As another year draws to a close, Jools Green says it is time to reflect on the highlights.
Album Of The Year – SARKE – Endo Feight
My album of the year was an easy choice. For me, it could only be SARKE’s eighth full-length studio offering, Endo Feight. This is a release that not only blew me away after the very first listen but has gone on to be an album that I listened to obsessively on a daily basis for weeks afterwards. It still gets regular airtime from me, more so than any other album I can think of.
They have not ever done a bad album or track, in my opinion, but Endo Feight has pushed the bar even higher, encompassing aspects of their past offerings with gripping lyrics alongside some standout blues/rock guitar work woven into their unique and innovative meld of ’70s rock, ’80s Speed Metal and ’90s Black Metal.
Song Of The Year – SARKE – Lost
Not surprisingly, my song of the year is Lost, also from SARKE’s Endo Feight. One of the slower-paced pieces from the album, it is a dramatic offering of contrasting elements that meld impactfully. While it is keyboard-based, it has superb guitarwork coursing over it, much of which has that previously mentioned blues/rock feel, adding a haunting atmosphere.
The spoken vocal delivery of the bleak lyrics and sparse but well-placed drum beats create, together, a dark, unnerving quality to the track that gets inside your head, and you just can’t shake it off.
Completing my Top 10 albums are these nine other superb albums, all of equal merit.
Svarttjern – Draw Blood
A straightforward but blistering Black Metal offering harbouring elements of Thrash and rock within the mix with lyrical themes of misanthropy, necrophilia and Satanism. Draw Blood is a filthy offering that I just cannot resist.
Duisternis – Relapse Into Submission
Not content with releasing the impressive Unity Unto None EP at the beginning of the year, musician and photographer Chris Howell ended the year with a follow-up full length. Built on solid Black Metal foundations, there is a huge element of that sound definitely coming from thinking outside of the box, resulting in unique and innovative, atmospheric Black Metal that engages and intrigues.
Relapse Into Submission is an album that can only be described as creative brilliance at its finest.
Shattered Hope – Memoir EP
Memoir is a hugely emotive listen that delivers an impressive vocal range throughout, alongside a broad range of moods and styles to the tracks, Shattered Hope are not afraid to get creative with their sound. This is also an EP with one of the best-reinterpreted covers I have heard, that of Diafana Krina’s Ble Himonas, where they have added a superb Doom edge to the track.
Werewolves – Die For Us
Described by the band in true Aussie humour as “yet another barrage of completely moronic Death Metal,” Die For Us is, in fact, a blisteringly good listen filled with humorous lyrics to make you laugh as you headbang yourself into oblivion.
Horned Almighty – Contagion Zero
A dose of Black Metal brutality Danish style, Contagion Zero is a superb album that holds your attention end to end. It is brutal, varied, fully engaging and, most importantly, one you want to listen to again and again.
Arx Atrata – A Reckoning
A solo atmospheric Black Metal project by multi-instrumentalist Ben Sizer, A Reckoning is a beautifully reflective and easy listen that finds inspiration in existentialism, life and death and the past. You can lose yourself within a shadowy landscape as you journey through this melancholic and reflectively atmospheric offering.
Aklash – Reincarnation
A powerfully emotive and engaging listen end to end where the time and effort put into every element of its creation is very apparent. Reincarnation is a release that, although Black Metal, goes far beyond the established boundaries of the genre, making it such a unique creation.
Dødsferd – Wrath
Thematically a release that “carries in its wake a vigorous indictment of the social and economic consequences of capitalism, political corruption, ecocide, and the largest argument against our civility, warfare”, Wrath is also a crushingly good chunk of furious Black Metal and the latest edition to a consistently superb catalogue of music that spans over twenty years.
Khold – Du dømmes til Død
The band’s eighth offering and a concept album about henchmen and various people being condemned to the death penalty throughout Norwegian history, Du dømmes til Død is an irresistible slab of raw, down-tuned, mid-pace, groovy and addictive Black Metal and a superb album from start to finish.
Gig Of The Year
My gig of the year has to be Marduk at the Fleece in Bristol on 18 April 2024. It was an interesting mix of bands. The opening act, the female-fronted Dutch Black Metal outfit Doodswens, gave a good performance and set the mood for the evening in a very positive light. Main support were US Technical Brutal Death Metallers Origin, who were well overdue a revisit.
Origin absolutely blew me away with the visual spectacle that is their masterfully technical and visually flamboyant guitar work, particularly Mike Flores’ bass lines.
The headliners, Swedish Black Metal legends Marduk delivered, as always, a superbly powerful and impactful performance. They whipped the crowd up into such a frenzy with a swirling pit, crowd surfing and flying drinks. I found myself clinging to a pillar, grinning like a Cheshire cat and trying not to get swept away in the melee.
A truly exhilarating experience and one that required a relaxing drink in the pub next door afterwards to quieten myself.
Event Of The Year
The event of the year was Cosmic Void Black Metal Festival, 13 – 15 September in London, at the O2 Islington Academy, the Electric Ballroom, The Underworld and The Black Heart, Camden. The high point for me was when Tulus performed their debut album from 1996, Pure Black Energy.
As a studio offering, it is a good album, but live, twenty-eight years on with a wealth of experience behind them, it was delivered superbly with power, conviction and finesse. There were so many other great bands, including Necro Ritual, Taur-Im-Duinath, Mortuary Drape, Cistvaen and Aklash. I am definitely looking forward to what next year’s festival will bring.
