Metal Reviews

wonderful blend of dark ambiance and Malefic's
'tormented' vocal performance, or shitty produced mess of fuzzy sounds.
your thoughts?

I honestly don't enjoy Xasthur,but I'm happy for those that can.A bit too noisy and simple for my tastes.

Good in small doses, but there's better stuff around, and there's little point in owning more than a couple of albums. I really need to review more kvlt USBM and CBM that no-one's ever heard of, there's a lot of great stuff out there.

Agreed with Goat; find a lot of his stuff a bit pointless and hard to get into. But then, that very faded out, distant type of depressive BM is not really my cup of tea.

I don't mind it, in the right mood I really like the buried and distant sound of his music.

To Goat- check out a band from Cleveland called Afterlight. As of now they have nothing in print but they are the opening act for Mayhem at Peabody's and are garnering some attention. Their music can be found only on Youtube.

Good stuff to put on at night and sleep to.

I am not very fond of depressive black metal either. Some tracks are evil though.

I really like depressive black metal, but the thing with Xasthur is that every album sounds the same. He's not even one of those "if you listen closely you'll hear the subtle differences in each song" sort of artists, it's all literally the same.

Having said that, I do like Xasthur- it's very atmospheric, very grief-stricken, and very mesmerizing to listen to...but I think you can easily get by only having one album.

Nyktalgia, Urfaust, Noenum, Blood Red Fog and Pensees Nocturnes are all better.

I was listening to a lot called Nox Inferi yesterday, they were good at the atmospheric BM thang.

This is how I feel about his stuff as well. Personally I'm mostly attracted to Subliminal Genocide. Dunno why, its just the album that did it for me.

I have a couple of their CDs (Funeral of Being, To Violate the Oblivious) and I have always enjoyed them because some of the droning melodies are quite good. If it was just a lot of fuzz drone without any purpose or pattern, I wouldn't like them.

However, I definitely have to be in a certain mood, and I feel that he has produced too many albums. I think he should probably have produced half as many and increased the quality concentration.

Hm I looked at Xasthurs Metal Archives page, apparently there's another new one out?

Something I'll occasionally listen to, but honestly feels, more often than not, like he releases the same album over and over again. Having one Xasthur album is enough for whenever one feels in the mood. I prefer Telepathic With the Deceased, personally, but honestly rarely listen to it.

Oh it depends what mood I'm in. If I want to close my eyes and enjoy some black metal I'll turn to Xasthur as a top choice, but the sound is fuzzy as Hell.

Yeah. I got 30 seconds into the first track and thought "hm, this isn't for me". Which is kind of unfair, but, y'know.

I feel exactly the same here.

I only own Suicide in Dark Serenity and Nocturnal Poisoning. Both are very very good when i'm in the right mood. But the atmosphere!! This damn atmosphere is incredible. Mostly on Suicide.

I'm not even going to bother listening to it

If I want to listen to Xasthur I'll just put on Telepathic With the Deceased (my favourite) on.