Job - Nascentes Morimur

Genre: Ambient/Funeral Doom Metal
Year: 2008

Nascentes Morimus - From the moment we are born, we die. The slow and inevitable realization of decrepitude. Transcendental death metal interlaced with introspective ambient undertones.

WRNLRD - In From the Night Herd

Genre: Ambient/Black/Noise
Year: 2007

The bizarre individual that masks himself under the moniker WRNLRD is no stranger to sound experimentation. He began recording and releasing albums himself and was later [and rightfully so] picked up by a label. While this release still falls under the self-produced category do not let that fool you. Easily his most ambient release, the music and production here is quite thick and laden with atmosphere. Eerie noises creep and swirl around you, voices jut out of the darkness and beckon you into it's murky darkness.

Murmuüre - Murmuüre

Genre: Ambient/Black Metal
Year: 2010

Re-release of the bizarre work of this French one-piece. Upon my first listen I knew there was something special about this and when I explored the band further and learned of their past and the composition of the album I was just that much more intrigued. Here we have a very special blend of folk music, dreamy ambiance, improvised guitar patterns and ritualistic howls that leaves you wanting more as soon as it’s all over.

Paradigm Recordings

Smorzando - Smrad

Genre: Ambient/Black Metal
Year: 2008

Wonderful ambient soundscapes over-laced with melancholic black metal.

Pensées Nocturnes - Vacuum

Year: 2009
Genre: Ambient/Depressive Black Metal

Classically tinged depressive black metal. Beautifully orchestrated.

Velvet Cacoon - Genevieve

Year: 2004
Genre: Ambient/Black Metal

Haunting, drug induced introspective journeys with a large ambient/drone overtone weaved within noisy, washing black metal. Perfect for late nights looking out over a snow covered landscape.

Darkspace

Year: 2002
Genre: Ambient/Black Metal

This really is a remarkable feat for a first demo, creating an ambiance and atmosphere that is all its own. It seems to serve as a promo, or taster, for the first full-length, but this easily stands alone, and is a fantastic effort in its own right. It is very much black metal, but there are ambient sections added in, passages of distorted, rumbling noise, haunting keyboard work and all manner of techniques interspersed to create a deep and captivating atmosphere. The black metal elements are also remarkably well done. Unusual and unpredictable tremolo-picked chord progressions soar above unrelenting programmed drum beats, accompanied by inhuman screams drenched in reverb and effects that give the illusion of immense distance. The second track has a far more industrial feel, with distorted, whispered vocals over deep, almost choral keyboards, pounding beats and jarring metallic clangs and scraping sounds. It is very repetitive, but in a captivating, hypnotic manner rather than a boring one.

Year: 2003
Genre: Ambient/Black Metal

Dark Space I is first a mystery to the auditor. An indefinable mix of different styles, samples and ambient sounds combined to a terrifying musical abyss. But after several wanderings through Darkspace’s dimension, you’ll notice the fine differences in each song which make every track to a stand alone masterpiece that fascinates you for hours.

Year: 2005
Genre: Ambient/Black Metal

Dark Space II exists as an organic entity where melody is made by thick bass notes – sanguine spasms that pulsate under a thin, gossamer web of guitar, reminiscent to the tone of horror flicks ambient. The music represents an amorphous mass, hard to break down in pieces due to the compact style with which the instruments are played. The composition brings to mind the sobriety and icy tension of doom metal, tension that discharges into the listener through vast detonations of static that don’t disturb the flow of already overburdened sound.

Year: 2008
Genre: Ambient/Black Metal

The music of Darkspace here is a blend of the first two albums. The heavy rhythmic palm muting riffs of the first album that almost gave a death metal touch are back after being put aside for "II". The huge airy and open keyboard sounds of two are also back, and III almost feels as if it is the best of the first two albums blended together. The songs are all very long, but this time the music is as varied as ever for Darkspace standards. One of the key things that Darkspace do are create a wall of sound rather than distinct riffs and melodies. This is effective because you don't notice repeats or reoccurring structures which makes the music flow very organically. The mix is also very organic, including a good amount of distortion on the guitars bass and vocals. The drumming is still being handled by a computer and I think the synth is also programmed as it is rarely actually playing anything melodic. The synth creates moods and bursts of sound which work extremely effectively.

Fungoid Stream - Celaenus Fragments

Year: 2004
Genre: Ambient/Funeral Doom

Fungoid Stream is a two piece from Argentina. One handling vocals [Simon O.] and one handling all the instruments [Joseph C.], the whole concept of the band is based on the works of writer extraordinaire H.P. Lovecraft, the lyrical concept and even the band name is all product of the influence of Howard Phillips on these guys. This stuff is really atmospheric, dense, slow, funeral doom. The clean guitars mix with the distorted ones creating a aura of uneasiness, the pounding riffs and the ever present keyboard adds a eerie atmosphere to each song, reminder of the bands main influence.

Vhernen - Vhernen

Year: 2007
Genre: Black/Funeral Doom Metal

Following the roots of the previous work but improving the style and the sound towards something more personal and intimate, more atmospheric with a mature songwriting that in this opus has put in prominence a massive use of his classic electric cello and orchestral harp, to create austere and mystic ambiances. A noble and eclectic piece of extreme art, a concept album based upon the deadly passage from Autumn to Winter. No need to say that one more time Vhernen will enchant who is looking for a personal concept of black metal and for a music that live in a proper dimension.

Öröm - 8

Year: 2006
Genre: Ambient/Doom Metal

Wold - Screech Owl

Year: 2007
Genre: Ambient/Black/Noise

Man has long since lost the connection to the primeval world. Ephemeral desires replace the hunt, the ritual. Wold erect a Winter Lodge out of this behavior, banished by convenience, left like tusk-less boar to bleed out in the field. From pounding, overdriven guitar to vocals as hot-wired power tools, these songs work to betray their source material, ultimately serving as manipulated field recordings. When device fails to shake its mask, there’s only imagination. The mind turns percussive strings into evergreen branches torn from their trunks, others hum and buzz and throb like waning insects, their wings and antennae slowed by sap. Keys bleat and thump, a buck’s heart cut from his chest and bright with deep red gore. The title track opens with yawning guitar, cold breath in tight clouds that melt away. Fortress Crookedjaw’s voice is the river and the sky; below and above, in motion and static by nature, it creeps free of river rock, rushes over tonal stones, breaks over banks and falls into great white din. As much indebted to early Sightings as it is Cree Indian Conservationist proverb, Wold distorts the Black Metal paradigm into a perversely plastic idiom. Their disregard for fundamentals has empowered their sound, and like the seasons that conditioned its release, this is a work in flux. The unfinished quality that pervades the sound, the music, is not for lack of polish or resource. Intentionally left undone, the listener’s only recourse is to configure the loose matter into something figurative.

Aluk Todolo - Descension

Year: 2007
Genre: Psychedelic Black Metal/Ambient

This first full-length album shows the band developing the esoteric theorems established on it's debut 7-inch EP, and going far deeper in the methodical exploration of the occult powers of musical trance. With the goal to create a timeless, organic mixing of krautrock's strangeness and grim black metal's coldness, Aluk Todolo conjures rabid obsessive rhythms and abyssal disharmonic guitars, subliminal spiritualist vibrations and bizarre, magick summonings. By reducing psychedelic improvisation to a bare, telluric instrumentation, and basking in the archaic rawness of lo-fi production, the trio elaborates on an audio ritual meant to be monolithic and stabbing, hypnotic but unpredictable, minimalist yet teeming.