Over the course of a career that began in 2012, the UK band Horrified have released three albums and a pair of shorter releases. and have continually pushed themselves in new musical directions. As the follow-up to their last album, 2017’s Allure of the Fallen, they’ve recorded an eye-popping 30-minute EP named Sentinel that’s perhaps best characterized as progressive death metal, but isn’t strictly beholden to that genre label, or confined by any other single pigeon-hole. Inventive in its composition and technically remarkable in its execution, it’s an adventurous thrill-ride that’s full of surprises.

Sentinel will be released by Testimony Records on December 13th, and today we’re presenting the second single from the record (following a previously released song called “The Pessimist“, which we’re also streaming below). The title of this new one is “Forgotten Thrones“, and it’s a great example of this band’s formidable talents. Continue reading »

I think I need to repeat something I wrote when I first came across the title track to the new full-length by Horrified: “If Adam Burke’s artwork for the new album by the UK’s Horrified doesn’t compel you to listen to the music, there may be no hope for you (or perhaps you just need to visit your optometrist for a prescription update)”. That remains just as true today. But there is now abundant evidence besides the artwork that this album is something very special.

Entitled Allure of the Fallen, it’s set for release on September 29th via Shadow Kingdom Records, and now we have one more song to present as proof of the album’s power, in addition to streams of two others that have previously premiered. The new song is named “The Perceiver“.

For those new to Horrified, this is their third album, following Of Despair last year and 2014’s Descent Into Putridity, and the strength of the band’s continued musical evolution and their increased sophistication, self-asssurance, and distinctiveness of vision is fully revealed in this new one. In the simplest of genre terms, you could call Horrified a melodic death metal band, but their new music is far from simple. “The Perceiver“, for example, is impressively multi-faceted, rhythmically dynamic, intricately plotted, and emotionally evocative. It vividly summons sensations of torment, terror, and paralyzing grief. Continue reading »

The UK quartet Horrified released an impressive debut album in 2014 by the name of Descent Into Putridity. As the album’s name implies, the music was the kind of nasty, primal death metal that paid its respects to the likes of Autopsy and Pestilence. They’ve now completed work on a second full-length entitled Of Despair, which was mastered by Damian Herring (Horrendous) at Subterranean Watchtower Studios and will be released by Stormspell Records on March 25.

As you’re about to hear (and as you might even guess from the style of the album’s eye-catching cover art by Raul Gonzales), the band have broadened their musical horizons since their debut, taking inspiration from such Scandinavian greats as Dissection, Unanimated, and Sacramentum.

The band’s vocalist/guitarist Dan Alderson described the band’s musical approach for the new album in this way: Continue reading »