Tag Archives: blackgaze

Fathomless – II: Thy Desolation (Self-Released)

Posted by John Lithium on

Label Description:

The second full length from Fathomless started out as an homage to Star Trek villains and anti-heroes. But when it came time to write lyrics the realization dawned that life is imitating art a little too well these days and it morphed into an anti-fascist, anti-theocratic, anti-AI album.

The same lineup from the debut album returns, but this time with some special guests joining. Steve Wiener (Am I in Trouble?, Ashenheart, Eveale, Negative Bliss) contributes the albums only clean vocals in the title track. Josh Turner (Dischordia) contributes backing/additional vocals to “Spectres,” and Alicia Cordisco (Transgressive, Ex-Judicator) contributed a ripping guitar solo in “Intangibles.”

Stylistically this album embraces the Vulcan concept of “Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations.” While firmly rooted in Black Metal it also draws heavily from Death Metal, Thrash, Punk Rock, Blackgaze, Prog, and Stoner metal.

Fathomless II:Thy Desolation takes a more organic approach to production than the debut album. Mics on loud tube amps, live drums, no VSTs/amp sims, no sample replacement. The result is a wall of sound with a natural “live” feel.

Tyler Blake – Bass, Keys/Synths, Theremin, Backing Vocals
Kyle Clark – Vocals
Clayton Eckert – Guitars
Josh Fallin – Drums, Guitars
Jon Reid – Guitars

Guest appearances:
Steve Wiener (Am I in Trouble?, Ashenheart, Eveale, Negative Bliss)- Clean vocals on “Thy Desolation”
Josh Turner (Dischordia) – Additional vocals on “Spectres”
Alicia Cordisco (Transgressive, Ex-Judicator) – Guitar solo on “Intangibles”

All music and lyrics by Tyler Blake
Produced, engineered, mixed, and mastered by Tyler Blake

Recorded at ToneTrip Studios and Fathomless Studios
Reamping at ToneTrip Studios by Tyler Blake and Jon Reid

Artwork by Holy Forest Design

Olhava – Memorial (Avantgarde Music)

Posted by John Lithium on

Label Description:

Stream the album on all platforms: band.link/olhava2026

Memorial continues the path opened by Sacrifice. After the burning, there is stillness. Time spent among what remains. Ashes settle, memory lingers, and the question is no longer how to begin again, but what can finally be released.

The record moves through remembrance toward letting go and acceptance — a quiet reconciliation with what cannot be carried further. It speaks from a single, unpersonified voice: a shared human state shaped by loss, exhaustion, love, and the fragile will to endure.

At its center stands a forest hut: not a physical place, but a retreat of the mind. A solitary structure in the woods, an escape from the collapsing outer world, where everything decays, familiar bonds loosen, and people drift apart and return changed. The hut becomes a memorial itself — an obelisk in the forest, a burial site for former lives, a place one returns to alone to contemplate what remains.

Inside, memory becomes both refuge and weight. What was meant to be forgotten stays. What was meant to last dissolves. Grief softens into stillness.

Unlike Sacrifice, Memorial offers a different kind of rebirth. Rebirth here is indistinct — a quieter transformation found in letting go rather than becoming. Only in its final moments does movement return: a fragile renewal, like thawed water finding its way to a river.

Memorial is dedicated to more than one loss. It holds space for the dead, for love that has outlived itself, for time that cannot be returned, for friends forced to flee, and for selves left behind. Its meaning remains open, shifting with each return — a structure in the forest, unchanged, waiting.

Information about vinyl and CD editions will be available very soon; as usual, they will be released via Avantgarde Music. 

Music – Andrey Novozhilov and Tim Yusupov
Screwdriver solo on track “When the Ashes Grow Cold” – Artem Selyugin of Show Me A Dinosaur, Somn, hopeyouwell
Sound – Mikhail Kurochkin
Artwork – Margot Makletsova

Olhava – Frozen Bloom (Avantgarde Music)

Posted by John Lithium on

Label Description:

Frozen Bloom is our fourth album where we took some different routes compositionally(sic). Two of four tracks are traditionally storm-like blackgaze passages and another two are leaning towards more meditative drone experience.

It is about unfulfilled dreams. About how we sacrifice everything today for some abstract “tomorrow” which may never come. But tomorrow and yesterday don’t exist – only this very moment of static contemplation.

When winter is just starting to fade and give some space for a spring’s first steps, when first life starts to reappear and the very early flowers peek through the thawing soil a sudden shift in temperature can leave them petrified and frozen back again like being punished by the Queen of Fields. This statuesque dead beauty, being infinitely alive and dead at the same time is Frozen Bloom.

We got a chance to collaborate with A. Lunn (appearing courtesy of Bindrune records) who kindly agreed to record an electric guitar solo as well as acoustic parts and choral parts on Frozen Bloom I

Recording, mixing and mastering by Mihail Kurochkin
Cover art by Daniel Teisakowski (@daniel_tskwsk)
Guest electric guitar, acoustic guitar, square neck resonator guitar and choral vocals – A. Lunn (Appearing courtesy of Bindrune recordings)
Physical release via Avantgarde music
Cassette release by Slowsnow records