Category : Black Metal Scene

In the first few months of 2015, I was a little bit worried. I had been buying quite a lot of nice albums at the end of the previous year, from awesome bands such as Winterfylleth or 1349, but suddenly the underground scene was slowing down and I almost stopped adding CDs to my collection.

Then, gradually, new killer Black Metal albums were released and I quickly changed my mind about how good the year 2015 would be.

Today, as we are now almost halfway through the month of December, it is time to relax and look back a little bit. So, I decided to make, once again, a "best-of" list. True, it is always a difficult and subjective task. However, I really wanted to share with you these quality releases, in case you had missed or forgotten about some of them.

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Black Metal is a genre for which concept is often as important as music.

If Satanism and misanthropy have probably been some of the first subjects it dealt with, there is a growing trend of pagan Black Metal bands whose lyrics or appearance refer to local folklore and legends. Amongst those, some have decided to focus on the Middle-Ages period, either creating a mystic world filled with castles and knights, or trying to conjure a historically-correct picture based on authentic medieval texts.

Being very sensitive to these themes (which may not be surprising if you already know the music I'm doing with Askrinn), I decided to put together a list of some of my favorite Medieval Black Metal albums.

For this purpose, since I didn't want to build a close-minded list that would only reflect my personal tastes, I asked Cervantes and Aldébaran of the rising French Medieval Black Metal band Darkenhöld to join me in writing this article.

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Every year, it is a little bit of a ritual to do a Best of The Year albums list. I have to admit I usually enjoy these articles, as they are often a way to know what albums you missed, to remind you of things you wanted to give a listen to.

And more importantly, they are a great way to discover new bands and artists, aren't they ?

That's why instead of doing a pure Best of 2014 metal albums, I have chosen to select albums which I think you should check out. Maybe not the best ones - as it may somehow discard very quickly the newest bands if we take into account the production level - but the ones I believed to be the most interesting.

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Black Metal, this extreme music genre born in the 80s, happens to be filled with extreme personalities and is definitely fueled by an affirmed rejection of the modern world - or at least of some of its aspects. Therefore, numerous musicians are making strong statements, doomed to sometimes be misunderstood, as they try to justify their artistic approach or personal beliefs.

In this spirit, I have compiled 24 quotes from famous members of the scene which, I believe, depict quite precisely their inspiration sources as well as the various aspects of black metal.

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Metal is famous for including a large amount of subgenres. But do you know exactly what the term "pagan black metal" refers to?

It may often appear challenging to highlight the characteristics of a specific music trend. New ones are appearing every few months, fueled by the creativity of artists from all over the world. Yet this heathen variant of black metal is already quite old and tends to refer to something rather precise and obviously acknowledged.

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