#dissonantblackmetal — Public Fediverse posts

I love me an honest promo blurb. In a world where every advertisement promises more brutality than a 20-year exclusive diet of doughnuts and American cheese, and more emotional trauma than walking in your parents whipping you up a sibling, there are points to be earned for labels real enough to simply tell us what this is and who it’s for. The sophomore album by one-man project Agonanist arrived with the very simple description that this was “…adjacent to dissonant black metal in the vein of Deathspell Omega, Blut aus Nord, Xasthur, and Krallice.” I happen to have some degree of appreciation for all those bands, ranging from acknowledgement of importance to unbridled fanaticism, so I couldn’t wait to get my paws on this. Toss in some info about hand-carved microtonal guitars in the spirit of Jute Gyte, and this sets the stage for a blackened slab of ugly indeed. Can The Spirit of Gravity possibly live up to such a pedigree?

No, but the Spirit is definitely there. Agonanist could have just as easily labeled The Spirit of Gravity as experimental atmo-black and still been on the money, as the expected ugliness and mind-warping generally take a back seat to heaps and heaps of spacey, ambient atmosphere. It helps that the whole album is deeply overlaid with synth work, softening the more abrasive edges (“The Gateway”) and offering up transitional passages of beauty (“Collapse”) while rarely turning into their own highlight reel. “Effacement” is the two-pronged statement of intent, beginning with the required ugly chords, murky and full and indeed carrying a whiff of vintage Xasthur, but then blending into much more beautiful, hypnotic notes reminiscent of a less peaceful Cosmosophy. This dual approach is found in the bulk of The Spirit of Gravity, as flirtations with genuine microtonal oppression always give way to something more ethereal, and, dare I say, meditative.

Curiously, Agonanist thrives most when it leans into those moments of beauty and atmosphere over the aggressive and ugly. “Silent Absent” takes on a near shoegaze quality in the riff style and tones, and “Disruption and Decay” features some prolonged simple melodies of melancholy and reflection. Featuring a list of guest instrumentalists from bands as diverse as Krallice, Ripped to Shreds, and even Benighted, the overall sound never wanders beyond the adventurous gardens of the more tranquilly inclined Bluts and Xasthurs of the world. “For Mia” tries to channel some real pathos, with a simple, thick chord progression applying some emotional heft in defiance of the expected cosmic perversion of sound, with decent results. The entire body of work across The Spirit of Gravity lends itself more to relaxing, sky-watching atmospherics, only pausing at times to remind us all of the unknowable everything waiting just beyond the view of the horizon.

It’s in those pauses that The Spirit of Gravity falters. “Cry of Cages” is the most straightforwardly ugly song on the album, lurching here and there without an immediately obvious structure or hook beyond its warped and mutated lead. This song is also a strange blip in the Agonanist experience, as the bulk of The Spirit of Gravity tries to wield its two tonal influences in somewhat equal measure. Most of the speed present on the album finds itself in the uglier bits, with the first third of “Collapse”, the beginning of “Disruption…” and “Silent Absent” using tempo modulations to emphasize the spiritual shift before eventually easing just a touch into more major progressions and softer notes. The greatest riddle of the album is found in “Collapse”, which uses its gorgeous synth interlude to segue into a full five-minute outro of the rawest, screechiest guitar feedback and drumming, reminiscent of Spektr’s Et Fugit Interea Fugit Irreparabile Tempus. Suddenly the fusion is achieved, as the most objectively raw piece of the album masters the introspective and ethereal mood teased at and grasped for throughout, and I’m left desperately wanting more of that. It shows that there are greater things waiting in the project’s future, if they can commit more to a lane or improve in their combination of such disparate ingredients.

Much as the art depicts a mass of bright light surrounded by so much darkness, The Spirit of Gravity is an enjoyable, but imperfect amalgamation of two moods. It isn’t the soul-burning exposure to horrors beyond I was expecting, nor does it turn so beautiful that it can be described as anything truly melodic. What it shows is a unique vision, a sign of promise from a fledgling artist with an already well-crafted and distinct flavor. I’d love to hear more consistency, in one direction or the other; a deeper commitment to the horrors beyond or the beauty within. For now, Agonanist have dropped an interesting release in the realm of dissonant black metal, so come take a dive down this gravity well and pray you land on the right side of the light.

