Germany’s Thulcandra take their name from the legendary black metal band Darkthrone’s 1989 demo of the same name. Darkthrone had borrowed the term from the C.S. Lewis novel Out of the Silent Planet.

Over the course of the last five years, Thulcandra have established themselves as a force to be reckoned with in the world of black metal. On February 10, 2015, they released their third full-length album, Ascension Lost, and based on early reviews, it seems like their stock will continue to rise.

For this edition of Black Metal Friday, we revisit Thulcandra’s awe-inspiring debut album — 2010’s Fallen Angel’s Dominion. Here is the mighty Thulcandra with “Legions of Darkness.”

“Christians To The Lions” is the sixth track off of Thelema 6, the fifth studio album by Polish juggernauts Behemoth. Check out the clip here below of Behemoth performing “Christians to the Lions” live somewhere around 2004.

Ever since the release of the album Thelema 6 in the year 2000, the aforementioned track has been the central manifesto of nearly every live performance that the band has done. The song’s anti-religion message is a perfect summary of the philosophical stance that has, at times, gotten Behemoth leader Adam “Nergal” Darski into hot water. Darski was charged with causing offense to religion when he ripped the pages out of a bible at a live show in Poland. He was later acquitted of the charges.

Sweden’s Dissection was a lightening rod for controversy. The band would release only 3 full-length albums in its career, but each of them is considered a masterpiece and essential listening for students of black metal. Band leader Jon Nödtveidt was a disturbed genius who viewed Dissection as his vehicle to spread the anti-cosmic Satanism philosophies of the notorious Norwegian inner circle organization known as the Misanthropic Luciferian Order (now the Temple of the Black Light).

Dissection broke up in 1997 when Nödtveidt was convicted for his part in the murder of a homosexual man in a Göteborg park. He received a 10-year prison sentence, of which he served six. Upon emerging from prison, he would resurrect the band with new members who would be “able to “stand behind and live up to the demands of Dissection’s Satanic concept.” This would be the lineup that would record the final Dissection album, the 2006 masterpiece Reinkaos.

The Swedish black metal unit known as Marduk has just released its 13th studio album, Frontschwein, in Europe. The album will hit North American shores on February 10, 2015.

They have also just gifted us with the official video for the album’s title track, which you can check out here below. Frontschwein is the band’s first solely war-themed album since 1999’s legendary release, Panzer Division Marduk.

Agolloch is an avant-garde black metal band from Portland, Oregon, that utilizes elements of everything from folk music to shoegaze to prog rock. The band has been active since 1995, but has only released five full-length albums preferring to focus on quality, not quantity. Unlike many black metal bands that find their formula early on and stick with it, Agolloch is constantly experimenting and growing their sound. This has resulted in each of their albums bringing new and exciting surprises.

The band’s most recent offering, The Serpent and the Sphere, was their finest work to date and I’m still kicking myself for forgetting to include it on my Best Metal Albums of 2014 list. It should have had a place in the top 5 of that list and I can’t, for the life of me, imagine why it slipped my mind.

Let me make up for it by giving you a listen to the album’s awesome opening track, “Birth and Death of the Pillars of Creation,” right here below.