Blazemth

Atmospheric black metal band from Spain, catching the end of the Emperor trend and moving on toward defining a local sound.

This EP of atmospheric death metal manages to incorporate all of the clichés of the genres that compose its aesthetic and yet to successfully use those well-honed icons to achieve a unique atmosphere without requiring musical complexity. It opens with a tragic sappy keyboard piece that leads into a military march, composed for some ludicrous opera of religious cadence that plays itself over the stomp beats.

This gives way to strobing melodic riffs under chanting in the style of any atmospheric band with melody, simple phrases leading into harmony before interruption by structural aberrations. Fast tremelo strumming and single-note speed picking comprise most of these riffs, offset by longer segments of fast relaxed strumming of slowly changing power chords establishing melody. As this tonal mass saturates the listener with context and relative change, its internal balance rises to meet its internal dissonance, resulting in a mixture of tonal endpoints creating a mood of lingering harmonic conclusion. The patterned interactions resulting stretch melody through the structure which must introduce it, bringing from logical inquiry an inspired vision and impassioned response.

All of the major scene-pieces of black metal play out in these cycling songs, which alternate between strut beats and pulsating speed beats, giving a broad exposure to a canon of black metal pattern terminology without knowing how specialized the vocabulary makes the speaker. In this the surging arrangements of convergent directions fused into linearity make coherent the broad style and influences of this band, allowing its own voice to emerge and complement black metal with an imaginative and sensual detour away from the known.

For Centuries Left Behind...

Tracklist:

1. Marching across the path of glory (3:56)
2. It's suffering age (2:39)
3. Kingdome of black emperor (3:03)
4. Majesties of war (4:51)
5. To the valley of winds master (6:52)
Length: 21:23

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Avzhia

Catching the edge of the burgeoning black metal trend, Auhzia from simple elements built black metal in the flowing style of early Graveland.

Streaming dark collaborations of tone and rhythm in a high speed melange of melodies that terminate in phrase-stopping dissonant counterpoints, providing a raw and unfettered sense of expansion as well as a heartpounding inexorability of destruction. Auzhia make it work through melodies composed in a style of cyclic intensity.

Each phrase augments the previous and leads concisely into the next, assuring an ever-increasing feedback loop of the dissonance of melody propelling its conclusions and the harmony of its affinity for all other notes in the composition. Although chaotic these pieces are assemble

d with care and diligence that make their intentionality a highlight as patterns evolve throughout often radically different styles. The closest match in previous work are the Greek bands of ripping melodic fame, such as Rotting Christ or Varathron.

Dark ambient potential derives its power from its ability to

modulate context to the will of each composition toward closure, a symbolic destruction that is both satisfying and ambivalent in this context. Screeching feral vocals alternate with starchly chanted spoken pieces which direct contrast toward the more organic constructions of the music. Highly powerful despite its loose edges, this band is sheer brilliance with duct tape holding together the details of aesthetic.

Dark Emperors

Tracklist:

1. Into the War
2. Shadows of the Forest
3. Black Prayer
4. Immortal Spirit
5. Dark Emperors
6. Empire
7. Screams of Darkness
8. Auzhia
Length: 57:47

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Antaeus

Rattling extremism of dissident sound that shapes itself around the battery of grindcore or death metal using basic fragments of classically derived melody which shift moods as they gather intensity, expanding into sonorous patterns of thematic centrality between raging explosions of percussion and muffled rhythm picking, Antaeus make warmachine clatter metal in the style of Zyklon-B or second album Impaled Nazarene, and create in their music the same rising beauty these bands achieved. Chaos, and violence, give way to clarity although in Antaeus a newly disturbing cyclic nihilism brings a sense of no direction and a suffocating compression in the linearity and necessity of events.As if representing the brief fire before heat death, or the lack of motion between objects in the universe, Antaeus are hopeless and minimally hopeful as well. The style is well executed, the playing reasonable and the vocal performance profound, yet the casing of nihilistic battercore mixed with the faint stirrings of melody in the same obscure mythos that worked for Immortal "Pure Holocaust" are wrapped around phrases of tones so conclusively negative and suspendedly nothingbound in their gesture of will that suicide, morbidity and pointlessness are the only sensible outcomes.

Bloody shrieks whip on the churning percussion with layer

s of floating tremelo power chords behind it, letting melody bleed through the degenerating sound of collision, introducing changes in structure and inception of song. Long introductory ambient works settle mood around these violent appearances of song which demonstrate retribution as an art form and repulse all humanitarian instinct with their reduction of music and human affairs to

an empty relativism. Gruesome and confrontational in all of the ways that metal can focus its rhythm and dynamic shift of theme to a point of comparison and fundamental readjustment of worldview, this highly refined music is within recent memory the best of melodic black metal from Europe.

Cut Your Flesh and Worship Satan

Cut yourself and worship Satan - the voice of the cursed and hateful in humanity, this band exhibit mourning behavior for the stupidity of humankind in the rejection of our natural world.

Tracklist:

1. Inner War (4:28)
2. Seventh Ceremony (4:22)
3. Devotee (4:37)
4. Those With No Eyes (3:08)
5. Specimen 23 (4:05)
6. Bleeding Blasphemy (4:51)
7. Nihil Khaos (5:10)
8. Daemon (3:22)
Length: 34:05

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Satanic Warmaster

Satanic Warmaster is a black metal band from Lappeenranta in southern Finland. The musician "Satanic Tyrant Werwolf" (real name Lauri Penttilä) began recording under this name in 1999. The band's lyrics deal mainly with nature,folklore,Satanism, and "occult and warlike themes".

