SEEN AND HEARD ON A NEW YEAR’S DAY: KARLOFF, TOMBSEEKER, HEXER, 1986, KATHAREIN, HURSAN

Seattle Space Needle in the fog, Dec. 31, 2025, photo by Akash Pamarthy for The Seattle Times

(written by Islander)

Yesterday a newsletter I subscribe to (“This, Not That“) compiled quotations by many famous writers about New Year’s Day and the ending of the previous year, some of them humorous, some of them depressing, some of them wise. One of the quotes, by Charles Lamb, seemed to sum up all the others: “No one ever regarded the First of January with indifference.”

I’m certainly not indifferent. I’m determined… determined not to let the day go by without posting here about new music, notwithstanding the likelihood that many people are too hungover or sleep-deprived to wreck their heads with our preferred sonics today. It’s a compulsion of long standing, one that has resulted in our making some kind of music post 365 days a year, or close to that, with fewer than a dozen missed days over the 16+ years of our site’s existence.

As it always does, the new year of heavy music won’t waste much time taking off and achieving orbit velocity. We’ve already seen and spotlighted lots of songs from albums slated for release in the new year’s first quarter, and more will begin surfacing at an accelerated rate after this relatively slow week ends. I’ve picked an array of recent surfacings in this New Year’s Day column.

But, for better or worse, we haven’t completely finished reflecting in other ways on the music that 2025 brought us, including a few of today’s picks.

Speaking of 2025 reflections, I’m expecting at least two more year-end lists before we close out the first two phases of our LISTMANIA series. And sometime very soon (i.e., tomorrow) I’ll begin the third phase by rolling out our my list of last year’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs (I’ve already made choices for the first lucky 13 installments).

For today, many of the songs are from 2026 releases. They key word for all of them, with one significant exception, is “raucous“. Or you might conclude that most of these bands are “raising a ruckus“. Which, interestingly, isn’t derived from “raucous” despite the similarities but instead seems to be some conjunction of “ruction” and “rumpus”, with connections to “rampage”.

On behalf of everyone here at NCS, we wish you a Happy New Year. May it be better for all of us than the year just ended.

 

KARLOFF (Germany)

We lead off with “Regicide“, the third track to be revealed so far from the forthcoming second album by the German metalpunks Karloff.

With this one Karloff lay down vividly jumping beats and gritty, feral riffs that swarm and blare, along with equally gritty snarls that elevate like the baying of hounds. It’s a head-hooking, muscle-moving song, as haughty as it is nasty — but it also takes a couple of turns near the end, one soft and mysterious, the other racing and vicious, in which the drums go wild and the riffing seems to contort in pain.

The name of Karloff’s new album is Revered by Death, and it’s set for release on January 23rd by Dying Victims Productions.

https://dyingvictimsproductions.bandcamp.com/album/revered-by-death
https://www.facebook.com/karloffpunk

 

TOMBSEEKER (U.S.)

On January 16th the Kansas City death metal band Tombseeker will deliver their self-titled debut album via Iron Fortress Records. The second single off the album, “Flagellated“, is my next pick for this New Year’s Day. I was moved to check it out based on the label’s description of Tombseeker’s music as “drawing from the tank-tread force of Bolt Thrower, the HM-2-driven savagery of Entombed, and the merciless punishment of Suffocation.”

Based on this new song, those are good markers. The snare beats in “Flagellated” will pop your skull like a grape while the riffing sounds like the grim and greedy pulse of a vicious heart. Monstrous roars vent the words from abyssal depths, and the guitars begin darting about like the screeching of devilish sprites or swarming in crazed frenzies.

With a different kind of pulsating guitar bridge leading the way, Tombseeker start jolting listeners while still inflicting those shrill, madly throbbing riffs and gruesome gutturals. Horrors abound!

https://ironfortressrecords.bandcamp.com/album/tombseeker
https://www.ironfortressrecords.com/products/tombseeker-tombseeker-cd-pre-order
https://www.facebook.com/tombseekerkc/

 

HEXER (Germany)

“Fvck it, we just couldn’t wait — so here it is: ‘Black Flame In Cosmic Void‘, the title track of our upcoming EP soon to be released on Crawling Chaos Records.” And that’s how the German duo Hexer announced the next song in this collection two days ago.

Prepare yourselves for heavily rumbling drums and fuzz-bombed riffing that both gruesomely lurches and abrasively churns, led forward by lycanthropic howls and berserk shrieks. The song packs muscle-twitching grooves and muscle-twitching riffage that creates an atmosphere of menace and madness, especially when a guitar feverishly quivers and rises.

But the song suddenly digresses, briefly falling silent and then yielding the stage to brittle, gloom-cloaked picking. When the full band join in again, the music seems to heavily groan and painfully wail, heaving and crying out above and around heavy drum-throbs and electric drum-fills.

The music raggedly ripples and seems to ring like chimes, but it’s all very distressing — and even more so when the band launch a calamitous closing attack that will get your blood rushing and your head spinning, capped by truly spine-tingling vocals (the lycanthrope gone truly mad).

