My favourite black metal release of 2007 wasn’t Xasthur’s Defective Epitaph after all. It was more artistically refined than its predecessor, Subliminal Genocide, but came up short in terms of sheer aural devastation: there is simply no moment of utter obliteration on the later album comparable to the massively overwhelming opening of “Prison of Mirrors”, or the first lacerating howl of “Arcane and Misanthropic Projection”. Best of 2007, for me, was Deathspell Omega’s Fas Ite, Maledicte, In Ignem Aeternum, a simply staggering piece of work from beginning to end. I haven’t even started figuring out how you make something like that.

Striborg’s Ghostwoodlands (discussed at length by Valter at Documents) got creepier the more I listened to it, the sheer strangeness of Sin Nanna’s idea of music eventually giving way to the even greater strangeness of Sin Nanna himself. You start thinking things like, “I bet he’s really normal in real life”; but he can’t possibly be.

I haven’t had time to listen through the new Wolves in the Throne Room release, but had a good giggle at the bit in their Pitchfork interview where they said that “the first wave of Black Metal was powerful because it tapped into some primal well spring of energy, as all art does to some degree or another, but people should realize that the people who made that music were all pissed-off teens. I think it is silly for grown men to religiously adopt an aesthetic developed by a scene of angry children”. So they’ve moved on from the aesthetic, but, curiously, held on to the politics (Filosofem-style back-to-the-plough anti-urban misanthropic mysticism); I’d be inclined to do things the other way around. I rather like angry child music; I’m less enthused by ecofascism.

Caina’s Mourner had lovely sleeve artwork by Gentian Osman, got great reviews pretty much everywhere, and gave me the constant sense of a powerful musical imagination pushing hard up against its technical limitations. It’s a disquietingly intimate recording, mostly fairly sparsely arranged and without some of the distancing and softening effects that a more elaborate production would have brought to the songs; as it happens, this fits very well with the lyrical themes of being overwhelmed, shattered and painfully reconstructed. Andrew Curtis-Brignell has a way of singing the word “I” that puts me very much in mind of Mark Kozelek: there’s a whole lot of tension in that one syllable.

Profound Lore, who released Mourner, also put out Alcest’s wonderful Souvenirs d’un autre monde, which sounds a lot more like Slowdive or the fuzzier moments of RHP’s “rollercoaster” album than it does, say, Darkthrone. Souvenirs… is certainly very heavy, but it’s heavy with melancholy rather than doom-laden riffs or orcish gurgles.

Vast amounts of other BM stuff got released in 2007, mostly without my even knowing it existed; ask a real scene insider if you want an informed opinion on what was worthwhile; ask two scene insiders if you want two completely incompatible opinions on the same…