Style: Black metal, melodic black metal (harsh vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Emperor, Dissection
Country: Ohio, United States
Release date: 20 June 2025

As a ten-year old kid, I first discovered The Hobbit in my elementary school library. Its charm, characters, call to adventure, and perhaps above all, its meticulously crafted fictional world drew me in like no story ever has—at least in the literary realm. That initial enchantment naturally led to The Lord of the Rings, just in time for Peter Jackson’s films to hit theaters as I was finishing the books. I’ve returned to Tolkien’s saga many times since, and still revisit it now and then. As often happens, a love of Middle-earth opened the door to other high (and low) fantasy realms. Does your book have a map of a fictional world in the opening pages? Then I’ll probably check it out at some point.

Pair the allure of fantasy with my innate love of metal, and it’s no surprise that artists like Blind Guardian and Summoning quickly became favorites—bands whose music is conjured for a Tolkien-bred imagination. A few years ago, I was able to add another group to that cabal: Valdrin. But, unlike those who reinterpret familiar stories or put music to an existing lore, Valdrin have created a mythos all their own—a literary world inscribed upon black metal scrolls. I would be doing their work a disservice trying to summarize the hero’s journey of the titular character and his struggle with the malevolent Nex Animus, but suffice it to say: spiritual warfare, collapsing worlds, and existential dread are just the beginning.

Valdrin’s newest chapter, Apex Violator, continues their long-running saga of mythic chaos with a relentless, oppressive energy. While their previous album, Throne of the Lunar Soul, explored moments of triumph and sorrow amidst celestial fallout, Apex Violator is all sinister fury—a bit melodic, a tad fantastical, but pure scraping black metal cloaked in eldritch atmosphere. Scathing riffs wrapped in dissonant arpeggiation (“Ignite the Murder Shrine,” “The Muttering Derelict”), blistering percussion (“Poison Soul Vents”), and demonic, blood-curdling howls (“Veins of Akasha”) make up the bulk of this EP. We’re forgoing variety in favor of overwhelming force, here.

That dark force is made all the more sinister by various synths, keyboards, and choral chants throughout Apex Violator, lending a bit of flavor to the black metal cacophony. These elements are rarely the primary focus—they instead haunt the soundscape and lend an ominous sense to the EP. A standout in this regard is “Black Imperial Smoke,” whose macabre vocal chants can be nothing but cursed hymns echoing from the halls of a shadowy ruin. Additionally, the bridge in “Poison Soul Vents” has been stuck in my head for the past week, in no small part due to the deep, thrumming piano underneath the ominous guitar riff.

Still, I miss the sadness and grandeur that Throne of the Lunar Soul sprinkled around. Apex Violator is fairly one-note by comparison—little if any acoustic pensiveness, triumphant melody, or interludes for a breather to form those peaks and valleys that help create a truly standout album for me. This EP being a chapter dedicated to Nex Animus, I can understand why the atmosphere of the album is pure evil. I can’t help but wonder what pairing it with an emotionally unraveling latter half might do to elevate it, though.

As a standalone listen, Apex Violator may blur together a little, with little in the way of audible contrast. Yet, fans of the dark majesty of Emperor or the seething, melodic dissonance of Dissection will find much to admire here. Valdrin channels the phantasm of those black metal titans through the lens of their grim cosmology—and for the initiated, the fury of Apex Violator is another book of scripture. Map or not.