Look for the new Hexer EP in the spring of 2026.

https://thecrawlingchaos-records.de/HEXER
https://thecrawlingchaosrecords.bandcamp.com/track/black-flame-in-cosmic-void
https://www.facebook.com/hexerdoom

 

1986 (UK)

Tomorrow the Manchester-based death/sludge metal band 1986 will release a new album named Carniveil. I haven’t yet had time to make my way through the whole album, but the following video for an album track titled “Black Mirror” sure seized my attention (it came out three months ago but I just made my way to it yesterday).

The furious and agony-drenched face and contorting body of 1986’s frontperson Ashley command attention in the fast-cutting and head-scrambling black-and-white video for the song (nice Fuming Mouth shirt too), and the music also commands attention as it inflicts heart-pounding beats, bone-vibrating bass-lines, dissonant wailing riffage, weirdly warbling electronics, and unhinged screams.

In its grooves the song is reflexively leg-shaking, but everything else about it is weird and unsettling, partly like a swirling acid bath, partly like the aromas of a mass grave. Only at the end do the drums briefly race (like a mosh-pit punk), but the music remains steeped in misery, and the vocals remain relentlessly raw in their throat-lacerating intensity.

https://linktr.ee/1986band
https://www.facebook.com/1986uk

 

KATHAREIN (Romania)

Now we come to the significant exception to the key-word theme I identified for today’s collection. This next song isn’t raucous, but I found it transfixing nonetheless, and the lyrics you’ll see and hear in the new video below are one big reason for that.

The name of the song is “Ain’t Nobody”, words that end a soaring chorus refrain which begins:

What if I must be alone
Should I call my mind a home
Ain’t nobody coming in.
What if I can’t keep control
Should I call my mind a home
Ain’t nobody coming in

As they evolve, the words are unsettling, but I suspect they’ll evocatively hit home for many listeners. And for the most part the words are sung in a passion-fueled, range-spanning, high-flying voice that’s really captivating.

Apart from the compelling singing and lyricism, the song digs in its hooks in other ways. There’s plenty of heft in the bass lines, and the exotic riffing is equally captivating as it pings and rings, swirls and sways, moans and grasps. The moods of the music are as dark as the words, despite the brightness of many sounds, including the psychedelic guitar solo, but it’s nevertheless an infectious experience.

The band is Katharein. They are from Romania. “Ain’t Nobody” is off their debut album Lucky Shots, which was released in December 2024. But although this song isn’t a new one, Katharein did release three new songs in December 2025 along with this new video, and you can find them at Spotify here, here, and here.

https://kathareinmusic.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/kathareinband/

 

HURSAN (UK)

To wrap things up for today I’m recommending a new EP by the British bruisers Hursan. This one, which just dropped on December 30th, is their second release, following up a self-titled EP that came out last April. In reviewing that one, I described the music as “a punishing blend of sludge metal and hardcore” — “Fucking mean and psychotic stuff here, primitive and crazed, but hard to escape.”

The new EP is damned harrowing too, despite the fact that it’s title — R.U.E. — stands for Really Useful Engine, inspired by Thomas The Tank Engine.

By my lights Hursan’s heads are in the right place, as demonstrated by the furious speech that runs through the new EP’s opening track, “King and Country“, a speech preceded by ringing and reverberating notes with a sorrowful mood, and eventually accompanied by enormous booms and ruinously wailing riffage. “God will no accept yer thanks for murder.”

With that shattering overture behind them, Hursan inflict “Born“, a slow moving and hard-slugging march swathed in miserably writhing arpeggios and fronted by terrorizing screams and merciless roars. It’s a vicious and viscerally bleak experience, pierced by anguished, nerve-needling fretwork and percussive outbursts. As spoken words come in, the song punches and stomps even harder, but with no relent in the vocal ferocity or the melodic misery.

Then comes the title song, one still anchored by bone-throbbing bass-lines and skull-smacking beats. Here, the riffing is also still abrasive and often shrill, but it seems to weave in confusion and writhe in agony until everything comes together to ruthlessly pound like off-kilter pile-drivers, with yet another vocal sample in the mix (along with a range of maniacal harsh voices).

The high-octane rage and disgust that fuel Hursan’s music burns again in “Bombs Away“, a brutally pulverizing, furiously spine-cracking track accented by the brief soloing of a monstrously heavy bass, groaning chords, and scalding vocals.

And then Hursan follow that humongously heavy-grooved tirade with the up-tempo “Carnage“, which earns its title through clobbering drums; guitars that slash, boil, and scream; and one more ultra-savage vocal attack. “Carnage” further includes a hardcore slug-fest that will loosen your fillings and a brain-burning lead guitar which sounds like an air-raid siren that’s lost its mind.

If your general attitude about 2025’s socio-political environment was a mixture of anger and revulsion tinged with despair (if it wasn’t, then your eyes might have been half-closed), R.U.E. makes for a fitting fuck-off to the old year and a bracing call to arms as the new one begins.

https://hursan.bandcamp.com/album/r-u-e
https://www.facebook.com/people/Hursan/61566567203073/