Rating: 3.0/5.0
DR: 10 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Transylvanian Recordings
Website: Album Bandcamp
Releases Worldwide: August 28th, 2026

There’s a lot of weird shit floating around the metalsphere, and that includes Voidthrone’s newest addition, Dreaming Rat. The Seattle quartet has been kicking around for a decade, and in that time have released three prior platters of escalating lunacy. Without question, Dreaming Rat is Voidthrone’s most unhinged concoction to date, and a quick look at their Bandcamp credits gives prospective listeners a window into the alchemical ingredients they cook with, including Otamatone, conch shell, jaw harp, vibraslap, digeridoo, spoons, and a fretless bass. Throw in vocalist Zhenya Frolov’s deranged vocal stylings, and you’ve got yourself a bona fide manic expression of dissonant blackened death metal. With so many disparate components in Dreaming Rat’s stew, does Voidthrone soothe the savage beast or unleash a waking nightmare?

Listening to Dreaming Rat is a bit like experiencing an auditory fever dream, where disconnected fragments congeal into lurid, atonal anarchy. Voidthrone didn’t arrive at this sound overnight, though. Debut Spiritual War Tactics whipped and frothed with the restrained vitality of Krallice, and follow-up Kur added jazz-informed touches in the vein of Imperial Triumphant. Physical Degradation evolved Voidthrone’s sound, integrating more unconventional instrumentation and pushing the band’s songwriting past its comfort zone. On Dreaming Rat, Voidthrone takes the blueprint laid out on Physical Degradation and indiscriminately expands the range for strange. The result sees Frolov stretching his vocal performance into frenzied tirades, covering the gamut from Replicant’s vomitous barks to Sigh’s oddball deliveries. The instrumentation also gets exponentially wackier, as it conjures the rabid wrath of Pyrrhon along with the chaotic instincts of Afterbirth, resulting in an unpredictable romp to the end of the world.

At Dreaming Rat’s core, Voidthrone details the life and death of a solar system through bleak eras, segmenting the album into present, past, and future. The arcs are presented in that order, with each one comprised of three songs. The present describes the apex of a civilization, harnessing the promises forged upon the hopes and chaos of the past. Meanwhile, Voidthrone paints a grim outlook for the future, specifically calling out ‘an extinguished, lonely death of the physical, spiritual, and cognitive.’1 The lyrics throughout Dreaming Rat read like the demented ravings of a madman’s manifesto,2 and while I don’t think I could have divined the album’s overarching concept from them alone, reading them amplifies the bedlam Voidthrone has crafted on Dreaming Rat.

Writing music this lawless may seem haphazard, but over repeated listens, I’ve begun to glimpse the method to Dreaming Rat’s madness. Without question, everyone in Voidthrone earns their stripes. Ronald Foodsack’s guitars drench Dreaming Rat with warbling dissonance, perpetually in flux so that there’s never a riff or refrain to inhibit the music’s incessant lurch. Whether moving at frantic paces (“III-I. Surfing the Abyss”) or decelerating to a plodding crawl (“II-II. Morbid Seagull”), Ron’s six-stringed blitz never stalls. Additionally, Gavin Brooks contributes acoustic guitar and solos while manning the glorious fretless bass.3 Technical death metal has hogged the fretless bass for too long, and I’m glad Voidthrone has the stones to add it to disso metal’s tool chest. Tracks like “I-I. Bergen” and “II-I. Homeless Animal” showcase the character the instrument offers, bolstering the ever-shifting nature of Dreaming Rat. Drummer Josh Keifer grounds the band ably, locked into a supporting role that allows the other instruments to take center stage while he keeps things on the rails. Frolov’s feral vocals and the host of unconventional instruments further enrich Voidthrone’s distinctive identity, establishing what sounds like it could be the death throes of the universe.

What Voidthrone accomplishes with Dreaming Rat is fascinating and unique, and merits everyone’s attention. Sure, some songs could be trimmed to make such a scathing album a bit shorter and more palatable, and the three arcs could use some musical cues to distinguish songs thematically from one another, but Dreaming Rat is a crowning achievement for the band. Voidthrone’s psychedelic psychosis makes bold promises on paper and completely delivers in fact, and when I’m in the mood to get really weird with it, this will be the album I reach for.

