Last year's retrospective through Tarbathian glasses
Surely the start of the year brings mandatory flashbacks of the past 365 (and more) days. For the sake of capturing history, let us briefly remind the deeds of Tarbathian metal scene within the year number 2022.
The year was rather modest regarding its amount of concerts though among those, some special events might be catching one’s eye. The goat-scented death-black trio Ziegenhorn performed at the black metal festival Howls Of Winter, Tallinn in February, and in May they visited Scotland to celebrate the presentation of “Full Moon Calling”, the newest album of the notorious local melodic black metal figure Nyctopia.
The ragnarok ‘n’ roll grouping Ulguränd and the death-doom quartet Woundgiver stepped on the stage of Estonia’s most important metal festival Hard Rock Laager. Tankist – one of the more aggressive thrash-metal bands – stepped on the floorboards of (among others) Hard Rock Laager, Barbar Feast and Punk & Rock festival.
For a short period of time, the end of summer and start of autumn also brought the atmospheric black metal band Wolfskrone on stage, out of whose two performances this year the first one was in August at the Barther Metal Open Air in Germany.
September undoubtedly turned out to be the most intensive month of the year. For that, we could blame the German film makers from Undergrounded whose expedition to South-Estonia in 2021 eventually resulted in the documentary “Tartu Under the Horns”. The film was premiered in Elektriteater, an art-house cinema in Tartu, and Black Magic Estonia, an underground black metal club in Tallinn. The documentary was also uploaded to Youtube.
The film premieres were well-attended, to be frank. In both Tartu and Tallinn, the events were complemented by a diverse cultural program which basically included everything that Pergerus and its wider circle could offer at that moment. In Tartu, three bands performed at the club Rock & Roll: the death duo Graveater, the one and only Setonic black metal band Langenu and Wolfskrone, for whom it was their second and also last performance. The line-up at Black Magic Estonia in Tallinn consisted of the technical pagan black metal elite Pagansarv.
In addition to the bands, exclusive exhibitions by Fen, Skaðvaldur and Form provided gems of visual art. In Tallinn, there was also a discussion with Tristan Priimägi and Ahto-Lembit Lehtmets which shed light on the early history of metal in Tartu – that is, the scene of the 1990s.
In 2022, the release of music continued on a quite industrial scale. Already in February, Graveater single-handedly released their cassette “… Of Harrowing Remains”.
Warhorn Records, Tartu’s very own record label, strengthened their international connections by releasing the first full-length of the Scottish black metal band Nyctopia, “Full Moon Calling”, in the beginning of March.
The second half of the year increased the baby-boom of releases even more, Warhorn Records being the midwife for three of those. In August, the carrier of cosmic horrors Swarn released their second album “Whispers From Beyond” in a total of three different formats – on CD, vinyl and cassette, the last two of which were released in cooperation of Guano Records and Stuka Sound. In September came out the music video of Pagansarv “Kaarnakarva” from the album released a year before. In October, Langenu developed a mini-album named “Setooniq”, which was also the first metal-album in the world entirely in Seto language. It was accompanied by the band’s lyricists 1695 and Koljat’s exclusive poetry book “Setoonligu’ värsi’” (“Setonic verses”).
The darkness of December became a witness for the first full-length studio album of Ziegenhorn, namely “Blut and Kaos”. This year, with the support of the German label Wolfsgrimm Records, it can also be expected on a vinyl format. For a song of the album, “Chant for Utopia”, a music video was published. The doom-stoner trio Fhtagn got done with their third full-length album “Sügavik”.
As some other things are still in production, we can somewhat carefully predict that also the year of 2023 will not bring a drought to the low shores of Emajõgi.
Written by 1695
