Category: Album Reviews

Spectral Lore and Mare Cognitum - Wanderers: Astrology of the Nine

This is one of this year’s most import­ant albums. To me, of course, but then again I have a long his­tory with The Wanderers—because that’s what planet means in the first place. Wan­der­ers across our heav­ens, bod­ies that seem­ingly defy the fix­ed­ness of the stars, per­son­al­it­ies. But maybe the Wan­der­ers will be import­ant to you too.

LEYA - Flood Dream

Songs that ache and drip with a sad and uncom­prom­ising romantic ser­i­ous­ness that we some­times try to dis­miss in ourselves as juven­ile, but which never quite goes away.

Apostils Against Hegemony, Vol. I: Transitive Properties

It feels close. It feels like a warm reminder that there are many of us out there with a shared love for musical expres­sion and exper­i­ment­a­tion. It is a cul­ture where our ϙueer pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with sex and death is not just lived but cast through a vari­ety of cre­at­ive lenses, and I love it.

Obsequiae - The Palms of Sorrowed Kings

The one, the only, the ori­ginal Castle Metal. OBSEQUIAE is back with its most pol­ished album yet, far ahead of what little com­pet­i­tion there is. But will it turn out to be the her­ald of a new era?

Grotto Grove and Shrine #01

Ἀρέθουσα & Μηλινόη don’t always see eye to eye, but the sounds from their realms inter­mingle all the same. Light and dark ambi­ences, drones, and rituals.

Yellow Eyes - Rare Field Ceiling

Rare Field Ceil­ing feels like part of a con­tinuum, par­tic­u­larly with the last two albums, a logical next stage of the jour­ney, and it’s one of the best, most emo­tion­ally reward­ing jour­neys that I know of.

Exclusive preview: altostrati - chromatic

Inter­net music col­lab­or­a­tion is cool. 100% live col­lab­or­a­tion over Dis­cord is way cooler, and that’s just what valyri and r0x4ry did, res­ult­ing in over an hour of really intense dron­es­capes.