Since reuniting in 2023, Portland atmospheric black/folk/post metal greats Agalloch have played around 20 select shows and festivals, and in early June they're playing two sets at Milwaukee Metalfest (a retrospective set and an Ashes Against the Grain set) before playing a set at Montana fest Fire in the Mountains in July.
Fenriz describes Pre-Historic Metal as 'a loose term,' stating, 'just figure it's our VIBE, our take on things and it's more a statement that we use old style to create something new.' He emphasizes their identity as metal with 'very loud guitars' and characterizes the music as 'frightfully barbaric but not without finesse.'
Panopticon and Catharsis are doing a short co-headlining East Coast tour together this fall! The tour kicks off in Boston on October 8 before hitting Brooklyn's Market Hotel on October 9 and then shows in Philly and Baltimore. Tickets go on sale Friday (3/6).
Nocturnal Womb features two new songs that a press release says were "too dark and visceral to fit the story of Blackbraid III," as well as an acoustic version of the Blackbraid II song "Barefoot Ghost Dance on Blood Soaked Soil."
Los Angeles black metallers Agriculture released one of our favorite albums of 2025 with their sophomore LP, The Spiritual Sound, in October, and they wrapped up the winter leg of their tour supporting it with a trio of NYC shows, headlining Bowery Ballroom on Friday (2/13) with support from Knoll, playing a matinee on Saturday afternoon (2/14) at Rough Trade, and heading to Baby's All Right on Saturday night, with Ekko Astral and Peace Through Strength (Jack Tobias and Zack Borzone of YHWH Nailgun).
Black metal has been chummy with ambient music since birth, but Ulver's commitment to the genre is something else. Their debut album, (1995), released when singer Kristoffer Garm Rygg was 18, inspired a whole universe of nature-drunk folk metal; meanwhile, Nattens Madrigal (1997) is a prime example of the most scabrous and distortion-encrusted recesses of black metal. Between the two was the ambient Kveldssanger (1996), which proved they could work well at a lower altitude, but that still didn't prepare anyone for 2000's Perdition City:
Take the title of The Spiritual Sound as a kind of syllabus, and you'll find a heady list of musical reference points that Agriculture aim to exalt. The jarring intros of black metal songs that make you feel like a portal to Hell has opened inside your headphones. The sound design on later Scott Walker arrangements meant to conjure a Biblical plague. The slow, majestic build of post-rock epics that hold back their climax for maximum transcendence.
It was a great year for music, but everything felt a little more splintered this year, and in fact, picking a #1 album this year felt harder than it has in a while. Instead of a few major, dominant moments, we had the indie-country boom hitting a new peak, the biggest year for black metal in a while, the best year for emo in a while
Scary music actually excites me, but the piece that most sends shivers down my spine is the music in the shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock's film, Psycho. I've seen it numerous times and even though I know what's coming, the stabbing knife synched with Bernard Herrmann's score always freaks me out. More recently, I went through a phase of watching Japanese and Korean horror films.
The news was shared by current Bethlehem singer Yvonne "Onielar" Wilczynska. On Instagram, Onielar wrote (as translated from German), "He has died many times... But death was only temporary. After a serious illness, perseverance, and great fighting spirit, our beloved friend and esteemed founder of Bethlehem - Jürgen Bartsch - passed away on August 27, 2025. In deep sorrow and with a broken heart, In the name of Bethlehem, We will never forget you, Jürgen. Rest in peace."
When he discovered black metal, I followed him there too. Soon, my bedroom began to resemble a mausoleum: there were band posters featuring men made up to look like corpses glowering into Nordic fog, and CDs with tracklists that looked more like incantations than music. I began dressing the part black on black on black. I scoured forums for rare pressings and live bootlegs.
