The Asteroid Bullet Belt

"Shit has riffs, man."  Side-projects are a fascinating thing, but also a total crapshoot. For one, they can provide a glimpse into a different side of an artist’s sources of inspiration, or what might interest them besides their main source of creative output. People are complicated after all, that much is evident from all the black metal musicians who also have an ambient side-project. Yet at the same time, it does raise the question of how much effort has been put into it, especially when it appears to be a footnote in their catalogue. Συντρίμμια’s (Debris) Repulsive Inexpression piqued my interest owing to Ivan’s (of Kvadrat fame) involvement, not only as a musician, but also as a graphic designer. Seeing as the trio dropped this album back in 2023 without much fanfare, I couldn’t help but be a little curious about it. Was it a different take on deathgrind, a little fun thing to do on the side, or just an unremarkable album in the infinite ocean of the internet? One thin...

Digging your own grave XIV: Not-so-fatal 4-way.  Splits are a weird format to cover. For one, their length can range anywhere from being bite-sized EPs to full-bodied albums. Furthermore, they don’t exactly cohere a lot, besides the bands present usually having a common genre between them . And last, but certainly not least, you rarely get a clear view of each artist’s vision through however many tracks they are allotted during the split’s runtime. Nevertheless, their purpose as a means of connecting for artists and music discovery for listeners cannot be understated, especially if appropriate care is placed in who’s collaborating with whom. While I’ve only covered one split of theirs thus far (and listened to the rest in the interim), Μνήμα has proven to be quite prudent in choosing who they’re sharing space with, at the very least ensuring that the release makes sense on a sonic level. This particular 4-way split is no different on that front, although it has to be said that the ...

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...