Rating: Very Good!
DR: 7 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Self-Release
Websites: Bandcamp | Facebook
Releases Worldwide: May 8th, 2026

Dear Hollow’s Prava Kollektiv Collection [Things You Might Have Missed 2023]

By Dear Hollow

Look, I get this shit is niche. Like real fuckin’ niche. Cherd of Doom‘s excellent Black Metal Muster from 2022 enabled a new generation of us black metal wanderers to flip off the doom and prog aficionados, emerge from our corpsepainted closets, and shriek in indecipherable tones until that Methodist church down the street burned to the ground. Here we are, praising black metal twice in one year, and it doesn’t get much better than the enigmatic Prava Kollektiv, an enigmatic and anonymous congregation based probably in Russia or Slavic states, whose releases are unleashed, often simultaneously, in conjunction with Amor Fati Records and Fallen Empire Records. It is known that its five bands share members, and as you may have guessed, they all share the black metal tag. It is unknown, however, what thread courses through all the releases, as themes of the void, consciousness, the cosmos, and other abstract concepts plague the sound and lyrics. What is more important is that the Prava Kollektiv is an unfuckwithable and unmissable collection of blackened tunes, with 2023 offering their most formidable array yet. Without further ado, let’s get kvlt.

Arkhtinn // 三​度​目​の​災​害 – The Prava Kollektiv’s flagship act is perhaps one of the more traditional of the bunch, conjuring the isolation of ice-crusted stars through its use of raw black and ambiance. The release of 三​度​目​の​災​害 also coincides with Arkhtinn’s ten-year anniversary. Reconciling both the iciness and star-borne darkness of Wintherr’s projects, Arkhtinn’s “third disaster” (in Japanese) proves far from it. Through its two tracks and forty-four-minute runtime, you will feel smothered by darkness then exposed to the vacuum in the course of every ebb and flow of the cosmic winds of tracks “一番” and “二番,” shifting from lonely ambiance to blasting raw black intensity fused with symphonic and crystalline ambiance that recalls Emperor or Vordven. As evident in the 2020 split Astrophobia with and in contrast to Starless Domain, Arkhtinn is also here unafraid to embrace a scathing quality that spits in the face of modern atmoblack’s stereotypical warmth. 三​度​目​の​災​害 is atmospheric and otherworldly, but uncompromisingly punishing work from the act that proves its mettle again and again.

Voidsphere // To Infect | To Inflict – Like Wintherr’s Darkspace to his Paysage d’Hiver, Voidsphere dwells in vicious and suffocating darkness, while Arkhtinn largely concerns itself with isolation and frigidity. You will see the tricks of swelling synth and ambiance, but the claustrophobic ambivalence of noise saturates empty space and adds a weight all its own in Voidsphere’s sixth full-length. The act’s forty-three-minute dive into darkness is less an experiment but a sharpening of craft, as the riffs are stronger and the honed melodies are less a reprieve to the punishment but a last scream cut short. As its name suggests, “To Infect” is far more creeping and subtle while “To Inflict” offers a no-holds-barred assault of blackened intensity. What the void-worshipers have long done above shoulders better than their counterparts is conjure the claustrophobia and darkness of its source material and the colossal quality of its artwork. It has long felt that Voidsphere is hurtling toward some grand and earth-shattering conclusion, and we should all tremble to ponder it.

Mahr // Odium – The denser and darker sibling of the Prava Kollektiv, Mahr separates itself by incorporating a more deathened and industrial take on second-wave worship. Odium is a furious offering, as its hate-themed title indicates, grinding and relentless throughout its forty-minute beatdown. Even its moments of placidity balance the onslaught with scorched earth ambient compositions that survey the wreckage, basking in obsidian tones and subtle industrial electronic beats. “Infames” offers a slowly unraveling structure, layer after layer being stripped across its blastbeats and thick tremolo, culminating in the central riff: suddenly death metal clarity punches through the blackened murk in a downtuned skull-crushing riff paired with death metal vocals that drags the entire industrial black palette to hell and back. Mahr dials the dread up in “Maledicti” with a nearly impenetrable fog of sound that makes the vicious attack even more devastating. Odium finds Mahr distinguishing itself from the Prava Kollektiv’s more household acts with a relentlessly bleak and brutally unforgiving attack.

Hwwauoch // Under the Gaze of Dissolution – While Voidsphere conjures the weight of the void and Mahr channels hate, Hwwauoch’s dissonant and fluid-structure has always felt like a twisted and perverse image of Freud’s unconscious “id.” The dissonance conjured from the act’s catalog has always hinted at something beyond simple menace of or even unknowable hugeness: they play the music of distorted consciousness and humans made in God’s corrupted image. What their fourth full-length constitutes, however, is a radical departure from the dense impenetrability of Hwwauoch’s catalog. They brighten vocals and scathing melody into something resembling free jazz, but into a crippled and limping image unlike the decadence of Imperial Triumphant. A rare semblance of humanity in a chunky riff or tangible vocal appears beneath the howls (i.e. “Voluntary Trepanation”), but across its six-track acid trip they stumble through wonky compositions, complete with jazzy basslines, tortured layers of vocals, wonky ambiance, and dissonant punk riffs. Hwwauoch accomplishes an album that stands out due to its shining clarity and the ultimate descent into insanity.

