Black Metal

Housed in gatefold jacket with slight artwork variation. 28-page booklet professionally printed, folded and stapled this time. No CD is included with the repress.
Artist appears as ‘Reuerorum ib Malacht + Dödfödd’ on spine.
Track D1 is a blank track. Both tracks on side D are not listed in the tracklist.

REPRESS – The Ajna Offensive

Black Metal

Cold Finnish Black Metal at his best!

Debut full-length out now!

Black Metal

For the better part of a decade, RUACH RAAH have been plumbing the depths of the black metal underground with an unapologetically primitivist sound, spread over myriad spilt releases on cassette and vinyl. It all crystallized on their debut album, the aptly titled Hate Fanaticism, released to critical acclaim in 2015 by WAR ARTS PRODUCTIONS. But whereas the power-trio’s sound has thus far maintained a strict, almost martial hypnotism, with Under the Insignia of Baphomet, RUACH RAAH’s sound stretches into a roiling, rabid restlessness that unrelentingly attacks and attacks and ATTACKS. Built upon a solid foundation of gutter-dwelling bass and crunging guitar, the drums blast about in shapes most obscene, foregoing the previous, punk-rooted punch for a wholly more dread-inducing and doom-draped sound. Suitably, their elder rawness has been given a massive boost in the production department, sacrificing none of the cruelty but giving a frightening clarity to their belligerent battery.

If Ildjarn, Bone Awl, and rawest Darkthrone served as aesthetic touchstones in the past, now RUACH RAAH have inched closer to the disgust of classic Profanatica, Order From Chaos, and Black Witchery. It’s a payoff that works in spades, hereby making Under the Insignia of Baphomet a glorious new chapter in the band’s mounting supremacy.

Lim. 100 copies

Black Metal

Originally released as cassette by Mahamvantara Arts Records earlier this year, RÜNDGARD’s first public recording is one literally out of time. Mainman Lord Valtgryftåk is a prolific veteran of Chile’s increasingly potent black metal underground, concurrently handling the likes of Pyreficativm, 13th Temple, Gryftigæn, and Winterstorm among others. And while a number of those bands and satellite entities belonging to the Pure Raw Underground Black Metal Plague are indeed the rawest of the raw, with RÜNDGARD does he delve into ancient times, medieval majesty, and grim splendor somewhere between the earliest Nordic works and contemporaneous Polish ones.

Recorded during two periods over the course of MMXX/MMXXI and now featuring a mix & master by Rudrah Studios, Stronghold of Majestic Ruins suitably evokes its namesake both sonically and thematically. Empirically, the recording evokes the ancient passages and memories of a distant land submerged in mist and an interesting story behind ruins. As Lord Valtgryftåk explains, “Originally, this entity is directly related to those archaic dimensional Valdivian forces that still inhabit our realms, those forces from the past written in blood and guarded by solemn towers and fortresses that still remain alive.” And truly, that past comes alive across the album’s succinct-yet-expansive 25-minute runtime, maintaining a faithful respect for the old traditions and the sound of glorious times with an interesting melodic register at the same time very organic. No record-collector-nerd “raw black metal” here: only authentic ancient vintage!

For those nostalgic for forgotten realms and archaic ages, RÜNDGARD returns from a deep slumber with the fortifying Stronghold of Majestic Ruins!