Canadian Black Coffee and Italian Black Metal

Raise the unholy libation, present the sacrifice. This Italian black mass of traditional occult black metal is a mystikal ritual for all to indulge in. Every unearthed corpse has a morbid tale to connect us through seance to our dark master. Black clouds of delirious ceremonial chant and sacremental song augment the dark storms of irratic violence this horde pervertedly procreate. Satan is primordially invoked with riffing orthodoxy and vomitted summonings as the band enact their malevolent musical witchcraft. Meanwhile witches dance in shroud around the offering spilling chalices of blood. Unlike the more dejected, depressive graveyard contemplation of their contemporary Italian sects MonumentuM and Cult of Blood, The 13 Drape deliver their bleak visions of funereality with pumelling grimness and evil. Just look at the dead guy on the cover's reaction.

13th Way

Be flung into this emotional stew of blackest thoughts and demonic impulses. Embrace the left hand and debase the natural. Follow your black mass intuition to the extreior circle of existence. Leave behind this unified and barren universe for chaos eternal. The morbidly opaque spectral veil that is Necromass evoke psychic images of this carnival of blasphemy we call mortality from the abysmal obscurity beyond. Mysteria Mystica Zofiriana is a downwards spiral of bestial adrenaline and Satanic reflection that will leave you dizzily disillusioned. A must at sodomatic orgies of hate.

Into an Image of Left

Cult of Blood

As promised (tweeted, that is) here is another tome from Italy's cobwebbed and shrouded vault of occult rites. Released the same year as In Absentia Christi and featuring Agua Regis (Roberto Mammarella, vox + gtr with MonumentuM) on guitar and bass, Cultus Sanguine's epononymous EP is a morose ritual of Lombardian anguish. This is a good soundtrack for the type of party where no one shows because there is a thunderstorm and you drink all the bottles of high percentage table vino you bought and then wander through the darkness and rain into the cemetery only to leave a white rose at the wrong grave and remember that you left candles burning in your appartment. Since those don't happen every weekend (or so I'm told; for me they do) you could just listen now and feel sad.

Ride the winds of hate

In The Absence of Christ

Friends, devoted followers, trash collectors, forgive me for not posting in so long. I have been in a dark place, I am still there. It is a place of text, quotes, indents and of ancient philosophies. It's kind of like the scene in Hackers where they get into that secret folder and E=MC2 is floating around, but more monocrhome and monotonous. Don't fear for me, though, I can see a light at the end of this bleak tunnel of intellectual purgatory. But for now, I barrel on. However, I felt I must share with you the music that both best reflects the interior of my mind at the moment and makes the best soundtrack for this taxing journey I am embarked on.

Very special thanks to Aesop over at the Hearse for dropping yet another forgotten classic quickly become personal fave on my miserable earholes. MonumentuM's In Absentia Christi is just what I've been craving, some good old fashione Italian occultitude. Not easily described using metal terminology (because it sounds like little other metal I've heard) I will attempt to give an experiential equivalent to what I feel listening to this album. Imagine you are at an Italian Catholic funeral in a huge church, everyone is dressed in black and sobbing as the incense burns and the sound of murmured prayer gets louder and louder. The procession starts and you shoulder through the crowd to the son of the deceased to voice your condolences. This sends his long, dark-haired, pale, lanky frame into convulsions of bellowed balling. His tears soon turn to morbid reflection and he begins expounding to you his every thought of dejected agony, in Rozz Williams-like oration, while the chorus of chants and bells behind you rises and falls. He becomes more and more animated as the unusually long walk to the graveyard grows longer and stranger. Daylight turns to unsettling twilight and shadowy cobblestone streets stretch on into infinity. You feel very odd. You realize that the libation someone gave you at the church seems to have had hallucinatory effects. You want this depressing journey to end and yet with his every word you become more sympathetic for your host's bleak revery. Suddenly, the buildings fall away and you look out in front of the crowd to see an expansive cemetery, tombstone upon tombstone, crypt upon crypt, restful and still in the soft hues of the setting sun.

fade to grey...