The Asteroid Bullet Belt

Digging your own grave XI: With friends like these...  When I began this series, I was conflicted as to what I’d do with the splits Μνήμα has been on. On one hand, covering them would go against the original vision I had of chronicling their evolutionary journey, as their work would be standing opposite another band’s, whose material I wasn’t quite intending to cover, thus diluting the series’ original goal. On the other hand though, it would mean I’d leave roughly a fifth of their discography out, and no matter which way you cut it, that’s a sizable chunk. And given the fact that 2021 saw the release of three splits, it’s safe to say that they defined that year. In case it wasn’t obvious enough, I ended up making the call to cover the splits, thinking that they’d make for an interesting look into where Μνήμα was artistically in the throes of the pandemic, in addition to seeing what they considered to be good pairings for their brand of black metal. Our first co-conspirator is foun...

Why are you in the middle? Pick a side.  I don’t know how true it rings for other music reviewers, but I’ve had some releases I’d describe as “white whales”. They’re things I want to review, but for a variety of reasons, I just can’t get around to them. Be it a lack of inspiration, getting distracted by other things that caught my eye, or just forgetting altogether, they flutter at the edge of memory, a thought as innocuous as that of drinking water. Dysnerved, and their debut,  Man in the Middle is one such case for me. A release that I’ve been aware of and listening to intermittently since I saw them open for Groza back in 2022, it’s been in a post-hiatus “to review” list since I started writing again in 2024. Turns out, I never did write about it, and it’s been taunting me in the years since. Time and time again I’ve been listening to it in preparation to write about it, and it’s high time I put it to rest. Dysnerved operates within the field of dissonant death metal, wher...

Digging your own grave X: The low end theory.  I like multifaceted artists. Not in the sense each release is completely divorced from what preceded it, but in the sense that I like seeing musicians try their hand at different things, either within the confines of an established sound, or going out of their comfort zone. It's one of the key reasons why Μνήμα’s work has kept me as engaged as it has over the course of the series. It’s never clear which of the two approaches they’ll take, and I love the mild apprehension I feel every time I put on a new release of theirs, and Spectres of Oblivion  successfully continues this trend. I’ve talked extensively about the punk and D-beat influences that permeate the band’s work, but it has never been as prevalent as it is here. It’s tempting to say that this EP is more punk than black metal, but it seems to exist in this nexus between the two genres, akin to the one that defined the first wave sound. The opener, “Cursing the Eternal Nigh...

Digging your own grave IX: Running it back.  Yes, yes, I know that I said I’d review the  Gathering Sorcery...  series of EPs as a compilation and not individually. Any accusations of deception and insults regarding the integrity of my character are acknowledged as true and will be ignored henceforth. I missed this early period of Μνήμα and wanted to yap some more about it, and seeing as this was the only non-compilation release I had left ( Whispering Oaths  is interesting for its album-like cohesion but that’s about it), it was only reasonable to want to cover it, even if my perception of it would inevitably be clouded by having listened to everything that came since. Besides, the band itself considers these to be milestones of its progression, and who am I to deny them the time of day? Given that the first part of this series came out in the same year as the  Remains of Human Bones , it’s to be expected that the release is in a similar vein, with a handful of...

More like “The Hyperactive Paradox” lmao gotem.  It took me a good 3 years, and a lot of prologues that amounted to “I don’t like prog, but…”, but we have finally reached the point where I can confidently say I enjoy prog metal in some capacity. Admittedly, it does come with a handful of caveats, as is the case with developing a taste in anything. Although I generally enjoy checking out stuff I’ve not had the (dis)pleasure of familiarising myself with, I find myself gravitating towards this particular strain of prog that has a sci-fi theme, which more often than not bleeds into the music itself. Enter Chaos Over Cosmos, and their 2025 release The Hypercosmic Paradox . It’s a release that at a glance ticks the boxes I have when it comes to checking out progressive metal, namely the theme. For all intents and purposes, the spacey veneer of the cover definitely set up some expectations, and seeing as I prefer going in blind when it comes to albums, I came in fully prepared for an ambi...

Digging your own grave VIII: Going lunatic mode.  Although the Gathering Sorcery…  EPs (we’ll get to those soon enough) are used to delineate each of Μνήμα’s eras, I’ve taken to a different system for segmenting the band’s catalogue, and with Tombs of Necromantic Lunacy  we’re reaching the end of the second era. Whereas the first one was defined by our unnamed instrumentalist’s collaboration with X., and all the experimentation that came with it, 2020 was dedicated to reconfiguring the band’s core sound and seeing where things could go. Though each release has had its own unique character, the throughline of uncompromising raw black metal has remained consistent across all of them, and it's the glue that binds them all together. The two eras in question also have some commonalities in a macro scale, namely the fact that their last releases managed to blow my socks off for some reason. Tombs…  is arguably the best snapshot of Μνήμα one could possibly ask for. It’s bri...

Digging your own grave VII: It’s a procession, not a sequence.  Given the relative conservatism displayed by Μνήμα as they greeted the 2020s, it felt like they could’ve gone in whichever direction they wanted with whatever came after  Possessed Templars . They could either dig their heels in and iterate on previously established ideas, or veer off into completely unknown territory once again. The only consistent trend we have seen from them thus far is that we can’t quite know what to expect from them sonically. As it turns out,  Νεκρώσιμος Ακολουθία  posits a different answer to this conundrum: “Why not both”? I’m not particularly fond of cross-referencing an artist’s work with previous releases, but the nature of “Chalice of Spirits” makes it impossible to not draw some parallels to 2019’s  Forbidden Creatures of Time  EP. For one, it’s a 10-minute behemoth that plays around with soft-loud dynamics, but this time instead of ambient influences we are met...