Pharmakeia // Maenadic Ecstasy – While the tricks don’t necessarily feel earthshaking, the Prava Kollektiv’s newest addition manages to sound the most traditionally “kvlt” while still reveling in devastating density. No frills black metal with no reprieve from the scathing tremolo and blastbeats, there is an undeniable rawness here that recalls the borderline noise of Upir or even Portal’s twisted guitar tone. However, in the refusal to succumb to atmoblack tropes, the breaks in the chaos are more like the raised fist between blows. There’s undeniable psychedelia and otherworldliness woven into Pharmakeia’s approach, which fits them neatly among the Prava Kollektiv’s ranks, while its sparsely used clean baritone adds a haunting liturgical weight. It adheres to the second-wave worship most consistently, that although “Execration” features a sliding riff, “Furore” and “Lunacy” offer viciously chunky riffs, and “Zeal” kicks you in the face with a synth passage, it never feels as if it departs from black metal’s roots. Perhaps the only Prava Kollektiv offering that strays from the “atmospheric black metal” tag, don’t let its youth fool you: Pharmakeia is worth all the pain it inflicts.

#2023 #AmorFatiProductions #Arkhtinn #AtmosphericBlackMetal #BlackMetal #Darkspace #DissonantBlackMetal #Emperor #ExperimentalBlackMetal #FallenEmpireRecords #Hwwauoch #ImperialTriumphant #IndustrialBlackMetal #Mahr #PaysageDHiver #Pharmakeia #Portal #PravaKollektiv #StarlessDomain #ThingsYouMightHaveMissed2023 #TYMHM #Upir #Voidsphere #Vordven

Dear Hollow’s Prava Kollektiv Collection [Things You Might Have Missed 2023]

By Dear Hollow

Look, I get this shit is niche. Like real fuckin’ niche. Cherd of Doom‘s excellent Black Metal Muster from 2022 enabled a new generation of us black metal wanderers to flip off the doom and prog aficionados, emerge from our corpsepainted closets, and shriek in indecipherable tones until that Methodist church down the street burned to the ground. Here we are, praising black metal twice in one year, and it doesn’t get much better than the enigmatic Prava Kollektiv, an enigmatic and anonymous congregation based probably in Russia or Slavic states, whose releases are unleashed, often simultaneously, in conjunction with Amor Fati Records and Fallen Empire Records. It is known that its five bands share members, and as you may have guessed, they all share the black metal tag. It is unknown, however, what thread courses through all the releases, as themes of the void, consciousness, the cosmos, and other abstract concepts plague the sound and lyrics. What is more important is that the Prava Kollektiv is an unfuckwithable and unmissable collection of blackened tunes, with 2023 offering their most formidable array yet. Without further ado, let’s get kvlt.

Arkhtinn // 三​度​目​の​災​害 – The Prava Kollektiv’s flagship act is perhaps one of the more traditional of the bunch, conjuring the isolation of ice-crusted stars through its use of raw black and ambiance. The release of 三​度​目​の​災​害 also coincides with Arkhtinn’s ten-year anniversary. Reconciling both the iciness and star-borne darkness of Wintherr’s projects, Arkhtinn’s “third disaster” (in Japanese) proves far from it. Through its two tracks and forty-four-minute runtime, you will feel smothered by darkness then exposed to the vacuum in the course of every ebb and flow of the cosmic winds of tracks “一番” and “二番,” shifting from lonely ambiance to blasting raw black intensity fused with symphonic and crystalline ambiance that recalls Emperor or Vordven. As evident in the 2020 split Astrophobia with and in contrast to Starless Domain, Arkhtinn is also here unafraid to embrace a scathing quality that spits in the face of modern atmoblack’s stereotypical warmth. 三​度​目​の​災​害 is atmospheric and otherworldly, but uncompromisingly punishing work from the act that proves its mettle again and again.

