(written by Islander)
With only one premiere to handle today and nothing else waiting in the queue for our site, I had a combination of opportunity and need, anxiety about us not posting the usual amount of stuff in recent days and the time (barely enough time) to do something about it. So, as a head-start on Saturday’s roundup, I got this four-band collection done, focusing on two old favorites and two brand new discoveries. The cover art for all four was part of the initial attraction.
TOMBS (U.S.)
The first of the old favorites is Tombs. Earlier this week we got the news that they have a new album named Feral Darkness now set for release on October 17th by their new label Redefining Darkness Records. The “FFO” references for Tombs have changed over time. As a clue about this new full-length, which follows 2020’s Under Sullen Skies, it includes Fields of the Nephilim, Samhain, Mayhem, and Goatwhore. The lineup also includes new guitarist Dan Higgins. Sera Timms also provides guest vocals on one song.
And then there’s this from the press release:
While Feral Darkness still embraces TOMBS‘ black metal roots, it also explores the band’s gothic, death rock side, creating the band’s darkest and most haunting record to date
Along with all this news came the new album’s title track. It does indeed sound like feral darkness, and it rocks. Heavy in the low end, dirty in the riffing, and savage in the snarls, the song is a beastly menace. Sitting still while listening to this slugger isn’t an option, especially when the throbbing chugs and ghostly wails come out in the song’s back half.
The killer cover art for the album is the work of Seldon Hunt.
https://tombscult.bandcamp.com/album/feral-darkness
https://www.tombscult.com/
https://www.facebook.com/TombsBklyn/
HORNWOOD FELL (Italy)
I’ve been following Hornwood Fell for many moons, witness the seven times I’ve written about their music (including two premieres) beginning in 2017. Which makes me scratch my head about why I missed the fact that they’ve released two singles this year, “Il Rituale” in February and “Memories” in June.
Fortunately, Rennie Resmini was more on top of things, and I saw his piece about both of the 2025 songs in the most recent episode of the starkweather Substack (not the last time I’ll be thanking him in this roundup). As Rennie noted in his own brief write-up, both songs bring out a post-metal influence. They’re also both scary, especially the more recent one.
Mid-paced in its motion, “Il Rituale” combines enormous, granite-hard grooves and light, lilting notes, as well as skull-snapping beats and sizzling chords. It shimmers; a snarling voice periodically inserts itself; eventually the drums tumble down like a ritual avalanche; and the guitar then seems to mewl and whine. It’s almost hypnotic, thoroughly sinister, and grows increasingly, and frighteningly, un-real.
The more recent of the year’s two singles, “Memories“, is also mid-paced, massively heavy, and fearsome, but even more hallucinatory and unsettling. Unsettling, in part because the snarling is more rabid and present and in part because the melodies are more dissonant and disturbing. The music heaves and groans, gnaws and strangles, but also briefly shifts into greater eeriness before the band bring out the frighteners again — and amplify the fear with a finale of contorting guitars.
https://hornwoodfell.bandcamp.com/album/il-rituale
https://hornwoodfell.bandcamp.com/track/memories
ACEPHALIC VOID (?)
Rennie also wrote about this next EP, We Chose Death, in his latest Substack column, and also messaged me about it. Two days later we heard from Acephalic Void itself, an anonymous entity who referred to this debut release as a combination of “dissonant black metal and death industrial,” drawing inspiration “from bands like Deathspell Omega, Plebeian Grandstand, Kriegsmaschine and industrial acts such as Pharmakon, Genocide Organ, and Trepaneringsritualen.” Acephalic Void told us that lyrically the EP “explores themes including the climate crisis, anti-capitalism, pessimism, and the philosophies of Cioran and Bataille.”
All of that kindled my interest, but so did Rennie‘s writing about the EP:
The first assault from Acephalic Void combines a wide array of weaponry in the arsenal. What begins as a dissonant black metal attack starts to fray at the seams and incorporates harsh electronics, fried vocals, off kilter melodic breaks that are a nod to DsO, Blut Aus Nord and Dodecahedron. Some uptempo runs are frantic and furious as a disturbed hornet’s nest. The moments that are dialed back are eggshells and handrails with disjointed, stabbing guitar work while the drumming opens up and cycles around the wreckage of notes. Looking forward to hearing how this project develops.
