Beats and yelling: Nargaroth

Apocalyptic SteelOut 26th June on Season of Mist Underground Activists Say what you like about Nargaroth, but the guy dances to the beat of his own drum. In his earliest period Ash was simply content to write Nordic black metal fanfic, resulting in a surplus of flat, bloated material that bored more than it enraged despite its charms. This era will forever be remembered for the ‘Black Metal ist Krieg (A Dedication Monument)’ episode however, establishing Nargaroth’s reputation as a third wave court jester. Setting that aside, there were many apparently sincere efforts from this time right into the 2000s that are worth exploring, culminating in 2009’s ‘Jahreszeiten’, an ambitious conceptual nod to Vivaldi’s Four Seasons amongst other things. After a long gap, the project returned in 2017 with ‘Era of Threnody’, a sprawling, ambitious work that could be read as Ash attempting to digest his increasingly eclectic tastes into a recognisably Nargaroth template. Despite remaining active on…