Recommended tracks: Black Imperial Smoke, Ignite the Murder Shrine
You may also like: Stormkeep, Caladan Brood, Gallowbraid
Final verdict: 7/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives

Label: Avantgarde Music – Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Website | Metal-Archives

Valdrin is:
– Colton Deem (guitars)
– Carter Hicks (vocals, guitars, keyboards)
– James Lewis (bass)
– Ryan Maurmeier (drums)

The post Review: Valdrin – Apex Violator appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: avant-garde black metal, progressive black metal, dissonant black metal (harsh vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Thy Catafalque, Oranssi Pazuzu, Enslaved, Blut Aus Nord, Imperial Triumphant
Country: Netherlands
Release date: 28 March 2025

I know lots of music, literature, and visual art. I know plenty of music inspired by literature; literature inspired by art; visual art inspired by music; well all six combinations, you get it. Grey Aura’s Zwart Vierkant albums—Slotstuk is the follow-up and conceptual sequel to their 2021 album—are the first album I’ve ever heard based on a book that’s based on artwork. Slotstuk follows the second half of Ruben Wijlacker’s novel De Protodood in Zwarte Haren, in which our main character Pablo is seduced by the world of Supremist art—he follows his obsession by unveiling the void as his artwork, representative of the death of the physical realm. The concept is intense, inspired by the freakiest of the Modernists, and Grey Aura certainly have the appropriate style of music to back it up. So the question remains: is the music good enough to make me succumb to the void?

Grey Aura’s style on Zwart Vierkant: Slotstuk is intense, heady, and thrilling avant-garde black metal similar to their Hungarian peers Thy Catafalque. On each non-interlude track (there are three primarily Spanish guitar interludes), Grey Aura begin with a heavy riff centered around some warped idea of a melody, using varied and punishing drumming to force the track forward at a brisk march. Rhythmically alternating between a manic groove I don’t know whether to headbang or bust a move to and voracious blast beats, Slotstuk doesn’t stay still and proves Seth van de Loo to be one of the most promising percussionists in the scene. The guitars push back against the direct attack of the rhythm, lapping around each other in increasingly complicated circles, skirting around the melody, until they’ve nowhere left to go; in these moments, the music collapses in on itself, overwhelmed by the noise (my favorite example is only a minute into the album on “Daken als Kiezen”). Exhausting but satisfying, the constantly tense songwriting and dizzying riffs are an incredible tool to build tracks around. Grey Aura display an uncanny ability to shove full-fledged crescendos into only a minute or so of time.

Backing up the prominent guitar and drum parts is a small cast of different instruments. What stood out to me on 2021’s Zwart Vierkant was Grey Aura’s use of rather eclectic instrumentation, from a range of percussion styles to horns and acoustic guitars. All of these remain on Slotstuk but in subdued fashion; the result is a potentially less gimmicky sound. However, as much as gimmicks don’t necessarily make for good songwriting, Slotstuk is a tad less interesting. It’s a shame only the shorter tracks like “Nachten Zonder Dagen” have trombone and tuba because—let’s be honest—who doesn’t want those prominent on their avant-black album? Like the prior installment in the album duology, Sylwin Cornielje’s bass is produced fantastically and is the stitch keeping the self-fraying music together. Amidst the chaos, the chunky and often contrapuntal bass lines are all one can track to keep oneself sane, like on “De Ideologische Seance” or the brutal “Waarin de Dood Haar Kust.”

Clearly, Slotstuk is not for the faint-hearted—potent and harsh even in small doses. Ruben Wijlacker’s vocals make the already hard-to-approach album all the more difficult to appreciate. When I visited our blog’s glorious founder Sam in Amsterdam last, he yelled at me in Dutch to the effect of ‘turn that nonsense off’ when I put on my favorite comfort music, Imperial Triumphant. Well, being screamed at in German is scary; being screamed at in Dutch is just sort of confusing, albeit intriguing. This is precisely what Grey Aura’s vocals are, and I don’t really know if it works because they’re neither manic enough (something like Le Grand Guignol) nor varied enough (Thy Catafalque) for the style. Wijlacker’s vocals aren’t as impressive as the instrumentation around him.  

Just like his unceasingly shouting vocal style, the music can be too intimidating for its own good. Grey Aura play with dynamics—I mentioned their mini crescendoes—and they certainly have the cutesy little interludes, but Slotstuk is constantly a bit too overwhelmingly dense. For instance, while the blast beats are admirably metronomic, I find van de Loo’s usage of extremely intricate, almost danceable grooves far more intriguing. Moreover, the grooves don’t sacrifice heaviness but transfer the massive amounts of energy Grey Aura store into a more inspired package—when they’re focused on blast beats, they sound much more like a standard dissoblack bands than when the drumming and percussion is more varied.

