In their two albums after their 2006 reformation, Limbonic Art has managed to tarnish their legacy created by impressive releases such as “Moon in the Scorpio” and “In Abhorrence Dementia”. “Phantasmagoria” is one of said albums, and with this release we can only hope that the band changes their name or goes back to sleep once more.

In another attempt at creating something ‘impressive’ the ‘band’ fails miserably and creates another sub-par release from what once was from Limbonic Art. “Phantasmagoria” features well over one hour of pointless and direction-less songs that will only cause Black Metal fans to cringe track after track, since this release will give you a headache similar to the ones you get by listening to pure static for 6 hours.

Featuring half of the Woods of Ypres lineup and everybody of The Green Evening Requiem, today we have Woe and their very impressive second full-length release “Quiet, Undramatically”. The now full band, delivers a crushing 43 minutes of Black Metal with melodic and emotional passages that will surely get a bunch of people yelling Agalloch, Wolves in the Throne Room, etc, rip-offs.

While the band’s sound does have very little of the Agalloch, WitTR, melodic edge, they do have a hefty amount of aggressiveness and power to their sound, making them a very different band from what we are used to listening to from the Black Metal scene here in the USA. “Quiet, Undramatically” is a brilliant album that is both raw and aggressive, but it also has that certain elements of melody that makes you start ‘pseudo’ headbanging in your seat.

“The Isolationist” marks the first full-length album after the 2007 revival of USBM band Krieg. Featuring members of a wide variety of Black Metal bands, most notably N. Imperial, we get 11 tracks of an interesting combination of raw Black Metal and some experimental elements that take this release into the ‘Black Metal with weird stuff’ category in our book.

Opening with a very desolate intro, “No Future” shows a very raw and aggressive side of Black Metal that only a few bands (and Krieg) can pull off and not sound pretentious or that they are trying too hard. The guitar riffing is hellish, N. Imperials screams are brutal and the overall atmosphere of this song will bring unrest to even the calmest person in the world. This is pretty much how the rest of “The Isolationist” will continue to affect the listeners psyche.

In their first album in 13 years, Forbidden has managed to surpass all expectations and deliver a Thrash-tastic album that can easily be considered one of their best in their career, next to “Twisted into Form”. With the new addition of Steve Smyth on guitars and Mark Hernandez on drums, the band shows no signs of aging and with “Omega Wave” they deliver 12 excellent tracks of fresh-sounding Thrash Metal.

Immediately with the momentum builder opening track “Alpha Century”, you can see that Forbidden is not back to re-hash old days of glory, but rather push forward with their Thrash Metal sound. The band’s current sound is the perfectly blend of old-school style Thrash with dynamic riffing, a highly technical edge over other bands, brilliant vocal work, and that hint of experimentation that brings this release nicely in to 2010.

After their ‘decent’ 2003 debut album “Watching in Silence”, Circle II Circle is been in free-fall releasing several uninspired albums and “Consequence of Power” is not the exception to that trend. With very dull songs and a very bland production, “Consequence of Power” is another album that will greatly be un-noticed by the community and fans of Zak Stevens.

As you can imagine, Zak Stevens’s vocals are the best of this otherwise very boring release. Zak delivers a very emotional and solid vocal performance to very dull sounding and repetitive songs, so it’s like sprinkling a turd with 24k gold flakes, making the end-product still not appealing.

From the mind of Samoth (ex-Emperor, ex-Zyklon, etc) we have “Ominous”, the debut full-length release of The Wretched End. Having a band featuring Samoth and Nils Fjellström (ex-Dark Funeral), you know that the music will be intense and very well crafted. In addition to the band’s impressive line-up we have Cosmo (Mindgrinder and Scum), handling vocals and bass guitars.

Playing a very fresh blend of Death Metal with Thrash influences and the occasional Emperor-esque Black Metal hint here and there, The Wretched End brings forth a very solid debut album that immediately showcases the quality of musicians participating in the band. “Ominous” features 12 tracks of relentless music that will please all fans of almost any previous project/band of Samoth.