When the promo for Low Materialism landed in my inbox, it came with a description that read:
“The main theme of this melodic black metal album is Western European witchcraft revisited through the lens of Georges Bataille’s transgressive philosophy.”
Now, I’ll be honest — I’m more of a Kerouac-and-Bukowski-at-3AM kind of guy than a Bataille scholar. My nights are usually filled with distortion, cigarettes, and bourbon, not French philosophical depravity. But whatever lens this thing was forged through, I can tell you this much: Low Materialism by Asenath Blake sounds like a black mass come alive — the echo of burning wood and screaming souls caught between the stake and the stars.
This is not your standard raw melodic black metal record. It’s too possessed for that. Every note feels carved out of ritual. The guitars shimmer with a near-classical elegance before collapsing into shrieking chaos, like violins catching fire mid-performance. The drumming alternates between heartbeat pulse and full infernal convulsion, while Asenath herself howls like someone communing directly with the spirits of those damned by history.
There’s a witchcraft to the composition — not just thematically, but structurally. Songs bloom and die like spells, woven through with melodies that ache with old-world sorrow. It’s as if you can hear the faint chanting of forgotten covens beneath the blast beats. There’s beauty here, yes, but it’s beauty wrapped in pain, ritual, and philosophical despair.
What’s remarkable is how it manages to feel both intellectual and primal. You feel the philosophy without having to read a single word of it. The transgression is in the sound itself — in the way Asenath takes melody, harmony, and human emotion and flays them raw until they bleed black ichor.
This isn’t an easy listen, but it’s not supposed to be. It’s art that asks something of you — patience, vulnerability, and the willingness to let darkness seduce rather than repel. In a time when so much Black Metal hides behind polished production and safe structures, Low Materialism feels genuinely dangerous. It’s unpredictable, intimate, and cracked open by its own intensity.
Low Materialism is available from the Asenath Blake Bandcamp page.
CHOICE CUT: Ridden by the Night-Mare
BLACK METAL ARCHIVES VERDICT: Low Materialism is a ritual in sonic form — a haunting, cerebral, and deeply emotional piece of witch-lit Black Metal that burns slow but leaves scars that never fade.
