Terminus Episode 30 - Prezir, Panychida, Duister Maanlicht, Gjendod

Damn, well, it's the 30th installation of Terminus. That means 30 x 4 reviews / wk for a grand total of 120, plus a few 5-band shows and what we've started covering in Terminus News. Oh yeah, and the bonus episodes and interviews. At this point we're well out of The Shire, wandering towards Moria on our ill-advised quest to detonate the all-seeing Eye of professionally-credentialed metal journalism. And boy, do we have a show for you today, with a couple dark-horse last-minute candidates for year-end lists.

The Black Metal Guy leads off with two bands with Slavonic roots, both with  pretty original takes on the idea of "black metal as heavy metal." Milwaukee's Prezir ("Scorn" or "Contempt" in Serbian) write ripping blackthrash songs shot through with floridly melodic machismo, and your hosts butt heads over exactly how to define it. Is Prezir the lordly scion of Ares Kingdom, or the underground answer to honest yeomanry like Skeletonwitch? Could it be both? We're more able to agree on Panychida, a veteran band from the mountain woods of southern Czechia. Though this record soars with the folk-black passion of a Drukdh or a Kroda, it often riffs like another beast entirely, with headbanging leads that'll make you want to slam 8 warm beers at a massive European festival.

In the second half we've got a dramatic, kinky role-reversal, as The Death Metal Guy answers with a brace of.... intensely Norsk BM bands?? He leads with some oddly faithful Unblack Metal from that hotbed of early Protestantism, the Netherlands. Duister Maanlicht revives a largely forgotten version of the one-man kvlt aesthetic, his hyper-minimal two-riff structures conjuring the bleakness of a forlorn winter shore. Finally, we're both left awestruck by the return of Norway's Gjendød, whose Angrep is a blistering and noble distillation of everything that made them -- and the masters of the Second Wave -- cool in the first place. Through this radical fidelity to origin, however, they've given form to something new and vital. The show culminates with TDMG waxing eloquent on Angrep's folkloric vision of the world, as TBMG sits back, grinning ear to ear.

 

00:00 - Introductory bullshitting

01:56 - Terminus news ft. Spider God (Death Kvlt, release in Jan 20201) and Dyfliza (Rat King Records)

18:15 - Rundown of bands and labels

21:33 - Prezir - Depredation (Independent / tape on Dread Records)*

01:00:30 - Panychida - Gabreta Aeterna (Folter Records)

01:38:13 - Interlude - Die Saat - “Sonnenzglanz,” fr. Niedergang (Independent, 2001 / Ewiges Eis, 2002)

01:45:58 - Duister Maanlicht - Over Zwarte Kunsten, Hekserij en Andere Dienaren van het Kwaad (Vision of God Records)

02:18:40 - Gjendød - Angrep (Hellthrasher Productions)

03:11:08 - Outro - Gjendød - "Når sårene er renset," fr. Krigsdøger (Darker than Black, 2018 / Hellthrasher, 2019)

*CORRECTION: In the first segment, TBMG erroneously suggests that Prezir is / was on Folter Records. There's a clear connection to that scene / aesthetic, but none of their stuff has come out on Folter.

 

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