#black-lion-records — Public Fediverse posts

Since releasing Magnum Opus four years ago, Philadelphia’s IATT has refined their songwriting toolkit to incorporate an even wider array of ideas and sounds. New platter Etheric Realms of the Night demonstrates a compositional leap as IATT weaves a grandiose concept into music—specifically, exploring the deconstruction of consciousness as wakeful awareness decays amongst the capricious environs of the subliminal. This abstract notion is rife with potential, offering boundless possibilities for artistic exploration. Broadly speaking, IATT follows a fascinating trajectory, covering a lot of ground with each release and honing their craft remarkably since their debut. With their latest offering, can IATT send us into Etheric Realms of delight?

Etheric Realms of the Night surges with ideas and instrumentation, entwining ephemeral beauty and scathing dissonance into a fugue-like fever dream. Prior albums Nomenclature and Magnum Opus reference stalwarts Opeth, Enslaved, and Dissection, melding melody with brutality to wondrous effect. Etheric Realms of the Night retains the core of IATT’s sound while expanding it even further into flamboyantly progressive territory à la Ihsahn and Thy Catafalque, and it’s this pivot that unites Etheric Realms’ music and concept so cohesively. The flute, performed by Didier Malherbe, sets the tone at the beginning of lead track “Drift Away.” Light, airy, and flitting, its inclusion is a masterstroke in evoking dreams’ fleeting substance. Piano lines weave in and out of the compositions, enriching the gorgeously textured cascades of IATT’s dense soundscape with vague impressions of a lullaby. Yet no matter how busy any particular moment is, each facet plays in service to the whole, engendering an astonishing coherence through Etheric Realms despite the diversity of components.

The overarching narrative on Etheric Realms of the Night follows the mind’s state of consciousness as sleep erodes the physics of reality, sending us deep into the impenetrable murk of unfiltered inputs and perceptions. “Drift Away” begins with a tandem of acoustic strumming played under a lilting flute, leading to a VoiceOver thought exercise that establishes a loose framework for Etheric Realms.1 From there, the track launches into harsh vocals alongside soaring strings that give way to heartfelt cleans, a groovy drum shuffle, punchy bass countermelodies, and sprightly piano flourishes. It’s the perfect introduction for what IATT accomplishes throughout Etheric Realms, as atmospheres consistently dart and lurch in unexpected directions. This approach synchronizes perfectly with the ephemeral temperament of dreams, where paradigms are kaleidoscopic, and no foothold lasts longer than a breath. So, too, does IATT’s songwriting shift and evolve throughout Etheric Realms’ runtime, with themes and motifs fading and reemerging in altered forms.

Etheric Realms’ success hinges on performances that can support the concept IATT sets in motion, and here, too, they deliver in spades. The guitars feature prominently on Magnum Opus, frequently stepping out to deliver showy licks and sure-fingered solos. On Etheric Realms, guitarists Joe Cantamessa and Alec Pezzano are no less capable and still deliver electrifying leads and riffs. Yet it’s their restraint that works best, giving room for other parts to dazzle. Paul Cole’s drumming hypnotizes as he adopts different styles throughout, including a dance-ready samba pattern on “Pavor Nocturnus” and a Portnoyesque rumble toward the back end of “Somniphobia.” Meanwhile, bassist/vocalist Jay Briscoe unleashes the best performance of his career so far, issuing a variety of black metal rasps and lower register roars along with effective cleans. Briscoe’s stately bass lines deserve praise as well, sauntering into the spotlight or supporting with gravelly grooves as needed. Also, the saxophone on “Walk Amongst,” played by Jørgen Munkeby (Emperor, Shining), wails with such emotion and moxie that I get goosebumps every time I listen. Every moment on Etheric Realms feels well-considered and expertly crafted, and the way it all fits together is transcendent.

Etheric Realms of the Night is an unabashed triumph. In my time at AMG, this is the only review I’ve tarried on because I didn’t want to stop listening to the album. IATT supplies an arresting three-quarters of an hour that sets my dopamine release valve to ‘GUSH,’ and Etheric Realms claims a residency in my gray matter that haunts me day and night. Every time “Hypnos” concludes, I’m left mesmerized and enamored with IATT’s swirling moods and seamless conglomeration of ideas. While it’s too early for me to think about list season,2 the subconscious pull Etheric Realms possesses only grows stronger with each visit, and I dare to dream of writing about it again.

