Ab'Bhau - Devastaciones Bajo El Fulgor Del Vacmo - VINYL LP

Abhoria was created by guitarist Vor (aka Trevor Portz of Ashen Horde) as a way to satiate his appetite to play classic, aggressive black metal. Recruiting some top-notch players from the L.A. metal underground to join him, he rounded out the band with vocalist Walthrax (ex- Catheter) and bassist Koszmar (Vimana). The band quickly got to work on their debut album with engineer Shane Howard (Vale of Pnath, Martriden, Helleborus), and the result is a black metal album that harks back to the 90s black metal scene, but with modern production. While rooted in the more brutal side of black metal, the album blends the requisite blast beats and tremolo picked guitars with many melodic passages, doom-inspired detours and a variety of tempos. While InchMountebankInch is a relentless blitz of high-speed black metal, closing track InchSunlessInch is a seven-minute epic that incorporates mid-paced, atmospheric grooves and clean vocals. Though the energy never relents, the album is not relentless. Abhoria is hellbent on carrying on the musical torch of the genre's founding fathers Immortal, Dark Funeral and Emperor.

Back with their fourth album Heresiarch, THE Ritual Aura is firing on all cylinders with 11 new songs of brilliant progressive technical death metal. The 56-minute album takes you on an epic trek from delicate clean passages to furious blast beats and face-melting string ferocity, highlighted especially in the 15-minute album closer, InchDenouement Knell.Inch This album is a must for any fan of technical or progressive death metal.

If there is a musical equivalent to a great French red wine The music of Émile-Robert Blanchet would be a worthy candidate. Karl-Andreas Kolly has taken on piano music by his Swiss compatriot and recorded it on Super Audio album, much of it probably for the first time. Blanchet studied with Busoni, so it's no wonder that his music, too, knows no bounds pianistically. The naturalness with which Andreas Kolly masters these supreme difficulties leaves room for musical depth with long enduring resonance. After studying in Weimar and Berlin, Blanchet returned to Lausanne, where he taught at the conservatoire and also took over it's direction for a time. At the age of 40, however, he turned his back on teaching to devote himself almost exclusively to his passion, mountaineering. Fortunately, he continued to play occasional recitals, for which he repeatedly composed his own pieces. Blanchet is obviously not interested in virtuoso effect. Again and again, there are harsh dissonances in the full-bodied chords that create an intense, sometimes downright threatening atmosphere, as in InchTocsinInch (Alarm Bell), which - unlike many nationalistically euphoric contemporaries - seems to foreshadow the horrors of the First World War as early as August 1914. Whether in the numerous etudes, ballads or nocturnes Blanchet's idiosyncratic harmonies unfold their multi-layered charms above all in the aftertaste. Karl-Andreas Kolly traces these special sounds with great sensitivity; the Steinway concert grand InchManfred BürkiInch from 1901 with it's profound depth and brilliant treble does the rest for a lasting listening experience that virtually invites repetition.