Early years (1998-2000)

The idea for Satanic Warmaster was first formed in 1998, while Werwolf was performing vocals for the band Horna. While with Horna he recorded under the name "Nazgul Von Armageddon". During this time he released three demos for Satanic Warmaster, Bloody Ritual and Marsch Zu Neuen Zeitaltern in 1999, and Gas Chamber in 2000. He left Horna in 2001 to focus on Satanic Warmaster and also because of personal reasons, citing his frustration and need to create his own art.

Satanic Warmaster - Nachzehrer

1.	Intro	01:58
2.	Satan's Werewolf	05:21
3.	Vampires	05:12
4.	Warmaster Returns	06:38
5.	One Shining Star	06:35
6.	Bestial Darkness	05:07
7.	Rotting Raven's Blood	05:51
8.	Utug-Hul	03:55

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Sammath

Sammath was formed in 1994 by Jan Kruitwagen. Inspired by early black metal and the thrash, speed and death formations of the eighties. Growing up in Australia raw fast metal left its mark on Sammath. Jan moved from Sydney to Europe, Holland in 1999.

1994- First promo tape "Visions upon winter lands" was recorded. Soon after this tape, Kruitwagen got in contact with M.Gertsen. "Zwaardbroeders bij de bergengte" (Brothers of the sword at the mountain pass) was released in 1996 several tracks appeared on complication tapes worldwide. The next year the promo tape "De ruïnes fluisteren " (the ruins whisper) was released in 97. This tape led to a deal with Folter Records in 1997. Gertsen was relieved, due to lack of interest and vision. 1999 The first CD "Strijd" (Battle) was recorded on 16 tracks. All lyrics, music and instruments we re recorded by Kruitwagen. Numerous tracks were released on complication tapes/cds like the "Encyclopedia Pestilentia" complication . The new Sammath CD 2002- "Verwoesting/Devastation" was released, a violent and unconventional way of combining black and death metal. After the recording of the album the idea was born to search for bandmembers. Drummer Koos Bos added his insane drumming to Sammath in 2001, the violence continued. In 2002 Sammath performed at the Under the black sun festival and did some gigs in the Netherlands The live line up was Ruud Nillesen, bass, Cor van Maris, vocals, Koos Bos, drums and Jan Kruitwagen, guitar. In 2002 Macabre Operetta rereleased the first album "Strijd" on LP under licence from Folter.

Signing on with Folter Records 2006 The album "Dodengang" turned out to be a furious black metal cd. To promote the album Sammath did some different shows in Holland and at the Under the black sun festival. Hanna van den Berg joined the live line up.2006 Jan got in contact with madman Magnus from Magnificat they decided to combine his skills into Sammath, he will contribute mad guitar solos to the new, most aggressive, violent and raging Sammath album Triumph in hatred.

Review: Positioning elements of harmony in counterpoint to melodic direction in song Sammath achieve a landscape view of spatial tonality through the meshing of themes in narrative songs which explode circular structures through transitional material in which melodic structure is revealed before its digestion in the next sequence of interconnected cyclic evolutionary heuristic process. Using exuberant keyboards sparsely this music punctuates "grand" scenarios of musical exchange with a sense of the nihilistic and windswept minimal in tremelo strumming of thematic growth in longer phrases.

Violence merged with decadence, and mood coalescing in a delicate sense of melodic buildup and deconstruction, create foundations for ambitious epics of balanced ripping speed and exploratory phrasing which finds in the basic tonal shape and return structure of the harmonic interchange of a particular moment and song, through understanding of balance in motion of continuity through architecture joined with modal coherence, a space of development and symbolic change in fundamentals of theme to suggest narrative change.

In this language of texture and motion motifs reflect ventures from a sudden nothingness to coherence in an ambiguous but sensible state, moving within in abrupt reconfigurations of structure based on revelations of core progress of idea; this completes a metal ideal of merging the most explosive sound possible with a balance and logicality forcing a confrontation with chaos, ambiguity and the perceptual balance of the user. Geometric in the framing of motion through space between an initiation and possible resolutions in tone, these melodies change focus within an ecosystem of separate motions so that the force of action follows a new direction inherent but unknown as ascendant within protean shape evolution to that point.

Like a good detective novel, this music uncovers unexpected possibilities forming a better mapping of an obscure situation under investigations, making tunnels of melodic exploration venturing from a central point of choice or variation, reminding the black metal enthusiast of Emperor or Summoning. Instrumentalism is reasonable and percussion accurate and streamlined. In thunder and light, as well as a refined sense of riffwriting and howling shrikes of vocals that exactingly inflect details of mood variance into expanding phrase, the music of Sammath brings to black metal a new hope and power.

Sammath - Triumph in Hatred

1.	Blood	05:59
2.	Burn in the Fires of Hell	06:21
3.	Interlude/Torment	04:30
4.	Damnation	05:03
5.	Blazing Storm of Steel	06:10
6.	Triumph in Hatred	06:54
7.	The Dead Lay Torn	05:48

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Recording line up:

j.kruitwagen guitars, vocals

Ruud Nillesen, bass

Koos Bos, drums

Andy, solos

Sammath - Strijd

Tracklist:

1. De glorie van het slagvefd (5:13)
2. Zwaardbroeders bij de bergengte (5:51)
3. Strijd (7:06)
4. Drakenbloed (5:07)
5. De heidense vlam zal branden (4:02)
6. Als duisternis de kasteel torens bedekt (3:39)
7. Met de strijdbijf in mijn hand (4:32)

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