(written by Islander)
It has been quite a while since I’ve done this, 92 days to be precise — “this” being to use the OVERFLOWING STREAMS banner for one of these Saturday roundups instead of the usual SEEN AND HEARD. I don’t have a precise dividing line between them, it’s more of a gut feel, but my gut tells me that 10 selections is an overflow.
Beyond using the different banner name for collections of this size, I also dispense with the time required to download, upload, and re-size album art, and I put the release info in lists instead of sentences. I also had delusions of trying to be a bit more concise in my comments about the songs and videos, too, but for the most part I didn’t succeed.
I also didn’t spend time trying to figure out a flow for the music, a sequencing that would generate either companionability or stark contrasts among the songs (or both), but instead put everything in alphabetical order by band name.
The objective of all this was to be more efficient with the time I’ve got this morning so I can include more instead of less. In some settings less can be more, but not today.
ARCHITECT OF SETH (France)
A confluence of the alphabet and my own tastes leads us off on today’s extensive journey with the opening two tracks from Architect of Seth’s first album in more than a dozen years. It’s one of three albums that I, Voidhanger Records announced for release last week.
The first of those opening tracks, “L’Âge des Traîtres“, is a relatively brief and mysteriously reverberating instrumental overture, melancholy in mood and increasingly magnificent in its sweep. It brilliantly gleams, but eventually it also crashes and crushes, adding the weight of daunting darkness to the experience.
The first full song, “Fortress of Injuries“, includes a great deal more twists and turns but doesn’t lose its way. The music flashes, flickers, and flies, but also furiously hammers and jolts. It engages in bracing gallops and it’s packed with ecstatic fretwork flourishes, but also includes elements of elegant (and occasionally ominous) orchestration and wild guitar soloing. And in the vocal department it veers from foul gutturals to rabid howls and crazed screams.
Song: “L’Âge des Traîtres”, “Fortress of Injuries”
Album: Solitude Solaire
Label: I, Voidhanger Records
Release date: November 6th
https://i-voidhangerrecords.bandcamp.com/album/solitude-solaire
https://architectofseth.bandcamp.com/album/fortress-of-injuries
https://www.facebook.com/ArchitectOfSeth/
CLØUDY SKIES (France)
I wasn’t familiar with the Cløudy Skies duo before skimming a press release we received concerning their forthcoming second album, Bury Me Beneath the Stars. But the description of their music was intriguing, and I was further attracted by the news that one of the album’s songs — the one that’s next in today’s collection — includes a guest vocal appearance by Keijo Niinimaa, frontman of the Finnish grindcore band Rotten Sound.
This song, “Lights of The Night“, arrived in tandem with a surreal music video that was inspired by “the avant-garde dreamscapes of David Lynch”. The song is also surreal. It juxtaposes phases of ethereal and eerily ringing melody with torrents of tremendous turbulence. It transforms into mesmerizing musical panoramas, very much like a musical rendering of nightsky beauty, accented by skipping beats and throbbing bass tones.
They create another stark juxtaposition with grit-choked harsh vocals of wrenching intensity that sometimes flow into haunted singing, or scream their torments above tides of sweeping but perilous magnificence. As the song evolves, it brings in other styles of singing (more ardent and high-flying) and even more excruciating screams, as well as vividly rippling riffage and the hypnotic glitter of grief-stricken arpeggios.
All in all, it’s quite a head-spinning and unsettling musical extravaganza.
Song: “Lights of the Night”
Album: Bury Me Beneath The Stars
Label: Argonauta Records
Release date: October 16th
https://shop.argonautarecords.com/
https://www.facebook.com/cloudyskies.fr
DUMAL (U.S.)
I enjoyed all of the songs in today’s collection, else they wouldn’t be here, but I think this next one from Dumal is my favorite.
Prepare for abrasive, surround-sound riffing that both vibrantly pulsates and rolls like a very dark tide. Prepare also for a dynamic drum performance that will get your pulse kicking, and for raging vocals that feel like they’re blasting shards of splintered glass.
The song expands and towers as the music continues to slowly rise and fall (to moan and to wail), and the riffing also feverishly roils around drums going wild. But Dumal also introduce an interlude of sorts, one that grabs attention with vibrantly pulsating guitars and a prominent bass motif.
