EPs From Hell - Including Monstraat, Nightmare City, The 135

We start with Monstraat's latest EP named the Eternal One. Monstraat is a Swedish based primitive black metal band with all the essential criterias for a meaningful release. Filled with Devil-worshiping lyrics, blasphemy and the whole old school aesthetics witch I really like in a band.
This EP contains 4 tracks, The One Eternal, Unchained, Voidlike Sky and Dead Eyes See.
Nothing new to the genre, they stick to the basics, and hell, they are good at it.
Melodies come and go between the wicked riffs and raspy vocals in the veins of Malign, Morbid Insulter and more.
Plus, really good work on the cover too.

8
Listen Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QggmYuIJ-Lk


Second band, is Nightmare City, a heavy metal/punk band from Sweden also. They released this year their first EP called Nightmare City through Electric Assault Records. It contains 6 tracks, not that long but catchy and hellish. It has an old school vibe that I love, reminds me a bit of Venom, but more clean in a way. Moving on, there are a lot of melodies coming straight from their NWOBHM influences, their style also can be a hint to that. The vocals are not that clean, they have more of a first wave of Black Metal approach, that's why the Venom reffrence above.
A very artistic and punk-ish I must add selection on the cover, and I'm looking forward for their debut LP, which I hope it won't take too long.

7
Listen Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0_uAwzMHX0

Last band is The 135, a really interesting release from France, playing a form of Avant-Garde Black Metal in a French way, kinda like Deathspell Omega and maybe Aosoth, and since I'm a fan and have huge respect for those bands I couldn't help myself from reviewing this quite good piece of Art.
The EP is titled Lumen Per Lumen, raughly translated as The Light From The Light I think, contains only 3 tracks, with the first one Drakon Manifesto - The Death Of The I, having a 2-minute intro workng as an introduction to the band.
As you may have realised the lyrical concept is about Occultism in a serious way, the musicianship in here is absolutely stunning. Chaotic melodies, influenced by Deathspell Omega, sometimes really nostalgic ones, acoustic passages, but also some are like a wall of nails closing in, causing the listener to go through a lot of emotional changes until the song absorbs him/her in the great vasts of darkness.
The vocals also are a bit of a suprise, mainly because there are a lot of clean singing parts before it goes into the typical yet beautiful growl-ish black metal vocals much like Mgla sounds.
I highly recomend it, to anyone who is interested in the French Black Metal scene, and to everyone who wants their black metal Satanic and Philosophical.

8,5
Listen Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yl6PR8OMWck

Hypothermia - Svartkonst Review

Hypothermia is a black metal band hailing from Sweden and it's the child, so to speak, of Kim Carlsson mostly known as the vocalist in Lifelover and other musical expressions such as Horns Emerging and Kall.
Now this album, Svartkonst, meaning black art or sorcery, correct me if I'm wrong, came out earlier this year following the well praised Skogens Hjarta.
One of the things that I enjoyed mostly in this release is the production. Very clean, etherial and you can hear every instrument at the same time without the guitars for example swallowing each other or the drums, something that in their earlier albums was a problem to me.
To those that don't know about the musical past of Hypothermia, their previous albums had more of a depressing or negative feeling, drowning a lot of elements from depressive black metal and post rock/metal.
In this one though, there are no vocals, the post rock influences are more present, which I find very possitive, and the albums as a whole can work perfectly with meditation or a walk through the forest.
It's a form of magick in my opinion, repeatitive riffs, thus creating a trance like feeling to the listener, the compositions are very tight, not anything too technical but instead everything is simple, and so easy to absorb that anyone I believe can find something worth in this record about himself.
It's a soundtrack of retrospection.
I won't talk about the highlights of the record because I think you have to listen to the whole damn thing to realise what it's all about.

9/10