Voidsphere // To Infect | To Inflict – Like Wintherr’s Darkspace to his Paysage d’Hiver, Voidsphere dwells in vicious and suffocating darkness, while Arkhtinn largely concerns itself with isolation and frigidity. You will see the tricks of swelling synth and ambiance, but the claustrophobic ambivalence of noise saturates empty space and adds a weight all its own in Voidsphere’s sixth full-length. The act’s forty-three-minute dive into darkness is less an experiment but a sharpening of craft, as the riffs are stronger and the honed melodies are less a reprieve to the punishment but a last scream cut short. As its name suggests, “To Infect” is far more creeping and subtle while “To Inflict” offers a no-holds-barred assault of blackened intensity. What the void-worshipers have long done above shoulders better than their counterparts is conjure the claustrophobia and darkness of its source material and the colossal quality of its artwork. It has long felt that Voidsphere is hurtling toward some grand and earth-shattering conclusion, and we should all tremble to ponder it.

Mahr // Odium – The denser and darker sibling of the Prava Kollektiv, Mahr separates itself by incorporating a more deathened and industrial take on second-wave worship. Odium is a furious offering, as its hate-themed title indicates, grinding and relentless throughout its forty-minute beatdown. Even its moments of placidity balance the onslaught with scorched earth ambient compositions that survey the wreckage, basking in obsidian tones and subtle industrial electronic beats. “Infames” offers a slowly unraveling structure, layer after layer being stripped across its blastbeats and thick tremolo, culminating in the central riff: suddenly death metal clarity punches through the blackened murk in a downtuned skull-crushing riff paired with death metal vocals that drags the entire industrial black palette to hell and back. Mahr dials the dread up in “Maledicti” with a nearly impenetrable fog of sound that makes the vicious attack even more devastating. Odium finds Mahr distinguishing itself from the Prava Kollektiv’s more household acts with a relentlessly bleak and brutally unforgiving attack.

Hwwauoch // Under the Gaze of Dissolution – While Voidsphere conjures the weight of the void and Mahr channels hate, Hwwauoch’s dissonant and fluid-structure has always felt like a twisted and perverse image of Freud’s unconscious “id.” The dissonance conjured from the act’s catalog has always hinted at something beyond simple menace of or even unknowable hugeness: they play the music of distorted consciousness and humans made in God’s corrupted image. What their fourth full-length constitutes, however, is a radical departure from the dense impenetrability of Hwwauoch’s catalog. They brighten vocals and scathing melody into something resembling free jazz, but into a crippled and limping image unlike the decadence of Imperial Triumphant. A rare semblance of humanity in a chunky riff or tangible vocal appears beneath the howls (i.e. “Voluntary Trepanation”), but across its six-track acid trip they stumble through wonky compositions, complete with jazzy basslines, tortured layers of vocals, wonky ambiance, and dissonant punk riffs. Hwwauoch accomplishes an album that stands out due to its shining clarity and the ultimate descent into insanity.

Pharmakeia // Maenadic Ecstasy – While the tricks don’t necessarily feel earthshaking, the Prava Kollektiv’s newest addition manages to sound the most traditionally “kvlt” while still reveling in devastating density. No frills black metal with no reprieve from the scathing tremolo and blastbeats, there is an undeniable rawness here that recalls the borderline noise of Upir or even Portal’s twisted guitar tone. However, in the refusal to succumb to atmoblack tropes, the breaks in the chaos are more like the raised fist between blows. There’s undeniable psychedelia and otherworldliness woven into Pharmakeia’s approach, which fits them neatly among the Prava Kollektiv’s ranks, while its sparsely used clean baritone adds a haunting liturgical weight. It adheres to the second-wave worship most consistently, that although “Execration” features a sliding riff, “Furore” and “Lunacy” offer viciously chunky riffs, and “Zeal” kicks you in the face with a synth passage, it never feels as if it departs from black metal’s roots. Perhaps the only Prava Kollektiv offering that strays from the “atmospheric black metal” tag, don’t let its youth fool you: Pharmakeia is worth all the pain it inflicts.

#2023 #AmorFatiProductions #Arkhtinn #AtmosphericBlackMetal #BlackMetal #Darkspace #DissonantBlackMetal #Emperor #ExperimentalBlackMetal #FallenEmpireRecords #Hwwauoch #ImperialTriumphant #IndustrialBlackMetal #Mahr #PaysageDHiver #Pharmakeia #Portal #PravaKollektiv #StarlessDomain #ThingsYouMightHaveMissed2023 #TYMHM #Upir #Voidsphere #Vordven