Some of the most potent sounds from the heavier end of the 21st Century have issued from the mutating offshoots of black metal. The sound's ongoing and burgeoning development encompassing melodicism and atmospheres lifted from shoegaze and spacerock, punctuated by blistering eruptions of heavy rock and industrial drumming, electronic atmospheres, distorted guitar and noise. What may be the epitome of this cross-genre hybridization can be heard in the dynamic solar magma of guitar riffs and rhythm-play of Deafheaven. With other compatriots in the sound to be found in Oathbreaker, as well as the turbulent rock of Nothing and their fusion of metal drumming and spacerock blur as heard on 2014's "Guilty of Everything". From the fringe of the genre, taking the sound down more melancholy paths, there's the crushing shoegaze blues of True Widow. Krallice, Agalloch, and Pallbearer represent the darker, heavier school of blackness pouring forth from the Profound Lore label. A branch of a sound and scene Brad Sanders detailed in his piece for The Quietus, "Untrue And International: Living in a Post-Black Metal World". The article acting as an excellent opening unto the dark passageways of this genre's multitude of representations, dominantly issued from Hydrahead, Ipecac, Deathwish, Sargent House, Profound Lore and Relapse. This particular low lit territory branching out from the landscape of black and doom metal has no small place in the lineup of this month's inaugural Northwest Terror Fest. A all-things-metal festival with a previous Southwest iteration, Terror Fest's three days and nights at Seattle's Neumos, Barboza and The Highline, have been assembled under the compelling opportunity to, "Bring Warning to America: An Interview with Terrorfest founder David Rodgers". Rodger's wider curatorial vision for the festival, detailed in Decibel's, "It's Good to Have Goals and Dreams Can Come True". His programming for the Northwest edition encompassing everything from the gloaming atmosphere and doom riffs of Wolves in the Throne Room, to Samothrace, Graves at Sea, Cephalic Carnage, Cult Leader, Yob, Heiress, Bell Witch, and the dark neofolk of Marissa Nadler.
