(Our South African contributor Vizzah Harri decided to follow up our 2025 LISTMANIA series with a monumental listmania of his own, which includes various list-assembling calculations and his abundantly illustrated thoughts about three groups of albums he chose to highlight in his own inimitable fashion, respectively anchored in each section by discursive reviews of releases by Demonic Death Judge, Melpomene, and Imperial Triumphant.)
Hi, it’s your non-resident alien. Can someone please remind us of what the time is, last year is over already? Well, I’ve spent too much time as my second favorite spirit animal, the ostrich. You know, sticking my head in the sand and grubbing around for shiny rocks cos the job market is absolutely grade A dogshit.
Yes, year-end mania is over. The train has left the station and all that’s left are the weeds creeping up the platform and the announcement notice is stuck on loop. So, while we’re waiting for that next train and everyone else is racing ahead into the future, here are some uselessly vital statistix for those of us who aren’t quite ready for the new year. NCS doesn’t have a single authoritative take like other ‘happy camper’ sites that deal in the underground, though the Listmania roundup does a good job of covering a lot of bases.
I’m not a threat to anyone’s job dragging cells, I do however excel at stupidly focusing on mindless chores. Before we get into some things from last year that are still worth your time, a quick diversion into; what a meta list of readers’ lists would produce and what a meta list of NCS lists would produce. I tried compiling a meta list of the mind-numbing data of all the other lists including these, but it ended up being futile. There already is a To the Teeth list of lists, which is careful to account for bias. I’m not a data scientist and I’m biased as fvck, I was however able to gather that across the board, there are two albums that got way more votes on way more sites than any others. Therefore a meta meta list, in the Greek sense, of all the motherfuckin lists weighted and scaled together (the link is to Brazilian avant-jazz band Metá Metá’s pandemic album MetaL MetaL) would mean 2025’s Absolute Elsewheres are:
Messa’s The Spin and Deafheaven’s Lonely People with Power.
Great albums all, but what did our readers think? First up is an amalgamation of what our readers enjoyed listening to the most this year. The fact that many readers only contributed a slab of albums they enjoyed this year instead of ranking them meant that one could only really focus on which albums got mentioned more. Listing can be tedious, even senseless, so why are we doing this then? For kicks of course.
NCS readers submitted 526 different albums spanning pretty much the whole spectrum of genres. 139 of those records were mentioned more than once… though to narrow it down I had to look at those with more than 5 votes, of which there were only 20. It’s in reverse alphabetic order because Confusion Gate got the most top five votes. The results can be whatever you want them to be, but it does seem like our readers have really good taste in muzak:
Yellow Eyes – Confusion Gate
Tómarúm – Beyond Obsidian Euphoria
Teitanblood – From the Visceral Abyss
Qrixkuor – The Womb Of The World
Perdition Temple – Malign Apothesis
Paradise Lost – Ascension
Morast – Fentanyl
Malefic Throne – The Conquering Darkness
Imperial Triumphant – Goldstar
Hedonist – Scapulimancy
Havukruunu – Tavastland
Dormant Ordeal – Tooth & Nail
Deafheaven – Lonely People With Power
Blut Aus Nord – Ethereal Horizons
Blood Abscission – I I
Black Braid – III
Arrows – Yearning Arrows, Cloven Suns
Arkhaaik – Uihtis
Ancient Death – Ego Dissolution
Abigail Williams – A Void Within Existence
Next up is the semi-controversial one. This is the meta NCS list compiled from our Listmania Best of ‘25. Votes were counted, daemons on shoulders were both consulted and ignored, yet, rational scoring systems do not work here cos we don’t have a blanket ranking system. This is more a parody of lists than anything else:
Coroner – Dissonance Theory (score: 13,006,666)
Blut Aus Nord – Ethereal Horizons (12,398,914)
Teitanblood – From the Visceral Abyss (12,269,622)
Rivers Of Nihil – Rivers Of Nihil (12,157,932)
Abduction – Existentialismus (1.618033988749895)
Tombs – Feral Darkness (9,801,928)
Qrixkuor – The Womb of the World (9,772,223)
Patristic – Catechesis (9,723,129)
In Mourning – The Immortal (9,559,352
Havukruunu – Tavastland (9,338,873)
Floating – Hesitating Lights (9,276,452)
An Abstract Illusion – The Sleeping City (8,654,151)
Ancient Death – Ego Dissolution (8,420,704)
Well, music is subjective after all y’all. Metal Archives’ is not a year-end list that got included in any of the meta meta lists, it has been running for 9 years-ish and just for the hell of it, here’s the top 13 of the 387 albums that made the cut in the mega list out of 861 initial entries. Or how it would look if I had to actually rank stuff:
