Four years have passed since their punishing “You Will Bleed” release, and Handful of Hate is ready to rock your world with an even more vicious release with “To Perdition”. In this devastating exercise in Black Metal brilliance, this Italian band delivers 11 tracks of relentless aural assaults that will leave you beat to a pulp. If you like the power of bands like Taake, Gorgoroth, Immortal, etc., this is one album that you can’t miss.

Opening with the ultra-violent title track, this release starts with a bang and keeps going like this for over 40 minutes. The riffing is quite punishing and very BM-esque, but the intensity of the drumming and hellishness of the vocals is what makes this band stand out. The band’s power goes unrivaled through epic tracks like “Cursed Be Your Breat”, “Far Beyond All Scourges”, and our personal favorite “Swines Graced Gods”. These songs provide a whirlwind of brutality and great levels of intensity that very few bands can delivers with such a quality production package.

Being huge fans of Ihsahn, we finally made the pilgrimage this year to watch him play live at the Afterburner in the legendary Roadburn Festival. Having surrounded himself with the extremely talented musicians of Leprous as his ‘backing band’, he delivered quite an impressive performance by nailing almost all the songs with brilliant technical perfection. Anyways, on his latest release, “Das Seelenbrechen”, he pushes the envelope even further with a lot of experimentation and a few of his signature elements. If you are expecting another “After” or “Eremita”, you might find yourself scratching your head a bit with this one.

Enlisting Leprous drummer-extraordinaire Tobias Ørnes Andersen for this release, Ihsahn as always handled everything else. Things seem to open in a very traditional way with the beginning of “Hilber”, a seemingly straightforward track that starts getting crazy as the odd keyboards come up. While this track is quite engaging, the weirdness is still manageable for all fans of Ihsahn. “Regen” takes a turn for the dramatic with clean vocals and a very dark vibe. The ballad-esque opening nicely builds up to some very epic moments as the song progresses. This track is one of our favorite ones thanks to the brilliant mood progression and dramatic climax.

After causing a lot of frowns and confusion with their solid “The Great Southern Darkness” release, France’s Glorior Belli returns with a more compact and fully integrated sound. In “Gators Rumble, Chaos Unfurs” their combination of Black Metal elements with a Southern Rock and Sludge comes to full fruition and delivers one of the best albums of 2013. With their previous album being a bigger jump of what we expected, we are glad that they regained control of their sound and produced 45 minutes of brilliant music.

Immediately as the album opens we have crushing twangy riffs that bleed Sludge and Southern Rock influences. The vocals are quite powerful and nicely complement the band’s knack for intoxicating melodies. While the band’s style change was very evident and in your face on their previous album, songs like “Wolves At My Door” and “Ain’t No Pit Deep Enough” quickly show how the tamed their explosive sound and combined better in this release.

With an eerie resemblance to Dark Lunacy and Eluveitie (sans the folk stuff), today we have Dawn of Tears and their excellent release “Act III: The Dying Eve”. Being huge fans of Melodic Death/Gothic Metal, this Spanish band blew us away since the first time we listened to this release. Mixing heavy guitars with tons of melodic/headbanging interludes and some female vocals and keyboards, they manage to deliver super catchy tracks that will have all fans of Dark Lunacy, Eternal Tears of Sorrow, etc. craving for more.

The album immediately starts on a high note with the high-octane “A Curse Herritage”. This track immediately shows great energy from this promising band. The incursion of female vocals is quite enjoyable, giving the music a completely different dimension. The album’s first single, “Present of Guilt”, is another mega-catchy melody that features an excellent chorus section and brilliant guitar work. With some cool atmospheric components, this song’s vocals reminded us of Eluveitie. Stepping up their game, “Lament of Madeleine” delivers a powerful opening that nicely turns mysterious in a very Eternal Tears of Sorrow way.

Nachtzeit’s one man project Lustre returns with another killer MCD featuring one 19 minute track title “A Spark of Times of Old”. For all fans of Atmospheric Black Metal, Lustre has been delivering very engaging releases since 2008, and with this EP the project continues to push forward their raw and uncompromising Black Metal filled with lush atmospheric elements and a certain feeling of bleakness that works great with this kind of music.

