STRIBORG Solitude (2007)

Tasmania produced a lot of strange things, but few stranger than Sin Nanna, the one-man project behind Striborg, recording black metal alone in the Huon Valley bush before anyone was romanticising DIY isolation. Solitude, released in 2007, is exactly what the title promises, and it is not comfortable.

This is Australian black metal at its most uncompromising, thick with coldwave atmosphere and the kind of lo-fi murk that sounds like it was recorded inside a dying forest. Sin Nanna's output sits in a lineage of hermetic black metal, somewhere between Burzum's ambient drift and the rawer end of the depressive black metal scene, but with a distinctly Southern Hemisphere bleakness that no European act has ever quite replicated. If you've been sleeping on Australia's underground metal history, this is essential archaeology.

Original 2007 pressing, full length album, jewel case CD. Australian artist, coldwave/black metal.

Fans of: Burzum, Leviathan, Wolves in the Throne Room, Grey Waters.