[bandcamp width=350 height=470 album=2622114112 size=large bgcol=333333 linkcol=0f91ff tracklist=false] We’re proud to announce the signing of Selcouth and the upcoming CD release of their first full-length album, “Heart is The Star Of Chaos”. Selcouth is a collaboration of fantastic individuals (among them, the whole Khanus line-up) from various nationalities and backgrounds, boldly flowing jazzy avant-garde tunes to metal, rock and post-this-and-that, purely for the love of the game. “Nightspirit”, the first extract from “Heart Is The Star Of Chaos”, will surely please those into Virus and Arcturus. On these notes I, Voidhanger Records salute and thank you all for your invaluable support during...
Out February 3, 2017 Active since the early 2000’s, TODESSTOSS is the creature of Martin Lang, a German musician, poet and painter that has left a lasting mark on the metal underground with his eclectic style. Lang’s music is a reflection of his composite visual art and inventive poetry, a surrealistic and theatrical mise-en-scène, as disturbing and darkly bizarre as it is daring and provocative. TODESSTOSS’ previous work on I, Voidhanger Records, “Hirngemeer” (2015), was a mind-bloggling, vicious tangle of cacophonous black metal, spooky doom, dark electro-rock and weird psychedelia, propelled by a cold and primitive drum-pulse. No less stylistically lunatic, the new album “Ebne Graun” (a play on words translatable to “The ‘orror Pla’n”) is probably even more hallucinatory and mysterious, certainly more epic and frightening in concept and scope. It features one single 46-minute long track, a majestic and dreary funeral dirge slowly carrying the listener through the barren lands beyond Existence. With the help of Flesh Of L. (vocals) and Euer Gnaden (bass), for “Ebne Graun” Martin Lang has carved his most dreadful visions of keen insights and horror, where gigantic waves of black metal guitars first dilate reaching breathtaking emotional peaks, then deflate and crawl over the doomy pace of the rhythm section. On the creepy cover photograph – that Lang shot by mere chance during Totensonntag, a German religious holiday celebrating the dead – a Grim Entity is clothed in an astral dress, its claws tightly holding a snake sceptre that slowly tries to feast on the last rays of life from a departed human being… Is that our ultimate destiny? A larval existence...
LORN “Arrayed Claws” CD Out February 3, 2017 Two years after the revelatory “Subconscious Metamorphosis” album, Italy’s LORN are back with “Arrayed Claws”, probably their more psychotic and violent work to date. The album features 5 tracks that perfectly exemplify LORN’s evolutionary path within the black metal field. As it was with its predecessor, “Arrayed Claws” is an accumulation of ultra-electric and dissonant melodies standing out against colossal guitar-walls, often shattering into psychedelic, mind-expanding dark ambient codas. But where “Subconscious Metamorhposis” was a transcendental mental journey towards a superior illumination, LORN’s new album looks more like a physical and desperate odyssey through the regions of Death, an “abstract trap” through which to sink into an unforgiving hell that corrupts the flesh and mutilates the spirit. That’s exactly what happes in “Toybodïm” and “Süt-aq-Köl”, two songs inspired by the Altaian mythology, two stages of a purification path. The first track takes its name from a black lake where the souls of the dead fall and become larvae; the second is a lake of milk where the spirits get purified, a placenta for the newborns. The transition between these two tracks and the towering atmospheric conclusion of “Aus Nebel Turm” leaves the listener beaten and dismayed, with the painful awareness of being only a grain of nothing, lost in the unending and mysterious fogs of Existence. TRACKLIST 1. Disharmonic Feticism (10:53) 2. Abstract Trap (10:15) 3. Toybodïm (6:09) 4. Süt-aq-Köl (4:56) 5. Aus Nebel Turm (6:40) Total time 38:53 Lorn is: Radok – Guitars, bass, synth, vocals Chimsicrin – Drums Comes as a jewel box CD with a 8-page full color...
Out February 3, 2016 Man vs. cosmos, cosmos vs. man; as we explore the antipodes of the universe and its relation to the human condition, inevitably we shall stumble upon something greater than ourselves. Something which stands defiantly beyond language, beyond concepts, beyond the human. Desperately we try to fathom and describe but to no avail. Some call it God, others prefer silence. Tome of the Unreplenished, fully cognizant of this ancient struggle, abandon the fetters of musical convention and knowingly steer into terra incognita. The cosy familiarity of the casual fan is here defaced and denounced by the sheer power of sound. Gone is the uplifting transcendence of this work heretofore, now inverted into a vertiginous descent. In this deluge, sonic experience takes primacy over structure and rhythm, objective determinants of harmony and order give way to subjective sensations of Cosmic revelation. Make no mistake, the religious connotations are not unintentional: like any other audio-ritual of its ilk, “Cosmoprism: The Theurgy – Act I” acts as a conduit between ourselves, and that preternatural something alluded to earlier. What we get on our side as listeners is merely a hint, a suggestion of a truth both horrifying and yet liberating – all we can do is surrender. And though one might feel lost in the celestial vastness as he embarks on this journey, he may still gaze outwards in anticipation, knowing that the terror is but the first step towards divinity… “Cosmoprism: The Theurgy – Act I” will be available as a digifile CD with 12-page booklet and obi strip, strictly limited to 300 copies. TOME OF THE UNREPLENISHED...
