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.
It's been a bit since we had a feral and ferocious album of Lovecraftian black metal to drool and excrete all over, hasn't it? The raging wind outside and the constant flickering of lights makes this album seem appropriate for the moment, and how can one resist that album title? Philly's Blood Storm (two words, no hyphen, thank you) play straightforward and fairly orthodox black metal in the oldest sense: bits and pieces of Celtic Frost and Venom sprinkled with early Mayhem and Emperor, with perhaps a twist of thrash metal in the vocals and the more mid-tempo songs. Most of the album is blastbeat/atonal riff/ semi-intelligible blasphemy though (and some well-placed spooky organ) - no surprises, but no clean vocals or banjos either. Aside from the excellent Lovecraftian "Yoggothian Slayers," we have primarily songs either directly and plainly about wizards or obliquely delivered in forgotten tongues (these, too, probably concern wizards). Yes, this sounds just about perfect right now - let's hope the power holds out...
Quite a strange little artifact tonight wee ones, an album of cinematic space jazz with its creator and seemingly sole musician, one Colin Timothy Gagnon, reading Lovecraft's entire sonnet cycle Fungi from Yuggoth in chilly monotone, punctuated by eerie whispers and mysterious scraping noises. Much of this seems produced on a cheap keyboard, but strangely the tinny horn sections and rubbery pounding of tribal drums gain a bit of eldritch majesty in context. The poetry of H.P. Lovecraft has never received the attention that his prose works continually enjoy, and I'll admit they have tested even my attention span at times, but this strange Gagnon person seems to have devoted much research and experimentation to this project with no chance of monetary reward or public recognition outside of esoteric circles such as this Swamp. Not to be dissuaded, his enthusiasm carries much weight here, turning his monotone delivery and low-budget cinematic ambition into positives, creating an atmosphere of dread against all odds. Quite the role model for those lone figures among, locked in your room, shouting alien gibberish into your tape machine, driven by urges beyond your ken.
Thanks to the attentions of my scholarly colleague Shelby Cobras, I was recently informed that Fungoid Stream, esoteric Argentinian cinematic doom explorers, have released a new album.