56. Der Weg einer Freiheit – Innern
342. Grey Aura – Zwart vierkant: Slotstuk
209. Veilburner – Longing for Triumph, Reeking of Tragedy
327. Smiqra – Rɡyaɡ̇dźé!
12. Zeicrydeus – La grande hérésie
54. Kostnatění – Přílišnost (Excess)
26. Lamp of Murmuur – The Dreaming Prince in Ecstasy
182. Psychonaut – World Maker
83. Agriculture – The Spiritual Sound
91. Species – Changelings
59. Morast – Fentanyl
288. Meth Leppard – Gatekeepers
18. One of Nine – Dawn of the Iron Shadow
Calva Louise was AMG’s #1 pick and it ain’t anywhere to be found on that first page of the forum, maybe cos they’re deemed a rock band? And goddamn, thanks for the shout AMG, cos Edge Of The Abyss is a mind-mashing listen! You know what else is not anywhere to be found in the just under 400 titles of the main list of the encyclopedia? All the albums I’m about to share with you (absolutism, it tends to bite in the ass, nearly all, as in 66.6% to be exact).
Some of them have been covered throughout the year, some have not made it into these halls as of yet. If you really wanted to delve deep enough into subterranean lairs to pinch the dragon before it rage-blasted you into an inviting lava pit, then Neill Jameson has you covered, but on a serious note, everyone here put a lot of thought and listening hours into what they recommended, so don’t skip the actual big list of NCS Listmania. Puns are usually intended, not to flummox as an hour of suffering, but to make sure you’re awake for this ride. We’re in the jungle now and before the crafty imperialists think of leoparding any appendages, they need reminding that it would be more applicable to precipitate the advent of a meth leppard than anything else.
Mathematicians and musicians alike have spent innumerable hours contemplating the properties of the golden ratio, square root of 5, adding one and then divided by 2 equals 1.618… or phi. Little did they know that the only trve music is that of metal, seeing as the people’s free encyclopedia tells us that “a pentagram, or five-pointed star polygon, whose geometry is quintessentially described by φ (phi). Primarily, each intersection of edges sections other edges in the golden ratio. The ratio of the length of the shorter segment to the segment bounded by the two intersecting edges (that is, a side of the inverted pentagon in the pentagram’s center) is φ.”
Which brings us to the phantom cuts you didn’t know you’ve been missing out on. Here are some of the best sonic hallucinations I’ve had the honor of undergoing last year.
5 Stealthy spectres of annihilation that flew under the radar
Waxwolf – Magic Madness Sadness
The avant-garde is where it’s at. Melodicity, symphonic sensibilities, unrivaled progressive death metal with chip-tune arcs, if you’re not inoculated then you’re gonna be hopelessly infected within 13 seconds. Crystalline production, with the tidal push and pull effects of Jupiterian moons transcribed on manuscript paper. For your friends that claim to listen to everything.
Federico “Waxwolf” Di Cera purportedly lost his voice providing harsh vocals back in 2017 for the epically named Folk Metal Jacket’s Eulogy for the Gentle Fools. Bah, who needs a voice box if you’ve got synths, a clarinet, piano, Rhodes, Hammond, flute, violin, and a sax to add color to the mix!? One of the two best instrumental albums of 2025 adorned with the elegance of Helvetica Blanc’s art, Waxwolf not only wrote an astonishing record with exceptional guests to fill in orchestral magnitudes, they also got Alkaloid’s Hannes Grossman and Linus Klausentizer on deck for the rhythm section. EP length? Lol, this album is so stacked with talent and vibrant ideas, there’s no way anyone only gives it one sub half hour spin.
Lycopolis – Sons of Set
Approach with caution, this album is supposedly an information hazard that will infect the be-Beelzebub out of you. It got slated for being repetitive in some corners of the ‘net, probably by a tech-death fan. These Egyptian sorcerers are masters of hypnosis though; the repetition is the point. “Roiling and tumultuous, martial and magisterial…Packing more than a heck of a punch in concept, construction, and delivery, equating what it encapsulates with anything other than a form of elder magic would be heresy.” And a “true testament to artistic prowess, the vitalism of African metal.”
Ckraft – Uncommon Grounds
New words are hard, here’s from the review: “On paper the album, and each song for that matter, should seem bonkers in concept. In actuality, it’s more than insane, it’s fret-bustingly fantastic. With a not-too-distant affinity towards convention just to keep the listener off-guard, here the side quest is the main journey. Taking a concept of sonic values to allude to, tether it to the here and now in consciousness, and then subtly scraping the temporal lobe with a steel brush. There are melodic, tonal, and compositional themes that run throughout the album and which can seem like ideas regurgitated or masticated in yet another stomach but one with a freak evolution of gnashers instead of gastric acid for the breakdown. Playing with words is also a constant, and then medieval chants as inspiration. Flirting with the grandiosity and magnificence of social constructs while being a critique of our conception of the corporeal plane and what we find significance in. Thirty-four minutes and 18 seconds never went by so quick.”
