{"id":572724,"date":"2026-04-08T23:24:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T23:24:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/572724\/"},"modified":"2026-04-08T23:24:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T23:24:09","slug":"foghazer-he-left-the-temple-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/572724\/","title":{"rendered":"Foghazer – He Left the Temple Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Black metal\u2019s wide-ranging milieu encompasses many sub-genres\u20141st wave, 2nd wave, raw, symphonic, atmospheric, post\u2014the list goes on. One niche of the black metalsphere, with neither a large sample size nor a large following, is black metal smashed hip-hop. Sure, some artists come to mind: Ghostemane, for one; then there\u2019s what Zeal & Ardor is doing, as well as D\u00e9h\u00e0\u2019s project NADDDIR, which melds flashes of black metal with trap beats and cloud rap. Tossing his spliff in the ashtray as it were is the mysterious Berliner, Foghazer, with his Hypnotic Dirge debut, He Left the Temple, an album comprised of nine, singularly titled tracks that cumulatively read \u201c\u2018He\u2019 \u2018Left\u2019 \u2018The\u2019 \u2018Temple\u2019 \u2018And\u2019 \u2018Fog\u2019 \u2018Followed\u2019 \u2018Him\u2019 \u2018Out,\u201d\u2018 and described by the artist as \u201clow-visibility sound: slow beats, distorted memory and fog as both space and emotion.\u201d Will Foghazer open the floodgates to a new sub-sub-sub-genre, or be just another basement-dwelling one-man band exiting his parents\u2019 lowest-level \u2018temple\u2019 in a haze of pot smoke and lo-fi tuneage in search of munchies.<\/p>\n

If Moderator and Portishead got down and \u201cblack metal\u201d dirty with Burzum in some hole in the wall no-tell motel, the offspring of that union would sound like Foghazer. Eschewing nearly all vocals, He Left the Temple employs trip-hoppy drum beats with occasional blasts and jazz fills, moody-smooth bass lines, and eerily plucked or Filosofem-level reverb-drenched guitars to armor the majority of its aural palette. Toss in some scratchy, Portishead-style turntablism, operatic female soprano warblings, Master Boot Record-type bleepity-bloops (\u201cHe,\u201d \u201cFollowed\u201d) amidst other random sounds, and you\u2019ve got the gist of what\u2019s happening here. He Left the Temple strikes a decent cinematic chord, evoking a lo-res film noir experience that, at least in my mind\u2019s movie, follows Foghazer and his gang of corpse-painted black metal beatniks as they roam the harsh streets of an \u201cevery-city\u201d looking for trouble.<\/p>\n

\ufeffHe Left The Temple by Foghazer<\/a><\/p>\n

Laid-back and gloomy, Foghazer does a good job of setting a mood; He Left the Temple would serve equally well as a lounge-lizard soundtrack looping endlessly in an edgy, urban underground cigar-and-whiskey bar as it would a score for some Werner Herzog black metal remake of the movie Kids. \u201cLeft\u201d has a slow, eerie build that transitions from creepy, singular guitar plucks to a double-bass rolling foundation that supports some nice, melodic riff patterns. \u201cFog\u201d is another standout; its trippy bass line and trap beats trade punches with passages of doomy tremolos and double bass rolls, and had me thinking, \u2018this is what Darkthrone might sound like if they took a stab at this kind of thing.\u2019 There were many moments where I found myself slipping comfortably into the groove that Foghazer was laying down, my rollin\u2019-through-Oslo-in-my-tricked-out-hearse head bob in full effect. Unfortunately, not all of the fog in the temple envelops completely.<\/p>\n

\"\"There is a dark thread of similitude running through nearly all of He Left the Temple that impacted my overall experience. Foghazer rinses and repeats his compositional formula such that, if you were to cycle through the first five seconds of every track from \u201cHe\u201d to \u201cFog,\u201d each begins in much the same way, which cumulatively has a hypnotizing effect that takes you out of what\u2019s happening more than it draws you in. I kept checking the track number every so often to see if I\u2019d mistakenly played the same song over again. The other demerit I must levy against He Left the Temple occurs when Foghazer leans heaviest into his black metal. \u201cTemple\u201d is the most glaring example of this as it begins pensively, with some brooding bass tones and spindly guitar plucks before settling into its trip-hop beat section, which gets rudely interrupted at the 1:25 mark by an obnoxious blast beat that continuously pulses under those creepy guitars. This track also contains Foghazer\u2019s only vocals, which, for us, is a blessing in disguise since I find his particular brand of shriek rather grating.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s some cool stuff going on in He Left the Temple, but this is nothing that\u2019s going to put Foghazer on the map. I appreciate the groove and mood he\u2019s able to create at times, but as a mostly instrumental album, the lack of any additional engaging dynamics left me wanting more from Foghazer. As it stands, He Left the Temple makes for some entertaining background music, but not much more.<\/p>\n

Rating: 2.5\/5.0
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 192kbps mp3
Label: Hypnotic Dirge Records<\/a>
Websites: Bandcamp<\/a> | Instagram<\/a>
Releases Worldwide: March 27th, 2026<\/p>\n

\n\tGive in to Your Anger:\n<\/p>\n