The Asteroid Bullet Belt

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...

Digging your own grave VI: New crypt, same smells.  Between you and me, I never quite liked the mentality of “New year, new me”. Change is more often than not a gradual, and at times imperceptible, process, whose effects are not immediately apparent. Sometimes, you might even entrench yourself in old habits, instead of actually effecting change. Such is the case with Μνήμα’s first foray into the 2020s, where the Possessed Templars demo sees the now one-man unit play along to well-established tropes, instead of swerving off into different directions like it had done up to this point. Don’t get it twisted though, this should not be misinterpreted as Μνήμα being uninspired, as for what it lacks in adventure, it makes up for in sheer thunder. While the tremolo riffing remains as infectious as ever, some of passages on “Vomitorous Desecration” are erratic in a way that we haven’t heard since the 2017 demo, messy chords jumping up and down the fretboard with the express purpose of di...

They'll never drag me out of the dark alive. In my time listening to metal, I’ve found myself enjoying music from a variety of countries whose language is not English. Nevertheless, they oftentimes opt for English as their mode of lyrical expression, given that it’s the world’s Lingua Franca. Perhaps it’s a way to reach wider audiences, or the language they felt more comfortable writing in. All the same, it creates a Berlin wall-esque barrier between artist and listener, as the former doesn’t get to express themselves in their native tongue, and the other has to use English as a means of connecting with the art. In turn, this means that the cultural differences between musician and listener are obliterated, as they have to make way for a common mode of expression. It does allow for a bridge to be built across cultures, but it invariably results in things being lost in translation. That being said, some artists do make use of their native tongue, and although I’ve always been a “rif...

Digging your own grave V: One crypt closes, another one opens.  One of the universe’s constants is the corrosive passage of time, and Μνήμα, for better or worse, are not exempt from it. 2 years after their inception, X. would part ways with our unnamed multi-instrumentalist, resulting in the band becoming a one-man project. Thankfully, the duo decided to close that chapter of the band’s existence with their best work up to that point, the Interment EP. While each of the band’s projects I have covered thus far has managed to engage me in its own unique way, this is the first time I find myself swept off my feet, my time spent with Disciples of Excremental Liturgies notwithstanding. For one, this goes completely off the path Μνήμα has walked up to this point, primarily in the fact that it’s *slow*. Whereas the furious tremolo riffing was used to weave intricate textural tapestries that blurred the lines between white noise and black metal, here it serves as an exclamation mark. Alt...