Style: Avant-Garde Black Metal, Dissonant Black Metal (Mixed Vocals, Mostly Harsh Vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Deathspell Omega, Blut Aus Nord, Emperor
Country: Germany
Release date: 15 May 2026

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The musculature of black metal lends itself to constant reinterpretation. For decades, musicians have peeled back the four major constituents of black metal—blast beats, treble-heavy production, tremolo picking, and harsh vocals—and altered them, almost beyond recognizability. Black metal has been grotesquely warped and wreathed in dissonance (Jute Gyte, Dodecahedron, Blut Aus Nord), forced into alien paradigms (Deafheaven, Imperial Triumphant, Book of Sand), been de-electrified (Kaatayra, Wreche, Botanist), and been the auditory setting for spiritual manifestos far afield from the scene’s satanic origins (Panegyrist, Liturgy, Agriculture). Shattered and reassembled time and again as black metal has, one never knows what to expect with an avant-garde black metal tag.  

On Junon’s debut, The Golden Citadel of the Astral Sphere, the enigmatic German band takes the most commonly tread style of avant-garde black metal, opting for an ugly dissonant approach. The I, Voidhanger signees try to capture the sensation of delirium, and while it’s not the most groundbreaking approach, I think Junon succeed for the most part. The main sound of the first two tracks is second-wave black metal with no deconstruction to be had for the most part, although the cymbal-work stands out, and the guitars slither around in sawed microtones like Blut Aus Nord or Jute Gyte. The strongest moments, however, are the clean vocals of Junon’s anonymous frontwoman. She ghoulishly wails, laboriously exhales sung notes in a strange way, operatically sings, and incantationally chants. Yet Junon woefully underutilize her clean vocals on The Golden Citadel of the Astral Sphere, especially since her growls, while competent, are quite standard, lacking an exotic, wild edge the album would benefit from. Her cleans are kept almost exclusively to sections sans blast beats, like when “Propheten der Blauen Flamme” dissolves into a doomy crawl of dissonant guitars.

The production on The Golden Citadel of the Astral Sphere blends old and new school black metal styles admirably, keeping a raw edge while still allowing for clear bass parts and psychedelia influenced buildups with layered chants (“Inanitas Cedit Profundo (Die Leere weicht der Tiefe)”)—maintaining sonic coherence between the maelstromic black metal and the naked, stripped-back dissonant sections. Each instrument gets its turn to shine, although the focus is most prominently placed on the guitars, whether they’re swirling tremolos or ringing out in slow chords played note by note. The guitar tone, moreover, is appropriate for the style, desiccated for the twisted dissonance to feel just nauseating enough.

While the first three tracks have some intriguing songwriting choices befitting of a mildly experimental black metal release, it is the twenty-one minute closer, “Dolorosa,” that pushes farthest into uncharted territory. For over seven minutes, a minimalist palette of alien guitars, scattered percussion, and vomitous vocals sends out tendrils of dissonance. Junon play around with open intervals and negative space, allowing the dissonance to ring out almost as if it were a drone project. Its unhurried pace and comfort to bask in extended moments of unresolved guitar is substantially more challenging than your average dissoblack that moves between ideas at a more feverish pace. While the buildup is what makes “Dolorosa” a unique track, showing Junon at their most daring and avant-garde, it’s also far too long—compounded by another extended section of droning microtonality later in the epic track. The climax at eighteen minutes, however, almost saves the track, a fantastic payoff, as the harmonic vocabulary switches from dissonance to consonance mid blackened fury. Junon’s operatic singing hovers above the black metal for the first time at the album’s zenith—a brilliant conclusion after forty minutes of uncomfortable, Jute Gyte-esque dissonance—but far too late in the track.

Junon don’t play into their many strengths nearly as much as they should, defaulting to fairly standard second wave black metal too often and avoiding Junon’s haunting voice. Junon also bite off more than they can chew with regards to the songwriting on The Golden Citadel of the Astral Sphere; that excess is useful when it comes to the climax, but Junon’s patience becomes an exercise in tediousness. But while Junon don’t break the mold entirely on their debut, their utilization of negative space, consonance, and clean vocals leads me to believe a sophomore effort could be interesting enough to slip away from the established dissoblack paradigm into the shadows of madness.

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Recommended tracks: Propheten der blauen Flamme
You may also like: Jute Gyte, Portal, Dodecahedron, Gorrch, Hebephrenique, Swords of Dis, Folterkammer, Rejoice! The Light Has Come, Sea Mosquito
Final verdict: 6/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Instagram

Label: I, Voidhanger Records

Junon is:
– Junon (everything)