The Asteroid Bullet Belt

Interned within four concrete walls.  Though I fancy myself as a Luddite on a lot of things, it’d be disingenuous of me to ignore how much the digital age has benefited the act of creation. Be it the ease of access to music-making tools (legality optional), or the potential to spread one’s art throughout the vast seas of the internet, it theoretically allows every person in the world to express themselves through art and share their experiences with the world. Both of these factors also play a great part in the proliferation of one-man bands, which have become more and more decentralised, thanks to the facilitation of access to instruments and software allowing musicians to create away from urban centres, foregoing the need for people whom they need to align and collaborate with. As you can imagine, seeing a project like Σε Μιά Γωνιά (In a Corner) pop up from Porto Cheli of all places was quite the surprise for me, and the novelty of its being a black metal/D-beat hybrid wasn’t los...

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 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...