PARMASSIS - Let The Stars Fall And The Kingdom Come Digi-CD

Reissue in a six-panel digipak, limited to 500 copies.

If you like your black metal to be the product of someone clearly possessed by demons, or in need of mental health intervention, then Parnassus is for you. We had one-man black metal bands in the 90s before they become the hipster favourite of 2013. All of Soderlund's projects just have that ineffable off-ness that's hard to specify. It's just an otherworldly uncanniness making for an extra vibe on Let the Stars Fall and the Kingdom Come.

You can try Puissance for almost un-psychotic Soderlund, but not really, and you can skip the cathedral mysticism of Parnassus, and go straight for Octinomos if you want relentless raw black metal. Parnassus is Soderlund's best project because it blends raw black metal riffs, menacing drum machine abuse, and exceptional orchestration, even though it's not precisely a halfway house between his other two main projects. It's a little hard to rectify, but as a mix of extremes, Let the Stars Fall and the Kingdome Come is pretty successful, and worth digging out. Just beware the creepiness factor.