Morgul - The Horror Grandeur - VINYL LP

Five of Cups opens with the title track, establishing the album's auditory and thematic modus operandi from the get-go. Holy Wave's lysergic textural palette is immediately apparent in the song's woozy synth lead and anti-gravity guitar jangle, but the atypical chord progressions and vocal melody steers the music away from anodyne escapism into a pensive grappling between self-determination and defeatism. Holy Wave continue to ride the wistful and phantasmic train on InchBog Song,Inch where the members vacillate between swells of austere minor chords and layered electric orchestration. From there, the previously released digital single InchChaparralInch plays with the band's own sense of nostalgia, weaving references of their El Paso past into a tapestry of transcendental triumph. Like so much classic album-oriented rock music, the real magic begins to unfold in the latter half of Five of Cups. On InchThe Darkest Timeline,Inch Holy Wave recruits their friends Lorena Quintanilla and Alberto Gonzalez from the Baja California, Mexico psych duo Lorelle Meets the Obsolete to add additional ethereal layers to their intoxicating after-midnight grooves. InchNothing in the DarkInch functions on a similar principle, using a steady propulsive drum pattern as the bedrock to tape-warbled synths, arpeggiated guitar chords, jet streams of fuzz, and serene vocals. Five of Cups' ruminations on combating defeat and disappointment are directly confronted on album closer InchHappier.Inch Once again straddling the melodic line between melancholy and breezy sophistication, Holy Wave examines the synthetic construct of happiness in our modern age and how so often the attainment of comfort lacks any true sense of joy. Yet this isn't some nihilistic dirge. Rather, it translates as a buoyant reminder that the bandwidth of human experience inherently requires peaks and valleys, and that euphor

Album Tracks 1. Colonia Dignidad 2. A Mendacious Myth 3. Extinction Threshold 4. Hermann's End 5. Mother Knows Best 6. Earthlings

With their fourth studio album InchHulders RitualInch ('Ritual of the Huldra'), Slagmaur break the chains of repetition and nostalgia by rewriting the rules of black metal. This does not mean abandoning the foundations of the genre, which is already indicated by working with the 'inventor' of the 'Norwegian black metal sound', THORNS mastermind Snorre W. Ruch, as an additional producer. The band's founder, General Gribbsphiiser, rather unafraid and with reckless abandon mutates and warps the traditional formula through a host of subtle innovations and tweaks of the classic sound. Although InchHulders RitualInch continues, refines, and widens the daring stylistic balance of Slagmaur's previous works, it adds an extra dimension of sardonic mania to it's collection of sharp and vicious sonic instruments. Choice guest-contributions that include TAAKE vocalist Hoest, DIMMU BORGIR guitarist Silenoz, and MISTHYRMING frontman D.G., who cover three decades of Nordic black metal make a case in point. Slagmaur hail from Brekstad on the Fosen peninsula in the Trondelag region and are a part of the Trondheim-based 'Nidrosian black metal movement'. Although Gribbsphiiser started the band as a solo project, he already recruited fellow musicians during the recording of his first demo, InchSvinInch (2006). Slagmaur's black avant-garde debut album, InchSkrekk Lich KunstlerInch (2007), marked the premier instalment in the still-unfolding series, InchThe Art of OldermanInch. The following studio albums InchVon Rov ShelterInch (2009) and InchThill Smitts TerrorInch (2017) continued this story arc. InchHulders RitualInch is for those, who are seeking musical darkness, magic, and the relentless breaking of limitations from black metal. Slagmaur push forward among the select few that are leading the way to the future of the genre. Album Tracks 1. Ritual Dogs 2. Wildkatze 3. Hulderg