I saw that an underground Canadian label named Hypnotic Dirge Records has released an album by a one-man band based in Tehran, Iran, named Silent Path. The man is Saman Nu, who apparently has created other works under the band name Ekove Efrits. This Silent Path album is called Mourner Portraits and was originally recorded in 2009, but is now getting an official release. 

I confess that one reason I checked this out is because of the controversy swirling around the authenticity (or lack thereof) of a one-woman black metal band named Janaza, which claims to be from Iraq. Whether Janaza turns out to be the real deal or a hoax, Silent Path is creating black metal in a place that must be at least as inhospitable to black metal as Iraq. 

The music I’ve heard so far from Mourner Portraits is excellent. It’s dense, atmospheric, and mesmerizing. It joins together the beautiful and the disturbing, combining both clean and brutally rancid vocals, both sweeping/ringing guitar chords and radioactive emissions that would set off Geiger counters. Some might call it depressive black metal, some might call it a mix of blackened/ambient/doom. Whatever the label, I’m really enjoying this