#NowPlaying

Plexamp's random album radio feature gave me an album about witchcraft, fitting for the current month... 🎃 🧹

Witching Hour by The Vision Bleak

bandcamp link:
https://the-vision-bleak.bandcamp.com/album/witching-hour

album.link:
https://album.link/t/175548830

#Music #Metal #GothicMetal #DarkMetal #TheVisionBleak

On this day, 20 years ago... The Vision Bleak released their amazing album 'Carpathia: A Dramatic Poem' 🖤

bandcamp link:
https://the-vision-bleak.bandcamp.com/album/carpathia-a-dramatic-poem

album.link:
https://album.link/i/1556152307

#Music #Metal #GothicMetal #TheVisionBleak #NowPlaying

#TheVisionBleak
#TheIdleImbed
01/08/2025

https://www.purgatoire.fr/merch/merch-656_the-vision-bleak

#TheVisionBleak
#TheUnknown
09/07/2025

https://www.purgatoire.fr/merch/merch-296_the-vision-bleak

Sun After Dark – Tatkraft Review

By Mystikus Hugebeard

Sun After Dark is an enigmatic new project that comes to us from one Benjamin König. He was a co-founding member and the principal composer of frigid black metal legends Lunar Aurora, which will surely excite my Dear and Hollow friend, but has very few listed musical credits since Lunar Aurora’s dissolution in 2012. In the interim, König has been a prolific artist, providing album artwork for bands like Botanist, Horna, Equilibrium, and so on. In fact, König’s artwork for Polar Veil by Hexvessel was even awarded 10th place on GardensTale’s Illustrious Artwork Extravaganza. Today, Herr König is cursed blessed with his first trve AMG review, for his first musical work in roughly a decade: Tatkraft.

At the risk of oversimplifying the myriad of musical ideas within Tatkraft, I would affectionately classify Tatkraft as blackened gothic metal. The opening volley efficiently demonstrates what Sun After Dark is about. “Dawn and Dirges” opens with a bevy of keyboard effects augmenting the guitars as they grow in intensity, launching into an immensely satisfying riff as the vocals appear. Thomas Helm (Empyrium, and the other permanent member of Sun After Dark) has a rich, operatic croon that contrasts nicely with Matthias Jell’s (Azathoth from Dark Fortress) nastier shrieks. “Waidmanns Hoffnung” shows visions of Tatkraft’s slower side, interspersing long passages of gloomy guitars and electronic drums with brief forays into blackened aggression. Like a medium-rare steak and red wine, the softer and heavier sides of Tatkraft pair deliciously. Tatkraft will often remind one of other bands—the vibes are a little bit The Vision Bleak, there’s some ambient traces of Lunar Aurora to be found, naturally, and Helm’s singular vocals cannot help but evoke Empyrium—but König balances the album’s sonic elements with finesse and creativity such that Tatkraft sounds wholly original throughout.

While the facets of Tatkraft complement each other well, the album’s greatest strength lies in König‘s inspired songwriting; the mashed potatoes with our steak and wine, if you will. Gnashing guitars (“Dawn and Dirges”), emotionally rich melodies (“Leaving Metropolis”), or folksy energy (“Schlittenfahrt”) hooks the listener straight away, until repeat listens reveal the layers of depth König has hidden behind the musicianship. In this regard, Tatkraft’s keyboards rival Atlas in weight carried. Flanging and warbling keyboards form a swirling tempest around the guitars in “Dawn and Dirges,” “Burning Blue,” “Antarctic Morning,” or they eke out a siren’s droning hum in “Waidmanns Hoffnung,” or any of the other infinite tiny tricks heard across the whole of Tatkraft. It’s all subtle and unobtrusive, and it’s a great way to utilize the negative space that makes for some wonderful moments like the blaring emergency honks atop chugging guitars towards the end of “Antarctic Morning.” The mix, by Victor Bullok of Triptykon, enables this depth to shine through while the moment-to-moment experience remains immediate and engaging.

What ultimately holds Tatkraft back from the higher score it deserves is a matter of focus. König is undoubtedly a talented songwriter with solid songcraft ideas, but these ideas infrequently culminate into a single, structurally satisfying whole. What highlights this are the sheer strength of “Burning Blue” and “Antarctic Morning,” where each sequence seamlessly flows into the next until reaching the climax. These songs do wield some of the strongest material in Tatkraft, so perhaps they’re unfairly advantaged. Still, there is a clear-cut and engaging progression to each song’s flow, which in turn highlights the opposite in “Ohne Grab” and “Schlittenfahrt.” Each song is similarly laden with strong ideas—I love the raking guitars that open “Ohne Grab” and the polka-inspired riffs of “Schlittenfahrt” (featuring Mosaic’s Martin Falkenstein) are a blast in a vacuum—but the flow is absent. The individual sequences in “Ohne Grab” are starkly different from one another, and the transitions between them lack any grace, while “Schlittenfahrt,” despite a strong core riff, feels incomplete, as if it were missing its second or third act. But ultimately, these rough edges do feel earned, not so much subtracting from the big picture but adding texture. No song on Tatkraft lacks in inspiration or sincerity, and boredom will be a foreign concept during your listening experience.

In the end, Tatkraft has made me an eager fan of Sun After Dark. There are a few things here and there to be ironed out, but I feel genuinely excited for Sun After Dark’s future. I shall be recommending Tatkraft to like-minded individuals, but when the day arrives, we get an album full of “Burning Blue”‘s and “Antarctic Morning”‘s, no god nor king could stop my blackened gothic crusade from spreading Sun After Dark to all.

