A Few Songs I Liked This Week and They're All by Yellow Eyes – October 2025, I guess

A very wrong mood lately. One of the truisms of life during war is that of a sense of greater purpose. I have always naturally attributed that to fascism and nationalism, in the ease in which an us-Vs-them mentality devolves in a sense of greater purpose vis-a-vis chauvinistic patriotism and the ills that come from that. So there's that. But there's also a greater purpose across the board, the feeling that everyone, anti-war, pro-war, whomever, feel like the drama has somehow reached a zenith that makes everything seem urgent. 

Another truism of war is that the real hard part happens after it's done. When the sense of greater purpose and/or the need to just push through and survive another day is spent, and all you're left with is a room filled with broken people and broken pieces and a world churning forward, so happy to have it all behind it. There's that great Wisława Szymborska poem that always gets quoted in moments like that.

Which isn't to say this war is over, it isn't. Not yet. And my kids are happy, at least my son is. Happy because good news are hard to come by. Because everyone is always down, because we're always down. My daughter isn't happy. She's older and also, I think, more cautious. But given there's a better chance than ever that it's over, or that the end, whatever that means, is somehow closer (the limitations of spatial metaphors notwithstanding), this end feels horrible. As if every fiber made supple and erect through just the sheer stress of it all is allowed, maybe for a moment, to loosen and everything just goes limb and motionless. 

There's been incredible music this past few weeks, and I really should write about all of it. But I don't want to. I can't explain why, but I don't. So this is what you're getting instead. Keep safe. If you missed the Esoteric interview – here it is.

Check out MILIM KASHOT VOL. 6, our latest in the MILIM KASHOT compilation series. All the money goes to World Central Kitchen. Also check out the amazing new Unsouling album that came out this weekend and for which we provided a luxurious premiere last week. Keep safe.

If you're new to this metal blog of bones you can also check out the various interview projects I have going on as well as the weekly recommendation posts. And if you'd like to keep abreast of the latest, most pressing developments follow us wherever I may roam (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Spotify, Bluesky, etc), and listen to my, I guess, active? (no) podcast (YouTube, Spotify, Apple), and to check out our amazing compilation albums. You could also possibly support my unholy work here (Patreon), if you feel like it. Early access to our bigger projects, weekly exclusive recommendations and playlists, and that wonderful feeling that you're encouraging a life-consuming habit. It's probably a bad idea, but to each their own. On to the list.

Yellow Eyes – "Cathedral," from Silence Threads The Evening's Cloth (Black Metal – Independent / Sol Y Nieve). One of the great things Yellow Eyes does is incorporate the fungi-like network of pain and humanity that runs through all things. There are many wonderful tracks on their debut, which really kinds them fully formed as Yellow Eyes, from the very first moment. But this "outro" is pure human static, the drama of being a human and failing as a human and being an artist and failing as an artist all shattered into these shards of sound and atmosphere.

Yellow Eyes – "Shrillness in the Heated Grass," from Immersion Trench Reverie (Black Metal – Gilead Media). This is one of those beautiful examples of one of the pillars of the Yellow Eyes magic, which is the encounter, spiritual and musical, between Mike's animal primitivism and The Brothers' fragile Eastern European soul. Here, as elsewhere, that encounter takes on an almost holy position. The word "ritual" gets thrown around a lot in black metal conversations, but rarely is it anything more than the sad pantomime of what used to be ritual. Here Yellow Eyes erect a church made up of medieval musical shapes, bolstered by an almost 90s' indie-pop sensibility, and draped with sadness. 

Yellow Eyes – "Cabin Filled With Smoke and Flies," from Hammer of Night (Black Metal – Sibir Records). The album that got me into the magic of these people's existence, and one of the most underrated black metal albums of our time. A dire album, a nasty album, melancholy in the same way that most of Yellow Eyes' music is, but the kind of melancholy that feels like it was recorded by an angry Steve Albini. Raw, emotional, and still bears the complexity of human life that is basically what Yellow Eyes represent to me. 

Yellow Eyes – "Heat from other Days," from Stillicide (Black Metal –  Prison Tatt Records / Sibir Records). A storm over the horizon. I'm not sure if I feel that image because of the storm they described in my interview with them a fear years back, though that one was there during, I think, the recording of Sick with Bloom. But a black-and-white movie, a small town, trees begin to blow a bit more violently, debris begins to move through the air, people fall down. It's takes a while before the houses disappear, before the animals are sucked into the airy vortex, and before the chimneys come crashing down on the sleeping, unsuspecting victims of the storm. It's important to document that collapse, and it's important to make sure you remember the people forced – apropos the poem above – to clean up once the drama is seemingly done. But the road there is important too. Very few artists care to document the storm building, growing, and "going away." But they're usually my favorites.

Yellow Eyes – "The Mangrove, the Preserver," from Sick With Bloom (Black Metal – Gilead Media). The storm hits

Yellow Eyes – "Rare Field Ceiling," from Rare Field Ceiling (Black Metal – Gilead Media). I think I'm done for this week. I'll just list a few great albums to check out in the bottom, as a service for those who read my posts for that kind of thing. The world is getting smaller and smaller, the path seems narrower and narrower. And maybe art can't save us, maybe. I don't feel like I know anymore. But it's probably worth a try. I need to be with my kids. 

FIVE MORE THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW

ONE: Radici by Dispensia. Shout out Calvin for this one. Incredible record, very early Oransi Pazuzu.

TWO: Beautiful new Robes of Snow album. Melancholic black metal done right.

THREE: Terror Corpse, whose demo I loved, is coming with an LP with Dark Descent. Sounds brutal.

FOUR: Also a new Phobocosm album coming, and it already sounds like a better version of recent Ulcerate. I said it.

FIVE: New Wolvennest single sounds great.

ONE LAST THING, PROMISE: Another "AOTY list type album" is the new Gates of Dawn. Weirdo perfection.

ONE LAST THINGGGGGGG: Keep safe.