
February 2014 sees the two piece German monster MANTAR release their debut album on Svart Records. Recorded earlier in 2013 and titled "Death By Burning", the album is a raw, self produced and 100% DIY display of power. The half German, half Turkish band has existed for less than a year and released one limited run 7" - probably sold out by the time you read this.

MANTAR manages to sound even and heavier than most five piece bands you may know, in spite of the fact that no bass guitar was used on this record. Just drums and guitar set for destruction. Forget about Rock `n Roll. This will hurt. Flogging beats and blackened melodies meet feedback orgies and doom mayhem. Early Melvins, Motorhead, Darkthrone. You name it. Don`t call it sludge though. Everything as black as possible. A soundtrack for the final battle.

Svart Records will unleash the black 10 track attack on February 7th on CD, LP, tape and digital.

Mantar: White Nights

Band: Amenra
Album: Mass IIII
Year: 2008
Label: Hypertension Records



AMENRA "Silver Needle, Golden Nail"

Band: Amenra
Album: Mass III
Year: 2006
Label: Hypertension Records


AMENRA "Némelèndèlle"

AMENRA "Am Kreuz"

AMENRA "Le fils Des Faux"

from the "NINE GRAVES" EP.

released by Sepulchral Voice Records and VÁN Records

999

NECROS CHRISTOS - Nine Graves

buy @ eisenwald shop

UADA - Our Pale Departure

Taken from Diadem of 12 Stars (Artemisia Records)
Available on 2xLP / CD / Cass / Digital on June 17th 2016

pre-order physical: http://shop.wittr,com

pre-order digital:
Bandcamp - http://geni.us/WITTRdiademBandcamp
iTunes - http://geni.us/WITTRdiademiTunes

See Wolves in the Throne Room live:

9/13/2016 - Brooklyn, NY - Saint Vitus Bar
9/14/2016 - Philadelphia, PA - Kung Fu Necktie
9/15/2016 - Washington, DC - DC9
9/17/2016 - Richmond, VA - Strange Matter
9/18/2016 - Atlanta, GA - The Earl
9/19/2016 - New Orleans, LA - Sisters In Christ
9/20/2016 - Austin, TX - Barracuda
9/21/2016 - Dallas, TX - DADA
9/22/2016 - Lawrence, KS - Riot Room
9/23/2016 - Chicago, IL - Empty Bottle
9/24/2016 - Toronto, ON - Lee's Palace
9/26/2016 - Portland, ME - Space Gallery
9/27/2016 - Somerville, MA - Cuisine En Locale

 All tickets on sale April 29th at noon local.

Queen Of Borrowed Light

Take a look at the figure on the cover of Longing, the debut from Seattle doom duo Bell Witch. Its eerie presence is appropriate for a record defined by inescapable haunting and loss. On these six songs, bassist/vocalist Dylan Desmond and drummer/vocalist Adrian Guerra play patiently, and sparingly; they appear to be carefully purging themselves of an inexplicable force corrupting their bodies. Instead of going for a frontal assault, piling riffs upon riffs upon riffs, they opt for something subtler, a spacious approach that affects the entire nervous system.
The album opens with a 20 minute journey into despair, "Bails (of Flesh)", a track that will likely weed out those who can't handle the unrelentingly downcast feel of the record. The tracks get shorter from there, but they also get sparser. Of note is "Longing (the River of Ash)", which grows more drawn out as it progresses. In this music of solitude, it's the loneliest track by far. Metal's defined by exaggeration, but the title Longing is perfect here: Desmond and Guerra want to go back to where pain didn't consume their reality.
A duo's primary challenge is to find a way to fill up space with minimal equipment. Usually, when a doom band's a two-piece, the guitars are double-amped and so downtuned that a bassist becomes irrelevant. Bell Witch flip this convention, employing a six-string bass in place of a guitar. (Often, one can hardly tell it's a bass.) Even lacking guitar, Desmond constructs melodies reminiscent of funeral doom acts like Skepticism and Esoteric, adding a touch of American dirtiness from his experience as the bassist of Samothrace.
There is one exception where the bass doesn't masquerade as a guitar. "Beneath the Mask", save for a sample from the Edgar Allen Poe-inspired film The Masque of the Red Death, is a five-minute drumless drone piece, where notes fly off and subsequently wither like Icarus on 33 1/3 RPM. The clean bass is more lonesome and more eerie than the distorted bass that the album's built upon. "Mask" seems like the perfect track to incorporate a sudden blast of hisses, feedback, screams-- something to make the listener jolt. It doesn't, and that suspense, like walking over rows of false trap doors, adds to the creepy atmosphere.
Throughout, Guerra's growls are complementary of the genre, and he even throws in a few blackened shrieks on "Rows (of Endless Waves)". Desmond's clean vocals, however, are more compelling, taking different shapes throughout the record. His warm, forlorn style carries the latter half of "Bails (of Flesh)", turning maudlin doom into perverted praise music. It's not a far stretch to imagine this being played in some church that worships self-destruction, congregants raising their hands up high, arms bleeding from cutting themselves. Desmond gives hails and salutations to the misery, like Om learning of a terminal illness diagnosis.
The previously mentioned "Rows" sees Desmond's voice become more delicate, almost crushing under the weight of the music. Frailty is important to the variety of doom Bell Witch explores, but rarely does a vocal performance capture what it is to stand on the line between sanity and madness. Desmond will whisper certain lines in "Rows", adding emphasis without raising his voice. He channels dISEMBOWELMENT's Renato Gallina on "Longing" making that track a true successor to the Australian doom-death quartet's 1993 classic Transcendence into the Peripheral. Remember that editorial arguing that metal vocalists are irrelevant? It wasn't entirely without merit, but Desmond challenges that line of thinking. He's got a cleverness and sense of space most vocalists don't possess. His voice is much like the music itself: it reverberates around, as if wandering and looking for a way out of this despair. Open and wide-reaching as it may be, there's also a sense of weighty claustrophobia in his voice, as if it's carrying his burdens, and the burdens of others, too. (via Pitchfork.com) 

Bell Witch - Rows (of endless Waves)

MORAR plays sophisticated Black Metal for all and none exclusively!

morar.bandcamp.com

AMENRA "Némelèndèlle"

CHURCHOFRA

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