I fucking love Ashenheart.

They were one of the first bands I discovered when I started doing this thing of ours, back in the mists of late 2024, and they opened my mind, heart, and ears to a whole underground movement of Black Metal that I thought had died, or, at worse, had been taken over by a bunch of fascist bellends, throwing up Nazi salutes in an expression of love.

Hi Elon, you dumbfuck.

In fact, so madly did I fall head over heels with Ashenheart, that they were the first ever winners of the Black Metal Archives Band of the Year Award, and rightly so

.What Amanda and Alex achieved on Faded Gold was beyond what two human beings should be able to do. And it was about Elden Ring. A fucking video game. A good fucking video game, but still a fucking video game.

So when news hit me that they were working on a follow up to that masterpiece – which it is, fight me – and that they were stepping away from the Elden Ring lore and adding Steve Wiener – the brillaint magician behind Am I in Trouble? and someone I once compared to a Black Metal George Clinton – it’s safe to say I was frothing at the mouth like Cujo to see what they would do together. And what they have done is the Tales From Eternal Dusk EP and it kicks so fucking hard that it will take your head clean off your shoulders if you stand to damn close to it.

Tales From Eternal Dusk uppes the ante when it comes to unsigned Black Metal bands. It is brutal, beautiful, and raw on levels that you would think almost impossible from other mortals. But Ashenheart aren’t other mortals.

Alex is a fucking demon possessed – and very probably a throat Doctors dream – as he growls, screeches, and screams his way across the four tracks on offer with such venom that you’d need a hasmat suit to clean up after he finished recording, while Steve brings his genius of knowing what a song needs when it needs it. It would’ve been easy for him to step into this situation and pull the old ‘Needs More Cowbell’ routine, but he is so damn clever, and so damn focused on what the song needs at the time that he fills the Ashenheart sound with perfectly placed keyboards and acoustic guitar that complemnts the sheer ferocity of what Amanda has laid down.

And Amanda… well… shit… this woman is on another planet when it comes to Black Metal. She understands the genre on a level that so many others can’t even come close to, and has more riffs in her locker than you could shake a Mayhem or two at.

Tales From Eternal Dusk is a fucking majestic work of art and one that you should get your ass over to Bandcamp and pre-order right now.

I said 2025 was going to be the year of Ashenheart and if this is anything to go by, I was right.