, yet time-alteringly immersive, the album doesn’t so much end as it lets you arise, bewildered and uncommonly revitalised.

But what with this influx of positivity, where does that leave the other projects? It is not unusual for artists to maintain largely divergent projects simultaneously, but rarely has one artist managed to simultaneously tame the light and dark, even as he keeps them wholly separate.  By de Jong’s standards, GTT releases began to tail off in 2011, which begs the question to what extent GTT, Aderlating and De Magia Veterum projects will feature as outlets for his future output. “Last year I tried composing for GTT, but every time I had an idea I’d immediately think: ‘done that before’. There’s no use in doing the same thing over and over again, so I’ll leave GTT be for a while. I’ve recorded lots of Aderlating material lately…so dark and heavy music is still on the menu.  There’s personal satisfaction I get from doing Seirom, I don’t get from the other projects. Maybe that’s just where I’m at at this moment in my life.”

The home of Seirom on the web is here.1973 is out now on Aurora Borealis. Pretty much all of Mories’ work can be heard at his Bandcamp page. Live dates to come later in the year.

In 2009, under the ominous portent of a gibbous moon, New York’s Sandess (Roman Cross) and Tampere’s Luxixul Sumering Auter (Cosmic Church) painted their faces, cast the bones, switched on the amps and invoked “the powers that be” to form a band infused with grim, occult insight. Following close on Asymmetry’s first release, A Strange Grease (2012), the band has added a dedicated bass player and brought forth a three-tracked demo, Ashes Into Wood.

Right off the bat, “Golden Page” drags you into the mucky pit with spindly fingers and lets loose an aural churn of viscous, doomy riffs. The drums are slouching, lagging even, but combined with the bass – oh, that ever-gluttonous bass – it conjures irresisitable hypnosis. Within seconds of entering “Alder and Birch” you snap out of the reverie cast by their Gorgonoid charms, as the double bass sputters and cymbals shatter. Majestic tremolo riffing, constantly underpinned by the bass, helps keep the composition organic and melodious. There are moments when the beautous and hideous cross paths, evoking the rich melancholy that is a Lurker favourite. Add a piercing banshee wail, which harrows and haunts the entirety of this production, and the gnarly juxtaposition is complete. The seven minutes of “Seven Years” stand as the consummation of what has come before.

Murky, umbral, clotted with devilry and as alchemical as its title – Ashes Into Wood proves that Asymmetry is indeed a force to be reckoned with. Thoroughly rooted in the dank underground and brimming with mythological references to the lauded Finnish epos “Kalevala”  (the story of Ilmarinen, the blacksmith mage who forges a golden bride from the ashes of birch-wood as well as the giant Ika-turso’s cosmic green-thumb are both referenced within the track titles and text), this demo offers some of last years most scathing sounds.

Listen to it here

Buy it here

Stephen O’Malley has taken this line of thinking to its logical conclusion: He has formed numerous bands and built an illustrious career, all with a single note.

Now the power of that note has transcended the very air which once dutifully transmitted it into the ears of the faithful, transcended into the world of the physical, the tactile, as energy made matter. Ladies and gentlemen, The Note you know, The Note you love, The Note that fixates your reptilian subconscious, reborn, as a pair of jeans.

O’Malley entered into a creative partnership with Norway’s favourite xenophobia-themed denim artisans Anti-Sweden to make this rebirth possible.

To welcome The Note writ new, a discrete ceremony was held in central Oslo at which only five video cameras were present. Rightfully attended only by fellow creatives, the mood was set by a visionary performance by O’Malley. Bedecked in the tools of his old trade, he let ring The Note, long had it been missed, via the propulsion of a metal wire through a magnetic field, and lo, The Note filled the air, heard for the last time. For in this last outing for The Note, the transformation did occur, lights dimmed, crowds hushed, The Note seemingly faded from the ears. But it had only attained a new, higher form. Once decibels, now denim, The Note hung before us on clothes hangers, ours for $300.

Some didn’t believe it was The Note: they cried malfeasance; they raved that The Note had been secreted away; this corporeal garm was mere distraction; bait and switch; a window of diversion allowing The Note to escape its Sisyphean life.

That was before some statuesque Scandinavian stepped forth from the shadows and began to undress: long golden locks tumbled past non-conventional piercings and sic (sic) tats as clothing fell away. Strong Scandinavian hands slid the slacks from the hanger and slipped them past socks and shins, squeezed over shapely buttocks, toned by years of Telemark skiing. As the figure turned, a gasp from the crowd, the doubters dropped to their knees, for, scorched onto the bum pockets, was the mark of The Note.