When the drums return Dumal then carry that wonderful riff forward in piercing tones that seem to channel a fervent yearning, and the music soars in grandeur, marking its way with a trilling guitar melody that’s hard to forget.
Or in fewer words, this proves to be a breathtaking song.
P.S. Besides the song I’ve installed below, there’s a second one (“Ivyland“) that you can and should hear at the album’s Bandcamp pages.
Song: “Rendered Impotent By Glass”
Album: The Trials of Existence
Label: Alte Seelen, Bölverk Records, Death Sculpted Productions
Release date: October 2nd
https://alteseelen.bandcamp.com/album/dumal-the-trials-of-existence
https://dumal.bandcamp.com/track/rendered-impotent-by-glass
https://www.instagram.com/dumal_666/
DUNGEON SERPENT (Canada)
Next up is probably the most head-spinning musical kaleidoscope of all the songs I’ve chosen to share today. If you’re familiar with the past works of this Vancouver band, that won’t come as a shock, but I think this one pushes their expansive envelope even further.
I’m not going to try to trace the nature of every twist and turn (and I’m really not sure I could, even if I tried), but just as a hint I’ll say that the song includes varying episodes that pull in varying degrees from black metal, brutal death metal, and even jazz, grind, and classical music.
The music frantically sizzles and quivers, soars and sweeps, elegantly dances and darts, dissonantly squirms and rises up on broad orchestral wings (and there’s a violinist in the lineup too, which becomes quite apparent in a dreamlike sequence near the end). And further, the drums and bass are as often veering off on their own frolics as they are keeping time.
Perhaps needless to say, the vocals veer around among gutturals and screams as well, and are almost unrelentingly harsh — though something like celestial voices also make a brief appearance.
Song: “Rainland’s Elegy (The Lamentations of the Shadowkingdoms)”
Album: Lamentations of the Shadowkingdoms
Label: Profound Lore
Release date: October 30th
https://dungeonserpentmdm.bandcamp.com/album/lamentations-of-the-shadowkingdoms
https://linktr.ee/DungeonSerpent
IMMORTAL DISSOLVER (Japan)
From what I can glean on M-A and the Centipede Abyss label, Immortal Dissolver is the solo work of one Norjevän, with lead guitars performed on the band’s debut album by Nythroth from Acausal Intrusion (and many other endeavors). The label recommends the music for fans of Disembowelment, Dissection, and Autopsy.
Because I almost always check out what that label releases, and because the FFO list was appealing, I spent time with the album’s first advance track, “A Sea of Warm Oil“. The song is hazy and spell-like at first, though a big grumbling bass soon provides a counterpoint. And then, with a terrorizing scream announcing a change, the music begins to shiver and burn, and to heavily lurch and stomp.
The vocal tirades are violently in pain, and the lead guitar is ecstatically crazed, but a dismal guitar harmony also surfaces just before the song as a whole becomes dismal as it drags its way forward. The drums and bass start feverishly throbbing, and the trem-picked riffing feels ill — and in truth, the whole song (but especially the vocals) increasingly feels like a manifestation of severe mental and physical illness.
Even attention-seizing guitar solos that appear near the end feel like terrible anguish, though the violence in the vocals also spills over into the rhythm section’s riotous machinations in the finale.
Song: “A Sea of Warm Oil”
Album: Rotting Ashes of Winter
Label: The Centipede Abyss
Release date: September 30th
https://centipedeabyss.bandcamp.com/album/rotting-ashes-of-winter
https://www.facebook.com/TheCentipedeAbyss/
MESSE DE MINUIT (Spain)
I didn’t have much info about this next two-song EP before going into it, and so took a look at the band’s M-A entry, which identifies a veteran lineup, even though this EP is only their second release (following a short 2024 demo).
From these two songs it’s evident that Messe de Minuit have drawn from wellsprings of early-’90s Greek black metal.
In the first song, “Necromantic Night“, the vocals are absolutely terrifying, manifesting as a kind of imperious demonic presence, and while the music often soars in grandeur thanks to ethereal keys, the riffing is also viciously hungry and evil. The song includes dark heavy-metal chugs, beautiful dual-guitar soloing that sounds like sorcery, and slowly slithering melodies that create world-serpent imagery.
The EP’s title song, like the first one, will also be perfect mood music for a Samhain night, thanks in part to horror-show organ keys, though at times it’s much faster and more destructively convulsive. The growled vocals are again authentically demonic, though they flare into crazed screams. And you’ll also be able to rock out when the band delve back into their bag of classic heavy metal influences.
