Black Metal
Liturgy and BIG|BRAVE Announce 2023 North American Tour
New albums are on the way from the two experimental metal acts in the coming weeks. Liturgy and BIG|BRAVE Announce 2023 North American Tour Spencer Kaufman
Dark Funeral and Cattle Decapitation Lead 2023 Decibel Magazine Tour
The North American outing kicks off in May. Dark Funeral and Cattle Decapitation Lead 2023 Decibel Magazine Tour Jon Hadusek
Darkthrone To Release Original Version of Shelved Album Goatlord
Darkthrone spearheaded the second wave of black metal in the early 1990s. But before the corpse paint and candelabras, they played a more technical brand of death metal, as heard on their 1991 debut Soulside Journey. The band would record another album’s worth of death metal as the intended follow-up. Known as Goatlord, the project was promptly shelved when Fenriz and Nocturno Culto embraced the lo-fi black metal aesthetics found on 1992’s A Blaze in the Northern Sky. Eventually, the Goatlord recordings would see the light of day, with Fenriz adding new vocal overdubs for the album in 1994 prior to its 1996 release on Moonfog Productions. Darkthrone have now revived Goatlord once more, but in its original instrumental form. Dubbed Goatlord: Original, the album features new artwork by Zbign...
Heavy Song of the Week: Dryad Conjure an Icy Gust of Midwestern Black Metal on “The Abyssal Plain”
Heavy Song of the Week is a new feature on Heavy Consequence breaking down the top metal and hard rock tracks you need to hear every Friday. This week the honor goes to Iowa black metal band Dryad’s “The Abyssal Plain.” Winter is upon us. The days are short, and the trees bare. A seasonal depression creeps in as we stay indoors to escape the cold. No wonder black metal was pioneered upon the tundras of Scandinavia. Otherworldly howls and walls of guitar that recall the bitter arctic wind — it just sounds right this time of year. A life indoors also means more time to consume, perform, write, and record music. Ideal circumstances for those looking to indulge the dark arts and channel whatever thoughts, negative or otherwise, through the escapism and personal journey black metal provides, bo...
Liturgy Share Choral Piece “Angel of Sovereignty” Ahead of Upcoming Double Album: Stream
Liturgy have shared the choral piece “Angel of Sovereignty” ahead of their upcoming double album 93696, out March 24th. Outwardly, a two-minute song that’s almost exclusively the sound of a children’s choir seems like a bizarre choice for a single. But Liturgy have been known to throw a curveball, and the track epitomizes the project’s uncompromising nature. There are no traditional rock instruments; nor is there anything remotely metal about the piece. However, the same compositional complexities that run through Liturgy’s “heavier” offerings, if you will, are still at work here. The arrangement of the vocal melodies is unconventional and beguiling — a test for listeners both in its choir-only format and composition. Advertisement Related Video As a teaser for 93696, the track has effecti...
Cradle of Filth and DevilDriver to Embark on 2023 US Co-Headlining Tour
Cradle of Filth and DevilDriver have announced a March 2023 US co-headlining tour with support from Black Satellite and Oni. Billed as the first leg of the “Double Trouble Live” tour, the initial set of dates kicks off March 8th in Tempe, Arizona, and runs through March 26th, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The route for the first leg of the outing (which promises to be a “world tour,” according to Cradle of Filth frontman Dani Filth) will stick mainly to West Coast and Southwest markets. Tickets go on sale Friday (January 13th) at 10 a.m. local time. You can pick up tickets via Ticketmaster. Advertisement Related Video “Cradle of Filth are maniacally looking forward to this two-pronged headline assault with fellow noisemongers DevilDriver,” remarked Dani Filth via a press statement. “Frontman...
Mining Metal: Top 10 Underground Metal Albums of 2022
I sit here writing this intro essay crouched at a too-small desk, my fiance’s mother’s childhood desk, huddled beneath a blanket in my fiance’s childhood room placing the finishing touches on our list just before Christmas Eve. My body is currently scratched and busted up; I have a bad hematoma on my left arm from elbow to armpit, with deep scratches on that forearm while my left hip and right elbow feel jacked to hell. That is because last night, after bursting out of my apartment door to tell a neighbor to quiet down after they paced screaming at the top of their lungs for over two hours, I found myself locked out of my apartment with my 12-year old dog locked inside. So, I attempted what any grown man left on their own in such a situation would: I attempted to scale my apartment buildin...