Rating: Excellent!
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Black Lion Records
Websites: Bandcamp | Facebook
Releases Worldwide: May 8th, 2026

Ildaruni – Divinum Sanguinem Review

By Andy-War-Hall

The mystic, the subliminal, the macabre: the fixings of good black metal and the bread and butter of Armenian pagans Ildaruni. Four years ago, they entered the blackened sphere with their debut Beyond Unseen Gateways, a folk-infused take on black metal that, while promising in several regards, felt bloated and unfocused. Its pagan, medieval-y acoustic passages felt tacked on, lethargic and a bit hokey, and I think Ildaruni agree with my assessment, as this year’s Divinum Sanguinem ditches the lutes and stuff for “a more tenebrous and ferocious black metal path.” At nine songs and 53 minutes, Divinum Sanguinem is yet another considerable offering from Ildaruni. Will this one prove more vital than the last?

This time, Ildaruni ain’t faffing about;1 Divinum Sanguinem is out for blood. Second-wave styling permeates Divinum Sanguinem, but without its typical murk. Utterly furious tremolo riffs and blast beats abound, wrought to vicious effect on songs like “Forged with Glaive and Blood” and “The Ascension of Kosmokrator,” while Narek Avedyan’s burly shrieks command the calamity into a lean, focused undertaking. This is black metal of a riff-centric nature, Immortal-like, but with the odd Bathory military march (“The Ascension of Kosmokrator”) and chant (“Zurvan Akrane”) to instill a greater sense of grandeur into Iladruni’s palette. Riffs are a’plenty, but it’s drummer Arthur Poghosyan who steals the show, just crushing the blasts on every song and layering everything with impressive symbol work. Divinum Sanguinem is a hefty record, but unlike Beyond Unseen Gateways, it isn’t bogged down with momentum-killing diversions. Exemplified on “Divinum Sanguinem”—where all eight minutes of imperial procession feel, bombastic dynamics and eerie bridges feel critical and purposeful—Divinum Sanguinem is lean, mean and blackened as anything.

Ildaruni hold a workman-like commitment to evil. There’s an Emperor-like dark majesty to Divinum Sanguinem, though Ildaruni forgo synths and orchestras for grandiose guitar leads to accomplish this (“The Ascension of Kosmokrator,” “Divinum Sanguinem”). Thrash riffs grace “Zurvan Akrane” beside metalface-inducing chugs on “Forged with Glaive and Blood” and “Arcane Sermon,” and even instances of Qanun (“Scorching Pathways to Samachi”)2 and bagpipe (“Forged with Glaive and Blood”)3 add to the sinister feel of Divinum Sanguinem. Similarly, the various instances of choir (“Of Nomos and Flaming Flint Stone,” “Arcane Sermon” and “Scorching Pathways to Samachi”),4 chant and clean singing (“Divinum Sanguinem”)5 add dimensions to the vocal front of Ildaruni, breaking from the incessant shrieks but not from its malignancy. Pagan folk elements from Iladruni’s previous work remain, but are relegated to folkish distorted guitar leads (and bagpipes) to keep from clashing with the breakneck nature of Divinum Sanguinem. Sometimes ritualistically ominous (“Divinum Sanguinem”) and frequently hostile (“The Ascension of Kosmokrator”), Ildaruni crafted something pointedly dark with Divinum Sanguinem.

But Ildaruni play a limited, well-trodden style, and Divinum Sanguinem is stretched too thin to inspire frequent replay. While Divinum Sanguinem’s songs feature brief moments of differentiation, the near constant tremolos, blast beats and shrieks that encompass the majority of most tracks lose their lustre with use. If a song doesn’t immediately open with trems and blasts, like on “Of Nomos and Flaming Flint Stone” or “Zurvan Akrane,” rest assured that they’ll reemerge before the verse, still competently played but with little melodic variation between them all, losing effect with overexposure. The near-uniformity of Ildaruni’s track lengths adds to this sense of sameness, as songs seem to go through the same or similar motions for similar amounts of time, which doesn’t bode well for memorability. An exception to this trend, “Immersion into Empyrean”— with its mid-paced tempo and open arpeggios—is borderline catchy and provides a stark illustration of how one-note much of the rest of the album is. Ildaruni are all business here, but there’s too much business on Divinum Sanguinem and not enough variety, novelty or abundance of hooks to make getting through it consistently engaging.

