(written by Islander)
I guess the word of the week is “piggy”, and not because Northwest Terror Fest announced yesterday that Piggy D will be one of the headliners at the May 2026 edition of the fest. In other news from the Department of Coincidence, we will post a review next week of an album by a band called Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs.
I guess I’ve been piggy myself this morning, ravenously rooting through the trough of extreme metal that got filled up with new releases over the past week. Now engorged, here’s what I decided to vomit up for your delectation this weekend:
(Kidding, of course, because the following music is neither slop nor vomit but thrilling nourishments for mind and soul.)
ENSHINE (Sweden/France)
I’m starting with the “latest breaking” piece of music in today’s roundup. I found out about it thanks to a Bandcamp alert this morning, due to having bought music from the band in the past. When I saw the name Enshine I jumped right to it.
We have a lot of history with this band, witness the 8 times we’ve written about their music (not counting today), including DGR’s reviews of their two albums to date, a song premiere, and me putting their music on two different editions of our Most Infectious Extreme Metal Song list.
The song that surprise-surfaced today is from their forthcoming third album, the first one in a decade, and Enshine’s first new music since the Transcending Fire EP in 2021. To borrow from a phrase DGR used in one of his past write-ups, “it’s a doozy”.
You’ll understand the name of the song (“Shimmering“) during its opening phase because the music… shimmers. The keys and guitar ring, ripple, and swell like a wondrous celestial event toward which we’re drawing closer. You wouldn’t guess from those first 45 seconds what a humongous slugger the song becomes.
And slug it does, thanks to crushing low-frequency thrusts and a gut-punching bass drum. Those wondrous stratospheric sounds continue to sparkle and swirl until savage snarling vocals arrive, and then the music becomes more distressing (though it still shines and flows in waves).
But the glittering brilliance and the slugging pulse of the music continue returning, interspersed with phases of melancholy, ominously towering chords, a piercing guitar solo that gloriously spirals high and another that seems to mourn, and vast cascades of yearning sound. Breathtaking stuff for sure.
In case you’ve forgotten, Enshine is the work of Jari Lindholm (Sweden) and Sebastien Pierre (France). They identify this song as the opening track and first single from their upcoming album Elevation. On the new album they’re joined by guests Giannis Koskinas (Ocean of Grief) on bass and Marcelo Aires on drums. Here’s the cover art:
https://enshine.bandcamp.com/track/shimmering-single
https://www.facebook.com/enshine.band
UNIVERSE217 (Greece)
Having already put one foot in doomy territory with that Enshine song, I decided to stride into it even further, on a clearly downhill path, with this next song and video by the Greek band Universe217.
Like the Enshine song, this next one is also late-breaking, having surfaced just yesterday. Like Enshine’s song, it’s described as the first single from an upcoming album, which would be this band’s fifth full-length and their first one since 2016. Like Enshine’s song, it’s a crusher… but much slower in its pacing.
The song is also an exception to our only-somewhat-serious rule about singing, though the shattering emotional intensity of Tanya’s vocals is more than a match for the most ruinous growls and throat-ripping shrieks you might find elsewhere.
The music heavily staggers at the pace of funeral doom, miserably moaning as it lurches ahead, until the band crank up the energy, melding together ringing guitar-slashes, vivid bass-lines, and more animated beats. And thus the music creates sounds of tension and turmoil, followed by a phase of abject misery — still elevated in electrifying fashion by the vocals — and a finale capable of putting listeners into a full-body headband.
And as if song itself weren’t enough to drop your jaws, the beautifully made (and occult-themed) video is also riveting.
https://universe217.bandcamp.com/track/wrong
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Universe217/128661547232566
CARRION VAEL (U.S.)
I thought now would be a good time to speed things up, and simultaneously to make DGR happy again, since he both reviewed Carrion Vael’s last album (Cannibals Anonymous) and put it at the No. 43 spot on his year-end Top 50 list.
This next song is the opening track from Carrion Vael’s forthcoming fifth album Slay Utterly, which is set for release by Unique Leader on January 16th. We’re told that each song on the album explores the story of a different serial killer, and “jumps between the killer themselves, and the experiences of the victims.” This song’s name is “19(fucking)78“, and it concerns the Hillside Stranglers in 1970s California (the terrible details are summarized at the end of the video below).
Carrion Vael throw a lot at listeners in this song — filaments of creepy and quivering melody, feverishly pulsating fretwork frenzies, blistering machine-gun beats, fast-paced bellowing barks, and maniacal screams. But they also segue into a wave-like, synth-enhanced melodic drift that’s steeped in sorrow, as well as high-flying clean singing that trades off with the harsh ferocity.
And that’s not all. The music gets brutish and primitive, led by a lead-weighted bass and punchy grooves, creating a further interlude before the band crank up their fleet-fingered and fleet-limbed tech-death machinations again — which they cap with a pyrotechnic guitar solo.
Does this mashup of tech-death flair, pummeling brutality, bestial vocals, and haunting synth-borne melody work? Judge for yourselves… it did for me.
https://orcd.co/SlayUtterly
https://uniqueleaderrecords.bandcamp.com/album/slay-utterly
https://www.facebook.com/CarrionVael
GHOULHOUSE (Sweden)
It’s quite well known among death metal addicts that Sweden’s Rogga Johansson never sits still. But the past few weeks have seemed especially active.
It’s probably just a coincidence, but on November 1st Iron Blood and Death Corporation released a new album (here) named Dreaming the Otherwhere by Rogga’s self-titled project; roughly a week later Xtreem Music announced a new album by Paganizer and debuted its title song (“As Mankind Rots“); and HPGD Productions has set December 5th as the release date for a new album by Ghoulhouse (titled Realm of Ghouls), in which Rogga joins forces with Håkan Stuvemark (Wombbath).
