AURA NOIR - DREAMS LIKE DESERTS

Aura Noir is Norway's bad-ass answer to 80's thrash metal. Their first release from '94 came at a time when thrash had become extremely uncool. Against trends, Dreams Like Deserts, delivers 6 fiercely structured, blackened assaults of incredible speed and agility. Side winding riffs, admonishing vocals and an avalanche of drumming catapulted these butchers to the top of the norwegian pile. They've remained there for nineteen + years, rendering corpse meat into primordial sludge. The production on DLD is more typical 90's BM than the band's subsequent releases (not a bad thing). These files are taken from the 2012 remaster. I stuck with the original cover since I'm not including the bonus tracks and I dig their original logo. DLD!

INQUISITION - OMINOUS DOCTRINES OF THE PERPETUAL MYSTICAL MACROCOSM

Though I love their early pursuits, the vision that Inquisition has cultivated over the course of their twenty five year career has grown absolutely astounding. Ominous Doctrines Of The Perpetual Mystical Macrocosm is the eighth full length release in their discography. It's easily among the best sounding of their recordings and some of their best song writing as well. Dagon and Incubus have expanded on their brand of grinding black metal to achieve a level of sophistication and sheer perfection that few can boast. Eternally unaffected by the limitations of a two piece line up, they offer yet another slab rife with all the aggressive energy and melodic abrasion we've come to expect. Dagon's voice is completely mesmerizing this time around; even transcendent. These songs numb your digits, tear your spine from it's ornamental blob and warp you to an inner space that dwarfs the known universe. If you only bought one BM record in 2010, this should have been it. Ominous!

PESUDOGOD - DEATHWOMB CATECHESIS

Satanic black death from russia, Pseudogod stands out among a slew of bands working in a similar vain. Less veiled than Titanblood and as large as the likes of Black Witchery, Revenge or Conqueror. Deathwomb Catechesis delivers 8 raw, rhythmically diverse and aggressively crafted rituals to blacken the sun and boil the seas. The vocals hover like a sphincter in the skies of hell, vomiting the entrails of the damned, into the mouths of the damned. Why anyone would choose to manifest such a ravaged and hopeless reality is beyond even me. All I know is that it draws me back again and again; deeper and deeper into the odorous din of the great pit. Monkey ballz!