There is an eternal appeal to black metal that reaches out to just about anyone. It's the way the music invokes blasted landscapes with twisted soundscapes and utters vile blasphemies that would scare off our parents. Something inside all of us wants to rebel and to find the eternal cosmic demon defined by true black metal. Of course in this day and age that is often limited and difficult to find. The changing face of black metal has, for better or for worse, forced us to reevaluate our perception of an entire style of music. The bands represented on Swallow Matewan come from a more cerebral side of the genre, yet clearly don't hold any truck with many of their modern peers. Rather they revel in the pure and blissful anarchy of their own music, allowing you to be embraced by their ever twisting tones. It's the sort of black metal split that you grew up wanting to hear.

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Torrid Husk are very much obsessed with the forests of their homeland. West Virginia is a cruel place, I've been, I actually enjoyed myself, but I also was forced to face the sheer nihilism of the Appalachians. They conjure up these potent sounds with vicious guitars and stunning melodies that will get your heart beating. They understand the power of American black metal and yet infuse it with enough of the old school magic that it remains vibrant. For their part End use Swallow Matewan as a veritable tour de force of their stunning atmospheric metal offerings. Their sense of melody and the forward motion demonstrated in their compositions is impressive and has a strangely proggy vibe to it. End cultivate a very busy brand of black metal with lots of ideas but remain surprisingly translucent, rarely dipping into the overly cerebral, brain bending madness some of their peers are guilty of. The point being – this split fucking rules. Spin the shit out of it motherfucker.

Preorder the record here: https://grimoirerecords.bandcamp.com/album/swallow-matewan