The Old Ones - Manfred

I've been sifting through the archives this week, spurred on by sickness and cabin fever,  eventually arriving at a pile of poorly tagged, low quality mp3's of The Old Ones. Downloaded years ago from the baffling 9 Productions website ( seemingly a relic from 1994 but sporadically updated with new information, despite being 90% perpetually "under construction"), The Old Ones are a classic example of a one-man project driven by sheer love and madness, content to languish in obscurity and bereft of shame or self-awareness.  Existing for years on the same fringes of doom populated by Aarni or Brown Jenkins, this anonymous Czech fellow continues to make music under this moniker - there is another album and multiple singles, and a sequel to this semi-full length is promised sometime this year.  This one is a bit of a mess - I corrected the incoherent tags as best I could, but the volume is wildly erratic, the guitars are tinny and muffled except for the occasional solo, the vocals are too loud, and the drum machine is laughable.  Still, crazy-eyed ambition and enthusiasm go a long way in bands like this, and The Old Ones have no shortage of either.  

I Remember

Shub-Niggurath Please

Vader - Out of the Deep
Morbus Chron - Red Hook Horror
Necromandus - Nightjar
Arkham Witch - Dagon's Bell
Briton Rites - A Meeting in the Woods
Orchid - Eyes Behind the Wall
Noctum - The Seance
The Wounded Kings - Return of the Sorcerer
Innsmouth - The She-Goat Quandary
Portal - Omnipotent Crawling Chaos
Abgott - Book 3-The Eye of Yog-Sothoth
Vasaeleth - Wrathful Deities
Necronomicon - Dreaming of the Old Ones
Thergothon - The Twilight Fade

Happy Halloween

Briton Rites - For Mircala

 

Greetings, dearies!  I have once again returned to the Swamp, and am back among you.  Today I have for you one of the great unheard doom albums of the last year, the debut album from Georgia's hirsute Briton Rites. Effortlessly evoking the dark history of doom metal without sounding artificially retro or atavistic, For Mircala is a loose concept album centered around vampirism and Lovecraftian dimensional bleedthrough.  I have a particular weakness for metal bands with literate and diverse sources, and these chaps certainly deliver on that front: the title cut is based on a pre-Dracula vampire novel; "The Right Hand of Doom" is grounded in a Robert E. Howard short story starring his demon-hunting Puritan, Solomon Kane; several other are grounded in Hammer Horror flicks and pulpy supernatural melodrama.  Musically, it owes a heavy debt to the doomier side of NWOBHM, like Witchfinder General of Pagan Altar, with killer vocals from Phil Swanson (of such Swamp favorites as Hour of 13, Seamount, and Atlantean Kodex) and guitars by Howie Bentley of legendary Georgia metal band Cauldron Born.  More importantly, every song is memorable, catchy, and tough - no pretty stuff here, just doom and blood and haze.

The doom evoked by the words he spoke, as the hand began to crawl

Thou Shalt Suffer - Into the Woods of Belial

Thou Shalt Suffer was the pre-Emperor death metal band of Ihsahn, Ildjarn, and Samoth. This compilation contains their demo, 7" EP, and a live set, all recorded in 1991, just before the shift from death metal into black. Consequently this group gets little love from die-hard black metal nerds and is rarely held up as an example of classic old-school death metal, either. Sad, that is, because the material here is pure, soul-snuffing Lovecraftian foulness. Hints of their future direction crop up during the intro, various gothic keyboard flourishes, and, in the case of Ildjarn, the gritty, hissing sound quality. Thou Shalt Suffer eventually became an ambient/drone side project for Ihsahn before he struck out under his own name - look for the album Somnium if that sounds like your cup of tea, but be warned there is little in common with this.
I seek the path of obscurity

Unaussprechlichen Kulten - Wake Up in the Night of Walpurgis

Crusty Chilean ESL death metallers Unaussprechlichen Kulten sing entirely within the orbit of the Cthulhu mythos, and are obviously well versed and fervent. I haven't but precious moments to type, so I'll not mince words: this album is crucial to your understanding of the universe. Further growth will simply cease until you absorb this precious nourishment, for your minds and many wriggling tentacles.
The Black Goat of the Woods With a Thousand Youngs

Cthulhu Coloring Book

Eyeball it here.
Buy a real one here.

The Lamp of Thoth - Sing As You Slay

Lo, faithful cultists! Almost 48 hours since we last spoke and so many things have gone horribly awry! Only one solution presents itself to make up for it, and promises some sort of horrible revenge later: The Lamp of Thoth's new album, Sing As You Slay. Fans of Arkham Witch shall be delighted with this complex, unpretentious non-sub-genred heavy metal record, as it is primarily the same set of fishy sub-humans. Greek myth, Lovecraftian dread, Tolkien swashbuckling, Viking rage, sinister voodoo ritual - something for everybody. Another functioning musical ensemble, they, and I have soul-searched somewhat deeply as to whether I shall aid or hinder them to just hand the damned thing out like loaves and fishes, but no answer comes, only vengeance.