Lost Flood - Lost Flood [2011]

Lost Flood’s eponymous cassette brings together some filthily lo-fi black metal that borders on noise. Sloppily recorded drums crash on in the background over needle-thin walls of guitar noise and tortured howls from Peter McGee, who wrote and played all the music on this tape. McGee manages to bring together the repetitive drumming of atmospheric black metal and extremely noisy tremolo guitar riffs that combined create a truly dark and haunting atmosphere that is only exacerbated by the layers of noise obscuring the music .“Hunter’s Eyes” is among the best tracks here, devolving from Lost Flood’s hellishly raw and low-fidelity black metal into bursts of feedback that die out slowly as the track fades out. It's not a particularly long tape, but well worth checking out for those interested in some of the most abrasive and gloomily atmospheric blackened noise on offer from the british isles.

Trist – Willenskraft (2009)

There are two bands with the name Trist, the more famous one a depressive black metal band from the Czech Republic, and this one, an ambient black metal band from Germany. It was formed by Tristan from Lunar Aurora, a black metal band that received quite a lot of praise for their 2012 album Hoagascht. You can draw lines between Lunar Auroras sound and the sound that Tristan creates on Willenskraft, both are ambient black metal bands that rely heavily on atmosphere and a sound that is eerie, and depressive rather than aggressive. Of course there will always be a certain level of aggression in black metal, Trist is not an exception, but with this album the aggression is internal, a battle against oneself.