This song also includes a shrill, orgiastic guitar solo in the midst of a full-throttle surge, ruthless gang howls that are spine-tingling, and a closing Gothic organ instrumental that draws a funereal curtain on the performance.
EP: The Neophythe
Label: Iron Bonehead
Release date: September 15th
https://ironboneheadproductions.bandcamp.com/album/messe-de-minuit-the-neophythe
https://shop.ironbonehead.de/de/
https://www.facebook.com/IronBoneheadProductions/
OUTER HEAVEN (U.S.)
Pennsylvania’s Outer Heaven decided to follow up their last album (2023’s Infinite Psychic Depths) with a split — a split with Detroit’s Temple of Void, who released their latest album The Crawl just last spring. We’ll get to Temple of Void’s song next, but the focus here is Outer Heaven’s track — which includes a guest appearance by Rivers of Nihil.
In a nutshell, this song is a crusher and a cutter, a sledgehammering bludgeoner and a pulsating blizzard of knives. Berserk guitar soloing, roaring bellows, and unhinged yells add to the song’s feeling of riot and rage. They also turn the sledgehammer into a jackhammer, and use the occasion to infiltrate strangely squirming lead guitars and high-flying swirls of gleaming melody, with a finale that’s… weirdly squiggly.
Song: “The Burden of Being”
Album: Split with Temple of Void
Label: Relapse Records
Release date: October 16th
https://outerheaven.bandcamp.com/album/split-with-temple-of-void
https://www.facebook.com/OuterHeavenPA/
TEMPLE OF VOID (U.S.)
Now we turn to the other side of the split by Outer Heaven and Temple of Void.
Temple of Void’s song is a fast head-hooker, an amalgam (as I hear it) of body-moving death rock, ravenous death metal, Southern rock, and spritely post-punk. It includes horrid growls but also punk-ish singing, stratospheric glories as well as fast chugs, brutish smashes, and a hell of a guitar solo that’s kind of trippy and kind of bluesy, plus some swampy lead-guitar work at the end.
You could dance this!
Song: “Emperor’s Folly”
Album: Split with Outer Heaven
Label: Relapse Records
Release date: October 16th
https://templeofvoid.bandcamp.com/album/split-with-outer-heaven
https://www.facebook.com/TempleOfVoid/
VELNIAS (U.S.)
Colorado’s Velnias will commemorate their 20th year of existence through the release of a new album on the day before Samhain. Based on their track record, I have very high hopes for it, and the first song revealed from the album suggests those hopes will be abundantly fulfilled.
I hate to say it but I am running out of time, and so can’t write nearly as much as I wish I could about “Corporeal Anathema“. In its changing patterns it’s moody and panoramically magnificent, but it hits damned hard too, and the harsh vocals are explosive; the wailing tones of the vibrant fiddle music, and the rippling guitar at the song’s end, connect to the band’s western folkloric interests; the high-arcing clean vocals raise goosebumps; the nimble and nuanced bass lines add prog-metal textures; and the drumming is damned good too.
In a word… this long jam is spectacular.
Song: “Corporeal Anathema”
Album: Substrate Haruspex
Label: Eisenwald
Release date: October 30th
https://velnias.bandcamp.com/album/substrate-haruspex
https://www.facebook.com/VelniasCult/
WITCH RIPPER (U.S.)
To conclude today’s XL roundup I want to recommend yet another live performance filmed at Seattle’s KEXP studios in a series hosted by our good friend Tanner Ellison (the host, DJ, and producer of the Seek and Destroy metal show which he curates every Saturday night at KEXP).
I’ll venture to say that all of us here at NCS are ardent fans of Seattle’s Witch Ripper, and they made 2026 a better year by releasing a new album named Through the Hourglass last spring, which our Andy Synn lavished with praise in his review. They are also as much fun to see live as they are to hear on recordings, which makes this new KEXP video a real treat.
For this KEXP performance, which was recorded in July of this year, Witch Ripper chose these four songs, all of which are tracks from their new album:
“The Portal”
“Echoes And Dust”
“The Clock Queen”
“The Spiral Eye”
Enjoy!
https://witchripper.bandcamp.com
https://www.facebook.com/Witchripper/
http://kexp.org
https://www.facebook.com/kexp.fm/