Hallowed Hands – Rot Economy
Well fuck, every time I think I’m done with last year, it keeps coming back with more stellar holes punched in my small unblack dome of a sky. Recommendations for music that stands out as what we deem the best of the year… out standing in a field of digital wastes hellbent for whatever after enduring the unskippable cutscene. There’s supposed to be some seriously grave contemplation having gone into picks, and while I’m not in disagreement with this sentiment, we at times forget that the variety of muzak we choose to play in the safety of our lugholes, in the privacy of the wherever that still happens to be a thing, tends to be on the fun side as opposed to the type that makes us feel like non-playing characters in the mall of designed obsolescence.
Fun, cheer, enjoyment can be had in innocent ways, devious ones too, let’s just pray to Mael that those of us who choose the latter also understand that the safety of the flesh vessels and electric jelly of those around them matter too. There sure are the types of hominid that would look down with protruding brow at this alien entity residing in a blue bedroom and simply return to its cave and dwell on the peculiarities of ages still replicated now in nostalgic flippancy; and then there’re apes like me who worship at the altar of difference.
Yes I missed me some Cicada The Burrower, Cam Davis houses all her projects in the expanse of the blue chamber of her label labelled labially. Pixelated cover art, check. Offbeat whacky humorous song titles, check. Music that spans groove, black, chiptune, and oddball badassery with moments of whimsy and riffs that will dominate the living fvck out of you before tucking you in with lackadaisical flair, check. Zero fucks left to handout about your barely parboiled take, check. These hands be hallowed and blessed appendages cannot do any wrong.
What a trip.
Demonic Death Judge – Absolutely Launched
‘Loanword’ is a calque from the German ‘lehnwort’. ‘Calque’ is a loanword from French, an imitation or tracing. ‘Sauna’ is a loanword from ancient Finnish, whereas ‘syväväärennös’ is a Finnish calque for the English term ‘deepfake’.
I chose a word at semi-random to obtain the Finnish calque for ‘deepfake’. That word is a portmanteau, which shifted into its current form from its usage in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass where Humpty Dumpty describes the origins of different and unusual blends of words. Portmanteau used to be the term for a form of luggage that opens in two parts. Deepfake therefore is a portmanteau of deep learning and fake.
Another loanword that is of French origin also relating to storage is ‘chiffonier’, a sideboard in English or ragpicker in French. Deepfake was coined on the treasure trove for chiffoniers of all sorts of information, Reddit. There are myriad blended words: musically speaking, one of the more frowned upon practices in some circles would be that of karaoke, which is derived from words signifying ‘empty’ and ‘orchestra’. The only reason it is of import is because the one and only fan-tasizing, I am the Intimidator, released a remastered karaoke version of their raucous self-titled opus from the previous round of listmania-topping pleasantries.
Absolutely Launched should’ve made more waves, and unless people who frequent the sauna on a regular basis have a different idea of fun, it strikes me as music of action, exertion, and possibly the kind one would listen to on a leisurely drive, albeit the driver might want to make sure the brick in their shoe is removed in order to apply the leisure or it will be a singalong on a highway to the other side.
Demonic Death Judge are a Finnish band. Scraping the Suontaan miekka sword to the groove, bringing Principally Chromatic Principles to the stoner party, kicking despair in the face at the doom show and felling riff trees with the axe of Ukko or Ukonkirves since 2009. 17 years in and the riff-lords at Demonic Death Judge have not faltered one bit. They’ve also been the progenitors of some fantastic music videos from past releases.
The cover art cannot be seen as a deepfake, unless you imagine the surfer’s face to be that of Ari Vatanen with a mustache. The music is no cheap imitation, though it does contain traces lending heavily on masters of sonic chiropractic of old.
One of the coolest videos you haven’t experienced yet if you like riffs and rally racing, is that of their Heavy Chase video from the album Seaweed which uses Jean-Louis Mourey’s short film ‘Climb Dance’, a piece of cinéma vérité of the storied Finnish rally driver Ari Vatanen racing up the Pikes Peak Hillclimb in Colorado in the late eighties.
The original video includes a beautiful short piano piece and then it pretty much falls into petrolhead pörn territory with a focus on capturing the bridled fury of an era when Peugeot were still creating insane rally cars. Several versions of the short film still exist on the aether-tubes including this remastered audio offering as well as one that includes interviews in French.