Opening in a very dramatic fashion, “A Spark of Times of Old” delivers a chilling introduction for what it’s set to be another epic Lustre release. The minimalistic atmospheric keyboards greatly setup a backdrop of ambiance for the crushing riffing and demoralizing vocals of Nachtzeit. We particularly enjoy how well Lustre manages to combine simple elements into a web of depressing and bleak soundscapes that very few bands can achieve, let alone in the first three minutes of a song. As the song progresses the atmosphere has slight changes thanks to the excellent keyboards, varying a bit from the basic structure but staying in tune with the overall nature of the track.

Delivering another brilliant onslaught of aggressive and catchy songs, today we have Sepultura and their latest release “The Mediator between Head and Hands Must Be the Heart”. With over 45 minutes of their signature sound, the band goes throw a wide variety of equally intoxicating tunes that will have all fans headbaning from beginning to end, and puzzling some with a few unconventional (for Sepultura) songs. With the band’s ‘new’ drummer, Eloy Casagrande, fully incorporated with the band, this is one release you don’t want to miss.

Opening with the powerful “Trauma of War”, we get the full-blown Seputural treatment with incisive riffs and pummeling vocals. The first unconventional song comes under the title of “The Vatican”, featuring very dark and sinister orchestrations to open. This reminded us a bit of Dimmu Borgir and Fleshgod Apocalypse thanks to how dramatic the song starts before it kicks off into full-on Sepultura mode with some pounding guitars and killer drumming. The tribal-esque drumming returns in “Impending Doom” and “The Bliss of Ignorants”, making these tracks very characteristic of the band.

Arriving today from Poland’s Hellthrasher Productions we have Desolator and their pummeling old-school Death Metal debut full-length “Unearthly Monument”. Featuring 48 minutes of neck-snapping music, this release caters to all nostalgic fans of the good old days of Death Metal filled with chugging riffs, insane solos, and soul stealing vocals. With a heavy emphasis on catchiness and headbanging moments, this release is quite entertaining for any fan of the genre.

The band immediately steamrolls the listener with crushing tracks like “Thy Flesh Consumed”, “Desolated”, and “Gravefeast”, all of them filled with powerful guitars and tight drumming. If you could mix Grave with Suffocation, Desolator is exactly what would result. The violence keeps rolling with “Mass Human Pyre” and “Infernal Gathering”, two songs that with the combination of vocals provided by three of the band’s members keep things fresh and with different levels of aggression.

As a release dedicated to Ildjarn, “Likegyldig Raseri” is a very raw and direct release by Frozen Ocean. While we are fans of the band’s Ambient Black Metal and Ambient/Drone escapades, we can’t say that we really got into this one. Featuring almost no atmospheric elements, this release focuses on barbaric riffing, hellish vocals, and ponding drums, something perfect for your average Black Metal fan, but from this band/project, we expected a lot more.

While not bad at all, from tracks I to VIII we only get skull crushing sawing guitars and demonic shrieks of pain, something that many would call paradise. We find these tracks a bit linear since the riffing gets to be quite repetitive, but for what it is, it is actually not that bad for the standard in the scene. It is not until IX that we get a torturous break with some creepy atmosphere and some nerve wrecking vocals.

Originally recorded in 2009, today we have Frozen Ocean and ‘their’ release “Vestigial Existence”. This highly active one-man outfit keeps cranking out releases like they are pancakes, but impressively enough they are all pretty good. Whether they are Dark Ambient/Drone or Atmospheric Black Metal, the releases by this band are very well crafted and deliver the right amount of melody, atmosphere, and aggression. Luckily for us, this release is more on the Metal side, and we can enjoy some cool atmospheric elements thrown in with punishing riffs.

Immediately after the ambient intro “In Derelict”, the guitars start pounding on “Winter – Aelean Being”. In this track, a very melancholic vibe is present thanks to the solemn riffs and powerful vocals. The song structure is quite engaging and you can hear that is some of Frozen Ocean’s earlier work since their style is not as refined and sounds rawer. The catchiness is always present with “Mute Walls” and some cool sort-of-electronic elements that make this song very appealing for fans of Industrial Black Metal.