SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: CORONER, PARADISE LOST, WODE, KANONENFIEBER, SILENT TOMBS, ANTI RITUAL, DEFIGUREMENT, IN SHAME

(written by Islander)

Before we launch into this Saturday’s roundup all of us here want to express the great sadness we felt after seeing the tragic statements yesterday from Tomas Lindberg and At the Gates, reporting on Lindberg‘s affliction with Adenoid Cystic Carcinoma (a cancer in the mouth and pallet) and the failure of invasive surgery to eliminate it. Based on the statements, it appears that chemo treatment has become the last hope for arresting the disease. According to the band, he “has been receiving dedicated care in a specialized ward where he is being closely monitored around the clock.”

Those same statements reported that Lindberg had recorded the vocals for a new At the Gates album on the day before the surgery last spring. Of course, he has left an indelible mark on the history of metal already, but it will be great to hear him again when the album is finished.

We wish him strength and convey our heartfelt hopes for ultimate success in the hard battle he has been waging.

And now I’ll turn to the music for today. As usual, I had a ton of possible choices. I settled on a big mix of older and newer faces and arranged the songs and videos in a way that will provide a real roller-coaster ride for people who listen.

 

CORONER (Switzerland)

To quote a friend, I didn’t have a terrific new Coroner song on my bingo card for this week, but lo and behold we got one. And in October we’ll get the first Coroner album since Grin in 1993. It brings together the talents of original bassist/vocalist Ronald Broder, original guitarist Tommy Vetterli, and somewhat newer drummer Diego Rapacchiett.

The first single is appropriately named “Renewal“. The pulse of the opening riff and the rhythms in sync with it feel like the fast throb of a feverish heart, and the fast swirl of the guitar sends the fever higher. All of that sets a strong opening hook in advance of the oncoming snarls and thundering gallops.

The energy of the song is exhilarating and infectious, the vocals gritty and ferocious, and Coroner embellish the experience with dense riff-swarms, additional flurries of swirling and rapidly pulsating fretwork, bursts of punchy jackhammering, mystical and majestic melodic cascades, and an electrifying guitar solo.

Seriously, there are so many hooks in the song that it would make commercial fishermen green with envy. What a goddamn triumphant renewal this is! And it’s great to see Coroner in action through the video too.

The name of the new album is Dissonance Theory, and it’s set for release on October 17th by Century Media.

https://www.centurymedia.com/
https://centurymediashop.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/coronerband/

 

PARADISE LOST (UK)

If I keep writing about every new Paradise Lost single from their new album I may discourage one of the other dudes around here from reviewing it. I hope that won’t happen!

The newest song from the newest album, “Tyrants Serenade“, is the first but not the last doom hybrid in today’s roundup. It’s not the heaviest one (you’ll need to skip all the way to the bottom to find the heaviest one), but Nick Holmes‘ singing is moving (as are the song’s wailing lead-guitar melodies) and his growls menacing, and the big throbbing bass lines and grim low-end riffs do bring appreciable weight, while the drums crack like gunshots.

You’ll need a sharp spade to dig this one out of your head after you hear it. The beautifully made video is also a treat – it’s great to see these legends in the flesh.

The album is Ascension and it will be released on September 19th by Nuclear Blast.

https://paradiselost.bfan.link/ascension.yde
https://paradiselostofficial.bandcamp.com/album/ascension

 

WODE (UK)

Manchester’s Wode are returning with their fourth album, Uncrossing the Keys, on 20 Buck Spin — yet another record slated for release on the October 3 Bandcamp Friday. The first single, “Transmutation“, cried out to be positioned right after Paradise Lost. Why, you may ask? After all, Wode have a deserved reputation for being a fiery black metal band.

Well, the answer is that the lead riff of “Transmutation” and its stately pacing does create a mood of heartache and yearning, and the ensuing clean-toned guitar work strengthens the connection to auras of gothic gloom. The echoing vocals, on the other hand, are ravishing in their beastly, cutting harshness.

The early embers of the song do heat up into flames as the riffing skitters and flares and the drums pick up speed, augmented by more vivid bass throbs and a slithering and swirling guitar solo.

https://20buckspin.bandcamp.com/album/uncrossing-the-keys
https://wode.bandcamp.com
https://www.instagram.com/wode.cult
https://www.facebook.com/Wodecult

 

KANONENFIEBER (Germany)

It’s time to briefly break away from the sectors of doom.

