Style: Melodic black metal, dissonant black metal (Harsh vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Ulver (Nattens Madrigal), Blut Aus Nord, Urfaust
Country: United States
Release date: 16 January 2026

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Aesthetics and the subtext behind them are much more fundamental to metal than many metalheads may want to admit. Sure, the majority of us worship at the altar of The Almighty Riff, but fans often give just as much, if not more, thought to the ‘branding’ and imagery of their favorite bands. Progressive metal is rarely ‘prog’ if it doesn’t exude an air of introspection and intelligence; thrash metal is reduced to little more than tremolo-picked E notes without its tough guy anti-establishment veneer; and lo-fi, antagonistic production choices are central to the ‘trve kvlt’ aesthetic cultivated by one’s favorite black metal band. 

Serpent Column—project of solo artist Jimmy Hamzey aka Theophonos aka Serpent Cum aka Mr. Serpent Column aka Mr. Column—is no stranger to the hostile, suffocating aesthetics of black metal. On seminal dissoblack record Mirror in Darkness, Mr. Column employs brutal, relentless walls of dissonance backed by pummeling drum work. His latest release, Aion of Strife, is a forward-thinking recontextualization of this sound, introducing a mix of meloblack harmonics and subtler touches of dissoblack uneasiness. Tracks like “Flight of the Last Gods” and “Phenomenology of the Assault” are soaring and epic, like a spire piercing the sky with grand melodics. To balance out this triumphant grandeur, Mr. Column has shrunk the sonic stage considerably. Much of the record is tightly encased in a warm, fuzzy compression reminiscent of Nattens Madrigal (Ulver) as a means of tapping into the overwhelming claustrophobia found in previous work.

A lo-fi soundscape necessarily limits the breadth of musical focus; too many ideas at once and the music turns into an unintelligible mush. Aion of Strife avoids devolving into a noise wall by appropriately pushing most musical elements to the background and placing guitar work at center stage. Mr. Column strikes a balance between consonance and dissonance across the record, using repetition to anchor tracks and connecting ideas through hazy, amorphous interstitial riffs. “Descent Without Nadir”, for example, features an ominous, discordant ascending phrase in its opening verse, but pulls itself out of spiraling tension through lilting rhythms and breaching melodicism overtop a faint solo. “Descent” then opens up into a spacious and epic guitar lick, uniting the track’s moments with a conclusion that’s as ferocious as it is grand.

“Scherzo for a Dead Republic” indulges in ambiguity for much of its runtime; beginning strongly with a series of hard-hitting melodic riffs, the track changes meter halfway through and traipses far away from its starting point with a series of wholly unrelated passages. “Scherzo” and Aion of Strife’s other extended compositions all could benefit from some serious editing, as these tracks are wont to lose the plot when sticking around for too long despite their fleeting moments of interest. The saving grace of these longer tracks come from variations in tempo and focus. “Scherzo” incorporates a half-time breakdown that maintains interest, even as the track goes completely off the rails. “Prayer for the Pneumatic” plays with tempo through a slow standalone riff in its concluding third that is then built upon by a surprising double-time drum pattern reminiscent of Ad Nauseam’s “Inexorably Ousted Sente”.

Occasionally, a solo will peek through and duel with the lead guitar lines. However, whereas the lead guitars duel with a confident finesse, parrying and riposte-ing with elegance, the solos haphazardly swing their saber in clumsy panic. That is to say, the solos are cheeks. Aion of Strife begins with a powerfully exultant riff on “Phenomenology of the Assault”, and underneath Mr. Column plays a solo that meanders around the fretboard at lightning speed. This solo and others are more distracting than anything: with such limited sonic bandwidth, Aion of Strife has no room for extraneous elements, and there is virtually no instance where the solos warrant inclusion in the space they occupy.

Though guitar melodics are the centralizing compositional force along Aion of Strife’s grainy canvas, a spectacularly unsettling underbelly rests below. Ever-present drums blast in tandem across the course of the record and the whisper of a vocal performance from guest vocalist Mike Tibbits haunts the listener like a hazy specter that flickers in the corner of your eye. The placement of Tibbits’ vocals in the depths of the mix engenders a hallucinatory, psychedelic texture to Mr. Column’s compositions. Particularly in the record’s more dense sections, one can never be sure if they’re actually hearing vocals or if a passage’s soundscaping is simply an artifact of the production.

This effect is felt most strongly in the opening tracks when one hasn’t yet acclimated to the sound design. “Phenomenology of the Assault” and “Descent Without Nadir” benefit most handsomely with diminishing returns as Aion of Strife progresses and the listener becomes familiar with the sonic environment. By the halfway mark, the mind is effectively trained to focus only on the guitars and, as a consequence, some of the hypnagogic magic from the beginning is lost. “Always is the Kairos” manages to break out of this rut briefly in its closing minutes as all instruments drop out in favor of guitars with a strikingly clear tone and little-to-no compression; the passage that follows explodes back into claustrophobic fuzz and restores the sonic intrigue of the record’s opening moments. Ideas that play with sonic space, like in the aforementioned “Kairos”—or ones that shift the focus away from guitars entirely—would allow the hallucinogenic nature of the production to more readily persist across the record’s runtime.

Aion of Strife is one half fascinating melo-dissoblack that cleverly adheres to the genre’s aesthetics and principles, one half directionless and sometimes baffling musical choices. In its shorter compositions, grand melodics and menacing dissonance come together in epic lockstep, while longer tracks get bogged down by confusing compositional direction. One gets the sense that Mr. Column is still finding his sea legs within this new style, as both the intriguing lo-fi production and the supreme riffage in the first two tracks point to brilliance that is lost—if not squandered—later on in the record. Always is the kairos, Mr. Column, but it’s also completely okay to stop and take a second for deeper consideration.

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Recommended tracks: Descent Without Nadir, Phenomenology of the Assault, Flight of the Last Gods
You may also like: Suffering Hour, Castevet, Grenadier, Theophonos
Final verdict: 5/10

Related links: Instagram

Label: Independent

Serpent Column is:
– Jimmy Hamzey: everything
With guests:
– Mike Tibbits: vocals