It is possible that the filmmaker, Mourey, was inspired by Michele Mouton’s description of how it felt to tackle the pre-tarmac switchbacks of Pike’s 4 decades ago; “it’s like a ballet, it’s like a dance.” Mouton’s victory up that hill in 1985 remains one of the most impressive feats in motor racing. 2025 marked 40 years since that historic victory for which she has now been inducted into the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb Hall of Fame.
Absolutely Launched would nosedive or go over the falls if it didn’t go for the big tricks on the outside set these surfers of semiotic synchronicity have channeled on the first wave. This is no slowly transpiring peak, here we have a record of storm swell that went straight for the shallow reefed slab.
Another older video, Filthy as Charged, most definitely is NFSW, but the bastard child of Ralph Steadman and Liam Brazier in visuals will seduce nearly as much as the music it represents so hedonistically. There’s a visual reference that might be quite satisfying about the man without a face’s sycophantic mole with a hole in the kisser serving as a knuckle dusting of grace 90% of the world is hoping for. Which brings us to our first Finnish tongue twister of the day.
“Hurskastelevaisehkollaismaisellisuuksissaankohankin hän toimi?” – I wonder if he did so partly just to show sort of a slightly hypocritic kind of basic attitude? (the paradoxical hypocrisy lying in ‘pious secular’ ways)
90’s Violence, the first offering off Absolutely Launched, has a few bones to pick with somesuch attitudes:
“Land of the renaissance man.
Violence as a business plan.
Deals done by force.
Buried in shallow shores.”
The Finns probably employed some form of digital fenagling in attaining their 90’s (Ultra) Violence video to transform the album cover into motion, and sure, you might ask if the cover is photoshopped, does it even matter? In all seriousness, to shave a few grooves of serious brooding off the head, Toni Raukola’s cover design is what got me to click on the damned album in the first place. The video is what it advertises, a tribute to ’90s Hollywood action movies:
When something works really well, at least for me, then I turn into the subject of the song Goner, lost in the music. When I found that DDJ made a video for this insanely catchy tune it was all the more fun to see yet another reference to one of the funniest SNL skits ever. @gtheperson was right on the money: “The only metal band to truly get Christopher Walken‘s message about the cowbell.” (The skit aired a quarter century ago and the original is unavailable even from the primary source, probably because the inimitable Mr. Walken keeps getting disturbed with references to it.)
I Realize That… Now would be a good time for more tongue twisters:
Ääliö, älä lyö, ööliä läikkyy! – Literally, “You moron, don’t hit (it), you’ll spill beer!” (from a song by Pirkka-Pekka Petelius in 1985)
Which brings us to “Kersantti Pippuri rannalla tappeli,” which is supposedly a teaser for people who struggle with their r’s and l’s and means ‘Sergeant Pepper fought on the beach.’ You can’t beat that original album title, and the title track kicks a lot of ass, but I’d like to think this tongue twister is the Finnish alternative.
Demonic Death Judge’s Bandcamp states that their music caters “Uncompromising groove and relentless, crushing riffs.” Stoned sludgy grooves with rock ‘n’ roll sensibilities, a metallic edge fuzzed up to the max, hooks fit for a megalodon, and vox that can strip paint off the walls. And just enough cowbell to slake that thirst for this kinda sahti until the next one.
“Gödöllön pöllö töllöttää, möllöttää, köllöttää ja ööliä löllöttää” – The owl of Gödöllö watches around, sulks, idles, and consumes beer.
7 Flawless records from ’25
Death Obvious – Death Obvious
This duo self-released their self-titled album way early in ’25, but they have since been signed by Transcending Obscurity, hence the new-look album cover and the change from “Death Obvious” to the “Self-titled” moniker the album now has on BC. Apologies to anyone offended by my use of the old album cover, but I think it had a lot of charm. There wasn’t anything like this out there last year. It was in constant rotation throughout, and it still spins.
Punishing groove, infatuating exuberance in soundscapes of frayed melodicity accentuated with a fire of ominous avant-garde affinity. If this is how Islander felt about it, you know it’s some good shit: “ugly and abrasive, malevolent and marauding, dissonant and discordant, and accompanied by thoroughly bestial and berserk vocals that escalate into lunatic cries… relentlessly dynamic, constantly mutating, constantly galvanic beast, just fizzing with ideas”.
“…the stylistic wellsprings include black and death metal but freely venture beyond those into realms of acid-overdose psychedelia, mutant prog, corrupted doom, and even twisted neoclassical… ‘Who the hell are these two geniuses? This can’t possibly be their first rodeo!’”
