VARIOUS ARTISTS - Collection II (2021 Repose Records Sampler) review

 

VARIOUS ARTISTS - Collection II (2021 Repose Records Sampler)

Repose Records 

It's the fourth day of the new year. Add to that it's cold, wet and thoroughly miserable outside. In other words it's another perfect Winter day to play some black metal. This is the month when labels put out samplers to get you all excited about upcoming releases or some things you might've missed out on the year before. 

Repose Records is a label out of England who specialize in bands producing black metal of various sub genre styles. I'm familiar with two acts on their roster. Those would be ELFFOR and SORGELIG, both of whom have tracks on here. Collection II contains twenty bands each contributing one cut each. What's cool is that there's variety on here. And I do have some favorite tracks.

For starters there's RULUM from England whose nine plus minute track "Rul" is ambient/proggy influenced. NIMBIFER is a two piece act from Germany whose cut on here, "Am Boden", definitely has a cruel and frosty feel to it. Add to that their sound is of that old school rawness which German black metal use to have a flair for. 

REIGN is a one man BM project out of England whose track on here is ambient, proggy with some angst ridden and harshly screamed vocals. I kinda knew the SORGELIG track on here was gonna be good. I've been a fan of the Greek BM act for a few years now. Their song on here, "A Thousand Skies To Drown In", is damm good and also appears on their album We The Oblivious which originally came out in 2019. This label is reissuing it on vinyl.

Another great track on here is "Old Wizards Cavern" by Spain's one man black metal institution ELFFOR. I sat institution since this act as been around since the late 90's. The sound on this cut comes as no surprise. It's got the ambient synth opening with an epic BM atmospheric soundscape. For decades now ELFFOR creates black metal which is harsh and yet beautiful.

Some other acts with cool tracks of note are MURMUR's "Die Endlosung". MURMUR is a US atmospheric black metal act from the midwest who had a short lived career around a decade ago. It seems this label will be reissuing their 2010 debut, Mainlining The Lugubrious, later this year. KUKA'ILIMOU is also an interesting act to learn about since it's black metal from Hawaii. All in all this is a great black metal comp that like I said earlier leans more to the whole atmospheric / ambient ways of the genre.

LISTEN TO and ORDER HERE:

https://reposerecords.bandcamp.com/album/collection-ii-2021-sampler