January 30, 2026, seems so far away as to be almost unimaginable — or at least it’s very difficult to imagine the way the world will look then. But that’s the release date for a new Kanonenfieber album named Soldatenschicksale, which translates to “Soldiers’ Fate”. It is described as a compilation album, but it includes “revised versions” of “Yankee Division” (2022), “Der Füsilier” (2023), and “U-Bootsmann’ (2023)”, and it begins with two new songs — “Z-Vor!” and “Heizer Tenner” — which Noise says work together as “Skagerrak”, the largest naval battle of World War I.

That clash of British and German battleships, in which nearly 10,000 sailors perished, is also known as The Battle of Jutland, and if you’d like to learn more about it, you can find an extensive article at The Font of All Human Knowledge. The first of those two new opening songs was released along with a lyric video earlier this week. I’m not clear about the derivation of the song’s title — which are repeatedly snarled and near-sung in the song’s choruses — but it must represent some sort of command connected to that naval conflict.

It’s hard to resist crying out that command (at least mentally) every time it comes around in the song. The music also makes it easy to envision the violent clash of the fleets, expansive in scale across in an even more vast oceanic setting. The music swirls and soars, jolts and hammers, builds tension and subsides into gloom, charges and crashes.

https://noisebringer.de/
https://www.instagram.com/kanonenfieber/
https://www.facebook.com/Kanonenfieber/

 

SILENT TOMBS (Mexico)

Now returning to doomy environs, my next choice today is from a debut album by the Mexican doom-death metal band Silent Tombs, aptly entitled Mourning Hymns From Beyond.

The first single, “Crimson Sun“, is a slow burn. It brings to the table the piercing tones of a miserable guitar harmony, gargantuan low-end lurching, and crazed howls. Crushing agony is the order of the day, as the riffing begins to moan and scream and the drums batter harder.

The band continue turning up the heat, injecting viciously hard-hitting jolts and inflamed growls, but without leaving behind the stricken dual-guitar harmonies. They also turn down the heat, making way for rasping spoken words, melancholy strings, and an elegant collage of wistfully lilting notes — a bit of an enticing lull before the band start slugging listeners even harder than before as the lead guitar spills out its grief in a vibrantly trilling and darting solo (making for quite a spectacular finale).

Mourning Hymns From Beyond will be released by Personal Records on October 17th.

https://personal-records.bandcamp.com/album/mourning-hymns-from-beyond
https://www.facebook.com/SilentTombs

 

ANTI RITUAL (Denmark)

In today’s roller-coaster ride of music it’s time to dive fast and steep, hair blown back and wind sucked from the lungs.

We’ve paid attention to Denmark’s Anti Ritual before, with Mr. Synn reviewing both their debut album Expel the Leeches and their follow-up EP Green Terrorism. I did my small part by adding one of the tracks from that album to my Most Infectious Song list for that year. And now they have a new EP rocketing our way.

The name of the EP is 80 Years, so named because, to quote from a press release we received on behalf of the band’s label, it refers to “the eighty years that have passed since the great defeat of fascism — and to the time it has taken for this destructive ideology to return to the political stage and once again poison people’s minds and hearts in a chaotic world.” That same PR piece included this:

Compared to prior ANTI RITUAL releases, most recently the 2023 EP Green Terrorism, the blast beats and grindcore have been completely cut away, with the focus instead turned fully toward D-beat, dissonance, and the band’s epic guitar melodies.

The EP’s title song, which you can hear now, bears out that description. It also shows, however, that Anti Ritual haven’t cut away their ferocity. The raging, fire-spawned, larynx-shredding vocals make that clear, as do the skull-plundering beats, the gut-slugging bass, and some frantically vicious riffing.

But the song also really does include epic guitar melodies — gloriously blazing, beautifully swirling, and going off like the pulse of sirens. The word “anthemic” quickly comes to mind.

80 Years will be released by the Indisciplinarian label on September 5th. It includes four songs in total.

https://indisciplinarian.bandcamp.com/album/80-years
https://www.facebook.com/indisciplinarian/

 

DEFIGUREMENT

I’m not going to pull back from the blistering and blazing intensity of that last song just quite yet. We’ll leave that change of direction for the last song. For now, if anything, we’re going to dial up the spinning of heads, with two songs off the debut album from the experimental death/grind abomination Defigurement.