Am I in Trouble? – Spectrum
Iridescent, polychromatic, excessive dosages of melodic reverie, fanatically and belligerently antithetical to the meme of the rule. Black metal read through a pearlescent lens. It’s viciously triumphant music. Pick a color, you cannot go wrong.
Actually, you can go wrong by not checking out their music because a reimagined EP got released in December with reinterpretations by two different artists. Conceptually and creatively pushing and reconstructing boundaries.
Vespéral – La Mort de l’Âme
It only makes sense that these Québécois hit the right notes for me, half the band is also in Conifère, and their drummer Nakkabre provided the stellar cover art.
How this one went so deep under the radar can only be explained by advanced tactical fighter technology of the F-22 Raptor variety. Equal parts epic, atmospheric, and exhilarating. It’s a ritualistic and shamanic slab of temple pallor scrying holds of elder lore, meting out rallying calls to recant modern sensibilities on atavistic shores.
Proof that incorporating a raw feel does not have to imply shite sound production. A master class in mixing and sound design, a guitar tone to envy. When music is this good, I have to consciously force myself to listen critically because it contains ridiculously strong magick that traverses time.
Tumbleweed Dealer – Dark Green
For an astonishing year in music, I didn’t expect to be surprised by an experimental stoner prog band. Dark Green is what happens when 3 people have enough time to execute exactly what they’ve envisioned without worrying about external expectations. Completely stolen from the words I wrote about it: “Floral tonalities that at first opened as lament are joined with choral resonance and keys of solemnity. Percussive cymbal constructs circle a musical cornucopia in slow motion married with the urgency of a sped-up and ascending bass countdown. Reads like it’s conflicting, however it’s the best a non-muso can do in describing the incredible layering achieved…gorgeous interplay between instrumentation that supports and breathes organically, amplified through mycelium, reverbed with lichen.”
“There is an insistence to these tracks as if they were waiting ever less patiently to be hard-lined into a computer as a formula for life-affirmation. Tremolo’d leads of the bright kind, pastoral electronic piano, and later darker electronica take the foreground, but as much as those sounds dominate the soundscape, the percussion and bass in the rhythm section are simply astounding to behold. There is not a skippable track present… this thing should be amped up and listened to loud enough to get the gators out of slumber…”
Starer – Ancient Monuments and Modern Sadness
The last thing I listened to before the sun set on the old year was Lycopolis (Sons of Set, duh), the first thing I heard as the sun baked the fuck out of me and my tent was Thy Catafalque’s yet another motherfucking opus in ’24’s XII: A Gyönyörü Álmok Ezután Jönnek (Beautiful dreams are yet to come). Well I’ll be damned if the first rec I gave myself to remember was that of a certain Starer. Besides the dope album title of Ancient Monuments And Modern Sadness, it wasn’t just a coincidental mention of Thy Catafalque, there are a fuckton of notes, melodies, tones and idiosyncrasies that cannot be translated transcribed or even thought to be loaned, yet gawddammmn this fills the void.
Symphonic sure is one to put it, and a large brush to go for that first stroke. If any of the sonic selections in the previous revolution of the sun were anything to go by then you’d probably have realized more of an affinity for eastern-tinged tones, probably with some African groove in the mix, and fuck yes there is a symphony recorded which would affront most with cacophony, yet damn the descriptors are gonna run dry pretty darned quick if we were going to simply focus on genre-specific trifectas of elucidations. I wasn’t staring at the cover art that long, but then, it did give a bit of a minimalist pharaonic vibe. Islander got it right when he mused that “it’s an enormously impressive and thoroughly captivating album, and one I suspect will hover in the heads of anyone who hears it as we reach year-end list season (and beyond).”
This album is not a grower; in a year overflowing in quality black metal, Josh Hines went straight for the kill. If you like your riffs charred yet dripping in molasses, there might have been ‘favorite subjective’ choices for listening grace before you pressed play on this record; but I can tell you that Starer objectively unlocked, sculpted, carved and slashed into being some of the catchiest fuckin riffs you haven’t heard yet. Time to buy that brace before Il-Kantilena induces daemonic seizures and stigmatas fit for snapping your mortal vertebrae to exit your meat sack and Lie around [your] neck.
Lazerthrone – The Tomb Of The Lunar Oracle
Somewhere among the rocks and cacti of Tucson, Arizona is this mountain wanderer and desert-lamenting – albeit those paradoxically deserted wastes of space infested by dark matter – mofo named Voidseeker Acanthi Novah Anu, aka Jonathan Buchanan.
The Tomb Of The Lunar Oracle came the same way a lot of good shit on Bandcamp arises, by way of the mighty motherfucking album cover. Maybe it has been done before, but it isn’t often that you see an actual black hole in the credits of an album. A Funeral For Their Star contains the sounds recorded by NASA of “the black hole at the center of the Perseus cluster.” Aside from that cool and quirky bit of trivia this is cosmic black metal that ramps up the atmosphere and scales and surpasses the epic tag.