Though Divinum Sanguinem is marred by considerable songwriting issues, it still marks considerable improvement for Ildaruni and proves there’s a future for the band. When it works, Divinum Sanguinem is a powerhouse of a record, both atmospheric and immediate. When Ildaruni’s tricks run dry, however, it becomes too easy to let the music slip into the background. Perhaps genre diehards will get more out of the album than I did, but I found myself losing interest too often to offer it high marks. Still, if you’re in the market for black metal that riffs hard, you could do a lot worse than Divinum Sanguinem.

Rating: Mixed
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Black Lion Records
Websites: ildaruni.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/Ildaruni | instagram.com/ildaruni
Releases Worldwide: November 7th, 2025

#25 #2025 #armenianMetal #bathory #blackLionRecords #blackMetal #divinumSanguinem #emperor #ildaruni #immortal #nov25 #review #reviews

Insidius – Vulgus Illustrata Review

By Lavender Larcenist

A Polish, blackened death metal record a day keeps the doctor away, or so I have heard. If so, Insidius (so tired of mispelled band names that make things impossible to search for) is your latest shot of hyper technical, searingly fast loud noises from the Poles. Quietly chugging along in the background, this Olsztyn-based fivesome has been producing solid blackened death since their debut, Shadows of Humanity, in 2016. While the album cover for Vulgus Illustrata may look like it contains some atmospheric depressive black metal, the eight tracks inside are nonstop meat grinders of chainsaw riffing with thick bass, otherworldly drumming, and pure rage. While Insidius plays with the familiar and the foundational, does Vulgus Illustrata survive comparison to its heavyweight counterparts like Dormant Ordeal and Behemoth, or is it dragged to the bottom, each unoriginal idea weighing it down like cinderblocks tied to a corpse?

For starters, Insidius knows what they are doing. They’ve toured for years alongside bands like Vader, Grave, and Nervosa, and Vulgus Illustrata is full of dizzying instrumentation throughout. Tomasz Choiński and Jakub Janowicz wield their guitars like two buzzsaw-toting murderous surgeons, hacking and slicing at every turn with savage tremolo riffs and tilting dissonance. “Orgiastic” leads with a stop-start staccato riff, morphing with the introduction of Łukasz Usydus’s pirouetting bass. Of course, a blackened death metal album would be nowhere without some absurdly technical drumming, and Michał Andrzejczyk is no slouch. Inhuman fills, insane blasts, and rolling rhythms bring cohesion to Vulgus Illustrata, making for an album more akin to a face pummeling than a headbangers ball. Lastly, Rafał Tasak offers a competent if unflashy performance with his barking ferocity and pitched screaming. While the register remains generally on the low end, he has that pushing force that hurts your diaphragm to listen to. Think Cannibal Corpse, Vader, and Immolation, and you have the right idea.

Insidius has all the individual elements, but each track can’t help but bleed into the next, and even at a tight thirty-eight minutes, Vulgus Illustrata can feel long. Where bands like Dormant Ordeal mastered atmosphere, lead-ups, and the ebb and flow of a great blackened death song, Insidius feels too focused on in-your-face brutality. There are much-needed breaks here and there, with some genuinely great atmosphere, such as on the intro to “A Darkness That Divides” or “Censure”, and the entirety of the album closer “Forge of Our Hatred”. Unfortunately, these are few and far between, like ballasts in a storm that leave you hanging on for dear life. I like a good pummeling as much as the next fool, but only when it is consensual.

Maybe it is my undying love of blackened, Polish death metal, but I feel like I have seen everything Insidius has to offer done better elsewhere. Behemoth has a lock on hating god and the bombastic, theatrical edgelord side of things. Dormant Ordeal has technicality in spades alongside great songwriting, incredible atmosphere, and hidden hooks for days. Bands like Hath and Olkoth show that you don’t need to be from Poland to make good blackened death, either, so competition is fierce. Insidius feels late to the party, all dressed up, but nobody is there. They are doing everything right, but it isn’t quite clicking.

To be fair, some of you sick freaks will like getting absolutely brutalized and love every minute of Vulgus Illustrata, singing along as Tasak screams “Shit, cum and blood paint the wall of your prison”. I am not here to rain on your parade, and I don’t want to undersell Insidius. Vulgus Illustrata is heavy, consistent, competent, and genuinely engaging at times, but it feels tired. Insidius has the talent and the energy, but someone needs to point their ballistic missile of blackened death in the right direction for a direct hit. If you are a superfan of the genre, you may get some choice cuts from this slab of beef, but even still, you are better off eating with the bands that brought you here. Another victim to hang from the 3.0 tree, let’s tie the noose and be done with it.

