LAMMOTH - Onward

Black metal with a colourful cover, an innocuous pony on a green meadow under a blue sky, cartoon-style drawings that look fit for a children's book. Where has the darkness of Norwegian black metal gone? And above all, where has Satan gone?

This is how the solo project of Robert Sanford presents itself, a musician from Asheville, North Carolina, who aligns with "Red And Anarchist Black Metal" (RABM), a political-cultural current within black metal that brings together artists and labels of socialist or more broadly antifascist leanings (the "Antifascist Black Metal Network"). With black metal vocals, blackgaze guitars, chiptune sounds and a will to radically overturn the very concept of black metal, Sanford effectively strays so far from the Norwegian tradition that he ends up becoming something else entirely.

After all, his allegiance to "Red And Anarchist Black Metal" makes clear how thoroughly Norwegian nihilism has been left behind, replaced by strong ideas of rebellion and equality. "Onward" is his debut album — following the EP "Tales Of Treachery" (2024) — and it overturns just about every stylistic convention going. Obsessed since childhood with the books of Tolkien, Sanford dedicates the entire record to Bill, the hobbit Sam's pony, setting aside the usual fantasy clash between the heroes of good and evil to focus instead on an animal that symbolises loyalty and dependability. And this Tolkienian black metal is a world away from the more famous kind made by Austria's Summoning.

"Onward" immediately comes across as a strange, at times disorienting creature. A galloping horse and a piano loop open "Poor Old Half-Starved Pony": we're in the relaxed atmosphere of a hobbit village on a festival day. The guitars burst in suddenly alongside reverb-drenched screamed vocals, the drums race along at very high bpm, before the piano loop returns ahead of the closing chiptune flourish. It's a tamed, even playful, kind of black metal/blackgaze. The formula repeats in later tracks like "To Be Free (Bill)" or in the almost punk riffs, breakcore rhythms and vintage keyboards of "A Gardener", through the electric interlude of "A Fox Passing Through The Woods On Business Of Their Own", all the way to the closing triptych of "We Were Born To Suffer", "Horsethieving" and "A Final Parting", where we land squarely in shoegaze territory, closer by now to My Bloody Valentine than to Alcest, with black metal reduced to a distant memory.

Can darkness be painted pink? If you judge "Onward" purely as a black metal record, you might read it as an attempt to abandon the genre's destructive consistency — long considered incorruptible — in order to blunt its force, making it reassuring and even catchy. In reality, though, we're on an entirely different playing field, one where certain black metal building blocks are borrowed to draw up a new set of rules. Ultimately, "Onward" is just one of the countless alternative paths black metal has carved out over the last twenty years; what stands out is the desire for change, and above all good old Bill, the true star of this record.

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google

20/09/2026