Black Queen’s The Directress is the Blackened Stoner Album of the Year

I’m a little confused by Black Queen’s name. On multiple sites, it’s one word, spelled ‘blackQueen’, which bothers me as it makes me think of (hed)PE. But on their Encyclopedia Metallum page, it’s Black Queen, which isn’t nearly as bad (and is therefore how I will refer to them for the rest of this post). Which is it? I don’t know!

I bring this up because you might have to search for the band under different spellings, which you should do, immediately. The band’s latest album, The Directress, comes out this week , and one listen has already landed it on my Best of 2015 list. With all  occultism of Mayhem’s De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas and heaviness of Pentagram, The Directress is an incredible distillation of what I love about doom metal, black metal, and extreme metal in general.

And it doesn’t come at the cost of anything–there are plenty of haunting clean vocals and mind-bending solos here, even though other bands who try to do those things usually sound like a bunch of jackoffs. On top of all that, Metallum lists one of their lyrical themes as ‘Suspiria reborn as a crab’, so you know this shit slays.

You can buy The Directress below, and buy it at Black Queen’s Bandcamp. We hope this band does well, and contacts us to let us know how to spell out their name.