Zwart Vierkant: Slotstuk can be as dense as a black hole and took many, many listens for me to grapple with its contents, and in that regard, it is an overwhelming success. It tears apart its own reality and internal logic as each song grows until the inevitable crumpling. The black void box is real. Although they de-emphasized several of Zwart Vierkant’s best elements, Slotstuk is a fitting conclusion to the saga of Pablo our painter, and I think I may have been driven mad trying to review this. As intended.

Recommended tracks: Daken als Kiezen, Een Uithangbord van Wanhoop, Waarin de Dood Haar Kust, Slotstuk
You may also like: Dystopia, Am I in Trouble?, Dødheimsgard, Arcturus, Hail Spirit Noir, Haar, Sigh, Schammasch, Skythala, Thantifaxath, Convulsing, Veilburner, Ὁπλίτης
Final verdict: 7/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Official Website | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives page

Label: Avantgarde Music – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

Ruben Wijlacker – Vocals, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, synthesizer
Tjebbe Broek – Electric guitar, acoustic guitar, Spanish guitar
Sylwin Cornielje – Bass
Seth van de Loo – Drums, percussion

Ruben Schmidt – Cello
Alberto Pérez Jurado – Tuba, Trombone

The post Review: Grey Aura – Zwart Vierkant: Slotstuk appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: dissonant death metal, black metal, electronica (harsh vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Ulcerate, Gorguts, Morbid Angel, Gojira
Country: Arizona, United States
Release date: 28 February 2025

In my mind, the main feature (other than quality) that separates one dissonant death metal release from another is headiness. Some bands like Replicant are content to stay low to the earth, punishing any who come near with raw brutality, while others leave their earthly constraints and instead push dissodeath towards the cerebral; see Pyrrhon and Scarcity. In the middle, you get bands like Ulcerate and Convulsing that infuse elements from across the spectrum into their sound to create music equally confounding as it is crushing, and this alluring middle ground is where Light Dweller’s The Subjugate falls.

Stylistically, Light Dweller employs a shade of dissonant death metal on The Subjugate most similar to that of Convulsing’s masterful Perdurance from last year. Uniquely contrapuntal riffs weave in and upon themselves as the interminable drumming blasts away atop a bed of cacophonous atmospherics, but—like all the dissodeath I love—the album maintains a devotion to the mighty riff. From the harmonious guitar work of the opening track that sounds as though entirely different songs are playing from the left and right channels, to the tasteful ebb and flow of the breakdowns on songs like “Cessation of Time” and the Tool-like percussive riffage on tracks like “Fracturing Light” and “Passing Through the Veil,” there’s no shortage of unique and creative riffs on The Subjugate. In general, the riffs here feel more groove oriented, as if Morbid Angel’s sound never stopped evolving, and when Alex Haddad (Dessiderium, Arkaik) lends the album his tasteful lead work, the songs take on an even more technical edge. Even as the tracks venture into the realms of electronica with synthesized drum beats, haunting flute, and brainy synths, there’s always a killer riff waiting in the wings to bring it all back home to a familiar death metal base.

The balance between The Subjugate’s degenerate and cerebral qualities is what allows the album to truly shine. In fact, The Subjugate achieves an emulsification of metal subgenres here more successfully than any death metal act in recent memory, and I find my attention only broken by the unfortunately common additions of electronic drumming. There are certainly gaps in my electronic knowledge that keep me from fully contextualizing the ideas the album puts forth, but the manner in which the electronic drums never seemed to settle into a steady beat made each moment they appeared feel somewhat meandering, as if lacking a goal to push towards. There are a few moments like the spliced buildup of the intro of “Fracturing Light” that push the album towards a more cogent fusion of death metal and electronica, but these moments don’t outshine my distaste for the electronic drums as a whole.

