The Asteroid Bullet Belt

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...

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...