Stronger than Love: A Primer on Latvian Extreme Metal

Welcome to the third installment of the Baltic Metal Primers. Earlier this year, I discussed Lithuanian black metal and Estonian death metal, which included brief overviews of metal in context of Baltic history and culture. These primers primarily focused on Baltic metal in the 1990s shortly after the countries’ independence following the collapse of the USSR (and subsequently ending several […]

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Weakling – Dead As Dreams

Recommendation: 🐺🐺🐺 Released only seven years after the first Burzum album, Weakling’s Dead as Dreams pioneered a wave of American black metal bands1 that was so distinct from its Scandinavian predecessors that it even earned its own tag: “US Black Metal,” or USBM. For better or for worse – and more often the former, much to the chagrin of Weakling’s […]

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Drudkh – Forgotten Legends

Recommendation: 🐺🐺☁ Low fidelity production in black metal can be an immensely efficacious tool in establishing atmosphere, with the most (in?)famous example being Darkthrone’s Transilvanian Hunger. Sometimes a lo-fi aesthetic is necessitated by financial constraints on behalf of the band, which is at least one of the reasons why Ulver’s Nattens Madrigal – Aatte Hymne til Ulven i Manden has its characteristic buzzsaw […]

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Announcement: Welcome to SUNNbleach

Upon much consideration, the editors of the on-line music publication known as Sunbleach have decided that it is time for a change. Sunbleach has been a part of the vaporwave community for ten months now, amassing over one thousand articles including over two hundred reviews. However, vaporwave is dead. Therefore, it is with a heavy heart that we sing a […]

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