CoC : Various Artists - Wintergrief : Review

Various Artists - _Wintergrief_
(Nahitfol Productions, 1997)
by: Jo Romst (8 out of 10)

The main reason why I ordered this tape was that it featured many bands I have heard about for a long time but never really had the chance to listen to (like Nightfall or VOD). Yup, unless you're one of these guys who buys every single underground metal release, you'll discover many cool bands here! The orientation of the tape is towards the more atmospheric and melodic side of the black/doom/death genres. Black metal freaks will rejoice in blasphemy with Agatus, Zemial, Invocation, Elysian Fields, and an unreleased song by Varathron; doom/death followers will drown even deeper in sorrow with Yearning (debut CD out on Holy Records), Septic Flesh (no words needed for the gods!), VOD, Garbage Breed (chilean band a la My Dying Bride), Groms, COD (finnish band with a forthcoming release on Wild Rags) and Absence of Dawn; the more technical and progressive side of the scene is represented by Acid Death, Kalisia (incredible French band!), Aeon (Nocturnus lives!), and Manic. For those who'd want even more, there are a couple of quite surprising tunes: Carnival in Coal offer us a song filled with sheer brutality and hate but featuring a banjo break (!!!), Stille Volke is a folk/pagan band with lyrics in French (they're signed on Holy), The Renaissance Dance play dark/electro/pop and Moozzhead - the tape's outro is pure fucking noise! A funny thing is that almost half of the bands are Greek, so I guess that the guy who issued _Wintergrief_ must be Greek, too. This release is perfect for people who would like to discover some very good bands from the dark side of the current underground metal scene. More info can be found at: http://www.cs.univ-paris8.fr/~nahitfol/garden/

(article published 16/3/1997)

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