The Asteroid Bullet Belt

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...

Rage from the thousand lakes.  It’s been nearly two weeks, and I’m still buzzing over how good the concerts I attended were. Admittedly, my pace when it comes to writing does not quite reflect that, but rest assured that I’ve been incredibly excited to put this particular report together. As I alluded to in my Conan report, the weekend was set to start on a thoroughly blackened note, with the first show that we were to attend being Havukruunu and Heretoir, at the Eightball Club, as per usual. I always talk about how attendance waxes and wanes depending on the genre, and this show proves that Thessaloniki has a blackened heart. For the first time in a good while, I saw the club almost filled to capacity, with people standing shoulder-to-shoulder. It’s always a pleasure to see that, even if it can in part be attributed to Havukruunu having exploded in popularity since the 2020s rolled around, with albums like Uinuos Syömein Sota and especially Tavastland having broken containment out...

I'm in the club, listening to the brown note. New year, new shows, same old me. It’s been a week since I got to see Conan live, but I’m only just getting around to actually writing about it. Admittedly, more factors than procrastination factored into this, some of them directly related to the show itself, but that’s to be discussed over the course of this report, so do be patient. I’m uncertain as to whether I’ve mentioned it before, but Thessaloniki as a city has always been about black, thrash, and heavy/power metal, in no particular order. Stuff like death and sludge are in woefully short supply, with the only instance of a sludge band having come over recently being Eyehategod back in 2025, a time where I wasn’t in the country, let alone the city itself. As you can imagine, seeing an ad for Conan playing here was cause for excitement. The Scouse trio’s primitive brand of sludge, riffy and amplifier worshipping in equal measure, has been something that I’d grown quite fond of ov...

Mental prisons of our own making.  I’ve spent the last couple of weeks staring at an empty Word file about  The Horrible Dissonance of Oblivion . I open it thinking “Today’s gonna be the day I draft this review”, and then nothing comes out, except for the single placeholder word I use for the title itself. It’s not a matter of not knowing what to write about the music, my notes are as meticulous as they’ve ever been, but I don’t want to reiterate myself when it comes to Kvadrat. It’s been 4 years since I originally covered them, and they aren’t the type of band whose work is so similar that I feel inclined to repeat myself. Similarly, this extends to my not wanting to repeat myself in writing a prologue that lampshades how much of an anomaly they are in the Greek scene. They deserve better than that and frankly, I don’t know if I can muster something that’ll cover just how important their music is, both for myself and the scene at large. Kvadrat’s music has been defined by its...

Digging your own grave XIII: Thirsty and miserable.  2021 was quite the prolific year for Μνήμα, giving us collaborative and personal releases in equal measure. While the former hasn’t been that much of a hit at this point in the series, the latter has proven to be some of the band’s most interesting and dare I say, fun, material to date. Flesh Prison  is the last of these releases, and makes for a fitting finale to the unit’s isolationist policy for the year. Following the second part of the Gathering Sorcery…  series, I was quite curious as to what path we’d go down, seeing as there hasn’t been much connecting that release and the Spectres of Oblivion  EP stylistically. Turns out, we’re back to the piss and vinegar that we saw at the start of the year. Just drums, a bass guitar, and a shitload of high-velocity riffing that draws from all different stripes of punk music. It doesn’t take long for the demo’s intentions to make themselves known either, seeing as “Blood...

Digging your own grave XII:  A splash of colour. We might’ve hit a bit of a speed bump with the Spider God split, but  I had faith that sooner or later Μνήμα would get back to indulging us with quality material again, all by their lonesome. Following the escapade with Spider God, our unknown mastermind decided to revisit the Gathering Sorcery… series of EPs and produce its second instalment, one that I was quite curious about, seeing as I retroactively visited the first part, and this time around I’d be going in completely blind as to what is to come. Turns out that not only is it a case of the sequel improving on the original, it’s also my favourite of the band’s short-form releases thus far. While low recording fidelity is a recurring motif in Μνήμα’s work, this is the one time I found myself truly invested in the sonic aesthetics presented, instead of being repulsed or indifferent towards them. From the moment “III” begins, it’s evident that everything is far more brittle ...

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...