OUR LIST OF 2025’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 4): MASTIFF, IMPERIAL TRIUMPHANT, KOSTNATĚNÍ

(written by Islander)

There will be days when an installment of this list has a theme, something that connects the songs, at least in my head. The connections may not mean the songs live in the same musical time-zone or camp out in the same sub-genre territory. There might be some similarities of sound, but there might not. It might just be that the bands went off on their own unexpected and hard-to-classify jaunts. Yesterday’s installment was an example of that.

But even in my own addled head I had no connecting theme for today’s trio of songs. I was just scanning my long list of candidates and for no identifiable reason (other than the fact that they’re infectious) I decided to put these three together. If you perceive some connecting theme, please speak up in the Comments. That would be cheaper for me than booking time with a psychotherapist.

 

MASTIFF

After listening to Mastiff’s crushing 2025 EP For All the Dead Dreams I knew I’d need to put one of those five songs on this list, but I didn’t immediately know which one. On my gigantic list of candidates, I just wrote “something!” One of our commenters (Invictus) nominated “Decimated Graves“, emphasizing its brutality. I also re-read DGR’s review of the EP, which was loaded with good lines, like these:

Have you ever had a band that were perfect for ruining what would otherwise be a good day? A band that could drag you down into the depths of anger, violence, and misery no matter what in the world was happening outside? You could wake up and have everything be sunshine and rainbows, birds landing on your windowsill, all the animals of the forest resting kindly on your shoulder, and your beloved waiting just out of frame – only to put on a release by said group and have the whole feeling be annihilated and the skies darken around you?….

No? Have you ever listened to the UK’s Mastiff, whose brand of sludge-infused hardcore is perfect for bullrushing whatever room you’re in and declaring, “Oh you thought things were going to be good today? Well, not on my watch!”

He also included comments about each specific song. Here’s what he wrote about the one nominated by Invictus:

We would be remiss to not touch on “Decimated Graves” though, which amplifies everything the previous songs did and turns the knob on brutality extra high. If you’ve ever wondered what Mastiff doing a blatant low-and-slow deathcore breakdown would sound like, the closing minute or so of “Decimated Graves” has more than enough of that on display. It is enough to cause a building to sink and collapse on its foundation.

Early in the song it may seem like you’re in for a bus ride of a mid-tempo stomp that occasionally lets the drummer blast his way through the mid-section, but the song does something that Dying Fetus do on their song “From Womb To Waste” in that it steadily gets slower and “dumber” as the song goes on. “Decimated Graves” already starts at caveman crushing rocks level of cro-magnon man songwriting, so can you only imagine how in the hell we’re going to have to describe that last two minutes of the song? Do we even have a scale that goes that low? Would a band be insulted if it were described as writing something akin to being one of the boiling primordial soups that were present on early-Earth? Can we somehow paint this as being like an extremophile bacteria surviving the depths of space by sheer will in its closing minute?

I don’t really have anything to add to that… except that “Decimated Graves” is as infectious as it is decimating.

https://mastiffhchc.bandcamp.com/album/for-all-the-dead-dreams
http://facebook.com/mastiffhchc
https://www.instagram.com/mastiffhchc

 

IMPERIAL TRIUMPHANT

I’m pretty sure I’ve already written that sometimes the video for a song helps elevate it onto this list above other candidates that might be equally infectious, if not more so. Here’s another example of that. I’m pretty sure I would have put “Lexington Delirium” on here even if it hadn’t been packaged with a remarkable video, but now I can’t think of the song without also remembering the video. The two of them together, the visuals and the song itself, proved to be highly memorable.

Almost one year ago we got a bold preview of Imperial Triumphant’s newest album Goldstar, courtesy of Vizzah Harri, and then we got Andy Synn’s review a couple of months later. I was disappointed to see Andy label this next song on my list as “more of a B-side at best,” i.e., one that didn’t quite measure uo to other songs on the album that he acclaimed. Maybe I was unduly influenced by the video, or by Harri pushing for this song in a group of 36 recommendations he sent me, but I’m going with “Lexington Delirium” anyway, and not just because Meshuggah’s Tomas Hakke makes a guest appearance with ravaging growls and howls.

True to its name, the song does include aspects of musical delirium after its gently ringing and dreamlike opening segment and the slashing and shining chords which follow. The music boils and burns but also continues to eerily ring around vivid bass-lines and dynamic drumming. The music becomes gentle and wanders again, but the song reaches a new zenith of delirium in the finale thanks to an electrifying guitar solo.

And then there’s the video. I can’t remember another metal band getting to film a performance on one of the top floors of the Chrysler Building in Manhattan. I’ve been there as a tourist in one of the upper-level public spaces. The Art Deco architecture is stunning, and so are the views. It also seems a perfect setting for Imperial Triumphant’s artistic ethos, both musical and visual. Credit to Brendan McGowan for directing it. (It is located, btw, at the intersection of 42nd Street and Lexington Avenue.)

And I should share the band’s comment when this song and video were released:

“Ziggurats rise, skyscrapers weep, & the future is not birthed from the organic but from a cosmic, mechanical womb. It speaks of posterity lost in the congestion of New Culture, a place where Manhattan’s towering ambition conceals impending delirium. The Throne of Bolts becomes both a seat of power and a looming specter, begging for salvation from the soulless surge of progress. We climbed the deco spire of the magnificent Chrysler building in order to bring you a magnanimous visual experience.”

https://imperialtriumphant.bandcamp.com/album/goldstar-24-bit-hd-audio
https://www.facebook.com/imperialtriumphant

 

KOSTNATĚNÍ

Here’s another example of a song that I first focused on and listened to repeatedly because we premiered it. But I didn’t stop listening to it following the premiere. Unlike many songs we premiered last year, I periodically returned to this one, and that was a persuasive sign that it belonged on this list.

Which is not to imply that other songs on Kostnatění’s 2025 album Přílišnost (Excess) weren’t also infectious. If you haven’t listened to all of it, you should. And if you haven’t, maybe “Samotář (Loner)” will convince you to do that. I’ll repeat part of what I wrote for the premiere:

The song continues relentlessly morphing, using the elaborately layered and multi-toned guitars, plus constantly changing drum tempos and patterns, to create moods of menace, mystery, madness, and magnificence. The fretwork is complex, technically virtuosic, and kaleidoscopic in its impact. While the vocals are never less than maliciously ugly, they also change, ultimately exploding in terrifying screams as the song approaches its dazzling, adrenaline-fueled finale.

This particular song does reveal a fast-spinning blender of genre ingredients, defying simple categorization, but maybe it’s sufficient to call it “progressive extreme metal”, or simply a head-spinner of a high order. It is indeed bizarre, but also captivating and addictive.

https://kostnateni.bandcamp.com/album/p-li-nost-excess
https://www.facebook.com/kostnateni/
https://www.instagram.com/kostnateni