The Ruins of Beverast has never released a bad album. Its architect, Nagelfar alum Alexander von Meilenwald, has both a devotion to the trve and old-school as well as a flexibility to experiment, creating a legendary discography that feels like a natural progression from beginning to end. From the early and raw marriage of black metal and doom that set the foundation with genre classics Unlock the Shrine and Rain Upon the Impure, to the more melodic and ritualistic horrors of Foulest Semen of a Sheltered Elite and Blood Vaults, culminating in the ritual-imbued pinnacle Exuvia, the act has an uncanny ability to recall the familiar while trudging into unexplored territory. Tempelschlaf is the newest installment of just that.

If I’m being honest, I was not a fan of predecessor The Thule Grimoires – not for a flaw on von Meilenwald’s part but of my own preferences. Case in point, its heavier Type O Negative Gothic leanings and interplay of chord structures and themes weren’t necessarily my cup of tea, although they definitely were the gone-but-unforgotten Akerblogger’s brew of choice. Tempelschlaf echoes The Thule Grimoires in psychedelic textures and a more prominent baritone clean vocal presence that conjures a ritualistic madness, streamlined into a stronger crescendo and sense of purpose, as well as its signature breed of atmospheric black-doom with a hint of death metal. Tempelschlaf is exactly what you’d expect from The Ruins of Beverast.

Tempelschlaf by The Ruins Of Beverast

As always, balance and songwriting are The Ruins of Beverast’s priority, demonstrating von Meilenwald’s dedication to both progression and devotion to the blackened arts. As seen throughout the act’s legendary discography, Tempelschlaf features seamless movements from furious blasting to simmering menace to crystalline psychedelia to climactic solos, which is a clear winning formula, bolstered by a dichotomy of plodding black/doom furor and ritualistic placidity. The opening title track is of special note for its shifts and subtlety: blackened intensity is placed in the background in favor of a mammoth and dense foray into doom-saturated goth rock, giving a blackened Depeche Mode vibe with a lack of harsh vocals and instead, baritone sermons atop pulsing ritualistic drums guiding into a dreary and menacing goth verses, drenched in frosted keys and psychedelic textures. It sets the tone for the rest of the album, giving The Ruins of Beverast perhaps their biggest crescendo yet.

While the focus shifts from a mind-altering breed of psychedelic and dense doom metal in the opener, the rest of the album offers no gentle reprieve. While the wavering between the simmering and the searing is an asset for The Ruins of Beverast, it’s far more intense with a trve blackened assault guiding the proceedings (“Day of the Poacher”), but the back half of the album finds the album remarkably cohesive – the collision of ideas creating some of the most epic and grandiose movements since Exuvia. The drums’ mammoth pace, the guitar tone whose heft and barb are equally displayed, the venomous and toxic shrieks, and the otherworldly atmosphere through classic synth textures assemble in a massive sound that already feels like AOTY material (“Cathedral of Bleeding Statues,” “Alpha Fluids,” “The Carrion Cocoon”), interspersed by moments of furious blackened intensity (“Babel, You Scarlet Queen!”) and the lull before the storm (“Last Theatre of the Sea”). These tracks are the exemplar for The Ruins of Beverast’s breed of blackened doom, once again reinforcing itself as the upper echelon through von Meilenwald’s legendary career.

It’s nearly impossible for Beverast to top Exuvia, but without its first two tracks, Tempelschlaf comes damn close. It is not that the title track or “Day of the Poacher” fall short, but rather that their place in the album is to set the stage for the better pieces, complete with more abrupt tonal shifts, heightened melody, and just a bit too much chaos. That being said, von Meilenwald once again outdoes himself with an album devoted to blackened fury, monolithic doom, and otherworldly atmospheric textures, incorporating hints of the psychedelic goth rock of The Thule Grimoires in a far more streamlined capacity. Tempelschlaf is The Ruins of Beverast doing business as usual: growth, experimentation, and excellence.

Rating: 4.0/5.0
DR: 7 | Format Reviewed: 320 kb/s mp3
Label: Ván Records
Websites: theruinsofbeverast.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/the.ruins.of.beverast
Releases Worldwide: January 9th, 2026

Morast – Fentanyl Review

By Steel Druhm

I knew absolutely nothing of German blackened death-doom act Morast, but the promo description intrigued me and made me want to seize the means of review for their third album, Fentanyl. What I got for my troubles was the experience of being smashed into bloody jelly while simultaneously being suffocated by unspeakable evil and darkness. Fentanyl is a nihilistic nightmare of an album, crushingly heavy, unrelenting, and overloaded with oppressive atmospheres and existential dread. As caustic as the name implies, this hellish, dissonant soundscape borrows from acts like The Ruins of Beverast, Ulcerate, and vintage Behemoth, but it’s a unique monstrosity that wants to hurt you badly.