These songs caught my attention because a lot of notable names were involved in the making of the record. The band itself features drummer Mike Heller (Malignancy, Raven, ex-Fear Factory), guitarist Kevin Fetus (Lack of Interest, Fetus Eaters, ex-Murder Construct), bassist/noise architect DMT (Mormon Mincers, ex-Bad Acid Trip), and vocalist Matti Güey (Rottenness, Formless Master).

In addition, the album includes guest appearances by members of Gridlink, Mortalized, Cephalic Carnage, Deathwish, Invidiosus, King Goro, Formless Master, Gorgatron, Visceral Disgorge, Impaled, Terrorizer LA, Necropathy, and many more. You see why I perked up and paid attention?

The first song and video below, “Godtopsy“, includes a guest appearance by Cephalic Carnage guitarist Brian Hopp. And let me be clear: I picked up the word “abomination” in my first paragraph above from a press release for the album, but while the reference makes some sense, this song turns out to be a whole lot more interesting, indeed experimental, than you might suspect.

The jet-fueled drumming is tremendous (no surprise there), and the music is indeed macabre and monstrous — as are the beastly roars and strangled screams. But the music also displays grandeur as well as dementia; the soloing is an eye-popping delirium but also melodically jubilant; and the band throw in a surprising instrumental finale that’s kind of funky, kind of proggy, kind of jazzy, kind of trippy.

The second song, “Wounded Landscape“, includes a guest appearance by former Gridlink guitarist Takafumi Matsubara, and it’s as wild as the first song, and maybe even more so. The feeling of jubilant dementia is strong here; the melodies soar high and sweep far as the drums are going berserk; the guitars both pulsate and feverishly whirls; the vocals erupt in a burst of hyper-accelerated verbosity matched with blistering blast-beats.

And of course the band throw in another closing surprise — a bit of weirdly warbling and frantically spiking electronics with near-indecipherable vocals muttering in the background.

The clever name of the album is Endbryo. It will be released by Nefarious Industries on October 17th.

https://www.nefariousindustries.com/collections/defigurement-endbryo
https://defigurement.bandcamp.com/album/endbryo
https://www.facebook.com/defigurement

 

IN SHAME (U.S.)

An now to close this jumbo roundup we’ll turn to a song that will loosen your fillings and cause stress fractures in your foundations.

The name of the band is In Shame. They’re from Oakland, CA. According to Metal-Archives their lineup is a trio of bassist/vocalist Austin DeMars (ex-Treeherder), drummer Dominic Aiello (ex-Treeherder), and guitarist/vocalist Brian Howey. They have a debut album named Looming that will be released on August 31st by Transylvanian Recordings. The first advance song, which comes last in the album’s running order, is a 10-minute monster named “Ashes & Blood“.

“Crusty Sludgy Doom Metal” is how In Shame brand their music. They might also have called it “Apocalyptic Catastrophe”. You might not think so from the slow, dismal twang of the notes that begin “Ashes & Blood“, but that just makes the crushing immensity of what follows even more pulverizing. The ruthlessly distorted riffing sounds like some massive beast heaving and crawling its way through a foul and fetid landscape as the drums go off like mortars.

In contrast with that, the lead guitar eerily wails and moans, apparitional rather than monstrous in its aspect, but plainly stricken and hopeless. The band play that trick again with those lonely twanging notes, setting you up for another suffocating and skull-splitting slog, this time accompanied by screaming vocals as raw as roadburn and clearly bound for the emergency room after their delivery.

The vocals really are scary as shit, the shrieks going on so long it’s hard to fathom how anyone survived; the riffing is simultaneously thick and toxic; the drums sound like guns and bombs in the firing range of your cranium. And before it’s all over, the bass briefly shoves everything else out of the room and grumbles by itself, as a prelude for a closing dose of mauling and screaming, accented with the unnerving lysergic acid squall of a guitar solo.

https://transylvanianrecordings.bandcamp.com/album/in-shame-looming
https://www.facebook.com/TransylvanianRecordings/
https://www.instagram.com/shame_oak