Once in a while our photographer gets up to something sinister – last year he commemorated the launch of his portrait photography business with the…
Blasphemy‘s 2013 performance at Noctis Festival (v.6) in Calgary is still fresh in this reviewer’s memory but Sunday’s concert was the first occasion in half a generation that…
With this week’s gracious shift towards autumnal weather here on the Pacific Northwest coast, now is the ideal time for us to begin revisiting several noteworthy…
Whatever the traditional value and worth of December’s holiday season, the grim cacophony visited upon Vancouver’s Media Club last weekend was a welcome nihilist’s balm…
Whether deep within lightless subterranean passages or beyond the shadow of the furthest stars, Covenant Festival organizers embaced the infinite permeating darkness by its staging of Bölzer‘s first ever Vancouver show…
Perhaps it was the merciless assault of Tyrants Blood, the bleak cold howling of Körperlose Stimme, or else Assimilation’s contaminated death metal, who “put the ‘ass’…
The second night of Nothing Is Heavy’s third anniversary celebration showcased several bands from the brutal end of the metal spectrum, with emphasis on intense technical expressions of black metal…
Whether mere coincidence or a synchronization of celestial events, last week’s odd confluence of solar eclipse, super moon, and massive display of aurora borealis dramatically…
Since the release of their 2013 full-length Fragments of a Fallen Star, Victoria-area black metal trio Harrow has steadily toiled to cultivate a distinctive blend…
At the time of its inception over 30 years ago, black metal distinguished itself from other forms of metal as a dark, primal affirmation of the individual and a contemptuous rejection of institutions and dogma. Today its detractors protest that, as a whole, black metal has become largely derivative. However, with so many technologies in flux, today all musicians are much less likely to survive professionally than they were in the past, so it comes as no surprise when they take fewer creative risks. How, then, can a black metal band hope to survive, let alone distinguish itself? Toronto’s self-proclaimed “black metal fundamentalists” Panzerfaust may have found an answer.