There could be no denying this eloquent proof of the persistence of The Note, reverberating in its new textile state. And the crowds turned to O’Malley, himself metamorphosed, holding no longer his guitar, but now the tools of his new trade, the tools he would require to tame The Note in its new form: a tape-measure, a selvedge loom, and a copy of French Vogue.

The crowd got it. I mean they really got it. An uncreative mind might mistake these amazing scenes for the latest step in a facile branding exercise, the  pseudo-embodiment of the aesthetics and values of an entire artform, brazen self-promotion packed into a design so risible at its price tag that every scintilla of cycnicism ever entertained feels instantly vindicated. But the crowd saw past these heathen notions, to the truth, that O’Malley’s genius lies not in design, or creativity, or originality, or sincerity, but in his unique ability to tame The Note, and his prescient timing in releasing The Note. He is the keeper and gateway to the note, a profound and deep notion, that can now be acknowledged and displayed, stretched atop your buttocks, for a mere $300.

Since out last update, Dethroned Emperor have been keeping the putrid flame of annihilation burning bright with live shows, split releases, side projects and upcoming new materials. And while regressive death metal outfits propound their subject matter beyond the realms of believability and grindcore naively protests its political and cultural impotence, Dethroned Emperor just do not have any fucks to give.

Their DIY attitude ousts any satanic or pseudo-political insincerity in favour of unabashed attitude.  Slapstick brutality that fully encompasses the aesthetic of immediacy and rehearsal-jams that both grindcore and the more antediluvian branch of death metal initially offered. It is a welcome antithesis to the current trend of over-intellectualising that which should be natural, sporadic and volatile. Embrace the lizard brain. Revel in your own filth.

The problem I have with grindcore and death metal is the tendency to either over think structure, or not making the music engaging. With black metal, artists can occasionally get away with a lack of ideas by disguising it as ‘hypnotic’ or ‘repetitive’. Take Antediluvian for example, whose first full length, Through the Cervix of Hawaah, was just a listless journey across dull riff after dull riff (a shame, considering the promise displayed on 2008’s Under Wings of Asael demo, especially Solarburst).

2012 saw the band release two split EP’s. The first, New Brunswick Death Metal Alliance, is a split with neighboring death metallers Dystrophy; a pleasant surprise to stumble across acute, varied death metal legion pairing great melody with riffs that would make The Chasm proud. The second split is with local doomers Pharaoh who play a similar brand of sludgy metal to Pelican and Cult of Luna, if they were a tad angrier at the world (and have all of their material available for free download on their site). Despite the less than congenial grouping, the only similarity between the groups being location, the material is worth your time. Primordial death grind meets lofty, Isis-tinged sludge? Bizarre, I know.

Joe has also been busying himself with a side project, Death Fortress, having released the demo tape Pulling Ancient Stone through Fallen Empire records in September of last year. This is total Hate Forest worship. 100% power and domination. All things LURKER can get behind. Stream a track below. It slays. Unceasing drums, trebled out riffs and barbaric proclamations are all unbeatable hallmarks of the sound Roman Saenko mastered.

Dethroned Emperor are as unrelenting as their sound. They are currently putting final touches to their debut full length, MORAL NIHILITY, and preparing for future live shows. Get in touch and join the assault here.

A few minutes in, they drop into the first of many droning riffs based on carefully spaced chord changes. They introduce a Mayhemic arpeggio, garbled and distant but rising over the churn – a compelling minimalist theme. When they kick into double-bass, it becomes clear that, despite the watery sound, this is powerful, driven music. It was recorded in a single take, but carefully through-composed.

Now that you can resolve the riffs and rhythms, you can hear the openness of the mix – the spaces between the individual instruments, the space surrounding them. It’s less like being presented with a song than being present within one. The demo was recorded with a single microphone, like a field recording, so that it serves as the sonic imprint of its recording space. In a literal sense, that space is probably Vorde’s practice room in Bushwick, perhaps a windowless concrete bunker near the steel frame of the M train. But in an equally valid sense, it is also the imaginary space created by the music. The chief magic of this demo is that it collapses the distinction between those spaces, so that the former bleeds into the latter. We hear the music emanating from a deep grotto where, in faint torchlight, the cryptic markings on the walls become visible.

Vorde’s experiments with sound and space follow on similar work by bands like Coil and SunnO))), but this isn’t abstract, cerebral music. The second song (it’s all one track) opens with a mournful chord progression that suggests Mütiilation, but it really comes into its own with a stop – and switch – and suddenly the riff becomes a brilliant hook, hammering open chords over a ripping punk beat, like an intricate Ildjarn. It’d be easy to build the song around those two sections, but Vorde keep developing it, pushing back towards the drone that anchors this recording. This time they hold a single chord for forty seconds, periodically striking it again as if reaffirming it. There’s the terrifying focus of Darkthrone in their prime, but also the psychedelic effect of Fell Voices. That’s to be expected, though, because the drummer of Fell Voices is in this band.

