[engl] Void Omnia is a five-member black metal outfit from Oakland, USA, created in 2013 and bringing together former members of Apocryphon, Mutilation Rites and Tombs among others. The band has released a demo in 2014 and “Dying Light” is its first full-length album, available via Vendetta Records. Void Omnia is, in terms of atmosphere, one of those bands that I like to call the “third path“. I am talking about those acts which although are diligent students of both classic diabolical Scandinavian sound and the naturalistic US and Canadian black metal, their own atmosphere is not built with eerie, naked 90’s riffs nor with ambient and natural sound themes.It’s rather based on well-written and well-played guitar riffs that create a sense of melancholic paranoia, a constant state of emotional over-stimulation. (reckoning hour)

[engl] Assuming, then, that “atmospheric” simply refers to a specific swelling, epic mood conjured by layers of rhythms and relentlessly climactic songwriting that corresponds to yet enhances distended pangs of neutral emotions, neither nihilistic nor depressive, then Vukari has indeed succeeded in this endeavor. The postmodern textures surprisingly add much-needed depth to the sound, which one might not even realize until the disc finishes spinning, which tells us that these influences are so smartly blended in that the overarching picture isn’t meant to be dismantled for further inspection. Vukari’s sound is something much bigger, much fuller than that would suggest, and their sophomore release is a good exercise in how to create a musical journey that cannot be indulged in pieces, but as a whole. It certainly seems that it was intended to be taken in thusly, suggesting an approach to songwriting that does more for quality than mere conceptual liberties, which means these guys knew what they were doing from the get-go. The album begins with a blast and ends on a whimper, and has a crescendo of joy in the middle to round it all off, and at any given time the guitars always want to disappear into the ether but are reluctantly kept aloft by prominently skilled drum work that at times (“Invictus Maneo,” “Ad Delerium II,” “Bathe in the Divine Light”) remind me of Deathspell Omega’s “Apokatastasis Pantôn.” The pattern is unmistakable, and it’s an interesting connection to that scene, and especially the opening track of this album, which is the only time we see Vukari truly experiment with dissonance (with the exception of “Invictus Maneo” which towards the end is both meandering and menacing like Skáphe), for the postmodern themes arguably win the day overall. Perhaps most impressive of all would be Vukari’s articulation of melody, which like any doom/death album that’s worth a damn, is steadied by deliberate, mid-paced tempos and thick atmospheres that slather on layers of melancholy. It is a fitting comparison, and a seeming contradiction given the previous statement, but the melodies don’t lie; the tempered stylistic approach borrows specifics from different subgenres and is delivered through an understanding that seeks to reconcile differences by focusing on strengths without creating conflict. The end result is an expertly balanced album with a fulcrum of black metal, which is quite a feat indeed, considering how far removed it can seem from the subgenre. Vukari is quite a special band in this regard, and this album represents a very early pinnacle of what could be a stellar career. " ( metal observer )

[engl] "Here’s a surprisingly awesome shard of hardcore I only just came across. What made me take interest was that VYST contains members of Throwers, Glasses, and Perth Express. VYST will surely join the ranks of other great new German hardcore acts if they haven’t already. “Try Again. Fail Again.” is a half-hour of darkly tinged hardcore with some great ferocity displayed in each of the nine tracks featured here. They dip into moments of melody on some of the longer tracks like “Towards the Cliff”, “They Run”, and “Count Me Down” and their briefness makes them all the more powerful. The production is quite good also, everything rings clear and sharp bringing out the heaviness of some of the slower, crunchy passages. Vocals are wonderfully raspy and hoarse, rending his throat as he runs through issues both bleak and uplifting, contemptuous and angry. VYST don’t rely on dissonance. Merely powerful riffs that move from high speed punk to a moment or two in sludgecore territory (almost) to a short melodic or melancholic (sometimes clean) section — briefly there will be in a few songs a rough tremolo passage just touching on something blackened. Not injected with the blazing sludge found in Perth Express and yet not being as strictly hardcore as Glasses, VYST have found a comfortable middle ground with a very minor blackened-crusty influence without completely falling into the ever-popular splinter genre of dark hardcore; and it works very well. Actually they probably have more in common with their brothers in Throwers than the other two groups which is more on the dark dissonant side of the sound. There’s some excellent arrangements to be heard on “Try Again…”, very catchy and abrasive, fast with some hammer-blow heaviness sprinkled at just the right moments. Quite an enjoyable listening experience all the way through but nothing that could be said to be “off the beaten path”. Just solid, head-bang-inducing hardcore." ( cvltnation )

[engl] two heavyweights team up for one record, australia's whitehorse deliever one long track of their brutal corrupted influenced sludge / doom, filled with strange noises ; batillus do 2 tracks of their cold post-metal influenced doom, filled with synthnoises and ultra brutal vocals ; both sides were mastered by james plotkin

[engl] two of the heaviest bands around team up for one split record, australia's whitehorse once more deliver ultrabrutal sludge/doom with one of the sickest vocalists around, think a sludgier corrupted ; negative standards from the states are all over the place once more, mixing aggressive hardcore / power violence with mean sludge and even some black metal, and some samples added, sick mastered by james plotkin ; artwork by kevin gan yuen ( sutekh hexen )

[engl] "The realization strikes quickly; A Spell For The Death of Man is an atypical force. The haunting, oddly naked guitar that opens the record--perfectly painted in the "Solitude" referenced in the track's title-- is stark. Desolate. Profound, even. Mostly, it's real. A single guitar. Two minutes of truth or consequences. That's all that Woe needs to bury the seed. The seed grows. That solitary guitar morphs into a fiery wall of blasting and trem--nothing special--but halfway in, man...the violent revolution begins. Woe's manipulator, Xos, breaks the song open, driving it into a storm of dust with thick riffage and insane drumming. This is full-on, fuck-you hitting, turning the tide into a headbanging, jawbreaking tsunami of blackness. A Spell... is absolutely massive, wreaking havoc in a manner that few (if any) USBM bands have previous. Thrusting mightly, like a craggy Nightside Eclipse encrusted in crumbling punk nihilism, this album rarely relents. As the work of a single man, A Spell... is a nearly-obsessive vision of destruction (as well as its cathartic wake), but is devoid of theatrics and posturing. Xos' screams of vitriol fully embace the human/animal primalism that condemns our very existence, and his command of the riff is as organic as it is supreme. The ballsy, blackpunk sneer that climaxes "Longing Is All That Will Remain" (the album's true landmark) again spews nothing but honesty, albeit through mouthfuls of strained sinew and shards of bone. The nonstop venom that volcanoes from the core of "I See No Civilization" is of unmatched potency, instigating volume cranks and neck fractures with ease. Woe takes the "depressive" tag that has been glued to Stateside blackness for the past few years and turns its head on an axis. Forcefully. While the deliberate torture of the closing track,"Memento Mori," sludges things up (down), it sounds almost anti-climactic when stacked against the rest of this white-hot tome. By comparision, however, so do the wares of those scrambling for the vacant USBM throne. Woe does not scramble; Woe lays stake. A Spell For The Death of Man is easily 2008's most criminally overlooked album, and is quite simply the most important black metal release in years--not by virtue of perfection, but of relevance. A new dawn is upon us. Adjust accordingly." yourlastrites