This album is a journey into the desolate wastes of indifference that is our universe. Music to listen to with the lights off and loud enough for your tinnitus to howl like that black hole, music for contemplation, music for conquering the cosmos. And have no fear for that atmospheric tag, Buchanan’s songwriting chops and ability to write brain-searing riffs are up there with the greats in both space- and melodic black metal.
Melpomene – A Body Is A Suggestion
Chomping at the bit to have that goddamn gate drop. The gate being the play button that ain’t being kept, so before you even read any motherfucking further, smack your clickety finger on down!
Skull resonance jolts the fuck out of my skull and then you get to the bit that takes that resonance to an otherworldly cosmic-mattered dark level in ‘transcend form’… when that bass reverbs through my jaw I cannot but stretch my mouth in an oomph so wide my mouth starts splitting at the corners. Fuck. The album transcends form 3 minutes and 32 seconds into the eponymous track, and at 3:37 chrysalis is reached, complete. Them numbers add up to 8 and 13 respectively. “With moulting ouroboros.” Music that transcends time itself.
It is not necessary to go through even three tracks to realize that what you just committed your ears, brain, and even body to an all-encompassing, phantasmagoric, perception-warping chunk of completeness. When you get past song 3, if it hasn’t sunk in already, there is no turning back and the realization that we’re dealing with a piece of fucking art of the highest order should start manifesting. Not a nanosecond of tape in excess except if left in wanting, not a note placed in afterthought or jarring in the type of dissonance that doesn’t work.
Ladies, non-affiliated folks, and gents, what we have here is not something I’m going to claim to be in any way the best of anything, what we have here is one of the few absolutes of 2025. A Body Is A Suggestion is a perfect album, this is objective and this is fact. Whether listener or creator, bow down, the real shit just rocked up in town.
Abstraction of Being is listed as an instrumental track on the Metal Archives. Funny that. Ambient musique concrète instrumental in cleansing our aural palette before the final onslaught. Every other track here is furnished with bedizenments lyrical and of poetic abstraction as well as realism, meanderings, and reflections on being. Eloquently summed up on Bandcamp as “a treatise on self-actualization; ensconced in ceremonial body horror, lacquered in science-fantasy; shrouded in the warped electricity of a distorted guitar, the crash & clamour of a beaten drum – of wood on bronze. // Twin Cities Emotional Death // This is music meant to emulate violent catharsis and its mystic aftermath. By, for and about: queer, female, colored, and fringe experience.”
There is a good reason why Melpomene did not make many year-end lists, this isn’t music that caters towards anything regarding convention. The album fades out with funereal gongs. It departs into an aether asking its listener to contemplate, to enter a state of meditation on what has preceded terminus. More than any other album that you haven’t heard this year, this one should be paramount. Music on the very edge, of the underground and for the dwellers of peripheral reaches.
3 records of climacteric significance
Ancient Death – Ego Dissolution
Covered in Seen and Heard, reviewed and listed by Chile, on To the Teeth’s list of lists, Bandcamp Daily-, Stereogum– and Decibel’s lists, and not to mention listed by SurgicalBrute, and as an honorable recommendation in Professor D Grover XIIIth’s list.
We were spoiled for choice in death metal realms this year. For top-tier death, however, this one hit it out of orbit. If you held a gun to my head for a fucking rating out of 10, it gets a baker’s dozen. If an album gets so much love both above and under the ground, there has to be something to it. If you haven’t read Chile’s fantastic review of the album that I cannot best, here are some highlights: “riffs come pouring out without judgement, ready-made to dislocate some cervical vertebrae…” “paints a cosmic canvas so vast that it transcends the space-time continuum…” It’s an ambitious album that attained everything it set out to do musically and artistically, and that means that the hype is real.
Abduction – Existentialismus
Black metal that hits every goddamn note of the devil’s finest judgement. List makers probably take things like infectiousness, riffs, the guitar sound/ production and mix, the lyrics/concept and cover art, the beauty and artistry, the individual instrumentation, uniqueness/newness and wow factor, songwriting and pre-emptive judgement on timelessness into account. Existentialismus checks all those boxes and contains hooks dipped in a poison of alchemic magnetism that kept me going back to it. Approach at own risk.
Imperial Triumphant – Goldstar
Drawing away the curtain on this minor opera of opulent ideological decay, is Eye of Mars. Nightmarish in its execution, positively disconcerting. It culminates as it commences, with nods towards the time of the very construction of their beloved and vile city.
