Black Metal

Formed in that fateful, fiery year of 1993, Poland’s ARKONA heard the call from the North and took up torches of their own. While an often-overlooked name, alongside Graveland and very early Behemoth, ARKONA helped shaped the Polish black metal sound during the ’90s, and continue to this day honoring their ancient vision.

Black Metal

At long last, a timeless classic returns: BESTIAL WARLUST’s pivotal second album, Blood & Valour, now seeing release on digipack through HELLS HEADBANGERS! Originally released in 1995, Blood & Valour was the crucial follow-up to the Aussie barbarians’ legendary debut album, Vengeance War ‘Til Death. That debut almost singlehandedly started war metal, but it was with Blood & Valour where BESTIAL WARLUST confirmed that their “Satanic war metal” was truly a viable, lawless outback all its own and that their over-the-top violent savagery was no mere fluke. The lineup may have shifted, but the iron fist remained bloody: Blood & Valour more than lived up to its title, then and especially now. Added as a bonus track on this long-overdue reissue is the studio cover of BATHORY’s “Massacre” previously only heard by close contacts of the band. SATANIC WAR METAL…BESTIAL fucking WARLUST!!!

Black Metal

Widely considered one of the first “war metal” albums – if not THE first, actually – BESTIAL WARLUST’s debut was a shockingly violent and utterly barbaric slab of black metal that literally had no peer upon its release in 1994. It spawned countless imitators in the two decades since that original release and even furthered the “bestial metal” subgenre so prolific today, but there’s simply no substitute for the original – and HELLS HEADBANGERS couldn’t be prouder to reissue it alongside the second album, Blood & Valour. SATANIC WAR METAL…BESTIAL fucking WARLUST!!!

Black Metal

CANDELABRUM hail from Portugal, renown in the past decade for its polarizing raw black metal scene. The nameless mainman behind the band has been involved within that scene for many years, and even before his native scene found worldwide recognition. And even within that scene/idiom, CANDELABRUM stands alone, enigmatic and electric: his works are slavishly reverential of ancient black metal whilst simultaneously unorthodox. The band’s two albums to date, 2016’s Necrotelepathy and 2018’s Portals, are equally astounding modern classics which emit a strangely shimmering quality amongst an explosion of emotive rawness. Both albums are immersive and mesmerizing experiences unto themselves.

Wisely prizing quality over quantity, CANDELABRUM only emerge from the shadows when a new experience is fully formed and ready to curse/haunt/liberate the listener: at long last, Nocturnal Trance. Truly titled, this third album is a strident synthesis of its monolithic predecessors as well as form meeting content. Conceptually, Nocturnal Trance deals with the same theme of Necrotelepathy and Portals: death and the passage to a different plane, beyond. On those previous CANDELABRUM records, the figure on the front cover is always “moving” – crossing the passage, as it were – but this time, the mainman chose to clearly portray the passage from absolute darkness to an ominous monochromaticism: both a blinding light and a complete lack of it, going beyond darkness and back around to an absence of literally everything.

Black Metal

No one could expect CULTES DES GHOULES to create another Coven, which clocked in at nearly 100 minutes across two CDs or three 12″ vinyl records; they would never want to do that anyway. Instead, the coven dives headlong into the spacier crevasses of their inscrutable, always idiosyncratic sound. Like the blackest of magick, willed into being through both inmutable will and unselfconscious abandon, “Sinister” opens up – WIDELY – and again stretches sulfur and brimstone to their breaking point, with four of the five tracks topping ten minutes (or more) in length. Within, largely tribal/ritualistic drumming guides this “Sinister” spelunk into supernatural horrors yet witnessed; loose and lawless but always with torch in hand, the collective canvass teeth-gnashing gnarliness and haunting, stripped-back tension alike. It’s not “weird” black metal because it tries to be – it just IS, like always.

Black Metal

DESTROYER 666 should need no introduction. But back in 1997, the Australians were a relatively new entity, forming from the ashes of Bestial Warlust and introducing themselves to the metal underground with the Violence is the Prince of This World EP in ’95. Two years later, DESTROYER 666 would throw down the gauntlet to the international metal scene with soon-to-be-classic debut album Unchain the Wolves. Devastating yet dynamic to the bitter, bloody end, Unchain the Wolves comprises 50 minutes of black metal magick ‘n’ might that quickly became the band’s ever-unique trademark: epic and anthemic songwriting, gritty yet considered execution, and each song as integral as the last. Just try not headbanging to stone-cold classics like “Australian and Anti-Christ” and “Satan’s Hammer”; if you don’t, then you must be dead.

Black Metal

Lament in Winter’s Night proudly presents its second full-length album, entitled ‘Whereunto the Twilight Leads’, boasting 6 tracks of nostalgic and melancholic black metal performed by The Seer (Vocals, Guitars, Keys) and Blood Fury (Drums).

Black Metal

MEDIEVAL DEMON’s third album is a wellspring of noble ’90s spirits, not just in their native Hellenic scene but further afield: from old Samael to equally old Master’s Hammer, from Necromantia’s pioneering early work to the cult Italian prog band Jacula from the early ’70s, most especially with their haunting church organ. Upon its first dramatic notes, Arcadian Witchcraft is immediately, excitingly MEDIEVAL DEMON and pulses further into the velvety abyss with each of these seven spells. The poise, nuance, and sheer craft of their songwriting here reaches a masterful level, and one that’s authentically ancient in its splendor – which is perhaps not surprising given that their lineup now includes one Mutilator, original bassist of ROTTING CHRIST. Here, he brings along a number of ideas he hadn’t used during the ’90s, and likewise does Lord Apollyon unearth a number of old unreleased songs from those days. Which brings everything full circle, as Mutilator helped record MEDIEVAL DEMON’s first demo at Storm Studio…