The Asteroid Bullet Belt

We go wherever the wind takes us. (Originally submitted to the Metal Archives on January 25th 2024.)   Depending on who you ask, “Viking metal” can be a lot of things. It’s a rather nebulous descriptor that has been used by many to varying degrees of accuracy. More often than not, you see people tag any band that has a Nordic theme as such, despite their sound being anything but what Viking metal is actually supposed to be, that being a strain of black metal with an emphasis on an “epic” atmosphere and the use of folk influences. Nifrost is one such band, and seeing as they hail from Norway’s hotbed for the genre, it’s only natural that they’ll follow in their precursors’ steps. The band’s 2016 debut, Motvind , with its strikingly colourful artwork turned out to be a pleasant surprise from a style I never paid much mind to outside of a handful of heavy hitters. Nifrost’s modus operandi involves all of Viking metal’s core tenets, the band using every trick in the b...

Gathering at the altar of decadence. (Originally submitted to the Metal Archives on May 24th 2022)  Al Namrood is a band I’ve had a soft spot for ever since I discovered them back in 2020. It’s not so much that they’re one of my favourites or anything, but their unique take on black metal, and the influences they inject into it make for quite an interesting listen. Couple that with the difficult conditions under which they make their music, it’s hard not to root for them. 2 years after Wala’at , we’re being graced with the band’s newest full-length, Worship the Degenerate , an album that presents us with many changes, some more welcome than others. I’m gonna address the elephant in the room right off the bat: Humbaba’s gone. To me, he’s been one of the band’s defining characteristics outside of the instrumentation, with his vocal antics being one of the things I enjoyed the most about them. Whether he’d chant, gurgle or yell his lungs out, his theatrics added a lot ...

Scorching sands from the East. (Originally submitted to the Metal Archives on December 19th 2020)   Heavy metal as a genre has always been against the system and any sort of authority, but few, if any bands embody that aspect of the genre the way Al Namrood have for more than a decade now. Formed in 2008, the trio has been illegally making black metal denouncing religion, which is punishable by death in their home country of Saudi Arabia. I had actually read about them online a few years back, but dismissed them as a band whose music would just be mediocre, and that their only notable characteristic was the conditions under which they are making it. That changed earlier this year though with their most recent album, Wala'at , the quality of which took me aback and prompted me to look into the rest of their discography, which led to me writing about their 5th release, Diaji Al Joor . What we have here is the band expanding their sound and attempting to give the music ...