Rating: Good!!
DR: 5 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Hammerheart Records
Websites: facebook | bandcamp
Releases Worldwide: June 13th, 2025

#2025 #30 #BlackMetal #BlackenedGothic #DarkFortress #Empyrium #GermanMetal #GothicMetal #Jun25 #LunarAurora #Mosaic #Review #Reviews #SunAfterDark #Tatkraft #TheVisionBleak #Triptykon

"This is the night of the living dead,
A nightmare- The devil's called is creatures,
all are out to get your head!"

#TKZmusica #Musica #TheVisionBleak

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R471z1CrQbI

Ya la he puesto por aqui alguna vez, pero nunca seran tantas como este temazo de The Moody blues versioneado por The Vision Bleak se merece. Asi que coged aire, hinchad bien vuestros pulmones, y que se entere esa persona.  

¡¡'CAUSE I LOVE YOUUUU, YES I LOVE YOUUUU!!

#TKZmusica #Musica #TheVisionBleak #NightsInWhiteSatin

https://youtu.be/l3_plgOzwCE

#TheVisionBleak
#IntoTheUnknown
22/05/2025

https://www.purgatoire.fr/merch/merch-511_the-vision-bleak

In the Woods… – Otra Review

By Dr. A.N. Grier

Oh, yay, I get to review In the Woods…!! How I haven’t reviewed them before is beyond me. I must have been in the bathroom or something. I’ve been jamming to these guys forever, which led me to another favorite band: Green Carnation. As stated before by Z and Ferox, these Norwegians are an odd bunch that can’t quite figure out what they want to be, like gender confusion but genre confusion. After almost four decades in business, they’ve tinkered with everything from black to doom to progressive metal. As of 2022’s Diversum, In the Woods… has pretty much combined all their genre influences into one. In some cases, it works; in other cases, it’s a touch messy. That said, I think I liked Diversum more than Ferox because I thought the individual songs came together nicely to create the album, though there were obvious issues with some of the tracks. Some of it might be the new singer on staff. Or, it could be the songwriting as a whole. But Fjellestad is a solid addition to the crew, returning once again for this year’s Otra. The question is, will we see another side of In the Woods…, or will they finally reel in their influences to release something stunning?

One thing I can say that should please those who weren’t quite thrilled with the new vocalist on Diversum is that Fjellestad and the band have come quite a way since 2022. I’m not saying the vocals are better (because he’s a good vocalist), but the performance and songwriting are stronger on Otra. It might be because this time around, the album has a theme that connects the songs. Personifying the Otra river in Norway, the album flows through tumultuous rapids and sputtering streams, bringing the water molecules together for a forty-five-minute rafting trip. Now that we are in a boat instead of the forest, will Otra supply a soothing mist to my face or give me… wood? Wait.

“The Things You Shouldn’t Know” begins right away with gentle guitars and soothing vocals before it erupts into harsh vox and a grooving black metal lick. As this eight-plus-minute beauty builds, it alternates between Green Carnation-like passages and Borknagar/Vintersorg-esque black metal blasts. You’ll also find passionate guitar leads here (and elsewhere on the album) that push the vocals to soaring heights. The bigness only gets bigger when a second voice partners with Fjellestad in the final chorus. “The Crimson Crown” is another biggun that opens with pleasing keys that morph into a blanket of atmoblack riffage before cruising into a bass-led verse. Then, the song explodes into a Borknagar-ish chorus with alternating clean and harsh vox that works so damn well. One of the song’s coolest sections involves a calmness over the water, where Fjellestad adds subtle movement to his voice that adds layers to the music.

Other stellar tracks are “Let Me Sing” and the closing number, “The Wandering Deity.” The closer expands on that vocal wizardry of “The Crimson Crown” by hypnotizing the airwaves with vibrato. This slick addition makes the song’s final chorus that much more impactful. Being less than six minutes in length, this song sure as hell does a lot. Using a Green Carnation foundation, it slithers its way through dark, black metal riffage, gorgeous melodies, and even some black ‘n’ roll a la Carpathian Forest. “Let Me Sing” begins as an innocent piece, introducing it with muffled keys. That’s until the sinister mid-paced chug comes in, accompanied by a surprising vocal arrangement that brings to mind Type O Negative and The Vision Bleak. This song is one of the better tracks at alternating between clean and harsh. I also can’t move on without mentioning the bass work. Not only is it more prominent than other tracks, but nothing quite gets me erect like a bass slide.

The track that does not do well at alternating between the soft and hard sections is “The Kiss and the Lie.” While not a terrible track, its transitions feel forced and awkward, making it difficult to enjoy compared to the other pieces. “Come Ye Sinners” almost suffers the same fate, but the performances make up for it in the back half to save it. While Otra would do better with a more dynamic master, I can’t deny that the songwriting and vocal performances are some of the best in this new era of In the Woods… Taking what they learned from Diversum and polishing it up, this outing is a tight, seven-track affair and one of my favorites of theirs. Though, it’s damn near impossible to achieve what they did in the past, Otra is a pleasing listen and well worth a spin for In the Woods… enthusiasts.

Rating: 3.5/5.0
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 320 kb/s mp3
Label: Prophecy Productions
Websites: in-the-woods.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/inthewoods
Releases Worldwide: April 11th, 2025

#2025 #35 #Apr25 #AvantGarde #BlackMetal #Borknagar #CarpathianForest #GothicMetal #GreenCarnation #InTheWoods #NorwegianMetal #Otra #ProgressiveMetal #ProphecyProductions #Review #Reviews #TheVisionBleak #TypeONegative #Vintersorg