This track opens and closes with a statement from philosopher Marshall McLuhan, who predicted the big triplet of the ‘w’, not world war 3, the world wide web. Upon searching for that quote the first link that popped up was an article about Nam June Paik, a video art pioneer who coined the phrase ‘information (or electronic) super highway’. It got real weird really quick after that.
Nam June Paik – McLuhan Caged.
Delving further one could find a certain Bob Dobbs, man of mystery who inspired the church of the SubGenius, a parody religion and a search that surfaced this quote:
“I met Nam June Paik in New York City in the middle of May, 1975. I told him I would be seeing Marshall McLuhan in Toronto in a couple of days.
He immediately handed me a copy of the May 5 NEW YORKER which featured a long profile of Paik, and asked me to give it to McLuhan as a gift.
When I gave it to McLuhan compliments of Paik, McLuhan said he would read it that evening.
The next day I asked him if he had read the article.
He replied he had.
Then after a pause, he said: “But it’s all just CONTENT.””
A man who wrote about memes, one who became a meme, and then the ultimate meme creator of the 20th century. If you go to this NJP.ma link about Paik and head down to Part 2: Paik’s Participation TV and Marshall McLuhan (1968) and expand the video loop regarding the quote, it truly is an infinite loop. The total time is stamped at 15:12 yet it always starts at 1:22 and ends at 1:46, or rather loops 24 seconds back to repeat ad infinitum. Here is the video in full.
According to another video on Paik, he says that attending a John Cage concert was like chewing sand and that “Cage took seriousness out of serious music, and I took seriousness out of serious TV.” His piece on McLuhan was titled “McLuhan caged” and via Wikipedia McLuhan “frequently punned on the word “message”, changing it to “mass age”, “mess age” and “massage.” Concerning the title, McLuhan wrote:
“The title “The Medium Is the Massage” is a teaser—a way of getting attention. There’s a wonderful sign hanging in a Toronto junkyard which reads, ‘Help Beautify Junkyards. Throw Something Lovely Away Today.’ This is a very effective way of getting people to notice a lot of things. And so the title is intended to draw attention to the fact that a medium is not something neutral—it does something to people. It takes hold of them. It rubs them off, it massages them and bumps them around, chiropractically, as it were, and the general roughing up that any new society gets from a medium, especially a new medium, is what is intended in that title.””
With this in mind, it is then a stark reminder as to which medium Imperial Triumphant has chosen for what they deem as the next phase of their work, a message acting as a kneading with little bytes of intricacy referencing from the outset, with the heavy disclaimer of observer’s bias, how even in that most serious endeavor of creation one can liaise with the absurd.
Before we reach that opening for breath, reaches of intensity are strived for, attained and accompanied throughout by a masterclass in percussion. Quietus interspersed with virtuosic – bordering on vitriolic – musical expression as annotation to our experience of media, medium, and as could be extracted from the cryptic explanation from the band how the striving towards progress as a goal, a means and an absolute, the ultimate form of which is war (Mars was the god of war no?); we reap eventually the benefits of that very state of nature we never seem to be able to escape as 21st century monkeys with tablets containing all of history. Yet these information superhighways are curated, more like railroads with switches to remain on track by powers out of our grasp, algorithms refined to our searches which then surely keep us within a feedback loop of content.
Gomorrah Nouveaux shatters into place, simultaneously sounding like a Thai massage, a future dystopian tribe clapping in applause to its new sacrificial ruler, and an out of place ad that seeped into the demented world of dissonant blackened jazz.
In semitic spiritual texts, especially the Hebrew kind, Gomorrah and its sister Sodom became synonymous with “destruction and desolation” for their convenient description as hotbeds for vice. It etymologizes as being overwhelmed by water (Arabic) or the depths of copious amounts of water (Hebrew), and it was also one of the five cities of the plain, a reference I was today years old in catching for it’s very plain, goddammit, use by Cormac McCarthy.
If one has read that final chapter in the Border Trilogy and then extrapolates from the lyrics for this song upon the original meaning and usage of this fictional city’s place in the epoch of Abrahamic spiritual texts, it becomes an expression and review of the oldest profession, in all of its forms. For to sell oneself, to sell one’s body, is encapsulated in most visceral form perhaps in the trade of short-term amelioration of carnal urges, though labor of nigh any kind, the selling of one’s physical efforts, ends up in the end being a form of prostitution just as real as being used for physical pleasure.
One way to describe Imperial Triumphant’s sound is mordant melody. The second track is a mendacious march, simultaneously ascending and devolving, break stop. A descent into the caves of occlusion before maniacally melding background synth with science fiction deep sounds and elevated augmented bass in its mid-section which shift into a reappearance of theme in its first riff and the opening applause reimagined in the bass morphing into an overtone of decayed agency. The video accompaniment is fitfully manipulated by Brendan McGowan in its opening phase as a reference to Paik as a magnetized loop afore the 1920s veritably roar onto the screen.
