In this accursed manuscript, I extol the grotesque beauty of the grunt—a primordial utterance born from the darkest recesses of the human soul. It is a guttural scream that carries within it the echoes of ancient, tribal forces, a scream where the meaning is not conveyed by mere words, but by the terrifying intent behind them. The grunt, in its raw and feral nature, must clash against the instruments, as though in some ghastly struggle for survival, always teetering on the edge of being subsumed by the very forces it seeks to command. Only then does it ascend to its true, fearsome glory. The grunt thrives in its savage simplicity, and to burden it with melody would be to betray its very essence. Let such concerns be relegated to the over-civilized opera singers, for the grunt belongs to realms beyond their reach.

In the uncharted depths of time, music was but a fleeting cry to the stars, a quest for communion with forces far older and more terrible than the human mind could fathom. Yet as civilizations crumbled and rose again, and the centuries uncoiled like serpents, mankind’s music transformed. It sought to mirror the chaos and terror lurking beneath the placid surface of existence. Among these new forms, heavy metal emerged in the shadowy corners of the late 20th century, calling upon distorted tones and blasphemous noise to articulate that which no sane voice dared utter.

But it was not enough. No, the frenetic, howling guitars and pounding drums, like the cacophony of some ancient and malevolent cosmic engine, could not contain the full horror of what lingered beyond. And so, from the throat of man came a sound, not a scream nor a cry, but a grunt—an unholy articulation of the inarticulate, the sound of something ancient struggling to claw its way from the blackness of human nature. 
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Through darkened venues, where the air was thick with smoke and the scent of sweat and dread, this new form of vocalization took hold. It was first heard in the abyssal strains of death metal, where the unholy priest of death metal, if there is one, Chuck Schuldiner carved his name into history with sounds that evoked the primeval forces lurking beyond the veil of human understanding. The grunt, the growl, the guttural utterance became a weapon—a distortion of the human voice, a communion with the unspeakable.

But I find myself at odds with much of melodic death metal—a genre too often marred by the polished facades of bands like Dark Tranquillity, Amon Amarth, and the unfortunate Fleshgod Apocalypse, whose very name promises wonders but whose music, alas, is tainted by a veneer of insufferable posturing and lifeless precision (the proprietor of this accursed site dared to present me with their latest musical offering, an album grotesquely titled Opera, as though it were some eldritch relic I might appreciate). These are bands that try to evoke the spirit of death and embellish it with musical confectionery with no deeper meaning. 

I glorify the darker, more arcane rituals of the death and black metal where the instruments and vocals transcend the boundaries of expectation, becoming conduits for something far less predictable—something that, at its best, touches the very edge of the ineffable. In those fearsome strains, one hears the trembling echoes of the void, the music climbing toward a transcendence that bands like Dark Tranquillity, in their adherence to bombastic emptiness, cannot reach.

No, the true essence of the guttural growl lies in the abyssal depths of blackened death metal, that most blasphemous and soul-devouring of sonic abominations as currently still found in diabolical entities such as Waitan and Wachenfeldt (the latter a band that eerily reveals that even the violin, that relic of forgotten harmony, may weave its alien strains into the monstrous dirge, without falling prey to the pretentious or the insipid). It is within this dread genre that one glimpses the same eldritch beauty where the mundane warps into the grotesquely sublime, the ordinary reveals a hideous, unutterable secret, and the finite, driven to the brink of madness, peers trembling into the limitless void, beholding the nameless terrors that lurk beyond human comprehension.

In the grim, shadowy recesses of our world, where sanity falters and reason is cast aside, there stirs a sound so intoxicating and alien that it threatens to unravel the very fabric of reality itself. Such is the music of ARKA'N ASRAFOKOR, a band whose dread harmonies hail from the distant land of Togo. Their fusion of African chants, rap, and thrashing metal evokes primordial spirits from forgotten eons, from before mankind's brief dominion over this fragile earth. Their latest album Dzikkuh pulses with a vibrant, primal energy that seeps into the marrow of the listener, rejuvenating and yet unnervingly brilliant. One might feel an eerie surge of youthful vigor, a sensation akin to receding into a time of reckless abandon, the time when one is immortal and unlimited young. Beware, for their sound is infectious, creeping through the senses like a frenzy wind from beyond the horizon. To listen is to dance on the precipice of madness, the kind of metal mayhem we all so gratefully embrace.
 
The convergence of disparate musical styles and cultural ingredients within this band’s craft stands as a testament to the very zenith of artistic synthesis, a creation rare and potent. One can only hope that this group, whose sound pulses with an intensity that verges on the primordial, shall not dilute their essence in future endeavors. Yet, within the final track, The Calling, there lies a subtle but insidious warning—a foreboding glimpse of what could come to pass should they stray too close to the precipice of the mundane. This power ballad, though structurally sound, betrays the band’s uncanny origin through generic English lyrics that falter in their pronunciation, an unintentional reminder that they are not mere imitators of their sources of inspiration in the West, but something far more unique and formidable.

Yet, if the mayhem of ARKA'N ASRAFOKOR leaves you yearning for something even darker, more abyssal, then turn your attention to NILE, eldritch  harbingers of death metal and the grotesque. Their latest album The Underworld Awaits Us All is a monstrous invocation of progressive death metal, a testament to the horrors that lie beyond the veil of our feeble reality. In each thundering note and guttural growl, one can hear the echoes of ancient tombs, the whispers of unspeakable deities whose slumber we better not disturb. The density of sound, in instruments and words (Chapter for Not Being Hung Upside Down on a Stake in the Underworld and Made to Eat Feces by the Four Apes--and yes, that is a song title), mirrors the abyss itself, a cacophony so dense and impenetrable that it threatens to consume the soul of any who listen too intently. This album is a gateway to the unknown, a manifestation of that which should not be, yet is.
 
It is a nearly inconceivable task to single out highlights when speaking of a band as ancient and storied as NILE, whose very existence seems woven into the dark fabric of time itself. Yet, in their latest offering, The Underworld—an abyssal realm hinted at in the cryptic annals of forbidden lore—calls to us with a voice that resonates from beyond mortal comprehension. It beckons with an unsettling familiarity, drawing us inexorably into its shadowy embrace, where the eldritch forces of the unknown welcome us with open arms, promising a descent into depths from which few have returned unscathed.