Opener “Of Furor and Ecstacy” wastes no time burning down your comfort zone with crawling, slithering abominations of sound as riffs lurch and ooze all over you before they start cracking bones to get at the marrow within. Ex-Nagelfar vocalist Zingultus roars and cackles insanely like someone possessed by a demonic entity, and his crazed, unsettling verbalizations recall Attila Csihar’s work on De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas. The riffs from J. Slug are insanely raw, crushing, and dissonant, scouring and abrading your nerve endings even as they piledriver you into the muddy earth. This is the sound of the comfortable world around you coming apart at the seams. “Aratron” continues to hammer at your sanity with massively inexorable riffs that pulverize all before them. If a song could break the heaviness scale, this is it. You need to hear this to appreciate just how monolithic it feels. Little bits of bleak post-y term work eventually leak in to add grim adornments and darken the mood as Zingultus uses deep, baritone cleans to impart an unnerving ritualistic vibe to the horror show. It’s all done so well that it becomes unnaturally gripping and inescapable.

Over the short but uniformly savage 34-minute runtime, Fentanyl delivers one sadistic beatdown after another. There’s a certain one-note flavor to the torture parade but within the meatgrinder, you’ll encounter a subtle variety of blades. “Walls Come Closer” is less dizzyingly chaotic, focusing on a grinding doom plod with vaguely melodic lines floating outside the abrasive riffs. “A Thousand and More” adopts the same formula but ratchets everything up for a grand flattening of reality via ginormous riffs and twisted vocals. Colossal closer “On Pyre” primes the pump with droning, disso leads, and sprinkles Behemoth-esque bits of grandiose bombast throughout its nearly 8-minute slog. It’s a wild ride but it could stand some trimming as things get a touch monotonous towards the end. Bloat exists on other cuts as well, but here it’s the most noticeable. The relative brevity of the album is a blessing, as much more of this kind of material would truly be too much to bear. The production is dense, oppressive, and suffocating, creating a genuine sense of claustrophobia. Unfortunately, there are weird glitches in the sound at times where the volume drops abruptly before eventually resetting. I’m hoping it’s a promo issue rather than an album problem because that would be a shame.

The fiends behind Fentanyl are well-traveled vets with lots of time in the trenches. J. Slug’s riffs and “harmonies” are the reason the album delivers such a massive impact. The man creates absolute horrors on his fretboard, triggering real feelings of anxiety, dread, and terror. Adding to the discomfort, Zingultus goes all in vocally, blending black and death tropes to destabilize the mind. He often sounds deranged and fanatical, lending the material an extra sense of volatility. Some of his lines sound pathologically insane, and he even verges on vomiting sounds on a few occasions during this vocal tour de force. Leonardo Bardelle absolutely smashes his kit into assdust but offers rare moments of calm restraint that make the harder moments all the more shocking and disruptive. A great performance by all involved.

Fentanyl is not an album to relax with on a quiet winter evening or to nod along to on your daily commute. This is the sound of a descent into Hell. You will be tested, tortured, and terrorized in equal measure. I got a lot more than I bargained for on this one, and Morast left a deep impression on my brain stem. Fentanyl falls just shy of greatness, but you should schedule a time to be brutalized by this thing ASAP. You know you deserve it for that awful thing you did.

Rating: 3.5/5.0
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Ván Records
Websites: facebook.com/officialmorast | instagram.com/morast_doom
Releases Worldwide: February 7th, 2025

#2025 #35 #Behemoth #BlackMetal #DeathMetal #DoomMetal #Feb25 #Fentanyl #GermanMetal #Morast #Nagelfar #Review #Reviews #TheRuinsOfBeverast #Ulcerate #VanRecords

#weeklylastfm for week 34 of 2021

first time properly listening to #LunarAurora even though I've been around during their last decade before disbanding.
New split by Moeror / Human Serpent / #Kvadrat wins this week.

Top weekly artists for Halbeard
1. Lunar Aurora (27 plays)
2. #Moeror (22 plays)
3. #HumanSerpent (17 plays)
4. #Voidhaven (15 plays)
5. Délétère (14 plays)
6. Iku-Turso (14 plays)
7. #Nagelfar (14 plays)
8. #Viharukous (14 plays)
42 different artists in this time period

#weeklylastfm for week 33 of 2021

The chart came out very satisfying this week... alright I admit I completed that traffic light pattern with #Grima, #Urfaust & #BlazeOfPerdition after the first two circle covers aligned

Top weekly artists for Halbeard
1. Grima (27 plays)
2. #Aoratos (24 plays)
3. #Abigor (19 plays)
4. #Nagelfar (15 plays)
5. #Laoch (13 plays)
6. #Viharukous (13 plays)
7. Au-Dessus (12 plays)
8. Urfaust (12 plays)
48 different artists in this time period