The Finnish shamans known as KHANUS are currently putting the final touches on their first full-length album, scheduled for an early 2017 release. Cover art by Business For Satan. More details soon…
Limited to 250 copies on black vinyl. “Resvrrezionespiritval” is the second volume in a series of four split-LPs through which the French hermetic dark metal act known as YSENGRIN is going to concretise its magnum opus, inspired by Alchemy’s four stages: Nigredo, Albedo, Citrinitas and Rubedo. Co-produced by I, Voidhanger and NWN Prod., the previous chapter “Nigrum Nigrius Nigro” saw Chile’s amazing Black Grail coming up beside YSENGRIN along their path to enlightenment. The result was an artistic observation on the decomposion of matter, mirrored in YSENGRIN’s audacious mix of dark ambient and ancient metal on the verge of putrefaction, and counterbalanced by Black Grail’s 15-minute epic of mystic black art. “Resvrrezionespiritval” is the next step in YSENGRIN’s “solve et coagula” path, the Albedo step of purification following the Nigredo process. Compared to what was on offer on the first volume, here YSENGRIN embrace their old song-oriented formula once again, shaping their music around Guido Saint Roch’s hauting bass lines and keys, Inkantator Koura’s magnetic vocals and Aboth’s solid drumming. Scrupulously mastered at Temple Of Disharmony, these 3 recordings come without rhythm guitars, but Saint Roch’s bass layers and Koura’s roars are rich enough to make their hermetic dark metal deeper and heavier than ever, qualifying YSENGRIN as one of today’s most adventurous bands. The spiritual resurrection proceeds with SARTEGOS’ blackened death metal filling the LP’s second side. Versed in occultism and satanism, the band from Galicia offers 2 new long recordings perfecting the sulphurous atmospheres of its debut EP “As Fontes Do Negrume”, released on vinyl by I, Voidhanger Records in 2013. SARTEGOS’ songs evoke and transcend death...
Once in the ranks of the Finnish cult death metal acts Slugathor and Nerlich, over the years Jarno Nurmi has always taken a low profile. Many know him for being half of the Desecresy’s line-up and a live member of Cosmic Church, but Nurmi is also active with SERPENT ASCENDING, the torchbearer of his peculiar death metal vision and occult concept. Nurmi gave birth to SERPENT ASCENDING in 2008, debuting 3 years later on I, Voidhanger Records with The Enigma Unsettled, a collection of demos that drew attention to the band’s traditional yet unconventional style. SERPENT ASCENDING‘s first full-length album, Aṇaṅku is even more awe-inspiring. Rooted in the glorious old days of satanic death metal, it’s not imprisoned in stale clichés and doesn’t fall victim of abused canons. On the contrary, the album finds an original expressing way by weaving cavernous sounds and hallucinatory melodies together. Nurmi’s profound growls and twisted choirs contribute to the ritualistic atmosphere that permeates the tracks, where hazy guitars grimly hover over a primitive drumming that provides an incessant, hypnotic thrust. The songs are short and to the point, but their apparent simplicity hides a very effective work on arrangements and instrumental dialogues; so much that each track looks like a sonic sigil, a true act of magick perfectly crafted and executed. Aṇaṅku is a mesmerizing slab of death metal, fascinatingly shrouded in mystery and occultism. Hidden in the dark for years, it’s now time for SERPENT ASCENDING to show its pronged tongue once again, and to fill our chalices with venom. TRACKLIST: 1. Entrance (4:03) 2. Rivers Of Lava (2:54) 3. Northern Delirium (2:17)...
