The Asteroid Bullet Belt

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...

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...