Blessedly, the somewhat poor integration of the electronic elements into The Subjugate’s sound allows me to look past them and simply enjoy the dissodeath that the album has on offer, and it is really stellar stuff. I constantly find myself headbanging to every track, and by the time this rather lean album finishes up, I instantly feel the urge to spin it again, chasing those giddy glimpses into the album’s unfathomable riffage. As a fellow acolyte of the mighty riff, it truly warms my heart to see a band taking the riff heritage of bands like MorbidAngel—or Gojira for a more modern reference—and pushing it into the future. One inverted power chord and pick scrape at a time, Light Dweller, along with bands like Convulsing, Replicant, and Wormhole, are pushing metal riffing into the future, and there’s no telling where they may end up. Thankfully, we have The Subjugate as a stepping stone to help us along the way.

Recommended tracks: Adrift the Expanding Nothingness, Fracturing Light, Cessation of Time
You may also like: Convulsing, Warforged, Replicant, Sacrificial Vein, Luminous Vault, Artificial Brain
Final verdict: 7.5/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives page

Label: Unorthodox Emanations of Avantgarde Music – Bandcamp | Facebook

Light Dweller is:
– Cameron Boesch (everything)

The post Review: Light Dweller – The Subjugate appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: progressive black metal, heavy metal (mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Haggard, King Diamond, Fleshgod Apocalypse
Country: Italy
Release date: 31 January 2025

If I won the lottery, I’d pay for Wilderun and Ne Obliviscaris to record and perform with whatever orchestra and choir they’d like. In my humble opinion, (competent) orchestration and metal pair like peanut butter and jelly, elevating both to hitherto unknown heights. Truly, few things in life compare to the wedding of these disparate styles. On one man band Selvans’ third album, the Italian horrorist enlists the help of a sixty-member orchestra and choir. That’s damn ambitious and I respect it; do his compositions justify the cost?

Saturnalia exudes campy fun, living up to the Roman festival it’s named after. With a baseline of King Diamond-y heavy metal, Selvans amplifies the sound with eclectic black metal riffing and an aura of Fleshgod Apocalypse’s grandeur. Selvan’s vocal attack is similarly varied: he shouts at you in Italian, performs freakily accurate King Diamond highs, attempts silly little whispers and more goblin-y harshes (“Fonte del Diavoli”), and showcases operatic talent (“Madre Dei Tormenti”). For every vocal success, however, he has several which work less well: like the obnoxious burp which heralds the start of “Madre Dei Tormenti” and the out-of-place spaghetti-Western styled whistle in “Il Mio Maleficio V’incalzerà!,” but Selvans is clearly an entertainer to his core, his performances full of drama and refreshingly passionate—over-the-top but deservingly so. The all-Italian lyrics are also quite the riot (according to my Italian peer Francesco), chronicling loony tales of cultist orgies (“Il Mio Maleficio V’incalzerà!”) and… um a man who escapes an asylum, is flayed and burned alive, only to have the devil come and make him into a figure of terror who goes and curses people with a band of outcasts (“Il Mio Maleficio”) (thanks for the translation help, Francesco!).

Instrumentally, Selvans achieves similar bombast, even disregarding the orchestration. Chock-full of heavy metal swagger, guitarists Chris D’Onofrio and Antonio Scelzi rip solos whenever they get the chance—highlights including the ends of “Il Mio Maleficio V’incalzerà!” and “Il Capro Infuocato.” When not soloing, the trem-picked riffs provide the ghastly horror vibe Selvans aims to achieve, creating a sense of maniacal unhingedness like Le Grand Guignol did almost twenty years ago. A bevy of retro prog rock organs and synths create a spooky atmosphere during the more metal-y tracks (so all but “Necromilieu” and “Madre Dei Tormenti”); both keyboard styles are fun, but with all the sounds at once in the heavier parts, everything can be a bit overwhelming.

