2018…. It’s a year. It’s a year where valves broke, meters bust, and scars were laid afresh. It’s a year where anguish scaled the void, filling it, making it home. Nary did a ray of hope pass, nor did shadows not congregate. I’d want to go on like this. Laying descriptors after descriptors to suggest my current state of being. Let’s say it. It was a sad year.

Hope then is a slippery slope isn’t it? All these years of listening to metal haven’t really elevated my mood really. I’d even thought of taking up the outsider’s jeer “How do you listen to such depressing music all the time?”. Maybe it’s just subjective. The familiar personal.

And yet…A really long ‘yet’.. If I may place hope in a tiny little cradle, maybe and just maybe, Metal can be its proverbial nudge. Maybe I’m just reiterating metal’s constant dialogue with all things ‘power’. That transgression of the mundane. Oh well…

Here’s to 2019 and the eternal hope for hope! These are some of the tracks that really held my attention.

“stay awhile and listen” – deckard cain

Artwork by Metstazis

1 – Kaleikr – The Descent

This’d be a stretch. I reckon people who’ve read Alan Moore’s ‘V for Vendetta’(forget the movie) remembers the ‘The Vicious Cabaret’. A chapter that is grandiose, intricate and let’s admit, a mindfuck. Transcendent too. That’s what Iceland’s Kaleikr does. Weaving death and black metal into a heady mix that reminds of the theatricality of say Akercocke, but far different from them in style.

Kaleikr’s Heart of Lead releases on February 15^th through Debemur Morti Productions.

Continue reading →