In an essay investigating the work of Katja Strunz by Dominic Eichler titled ‘Something old, something new’, we can find partial inspiration for one of the loudest statements in Imperial Triumphant’s oeuvre, that of Lexington Delirium. A merry little tune on the inheritance of the delusions of grandeur that sweep down monuments of olden times as manifest exemplarism of that which will never be attained.
“In the 1920s Manhattan architect Hugh Ferriss was generating ominous charcoal drawings that explored the creative potential of skyscrapers within the maximum dimensions allowable by the city’s building regulations, and which he eventually published in his book The Metropolis of Tomorrow (1929).”
Hugh Ferriss – The Metropolis of Tomorrow (1929)
“In Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan (1978), Rem Koolhaas mused that Ferriss’ most important contribution to the city was ‘the creation of an illuminated night inside a cosmic container, the murky Ferrissian Void: a pitch black architectural womb that gives birth to consecutive stages of skyscraper [that] absorbs multiple impregnation by any number of alien and foreign influences.’”
The trio, at least in Ezrin’s words, deem the opening quote as one of the most direct definitions in lexis as to what their aesthetic encapsulates. I can listen to the opening notes on a loop for hours on end. In accordance with how the band feels about what they are as far as lore, sound, and appeal are concerned, this song really hits a triumphal swagger as it draws to a close. “The gold which crowns this tower pays its respect only to the black.”
Way back in 2024 the single for Hotel Sphinx appeared, and here’s some of what I wrote about it then:
“If playing 4 different tracks (they only have 3 members listed now, so perhaps Kenny G made a comeback) and taking an album’s worth of the scurf of a peyote-psyched crack of the dreams of a head trauma nightmare in sonic form wasn’t enough, splatter in the mix of the samples that I didn’t even hear on the first play-through; and then have their kids join in in a lullaby over Handel’s “Sarabande”… motherfucker. “Sarabande” was written for the saraband dance in triple meter. If the opening movement didn’t already prick up your ears, then the synth/stylophone pay-off motif will definitely do the job.
“The layers in this peculiar yet provocative pastiche would be like going into the crab nebula as Yog-Sothoth and trying to 3d-map it. This song alone as a musical- and visual referential meme of the highest order should be studied in universities.”
I could not get any confirmation from the primary source, however there is a rumour going round that if Goldstar got 3 stars or less on a review, the reviewer would get a complimentary packet of these inviting-looking lollipops:
No word on whether glowing reviews turned up any of these on publication:
The search for content on the product and the message uncovered two peculiar passages from a short story written by Huzama Habayeb: ‘A (Somewhat) Realistic Dream’
“The shopkeeper’s frail and worn appearance reminded me of previous visages stored in my memory. Where did I happen to see this face? I wondered, although it wasn’t of great concern. We exchanged greetings, and he handed me a pack of ‘Gold Star’ cigarettes without being asked. Apparently, he knew what I wanted. I paid him the pack’s price, thanked him, and pursued my dream lane.”
Whether or not you wanted this product, it does exist in our present, and it may not be as underground or obscure, esoteric even, it delivers the goods in sedation, the satisfying burn and solace one could expect from travelling into that 4th dimension of reciprocity. All art is give and take; whether or not the artist devises to bring into the world a piece that even allows for appreciation, the forming and creation of it is nearly never in isolation. There are examples of niche elitism where something is pressed in but double figures with no digital imprint whatsoever, sure, and even those on the fringes of fiscal society have to admit that value, however conceptual and ridiculous the notion is, can and sometimes should be added, shackled to art for how much has been put into it. This is the last album ever recorded at the previous iteration of Menegroth Studios, The Thousand Caves, of Colin motherfucking Marston, and one would hope that it was a fitting swansong.
“Structuring the dream as a mere ‘collage’ doesn’t allow us to draw visible or material lines between events, which makes it hard to retrieve numerous dreams after waking up, even when their events are highly dramatic. The overcrowded images, which part with each other and with reality, cause such dreams to shy from interpretation and logical reasoning.”
In consuming art, we often enter into a world of dreams, revelations written by other oneironauts for use to peruse, delve into, and bask in. Some dreams have a darker tint while others exist to terrify or uplift, and yet even others are shaped into being as a commentary intended for our current, future, or past states of being. Goldstar is all of these, as far as auditory hallucinations go, in pushing the boundaries of what can still be perceived as musically apt and approachable in tinkering with dissonance like the yin to its opposing yang in a swirl of ordered chaos with assonance.