And alas, the metal bits completely lose the orchestra. Just like Fleshgod Apocalypse, muddy production kills the full experience. The lead guitar and vocals are crisp above the menagerie of other textures, but those all blend together into a noisy, cluttered mess. In an ideal world, all of Selvans’ orchestrations and compositions would be a bit more deft—not to the level of Aquilus but perhaps handled like Lamentari. And this is where Selvans loses me despite their vibrant enthusiasm and jubilant, creepy songwriting: the group just get lost in the sauce. The ebbs and flows are thrilling, but by the end it doesn’t do much with symphonic grandeur, the songwriting never crescendoing to a satisfying enough climax (although the solos are undoubtedly great—I wish Selvans used them more). Along the same lines, the album closer “Fonte Dei Diavoli” is a little underwhelming: why does Saturnalia end on a fadeout???

I always respect ambition; it’s the driving force of prog, after all. But sometimes an artist has to rein it in, and that’s the case for Selvans. Fantastic musician, solid composer, fun ideator for concepts and stories, but the whole project just doesn’t coalesce in a satisfying way. That is not to say Saturnalia isn’t worthwhile, but I am sad that this is supposedly the final project under the Selvans name.

Recommended tracks: Il Mio Maleficio V’incalzerà!, Madre Dei Tormenti, Pantàfica
You may also like: Malokarpatan, Le Grand Guignol, Antipope, Pensées Nocturnes, Dissona, The Circle, Aenaon
Final verdict: 7/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Official Website | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives page

Label: Avantgarde Music – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

Selvans is:

Selvans: vocals and keyboards
Chris D’Onofrio: guitars
Agares: bass
Marco Berrettoni: drums
Antonio Scelzi: additional lead guitars
Triumphator: solo track 4

The post Review: Selvans – Saturnalia appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: progressive black metal, folk black metal (mostly harsh vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Negura Bunget, Enslaved, Heilung, Moonsorrow, Thy Catafalque
Country: Romania
Release date: 30 August 2024

At its core, genre is a reflection of culture: a framework for a specific moment in artistic and societal time. Genre evolves and shifts as do the values underlying them; they capture the zeitgeist. For example, what’s labeled as metal today isn’t the rock your dad delighted in because the artistic and musical expressions have gone far beyond a tritone or two and some distortion come the digital age. Likewise, I could quibble about how Sur Austru elegantly mix black metal, progressive metal, and folk music, but I opine that they simply write Romanian music, an amalgamation of their musical heritage, cultural traditions, and pride for their nation as a musical love letter to Romania; however, genre isn’t why we’re all here, it’s for quality, inspired music: do Sur Austru fit the bill?

For context, out of the skeleton of classic Romanian atmospheric black metal band and cornerstone of Eastern European metal Negurǎ Bunget sprung two amazing successors: Dordeduh and Sur Austru, both of which I discovered with their magnificent 2021 releases, Har and Obârsie, respectively. While both bands provided excellent first impressions, Dordeduh had a clear edge with their refined, progressive songwriting and more crystalline production qualities. Datura Străhiarelor closes the gap. Distilled passion forms Sur Austru’s third album; to start, Sur Austru is a community-driven effort, its cover art painted by carefully-chosen, local artist Bogdan Tigan and its lyrics penned by the young Romanian poet Călin Miclauș, taleing years of dedicated studies into Romanian folklore and mystical traditions—particularly of its eschatology—and the performance is, of course, performed in their native tongue.

