#notmetal — Public Fediverse posts

I grew up with a slew of friends who dabbled in the visual arts throughout the years. One in particular blew me away by stating that the greatest artists aren’t the masters of their trade in every aspect, but rather they know what they don’t have, or rather don’t need, to make a sizable impact. You don’t need to own the most expensive paint set, a wide array of colors at your disposal, or to fill up the canvas with stuff. You have to just create your vision with what you have, and let the negative space do the work for you. Swedish duo Moon Mother knows this. On their second full-length, Meadowlands, they paint a lush, aural landscape teeming with anguish, grief, and trauma, while also crafting a sense of wonder, peace, and a smidge of hope.

You probably scrolled down to the tags section and decided to nope out in record time, especially at the sight of the “Not Metal” tag, and that’s entirely your loss. What guitarist Patriec Ahlström and vocalist Sara Mehner crafted in Meadowlands is nothing short of breathtaking, and their usage of negative space to allow for Ahlström’s melodies and gentle strums to reverberate and roll through the sleepy landscape they’ve crafted. “Wilderness,” with its finger-plucked strings and gentle electric guitar hums, is a class example of what you can build with only what you’ve got. It’s not the high production values or expensive instruments that carry you through. Rather, it’s knowing what to say, how to say it, and when not to say anything at all.

And Mehner’s angelic voice is the perfect complimentary component. Whether it’s her powerful howling (opener “High Houses”), somber melodies (closer “Windhover”), or her achingly beautiful near-yodels (“Wilderness”, the awesome “Be a Forest, Child!”), Mehner’s ability to wring out the most emotion out of a song or melody rivals that of Chelsea Wolfe or Emma Ruth Rundle in terms of performance and power. The way her gentle wailing closes out the title track stirs up so many raw emotions that will have you feeling both heartbreak and catharsis, no matter how it manifests within you. Singling out certain moments on Meadowlands proved difficult because, in reality, her standout performance, coupled with Ahlström’s musical backdrop, is best enjoyed in a single, uninterrupted, and fully focused listening experience.

If there was a bone to pick with Meadowlands, it’s in the production, and even then, it’s not a dealbreaker. Meadowlands is drenched in reverb, and I mean drenched in reverb. Coupled with the compressed mix, it makes it a bit busy, especially during the second half of “High Houses.” That, and the album is loaded with cathartic moments in the album’s second half, almost to the point of being overwhelmingly so. But the last time I’ve been hit this hard, this potently, by a doom/folk hybrid was with Darkher’s debut album. That is some absolutely stellar company to be with, and Meadowlands connects viscerally on that level.

Sure, I know what the name of the website is, and Meadowlands is a colossal anomaly in that aspect. And yes, I’m sure my colleagues will give me a reasonable (re: absurdly high) amount of shit for giving it the score it’s getting, but Moon Mother crafted an album that’s simultaneously the perfect album to purge your emotions, and an album you can use as a backdrop for a dew-filled foggy morning with a mug of your favorite heated beverage of choice. In creating an album to signify grief and hope, they gained my attention and my adoration. Give it your time, and it most certainly will do the same for you.

Rating: 4.0/5.0
DR: 7 | Format: WAV
Label: Independent/Self-Release
Websites: Official | Bandcamp
Releases Worldwide: February 6th, 2026

Antinoë – The Fold Review

By Tyme

As the whispering winds of winter begin to blow colder through my neck of the woods, a time of year when fires get cozier, quaffed beers get darker, and we here at AMG begin to rhapsodize on things missed and regale readers with things listed, I found myself still searching for a near-end-of-year something new. When I saw Antinoë’s Dark Essence Records debut, The Fold, blurbily described as ‘Neoclassical Folk meets melancholy Pop with a Metal attitude,’ I was intrigued. Descending from the mountains of Madrid, Antinoë is the passion project of pianist and vocalist Teresa Marraco. Launched in 2021, Antinoë’s 2023 release, Whispers from the Dark Past, offered a unique piano tribute to the 90s Norwegian black metal scene, with Marraco covering everything from Emperor’s “I Am the Black Wizards” to Mayhem’s “Life Eternal” and Dimmu Borgir’s “Mourning Palace.”1 Poised to challenge the very fluid boundaries of what metal can be, let’s see if The Fold has the warmth necessary to keep those wintery winds at bay.

Void of instrumental trappings associated with most traditional metal, Antinoë relies solely on Marraco’s beautifully resonant voice and her expansive piano compositions to weave stygian tapestries. Conceptually, The Fold navigates the odyssey of accepting death, inviting listeners to tread a path through the idiomatic depths of grief’s different stages, as it traces the process of ‘folding inward.’ From the outset, as cricket-song fades into “Night Falls,” with its delicately crafted, darkly haunting piano melody and celestial vocals, the track pulls at melancholy heartstrings, drawing you into Antinoë’s dark world and setting the stage for what’s to come. The Fold offers an immersive, piano-led experience, peppered with pummeled ivories that shift with metallic force beneath sustained choral harmonies (“The Devil’s Voice”), as wispy trails of folky, Enya-esque ambiance waft amid airy, Dead Can Dance-like atmospheres (“Når Du Dør”). Not unlike Darkher, Antinoë succeeds at tapping into inscrutable emotion by minimalist means, but where Maiven casts spells webbed in doom, Marraco’s magic leans more toward the black arts.

While Antinoë draws much of its ‘metal’ from lyrical themes that explore the dense nature of grief and death, that doesn’t mean The Fold is musically bereft of heavier fare. Death angels descend on Emperor wings with halos of Dimmu Borgir to hover over the opening chords of “Threshold,” heralding dark omens in a chorus of swarming harmonies, witchy laughter, and raspy breaths, all as Antinoë pounds and trills her way through octaves in true symphonic black metal fashion.2 Is it still just a girl and her piano? Yes, but it’s by far the ‘heaviest’ song on the album. Which gives way to the excellently murky pop of “Chaos in the Sky,” another album highlight that had my neck snapped to rapt attention when Marracos, in her smoky voice, opened with “Who the fuck are you? Who the fuck am I?” like some dark-alt Adele, creating another moment more metal than not.

Drenched in warmth, The Fold’s production captures the beauty of Antinoë’s neo-classical elegance and marries it perfectly to its atmospherically blackened weight, providing a full-on musical experience. Whether it’s the delicate last minute of “The Devil’s Voice,” which flirts with a “Lágnætti” melody, off the Sólstafir magnum opus Ottá, or the inquisitive, childlike mystery of the whispers and keys on “Flock,” to the somber dirge of vocals from “Light Bringer,” listening to Antinoë is to become utterly immersed. I have little to critique, so enamored am I by Antinoë’s ability to impart complex ideas in the simplest of terms. I suppose there’s a minute or two that Marraco could have shaved from the two instrumentals, but in all honesty, there’s not a minute of The Fold that I would cut or change.

One of the things I’ve always appreciated about AMG is its fearlessness in shedding light on bands that are categorically not metal. Case in point, among many, is Dolphin Whisperer’s review of Maud the Moth’s excellent The Distaff this year. Antinoë has recorded an emotional album for healing hearts, and as I look back on the last few years of losses I’ve experienced, I’m unsurprised by how impactful it’s been to me. I wasn’t expecting something of this caliber to come sweeping in so close to list season, but here we are. I’ll gladly wrap myself in a warm blanket next to a cozy fire, slip on my favorite pair of headphones, and sip a smoky porter while letting The Fold envelop me against the impending winter’s chill.

Rating: 4.0/5.0
DR: 9 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Dark Essence Records
Websites: Bandcamp | Facebook
Releases Worldwide: November 21st, 2025

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