Black Metal

By now, RUNESPELL should require little introduction. Since this Australian entity’s public unveiling in 2017 with the Aeons of Ancient Blood demo – released by IRON BONEHEAD, as well as all successive recordings – RUNESPELL has sharpened its sword and quickly, with three albums arriving like clockwork every year: Unhallowed Blood Oath (2017), Order of Vengeance (2018), and Voice of Opprobrium (2019). That’s not to suggest that mainman Nightwolf is hasty or careless with his creations; rather, the RUNESPELL aesthetic is so etched in iron, so forged in blood, that this mystical & mesmerizing soundworld takes on its own life. A split LP with the reanimated FOREST MYSTICISM arrived last year, tiding the faithful over until the next full-length.

At last, it arrives in the form of Verses in Regicide. Arguably RUNESPELL’s best-produced and -executed album to date, Verses in Regicide is highly familiar in one sense – grandiose melancholy given majestic flight, bloodlusting energy no matter the tempo, widescreen in its vast landscapes yet fiercely focused – but reveals a subtly newer side. Melody has always played a prominent part in the characteristic RUNESPELL riffing – equal parts classic Scandinavia, France, and Poland – but there’s a multi-layered shadow of scintillating scales here that dazzles the senses and pulls even harder at the heartstrings. It’s deceptively straightforward, but boundlessly deep; it likewise feels more urgent than ever while seemingly coming from a cosmos many realities removed. Put another way, Verses in Regicide is second-wave black metal born from the elements, where earth, water, and fire forge a new destiny when wielded by such expert hands as RUNESPELL’s Nightwolf. And of course, those plaintive acoustic tracks, here aptly titled “Into Dust” and “Windswept Burial,” chill to the fucking bone.

Black Metal

A cross-generational meeting of two very old souls, Wandering Forlorn brings together two Australian hordes who’ve been following the voice of blood longer than most have been alive. RUNESPELL mainman Nightwolf has been forging steel in the glare of burning churches since 2017. In feverish succession, his three albums for IRON BONEHEAD have poignantly presented pagan black metal in an authentically old yet refreshingly new hue, and with his three equally epic tracks here, RUNESPELL shows that the fire is far from extinguished – in fact, its flames soar ever higher like spears hunting heaven. By comparison, FOREST MYSTICISM put Down Under paganism on the map nearly 15 years ago and then retreated into the shadows in 2011, honor intact. Come 2018, the Hearken EP indeed hearkened the band’s rebirth, and the three stout-yet-sumptuous tracks here continue that noble trajectory. And aside from a single-track split last year, Wandering Forlorn marks the most extended FOREST MYSTICISM recording since the no-less-considerable Hearken, a true fire of awakening.

Black Metal

RUTTOKOSMOS are one of the great “what if?”s of Finnish black metal. The band formed sometime in 2003 and released the five-song Ja minä näin kuoleman demo in 2006 and then the six-song Kärsimys demo a year later. Afterward, nothing was heard from RUTTOKOSMOS ever again. Only one member concurrently played in Divina Inferis, and the other two members either disappeared and played pseudonymously in other bands.

RAC/Oi!

Classic album from 1995.

Limited to 1067 copies.

Black Metal

Reissue of the SACRAMENTUM’s legendary debut album “Far Away From The Sun” (1996). An essential, perfect masterpiece of majestyc Swedish Melodic Black Metal. Remastered by Dan Swanö.

Includes 6-panel insert with lyrics, photos, and new liner notes.

Death Metal

Cult full-length from 1991 available again on LP.

Black Metal

The debut full-length of raw black metal from France’s Sainte Marie des Loups.

Black Metal

Limited to 200 hand-numbered copies.

Comes with 10×10″ insert.

Black Metal

Limited to 200 hand-numbered copies.

Comes with 10×10″ insert.

Black Metal

With this new EP SAMMAS’ EQUINOX is not straying far from the path, they have set on since their formation. “Maailmantaonta” introduces slightly more meditative and “progressive” elements, but the songs from SAMMAS’ EQUINOX forge remain fiery and crackling, growing only darker and rawer.

Black Metal

The runes have spoken…
Sanctuaire presents four hymns of pagan black metal praising ancient times when glory stood alongside tradition. Sanctuaire offers its strongest and most powerful effort to date, incorporating war-like kettledrums and chorus chanting featuring other artisans of the Metal Noire québecois circle. An epic journey to a distant time when our ancestors once struggled and fought for their lives. Mixed by Sorcier des Glaces, this release has a simple cardboard booklet and a cover artwork drawn by the talented David Thiérrée.

Black Metal

In darkest dirge crooned across an undercrypt of desolate inferno reigns that hallowed entity of power penance known only by arch herald of SANCTUM SATHANAS who, in allegiance with the malevolent Inferna Profundus Records, have transmogrified their debut full-length incantation by grand grim title of “Into the Eternal Satanic Damnation”. In observance of the morningstar of dawn decadence, Lucifer, SANCTUM SATHANAS have forged a true incantation of Raw Black Metal brutality in service to His name and shining unlight; unleashing an orthodox inflection of melancholic savagery across a variety of eclectic and densely composed spells, each more engrossing in ennui than that which came before. It is through Into the Eternal Satanic Damnation that SANCTUM SATHANAS preaches forth their most heretical grimoire of ruin to date, coagulating an alchemical concoction of pure blasphemy steeped in the true ways of old and celebrating all that is infernal and daemonic in essence.