Beyond exterior aesthetics, we’re treated to a wealth of instruments, ranging from the traditional metal band (plus flute) to a regional ensemble featuring the toacǎ (Orthodox liturgical percussion instrument), bucium (style of alphorn/bugle), nai (pan flute), and woodblock (percussion). My hesitation to reduce Datura Străhiarelor to mere metal is how well Sur Austru intertwine the folk and metal, closing in on the levels of compositional brilliance of Aquilus’s elegant neoclassical black metal. Elements of black metal suffuse Datura Străhiarelor as a remnant of Negurǎ Bunget, but the metallic sounds serve to emphasize the traditional music, forcing it to be punchier through distortion, adding a heft to morph the delicate, fluty Romanian folk sounds to something closer to the proto-Germanic paganry of Heilung. The greatest strength of Sur Austru’s sound on Datura Străhiarelor, though, is the percussion in its cascading, hypnotic (though never outright repetitive) patterns, building each song’s intensity from cavernous, brooding skin-beatings all the way up to crashing blast beats. Nearly every track builds in this fashion to swirling, sublime crescendos, using the drums’ increasingly speedy ritualistic pounding to mark their progress. These climaxes are certainly the highlights of the album, the culmination of storytelling lyrically and musically, yet, as grandiose sections often are, it’s through their context in which they work best, provided in the form of hazy atmospheres.

Every track on Datura Străhiarelor contains several psychedelic folk sections, flowing in transcendent swaths of new age-y flutes over nature sounds—birds chittering and thunderstorms—and atmospheric synths, conjuring the aura of an alpine trek through the Carpathians, a Romantic gesture through its simple pastoralism. These alternating and layered streams of psychedelia and intricate metal riffing create long, progressive, and meandering tracks, the songwriting exuding both the power and ease of the natural world and the heaviness of death and destruction. For example, intro “Arătarea” has birds chirping, the epic, foreboding war-cries of the bucium, and ends with a triumphant pagan guitar part. “Strânsura” has chants with an air Moonsorrow in the style choice before switching to complex alternate picking at 4:20; the flutes share the lead with the guitars in the bombastic ending sequence. Other tracks lull with a dreamlike quality such as “Cele Rele” or the women’s choir clinching the end of “Fărmăcarea.” On a less serious note, the booming “OOH-AH”s of “Împărăcherea” sound like the boys are working in a dwarven forge, the imagery certainly funny—still epic. 

The sole thing holding Sur Austru back is its lack of memorable melodies. In its fifty-four minute journey through dreams and the end of the world, Sur Austru cover a lot of ground and, obviously, beautifully integrate Romanian music into metal. However, Sur Austru can get a bit lost in the atmosphere—certainly not a problem on its own as their rhythm section and psychedelic tinge more than hold their own—but I feel like even the heroic climaxes lack a certain extra melodic oomph that Dordeduh have mastered. In this regard, Datura Străhiarelor almost functions as a brighter foil to The Ruins of Beverast with its occult, percussive buildups and effortless endowing of magnitude through sweeping structure choices. Despite its slightly lacking melodies, Sur Austru are vastly improved songwriters. 

More progressive and even more Romanian, Datura Străhiarelor handily improves on Obârşie. With an impeccable sense of ebb and flow, Sur Austru do justice to their love of their country, and I want more bands to celebrate their local artists while incorporating regional tradition in their music rather than blindly imitating what’s popular in the West (ie USA and UK). Sur Austru are authentic, and the heartfelt nature of Datura Străhiarelor is obvious: this was laboriously made, and Sur Austru’s passion pays dividends.

Recommended tracks: Cele Rele, Fărmăcarea
You may also like: Dordeduh, The Ruins of Beverast, Thragedium, Finsterforst, Aquilus
Final verdict: 8.5/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives page

Label: Avantgarde Music – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

Sur Austru is:
– Ovidiu Corodan (Bass, Toacă, Vocals)
– Mihai Florea (Guitars, Bucium, Vocals)
– Ionut Cadariu (Keyboards, Flute, Nai, Vocals)
– Tibor Kati (Vocals, Guitars, Keyboards, Bucium)
– Beni Ursulescu (Drums, Vocals)
– Paul Marcu (percussion)
– Călin Puticiu (Percussion, Woodblock)
– Călin Miclauș (lyrics)

The post Review: Sur Austru – Datura Străhiarelor appeared first on The Progressive Subway.