Rating: 3.0/5.0
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 320 kb/s mp3
Label: Black Lion Records
Websites: insidiusblacklion.bandcamp.com/album/vulgus-illustrata
Releases Worldwide: November 7th, 2025

#2025 #30 #behemoth #blackLionRecords #blackenedDeathMetal #dormantOrdeal #grave #hath #insidius #nervosa #nov25 #olkoth #poland #polishMetal #review #reviews #vader #vulgusIllustrata

Jordfäst – Blodsdåd Och Hor Review

By Killjoy

Sweden is a metal country in more ways than one. As I just learned from the promo blurb for Blodsdåd Och Hor, the iron and steel industry has been an integral component of its economy and culture for centuries. Of course, Sweden is not lacking in metal from a musical standpoint either. Jordfäst is the latest of these purveyors, whose brand of melancholic black metal seeks to honor their country’s long history of metalwork and warfare, mixed with a healthy dose of Norse mythology from the poem “Völuspá”. Blodsdåd Och Hor marks Jordfäst’s third full-length record since its formation in 2017. Time has proved Swedish metal to be extremely high quality, but what about Jordfäst’s?

The music may be melancholic, but Jordfäst gravitates towards the action-packed side of black metal rather than the atmospheric. Guitarist Elis Markskog prefers keen riffs and epic solos over icy tremolo picking and ambient synths, like a more sullen version of Havukruunu. There are more than a few nods to forebear Bathory’s Viking era in the form of pagan folk tunes and deep, resonant male singing (also by Markskog) to complement Olof Bengtsson’s sharp, staccato barks. Jocke Unger, now Jordfäst’s permanent drummer, buoys up the music even further with aggressive and bouncy rhythms. With a tight runtime of 35 minutes, Blodsdåd Och Hor is both lean and mean.

Blodsdåd Och Hor is quite literally a tale of two halves. Jordfäst does not break tradition with prior albums in that there are only two songs, each 17 minutes and sectioned into four separate tracks. The first half (“Ett altare av skärvor”) is steely and frigid, a harsh dissonant edge gleaming from the guitars. Jordfäst adeptly straddles the line between dissonance and melody, like in “Ett altare av skärvor, pt. 3” when clanging chords morph into a sinister, crooked tune. Blodsdåd Och Hor gradually warms up as it progresses through the second half (“Dit gudarna trälar är”), with more frequent Istapp-style clean singing and technical guitar solos to blast away the frost of the first half. “Dit gudarna trälar är, pt. 4” culminates with a hearty folk tune that hits like a blazing hearth fire after coming home from a cold mountain trip, a gratifying conclusion to the album. Even though, to my knowledge, no actual folk instruments are present, the Nordic roots are apparent in the robust musical compositions.

But, aside from these isolated noteworthy moments, Blodsdåd Och Hor tends to resist memorability as a whole for some reason. On paper, it has many qualities that I value in a record: dynamic songwriting, meaningful melodies, passionate ferocity, and a trim runtime. But maybe that’s part of why it’s not completely grabbing me—like a jack of all trades, Jordfäst is good at many things, but doesn’t feel quite exceptional in any. Or maybe (perhaps more likely) my taste is simply fickle. It might help if the volume were balanced more evenly between the principal harsh vocals and the clean backing vocals, as the former often feel too loud in the mix while the latter are often too faint. I’d also like to hear more Scandinavian folk influence seep into the guitars. It would likely go a long way to making Jordfäst stand out amongst their peers in this monochromatic genre we call black metal.

Jordfäst strikes a good balance between modernity and centuries of cultural heritage. Their melancholy approach to riffs ought to appeal to a wide variety of listeners; fans of second-wave black metal, dissoblack, and folk should find something here to enjoy. Though there aren’t too many standout moments that really resonate with me, Blodsdåd Och Hor is nevertheless very solid. I like Jordfäst’s practice of writing only two long-form songs per album, as it allows for ample development of ideas without blowing up the entire runtime. Make sure to pack winter gear if you choose to embark on this trek because it will be cold!

Rating: 3.0/5.0
DR: 8 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Black Lion Records
Websites: jordfst.bandcamp.com | jordfast.net | facebook.com/jordfastband
Releases Worldwide: July 25th, 2025

#2025 #30 #Bathory #BlackLionRecords #BlackMetal #BlodsdådOchHor #FolkMetal #Havukruunu #Istapp #Jordfäst #Jul25 #Review #Reviews #SwedishMetal #VikingMetal