The Asteroid Bullet Belt

Keeping it trve is playing blast beats for an hour and a half.  I’ve never been the most punctual writer, and that’s a big mark against me when it comes to writing concert reports, the old adage of striking while the iron’s hot ringing true as ever in these cases. Yet, I find myself capable of evoking memories from shows, be they sounds or images, regardless of how long it’s been, not to mention that taking the occasional picture helps jog the memory a little bit. Besides, turning into a curmudgeon that hangs out in the back whenever I attend shows with my wife prevents me from concussing every single detail out of my head by thrashing myself silly in the midst of the crowd. It’s been a month and some change, but I find myself looking back at seeing Tsjuder and Ignominous with relative fondness. It was yet another mid-week show for the season, and it’s no secret that I’m more than a little apprehensive about those, especially when the opener itself is playing for 20-30 people at be...

Digging your own grave XVI: A spiritual laxative.  It took me 15 reviews, and perhaps way too much time, but at long last we’ve reached the catalyst for this entire series. It took Μνήμα 4 years of screaming out into the void, but they did kick 2022 off with their very first full-length, Disciples of Excremental Liturgies , and it’s the platonic ideal of what one would expect from someone who spent so much time and effort exploring and expanding their sound. Before I get into the review proper, I’d like to take a moment to discuss my connection to Μνήμα prior to this series. I actually originally stumbled upon the group back in November 2024, naturally in the context of Nothing But Black Metal November, a most fitting time to listen to this sort of music, the weather getting colder and grimmer as sunlight becomes more scarce. Though I did find myself enjoying the band’s 2 records, as well as some of their early work, I found myself gravitating towards other bands, mostly classics I...

Digging your own grave XV: This one actually has a name.  Names are a powerful thing. Through them, we ascribe meaning and value to our surroundings, objects and individuals alike. To have something remain nameless is to rob it of its identity and any significance it might possess. Perhaps indirectly, this is part of the reason why Μνήμα’s splits thus far have felt lacking to me. Their “names” were merely a list of the participants, rather than something that signified an identity beyond that. There was music, that much was certain, but did it really amount to much besides everyone contributing a song? Not quite. As we reach the end of the band’s 2021 output though, we are met with Conspiring in Blood-drenched Moonlight , their third split for the year, and the only one in their catalogue to be named. While I did approach it cautiously, as I’d been 0 for 2 with my overall enjoyment of Μνήμα’s split work thus far, I found myself positively surprised by what was actually held in stor...

Maybe I should start a food blog.  Although I don’t allude to it often in my reviews, I love food, and the culinary arts as a whole. Though I do employ the occasional writing cliché of “Too many cooks”, or write a preamble about street food, it's not what I’d call a stylistic cornerstone of mine. Despite that, I find that cooking and music have a lot in common when it comes to the creative process. The careful measuring of ingredients, their assembly and preparation, and obviously the time and place they’re made in. With that out of the way, I’d like to take a moment to talk about soup. To the uninitiated, it’s a simple dish, you just chuck a bunch of stuff in a pot full of water and let it boil for a while. Anyone versed in cooking will tell you though that the ingredients thrown in do matter, as does their preparation. If you just dump whatever’s in your pantry, any potential synergy between flavours will be obliterated, resulting in something that has a perhaps intense, but ulti...

"Shit has riffs, man."  Side-projects are a fascinating thing, but also a total crapshoot. For one, they can provide a glimpse into a different side of an artist’s sources of inspiration, or what might interest them besides their main source of creative output. People are complicated after all, that much is evident from all the black metal musicians who also have an ambient side-project. Yet at the same time, it does raise the question of how much effort has been put into it, especially when it appears to be a footnote in their catalogue. Συντρίμμια’s (Debris) Repulsive Inexpression piqued my interest owing to Ivan’s (of Kvadrat fame) involvement, not only as a musician, but also as a graphic designer. Seeing as the trio dropped this album back in 2023 without much fanfare, I couldn’t help but be a little curious about it. Was it a different take on deathgrind, a little fun thing to do on the side, or just an unremarkable album in the infinite ocean of the internet? One thin...

Digging your own grave XIV: Not-so-fatal 4-way.  Splits are a weird format to cover. For one, their length can range anywhere from being bite-sized EPs to full-bodied albums. Furthermore, they don’t exactly cohere a lot, besides the bands present usually having a common genre between them . And last, but certainly not least, you rarely get a clear view of each artist’s vision through however many tracks they are allotted during the split’s runtime. Nevertheless, their purpose as a means of connecting for artists and music discovery for listeners cannot be understated, especially if appropriate care is placed in who’s collaborating with whom. While I’ve only covered one split of theirs thus far (and listened to the rest in the interim), Μνήμα has proven to be quite prudent in choosing who they’re sharing space with, at the very least ensuring that the release makes sense on a sonic level. This particular 4-way split is no different on that front, although it has to be said that the ...

The North will never forget this one.  Day two of one of the busiest weekends of the year so far, and let me tell you, it was something else. Thessaloniki doesn’t often get metal festivals, only shows that have what could be perceived as having too many acts for a single evening, but Up the Hammers – Call of the North was anything but that. Six bands, and a thoroughly reasonable starting time of 17:00, what else could one possibly ask for? I haven’t been to a proper festival since the first iteration of the Release Festival back in 2019, and although I have always been of the opinion that I’d rather attend a show with 3 bands than a full-fledged festival, passing up the opportunity to see some of the bands who appeared here was inconceivable to me. What are the odds I’d be able to see Eternal Champion, Liege Lord, and Solitude Aeturnus on the same bill in my life? Sure, the lineup is nowhere near as stacked as the one that appeared over the course of 4 days down in Athens, but this...