Ancient VVisdom A Godlike Inferno
Shinebox Recordings
Yes, that’s VVisdom, with two V’s instead of a W, perhaps to denote some sort of kvlt affinity, and why not when you’re a band whose first recorded offering is a split with Charles Manson and your dark, acoustic doom is black metal played out as the Devil’s blues? Driven by a forbidden force of steel-stringed conviction and Antichrist alchemy, the Austin band’s debut, A Godlike Inferno, is more than a poor cover, fancy spelling, and men in costumed ceremony — it’s eight tracks of pagan chamber music, a melodic and catchy gush of neo-folk played by dudes in dirty denim vests. And nevermind that Ancient VVisdom contains members of the louder groups Iron Age and Integrity because this is simple, stripped down, fire-licking rock n’ soul, like Agalloch at a biker camp-out or Days of the New in corpse paint, which is actually way better than it sounds.
Check out two videos for “The Opposition” and “VVorld of Flesh” from A Godlike Inferno!
Blood Ceremony Living With the Ancients
Rise Above
It’s been three years since Toronto’s Blood Ceremony drew us into their sect of satyrs with their self-titled debut, binding us to dungeon walls until such a time our sacrifice was desired, and it seems that moment has indeed arrived. Sorcerers of retro ritual rock, Blood Ceremony lay down doom-powered riffs over top hellfire organ, but their weapon of choice is the dark mistress Alia O’Brien, whose mastery of voice and flute are the spells that bind and hypnotize. Like its predecessor, Living With the Ancients is a bone-carved chalice overflowing with the fog of a pagan prog potion, and where one ends with a hymn to Pan the other begins with another such ode to the great half-man, half-goat God, thus continuing the sacred bloodline of influence and imagery that courses through all they do. You’ll also find demons, witches, hermits, magicians, ancient Roman priests, and W. Somerset Maugham’s caricature of Aleister Crowley at this monster’s ball, a medieval European masquerade not unlike the pentagram parties thrown by The Devil’s Blood, Ghost, Year of the Goat, Witchcraft, and so on. So, go ahead, offer yourself up to Blood Ceremony’s wicked ways. You’ll be glad you did.
Obiat comes at you from England by way of Poland and is at once Mastodonian, Katatonian, and Wagnerian (as in Eric, as in Trouble) in all it does, and yet stand well on their own out on the furthest branches of the tallest tree on the highest mountain in your mind. Where Candlemass built shrines, Obiat builds satellites; both speak the same ancient language, but exist in a different space and time. Eye Tree Pi, the band’s third album, is some serious psychedelic doom, a heavy mathematical formula where cosmic dynamite fury plus mystic pagan heresy equals wicked acid flashbacks of aliens building Stonehenge under stormy red skies. So put on your silver jumpsuit, spaceman, and take shelter in the forest of all time.
Ancient VVisdom
Blood Ceremony
Obiat