Rotting Christ to Embark on 2023 North American Tour
Greek black metal masters Rotting Christ have announced a 2023 North American tour. Dubbed the “Under Our Black Cult Tour,” the month-long trek kicks off on February 16th in Houston and runs through March 14th in Orlando. The band’s Season of Mist labelmates Carach Angren and Gaerea, along with UADA, will provide support. Tickets are available via Ticketmaster or via the individual venue links. Prior to the tour, Rotting Christ will be aboard the 70,000 Tons of Metal cruise, which departs from Miami on January 30th and returns to port on February 3rd. The band will be playing two sets, including a full performance of 1993’s Thy Mighty Contract to mark the seminal album’s 30th anniversary. Related Video The aforementioned LP helped define the melodic black metal sound that became synonymous...
Mining Metal: Critical Extravasation, Cryptae, Dream Unending, Elder, Fell Ruin, Feminizer, Spider God, and Tchornobog, and Abyssal
Mining Metal is a monthly column from Heavy Consequence contributing writers Langdon Hickman and Colin Dempsey. The focus is on noteworthy new music emerging from the non-mainstream metal scene, highlighting releases from small and independent labels — or even releases from unsigned acts. Peter Griffin once asked, “Where are those good old-fashioned values on which we used to rely?” While he was talking about entertainment at large when he posed that question, stroking his inappropriately-shaped chin, it’s debatable if he’d ask heavy metal, the genre that holds onto its good old-fashioned values with a Mankind-Mandible-Claw-like grip, that same query. This is to say that metal is laden with refinement more than drastic innovation. Now, this is actually good in that metal has arguably ...
Mining Metal: Abduction, Daeva, Faceless Burial, Forlesen, God Alone, MAL, The Otolith, and SUMAC/Keiji Haino
Every month, I could write to you all about how the selection process for this column is hard. When you first sit down to do something like this, there’s a hunger to write about all the bands that really get your engines going, to finally get to make people outside of your circle hear the things you’ve rehearsed in your head to pitch all this music you love to others. But as the months (and now years) creep on, you start finding that, well, those bands keep putting out music and a lot of it has stayed pretty good, but now new bands have joined the pack, and oh that’s a new label, and I’ve never even heard of this scene before, and wow these classic bands came back and put out a really special release, and… So sometimes the choices are less based on pure quality as other paradigms. One of t...
Immortal Announce New Album War Against All, Unveil Artwork and Tracklist
Norwegian black metal pioneers Immortal have announced their 10th studio album, War Against All. The new album is expected to arrive sometime in 2023 via Nuclear Blast, and will be the second Immortal album fronted by founding guitarist Demonaz, who took over vocals following the departure of Abbath in 2015. “Immortal continues the style that was established and defined on our very first records,” stated Demonaz in a press release. “It’s fast, furious, epic, and mighty Blashyrkh metal — the one and only way!” Related Video Regarding the artistic process of creating War Against All, Demonaz said that he still writes riffs and composes the same way he has since the early days of Immortal. Fans can expect the band to stick to its tried-and-true style of harsh black metal on the forthcoming LP...
Liturgy Announce New Double Album 93696, Release Title Track and Mini-LP: Stream
Liturgy have announced a new double album and shared the title track “93696.” The band also released a new stand-alone mini-LP, As the Blood of God Bursts the Veins of Time, that is available to stream now. Clocking in at 15 minutes, “93696” is another ambitious sonic leap for Liturgy. The genre-defying epic is structured into three movements that are crammed with musical flourishes. At any one point, you might hear tremelo-picked black metal riffs, a Melvins-y breakdown, or mind-boggling mathematical prog. The howls of guitarist/vocalist Ravenna Hunt-Hendrix (formerly Hunter Hunt-Hendrix) peek in and out of the fray. Hunt-Hendrix has been at the center of Liturgy since its inception, often joined by a revolving-door lineup of musicians who can achieve her complex musical vision. Here, the...