From the first to the second song, the overall composition is taking on form, gathering strength. On the final song, though, that accumulated force erupts. The first riff doesn’t quite sound like anything I’ve heard. The second riff sounds like Ofermod, or Emperor, or Kvist – after all the buildup, it’s just colossal. At last the weird, vaporous textures have dissipated to reveal Vorde’s full potential as a True Black Metal band. For the rest of the song you can almost hear that gorgeous first riff echoing over the rest of the music, but it’s not there, it’s just chiming away in your head. The whole track is defined by that figure’s absence and your longing for its return.

“Vorde” is an approximation of the Old Norse for “to become,” and their music is concerned with an intensified state of becoming – occult initiation. A number of great bands evoke this kind of atmosphere, but Vorde actually enacts the ritual. The demo’s inexorable rise from inchoate invocations to triumphant lyricism is, itself, a dire transformation. And through their unorthodox recording techniques, Vorde have opened up a sonic space in which this ritual can unfold. We’re lured over the threshold, into the inner sanctum.

Check out the demo on SoundCloud, then head to Fallen Empire for tapes.

Stylistically, the riff is king, with magnificent intertwining passages dominating each of the tape’s meandering compositions. The music bears a vast scope reminiscent of the best moments of the Second Wave that evokes thoughts of transcendent nature. Far from the tightly atmospheric, occult meditations that comprised much of the black metal underground last year, this is far more ethereal in sound, weaving dreamlike vistas as each movement flows naturally. Not to infer any degree of weakness on the behalf of Sodb, as this is at heart an all-out black metal assault.

The airy songcraft is at constant odds with a practiced ferocity which means, above all else, Don Seantalamh… is a work of perfectly executed contrast. This is a very impressive demo and hopefully a sign of better things to come. With an imminent live appearance supporting Deströyer 666 at Into the Void’s 20th anniversary, this could be a big year for Sodb. Although the demo tape is now sold out, a vinyl pressing is imminent through Into The Void, and material can be found with relative ease by the faithful. Well worth tracking down.

“Thus I bring loathly terror upon the one whose life and the light of whose faith I resent.”

English black metal has struggled to remain relevant on an international scale since Venom christened the genre. UKBM’s curious tendency of choosing shadows over platforms has created an isle without a “scene”, a slew of bands without any dedicated internet presence and a microcosm of stoic iconoclasm standing in opposition to our neighbours across the Atlantic. There’s mystique present in UKBM, a respectable lack of prostitution and compromise. The best UKBM is augmented like this in some way, bastardised. And Isenscur revel in it.

A curious mix of Dark Age superstition met with the sword and steel of an oppressive elite greets us on opening track ‘Siege’: “The tower is breached! The entrance is open!” Archetypal binary thumping and an honour-igniting call to arms set the standard. The feel of a constant battle, of blade meeting flesh and total chaos is subsumed in the track; it verges on war metal territory, without ever falling into disarray.

The orthodox black metal on display is clichéd in description only. Lyrically, anti-human, anti-Christian themes abound and stylistically, blasting, howling and riff piled on riff form the corpus of Mónaþfylen. It is an unhinged playing style, constantly veering between order and turmoil. It’s in the moments of transition, where the attack evolves from borderline war metal to pure melody, as on ‘Pool of Nerthus’ and ‘Albedo’, that this band excels.

Mónaþfylen is a varied beast. Isenscur’s talent allows them to mold a variety of playing styles to fit their aura. Where war metal meets orthodoxy, atmosphere and triumphant melodies overlay spoken-word proclamations. Considering that Mónaþfylen is only 34 minutes in length, the diversity of its content is initially overwhelming. First listen reveals a band skating over ideas. There is an experiment in execution easily confused for a crisis of identity. A subtler brilliance begins to unwind after repeated plays. The assorted changes are placed perfectly, preclude boredom and keep a stranglehold on intrigue until the closing notes.

An inimitable debut from another unknown British act, Isenscur appeared from nowhere with Mónaþfylen. The members remain unknown, disparate from any scene and isolated in their ability to command sound. As LURKER said before: ”The best British Black Metal is isolationist music, created by and for the solitary, with little to no input from others in the ‘scene’. These posts are a celebration of that anchoritic spirit, and the close bond it often has with the landscape and eccentricities of these islands.”

Isenscur are nearly a decade old and Mónaþfylen was released last September. Those among you seeking something different from the flavour of the week are encouraged to spend some time with Isenscur and their label, Barghest, whose roster is brimming with gems.

The LP is available now from Barghest Records. Stream a track below (although trust us when we say it is probably the weakest on the album).