Kommodus - An Imperial Sun Rises (2019)

Artist: Kommodus

Album: An Imperial Sun Rises (demo)

Genre: Black Metal

Country: Australia

Label: Unsigned

Preview Track:

At the end of the day, I think I just like Kommodus because they're weird. I mean, they're not necessarily the weirdest band I've come across and all four of main-man Lepidus Plague's demos under the Kommodus name have amounted to similarly raw and inscrutable black metal. There's definitely kookier musicians in extreme metal today, but Kommodus have my kind of kooky in them, the kind of kooky that amounts to an Aussie black metaller that normally writes about ancient Rome due to his Italian ancestry suddenly dropping a demo centered around Japanese author Yukio Mishima. I'm going to ignore for now that Mishima was an outspoken anti-Marxist activist in a nation that is to this day extremely nationalistic and racist (frankly there's a couple of lines in the Bandcamp description for this album that imply a bit about Lepidus Plague's politics) since it's all very vague and ambiguous. While I'm not a fan of all that, I am a fan of the visceral, vicious black metal on An Imperial Sun Rises. The difficulty is that it really is a very inscrutable style that makes it difficult to talk about. It's cavernous, warm yet with a bit of harsh treble in the mix to keep it old school, and the riffs trend a bit towards first wave classics more so than the second wave. There's a fair helping of melody in there too so it's not all angry blasting. That's about it. Part of what draws me to this demo and its predecessors is that vagueness you can't quite grasp, that quality that pushes you away as much as it draws you in. Maybe Kommodus aren't really the weird ones. Maybe it's just me.

K O M M O D U S

Ancient Hostility - Ancient Hostility (2019)

Artist: Ancient Hostility

Album: Ancient Hostility (S/T)

Genre: Dissonant Black Metal

Country: Ukraine

Label: Akashic Envoy Records

Preview Track:

At this point it seems undeniable that 2019 is the year of black metal. The parade of excellence has been nearly unending; Yellow Eyes, Remete, Saor, Vanum, Vimur, Akasha, even total shockers like Murg's latest have exceeded expectations. Thus, it comes as little surprise now that Ancient Hostility, a brand new Ukrainian/American duo (most of the work done by Ukraine's SadVoice while Imber provides vocals from the US), have succeeded in slipping their self-titled debut into my list of favorites for the year.

At first appearing fairly normal, Ancient Hostility soon advance beyond the well trodden boundaries of dissonant hellfire black metal into more interesting territory. Not that their take on it is stale in the first place, there's an unusually weighty low end to the album and the riffs, while not as demonically concocted as some from the famous Icelandic scene, vary wildly between straightforward tremolo barrages to doom dirges and death metal thunder. Dismal melodies dance on top of the often pummeling riffs so that there's always a multi-dimensional sound, a foundation laid to maintain atmosphere and imagery while the guitars paint grim portraits from the abyss. "Bloodied Fields", found late in the back half, betrays the duo's ambitions beyond just nihilistic BM. It's a startling melodic song backed with the same colossal low end, but with truly beautiful and meditative sounds overhead. It's not long though that we see a return to pummeling riffs and even some spastic breaks akin to something you might find in metalcore were it not for the murkier paint job. Ultimately not as adventurous as their follow-up will likely be, Ancient Hostility still impress greatly with a varied and well executed debut that sets up grander things in the future.

A N C I E N T H O S T I L I T Y