A pivotal name in today’s atmospheric black metal metal scene, MARE COGNITUM have always had much more to offer than mere ambient-infused black metal riffing. Their previous works, Phobos Monolith (2014) and An Extraconscious Lucidity (2012) showed a pronounced progressive approach to metal, and an unbearable tension that often releases itself in majestic, memorably dark melodies. New album Luminiferous Aether travels across the same astral paths of the past, but with a stronger philosophical vision that permeates both music and lyrics, giving birth to an original cosmic black metal opus that borders on pure sci-fi. “Luminiferous Aether is a mere fragment of a larger contemplation of humanity’s state, a reflection of its current position where it finds itself surrounded on all sides and even threatened from within,” explains Californian multi-instrumentalist Jacob Buczarski, MARE COGNITUM‘s sole member. “In the face of an indifferent Universe, the hubris of man dictates that solutions come from self-destruction. The resulting rumination is a binary lamentation and musing on both whether or not and from where we can find hope, and also an investigation into what compels the human spirit to conquer the insurmountable, and to change in a deeper way than the catalyst of evolution would seem to spur.” More violent, nihilistic and intense than its predecessors, MARE COGNITUM‘s Luminiferous Aether dissects mankind’s dark nature and ponders its peculiar impetus for masochism. And by doing so, it glances at a problematic future, at our final destination. “In an attempt to pierce to the core of sentience and its significance,” Buczarski concludes, “the light and darkness of man is weighed and considered, and one begins to realize that in all of this, the hourglass of time...
Lead by Italian multi-instrumentalist Gabriele Gramaglia (already known for his work with the atmospheric black metal project The Clearing Path), SUMMIT is an intrepid progressive sludge outfit that is not afraid to defy the genre’s conventions, bringing to it a fresh and eclectic viewpoint. SUMMIT’s debut album, nobly titled “The Winds That Forestall Thy Return”, comes superbly adorned with epic atmospheres and strong ambient textures, describing a panoramic sight of endless valleys hailing beneath the most hallucinogenic night skies. It embraces the listener with an omnipresent sense of deep melancholy and harrowing anguish, and with sporadic – though significant – gleams of hope. Largely instrumental and with a strong cinematic feel, SUMMIT’s debut album is a work of savage beauty built upon thunderous and complex drums lines, cosmic guitar arpeggios, monumental strings sections and celestial backing choirs. It may appeal to fans of Neurosis, Pelican and Jesu, but also to those who appreciate late Gorguts and “777”-era Blut Aus Nord, as testified by the gnarled death metal claws SUMMIT pull out in “The Winds That Forestall Thy Return, pt. II”, and by the black metal fugue in “Pale Moonlight Shadow”, which features Nicholas McMaster (Krallice, Geryon) on screaming vocals. “The Winds That Forestall Thy Return” is a solitary voyage, a late-night observation on human nature, with its peaks of grandeur and miserable abysses. A musical paradigm of the path we are condemned to travel like eternal wanderers: trapped in nostalgic memories, at the mercy of Life’s many turmoils, yet never tamed and romantically ready to follow our unattainable longings. TRACKLIST 1. Hymn Of The Forlorn Wayfarer (10:36) 2. Pale...
GOATCRAFT was born in 2010 as a vision of frustration. Disappointed by a stagnating metal scene incapable of renewing its original spirit and sheer power, sole member Lonegoat decided to go with a less obvious approach to the dark concepts that metal has always been soaked in. With GOATCRAFT he has translated the black and death metal vocabularies into a neo-classical musical language that rivals with them in terms of sonic intensity and depth. The typical metal instruments have been replaced with heavy keyboards; its fast riffs and primitive aggressiveness with tempestuous piano fugues; its brutality with elegant yet anguishing and foreboding melodies. Appropriately baptized by Lonegoat himself as ‘Necroclassical’, GOATCRAFT’s style has been perfected through the band’s previous releases: the “All For Naught” debut from 2013, and 2014’s acclaimed opus “The Blasphemer,” a concept album themed around the works of the famous English painter and poet William Blake. Now GOATCRAFT is back with a new album, “Yersinia Pestis”, featuring 10 new original recordings that offer an even more convincing blend of classical music and dark ambient. Far from being simply the tale of those sad days when the Black Plague scattered death and disease over Europe, “Yersinia Pestis” is above all an observation on the caducity of life and the misery of humankind. “Looking back to other great catastrophes, we can conclude that nature and man are intertwined in a dance of death,” explains Lonegoat. “Every so often the world puts us back into our places by killing us off. Our frail flesh is no match against the elements in which we reside. Humanity recoils.” TRACKLIST: 1. Beyond...
Out now and ready to ship: KHANUS “Rites Of Fire” EP Luxurious gloss laminated 4-panel digipak. 6-page booklet complete with lyrics and liner notes. Strictly limited to 300 copies and never to be reprinted again in this format. KHANUS plays Shamanic Metal of...
OUT NOW AND READY TO SHIP: HOWLS OF EBB “Cursus Impasse: The Pendlomic Vows” CD (Jewel case CD, 16-page full color booklet on 170gr. matte paper) BLIZARO “Cornucopia della Morte” CD (jewel case CD, 12-page full color booklet on 170gr. matte paper) CDs are here, all the pre-orders are going to ship in next few hours. Thanks for your...