The EP’s four songs turn out to be as dark and daunting as the record’s title. “A Single Breath” combines rough but still chimelike notes that have a dismal ring, corrosive siren-like tones that seem to quiver in agony and despair, bone-bruising low frequencies, manic percussive outbursts, and unhinged screams. Dissonant, diseased, and increasingly distraught, it’s a harrowing way to start.
The title song offers no balm for the music’s wounds, or relief from the wounds the music inflicts. Its layerings of shrill, dissonant guitars dig in like needles, sometimes frantic, sometimes meandering, but leaving trails of blood and madness wherever they go. The low end is again both bowel-loosening and bludgeoning (but unpredictable), the vocals again berserk.
By the time you reach “Forget” and “The Dagger in the Flesh” it will come as no surprise that Acephalic Void has no interest in making anyone comfortable. “Forget” is where the music diverges to a greater degree into harsh electronics, albeit with a groove. The riffing, such as it is, sounds like an open firehose spewing acid. The vocals sound like the person scorched and flayed by the stream.
At the end, “The Dagger in the Flesh” returns to a sonic amalgam more in line with the first two tracks, which is to say it’s discordant and devastating, determined to leave no bones unbroken and no nerve endings un-burnt. It’s elaborate, and like the first two songs, carefully plotted, but the scheming has ruthless objectives.
https://acephalicvoid.bandcamp.com/album/we-chose-death
https://www.facebook.com/acephalic.void/
https://www.instagram.com/acephalic.void/
DEF/LIGHT (Ukraine)
And finally, we come to an EP named Eternal Reign that was released on May 30th by Def/Light, the Ukrainian/Israeli duo of Avel and Void. I found it because of a press release announcing that the band will have a fifth album named Stygian Conclave coming out this September. That same press release said the album will be a continuation of the Eternal Reign EP, and so I thought I ought to listen to the EP first, especially because I don’t think I’d heard Def/Light‘s music before.
The EP’s Bandcamp stream is set up to play the fourth track first — for very good reasons, as you’ll find out — but I suggest you start at the beginning. You’ll have to get through a brief and haunting ambient overture before reaching the meat of the matter through “Book I: Ignis Contra Coelum“, which translates to “Fire Against the Sky”. It creates a bleak and bludgeoning experience, a slow and very heavy death march densely swathed in corrosive, wailing riffage and shivering peals of tonal pain, accompanied by truly shattering howls and screams. Eventually the band break up their heavy trudge with bursts of rhythmic slugging, but they offer no relief from the pitch-black mood.
“Book II: Dogma Crucified” again features the quivering pinging tones that surfaced within “Book I” as well as the mammoth heaviness in the bass-lines and the utterly crazed vocal blood-spray. The riffing is again dense and sizzling but seems both more distraught and more furious in its mood, backed by drumming that’s more animated from the start. In this one, Def/Light break things up with hard-hitting jolts, riffing that boils higher, spoken words, and wisps of grieving melody.
Then you’ll come to where the Bandcamp stream is set to begin — “Book III: The Poisoned Bite of Eden“. It’s the first time in the EP (post the intro track) when the music gentles, bringing forward brittle gleaming notes, soft symphonics, and choral voices — everything steeped in sorrow. But this sad phase is suddenly replaced by the most hard-charging and violent episode on the EP so far, featuring furious blast-beats, magma-like bass upheavals, and swirling seas of desolate and engulfing sound.
Our friend the little pinging keyboard hasn’t gone away, however, nor have those assaulting vocals, and although the song channels violence and rage it also preserves the feeling of sorrow that heralded its beginning, but writes that on a much bigger scale.
The EP ends with “Book IV: Through the Grave and Beyond“, and I guess I’ll sum it up as a savage stomper, maybe more thoroughly enraged and brutal than any of the preceding songs, though it incorporates many of the same ingredients. And yet the mood of the dense, whirring riffage still sounds like a manifestation of pain.
https://deflightmetal.bandcamp.com/album/eternal-reign
https://www.instagram.com/deflightmetal