photo credit: Artemis II crew and NASA
(written by Islander)
As you can see from the post title, I decided to pack a lot of new songs and videos into this week’s SEEN AND HEARD column. To make that possible (because I got another late start and my free time this morning is limited), I’ve had to skimp on the verbiage and truncate this introduction — which ends now.
AT THE GATES (Sweden)
Continuing to hear Tompa Lindberg’s distinctive voice on his last recordings with At the Gates is a continuing source of thrills and chills.
The music on the latest single from their new album is thrilling and chilling as well. It surges and thunders but also wails and shivers as if giving voice to despair. The animated video featuring Costin Chioreanu’s white-ink painting is a beautiful accompaniment as well.
Song: “The Dissonant Void”
Album: The Ghost of a Future Dead
Label: Century Media
Release date: April 24th
https://atthegates.lnk.to/TheGhostofaFutureDeadID
https://www.facebook.com/AtTheGatesOfficial/
EINHERJER (Norway)
More than 30 years into their career, Viking metal progenitors Einherjer aren’t pushing the envelope, but their latest single isn’t stale either. Both the heroic harmonized singing and gritty snarls are fierce, and so are the song’s brutally jolting blows, ripping tremolo’d riffs, glorious soloing, and pulse-punching drum rhythms – though the song also includes memorable guitar melodies that seem to channel misery and grief.
Song: “Bloodborn”
Album: Lifeblood
Label: By Norse Music
Release date: June 19th
https://einherjer.lnk.to/bloodborn
https://bynorsestore.com/en/bnm-pre-orders/
https://www.facebook.com/einherjerofficial
BLACK ROYAL (Finland)
I’ve been a slobbering fan of Black Royal since coming across their debut album Lightbringer in 2018 — witness the 13 times I’ve written about their music since then, including not one, not two, but three appearances on my annual list of Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs. Will they make a fourth appearance after 2026 closes? It’s certainly possible because M-Theory Audio has announced they will release a new Black Royal album this coming autumn, and the first single is already pretty damned infectious.
It’s also very damned heavy and savage. With scalding and roaring vocals extravagantly fronting the experience, the music furiously charges with HM-2-toned riffs and skull-smacking gallops, and Black Royal lace the charge with quivering, high-flying keys. But the song also grimly heaves like some massive dying leviathan, laced there with psychedelic leads.
Song: “Water of the Crow”
Album: title not yet revealed
Label: M-Theory Audio
Release date: March 25th
https://linktr.ee/blackroyal_finland
https://blackroyal.bandcamp.com/track/water-of-the-crow
https://www.facebook.com/blackroyalmusic
LAIR OF THE MINOTAUR (U.S.)
Praise be (to all that’s unholy), we have a second single from the resurgent Lair of the Minotaur.
In this one the viciously distorted riffing feverishly throbs and miserably moans above a rumbling and neck-wrecking rhythm section, and the ranging vocals are both savagely commanding and fanatically terrorizing. It’s a mega-voltage marauding muscle-mover for all of its 2 minutes 21 seconds.
Song: “Prowler Twin Sister”
Album: I HAIL I
Label: self-release
Release date: May 1st
https://lairoftheminotaur.bandcamp.com/album/i-hail-i-2
https://www.instagram.com/lair.of.the.minotaur/
DISORIENTATION (Canada)
Time to toss your mind into a hot pan and scramble it.
With their new single Disorientation blend together eerie and ethereal sonic apparitions, bone-smashing drum attacks, dissonantly ravaging riff-work, and unhinged screams and cries.
They also drift away into ghost-lands again with wailing oboe tones, a dirty and dismal “semi acoustic” guitar, abrasive reverberations, and weird and woozy singing. Even more vocal variety ensues as the music becomes dismally hallucinogenic. Something shrill spasms; the riffing stews and crashes; the guitars and perhaps keys trade off, squirming and screeching in their own channels; a beastly bass gnaws on bones; in the high end jubilant madness reigns, and a cacophony of voices madly joins in.
And, well, there’s more, which you can discover for yourselves. The song is an intricate, elaborate, thoroughly head-spinning, and mostly freakish experience, one that’s somehow both enthralling and destabilizing (it will definitely throw you off whatever mental course you were on before listening). Or more succinctly, we can say that the band definitely earn their name with this one.
I should add that the inventive drumming is all by itself well worth the 7+ minutes the song asks of you.
Song: “The Pact”
Album: it’s a single
Label: self-release
Release date: February 20, 2026
https://disorientationmetal.bandcamp.com/album/the-pact
https://www.facebook.com/DisorientationMetal
LONESHORE (Brazil)
The cover artwork by David Preissel is what drew me to this next song even before I realized the album will be released by a very dependable label (Willowtip Records). Only later did I remember that almost 8 years ago I premiered a song from their debut album From Presence To Silence — but after all, they haven’t released anything since then, until now.
The artwork suits the music very well. The song combines influences of prog and post-metal, and it includes contrasting ingredients that glitter, mysteriously ring, and miserably wail, but on the other hand also heavily thrum, fiercely jolt, feverishly twitch, and beautifully swirl.
This could easily have succeeded as a purely instrumental foray in which listeners could easily lose themselves, but I for one was pleased that it does include vocals — the kind of rasping and shrieking vocals with serrated edges that would be easily at home in a black metal band.
Song: “Parhelion”
Album: Nothing Left to Deconstruct
Label: Willowtip
Release date: June 19th
https://loneshore.bandcamp.com/album/nothing-left-to-deconstruct
https://www.facebook.com/Loneshore/
HEIDEN (Czech Republic)
What’s next is one of the most haunting songs and videos I’ve heard and seen in many moons. To make sense of the video, understand that the song is about the loss of a child to drowning and the grief that pours from that wound. The lyrics include these words:
She drifts and sways — a small clasp floats down the river,
The evening bell — she should be home by now.
The earth gives way, a hollow pain below,
No time for tears — just run, don’t ask how.
Running down the winding path between the trees,
Crying for help — the houses come in sight.
So close, so near — no voice returns—
“No!”
The music is itself wounded, ravaged, bereft, and so are the tremendously evocative and dramatically changing vocals. The music also bespeaks poignant solitary memories and rage. For better or worse, this is a song that will live with you for a long time after it concludes.
Song: “Vodě”
Album: CMA
Label: Epidemie Records
Release date: April 24th
https://eshop.heidenhorde.com/
https://heiden.bandcamp.com/album/cma
https://www.facebook.com/kapelaheiden
CRIPPLED BLACK PHOENIX (UK)
To close, we’ll step off our usual beaten paths with the final single from CBP’s next album. It’s not too far off for me, however, because I’ve been a die-hard fan of the group for quite a while, even though their music isn’t usually the kind we usually cover at NCS. This latest song is even more “metal adjacent” than usual because it features vocals by Kentucky-based Ryan Patterson (of Coliseum, Fotocrime, and Mirrorless).
His grit-edged singing is powerful throughout — as you’ll experience for yourselves following the song’s opening sample (from a vampire film I presume) — but the zenith of savage intensity he reaches in the song’s final minute and a half is the main reason I wanted to share it in this column. It’s such a frightening and fanatical explosion, and exactly what the song needed for its finale.
Beyond the power of the singing, the song will make you bob and bounce, raise the hairs on your neck, and maybe make you check over your shoulder to see if something red-eyed and hungry is bearing down on you. (It’s also fiendishly infectious.)
Song: “Vampire Grave”
Album: Sceaduhelm
Label: Season of Mist
Release date: April 17th
https://orcd.co/cbpsceaduhelm
https://www.facebook.com/CBP444/