I’ve been meaning to say something about all three of these releases, but for now I’ll focus on the latest advance track from the Ghoulhouse album, “Dying In The City (Of The Living Dead)“, which the label pitches as one “for true horror fans who enjoy the works of Goblin, Fabio Frizzi, John Carpenter, etc.
Fans of Rogga may be caught of guard by the song’s amalgam of booming electro-beats, weirdly croacking rhythmic frequencies, strangely quavering keys, and dimly muttered words (both female and male). It’s simultaneously hypnotic and surreal. Toes will tap; a chill will spread.
But hey, if this is too off-kilter for you, try out the alliteratively titled other two songs now up at Bandcamp, “Rotten Rancid Remains” and “Fetid Flesh Fairytale“. They’re a lot nastier, thanks to ruinously distorted and maniacally convulsive riffing, disgusting gutturals, freakishly screaming guitar solos, and an overarching atmosphere of horror most foul — or, as HPGD previews, “old school rotten, crusty Grindcore/Death Metal.”
https://hpgd.bandcamp.com/album/realm-of-ghouls
https://www.facebook.com/horrorpaingoredeath
CH’AHOM (Germany)
Like I do every time this week, I recently ventured over to Ron Ben-Tovim’s latest edition of “Songs I Liked This Week In List Form” at Machine Music. My next selection today is a demo he featured in that latest column. Here’s what he wrote about it:
A few things to unpack here. First things first: Ch’ahom, for the uninitiated, is nothing less than one of the great metal projects of our time, with a masterpiece of a full length that landed HIGH on my weirdo decade-thus-far list. The second thing is that this demo is, as the notes indicate, a harbinger for another full release to come, which is amazing news. The last thing is that, while pure chaos was indeed one major element of that wonderful album, it was beautifully balanced out by atmosphere and melody. This demo isn’t about that. It isn’t about balance. It’s about **checks notes** being covered in the priests black shit.
Covered in the Priests Black Shit is indeed the name of the demo, which the band released on September 11th. It’s six tracks and 15 minutes of storming chaos and howling madness, of tunnel-boring bass-lines and skull-clattering, bowel-loosening beats — a lights-out extravaganza of black/death/grind.
The music viciously churns, fanatically slashes, bizarrely squirms, thuggishly lurches, explodes in bursts of white-hot soloing insanity, pierces the ear with feedback abuses, and vents a cornucopia of ghastly, berserk vocals. At times it hits like a battering ram, at others it goes into psychotic seizures, at still others it sounds like wraiths gone mad.
Shit, the whole thing is mad, in both senses of the word, and perversely quite addictive as well as catastrophically destructive. Take some deep breaths before you hit Play; you’ll need the extra oxygen.
https://chahom.bandcamp.com/album/covered-in-the-priests-black-shit
https://www.instagram.com/devouringopaion
XAOC (U.S.)
The past week has been a very busy one for yours truly, and I haven’t had time to listen to more than a couple of complete albums. My concluding selection today is one of those.
I nearly fell off my chair when I saw the surreptitious news about it, because I didn’t realize that Xaoc was still a thing. If you need a memory refresher (and no one would blame you if you did), here’s what you’ll find at Metal-Archives:
Xaoc was started by Tony Petrocelly and Dave Schmidt after Bethledeign split up in 2006. An album was written, but the band split up before it was completed. In 2022 those songs were recorded with a new lineup and released by Edgewood Arsenal Records.
And then M-A says Xaoc split up again after that one album (Proxime Mortis) came out. But lo and behold, Xaoc dropped a new album named Repulsive Summoning on October 31st. It’s the work of a very talented lineup that includes Tony Petrocelly (Construct of Lethe) on guitars and bass, Brad Kensinger (Kevorkian) on lead guitar, Kevin Paradis (Construct of Lethe, Mithridatic, ex-Benighted) on drums, and vocalist Kishor Haulenbeek (Construct of Lethe, Black Harvest). And the afore-mentioned Dave Schmidt is credited for most of the lyrics.
Andy Synn reviewed that first Xaoc album for us. He called it “the perfect album for those people who like their Death Metal with everything turned up to at least eleven at all times” — “a merciless metallic murder machine” that’s “legitimately furious“, and “a real dark horse contender for one of the best Death Metal albums of the year.”
The lineup that created the new album only includes Tony Petrocelly from the group that made the earlier one, but have no fear (or rather, be very fearful) because it pulls no punches either — and it’s even more wild.
The music is rancorous and ruinous, almost constantly right out on the bleeding edge of vicious bedlam, but it’s also packed with technically eye-popping performances in service of all the violent insanity, plus a plethora of startling stops and starts and twists and turns that make the music dynamic (but never at the cost of savagery).
The raw and raging vocals are thoroughly crazed and ravenously carnivorous; the soloing is jaw dropping in its speed and dexterity; the drumming is a fast-changing, mind-blowing marvel; the vividly bubbling bass-work is remarkably diverse. And while the music is relentlessly boisterous and brutal, one listen to the carnival-like ecstasies of “Ave Salve Coagula” or the spectacular guitar soloing in “Antima Samskara”, “Crows of Torquemada”, and “Degenerate Era III” will prove to you that there’s a lot more going on in the music than full-bore ravening and ruin.
While the capabilities of the musicians as demonstrated here would put most tech-death bands to shame, these songs aren’t walls of notes or unmitigated blast-beat assaults. Among other things, there’s serious flair in the songwriting which persistently brings in strands of exotic and sinister melody, as well as an almost baroque kind of elaborateness in the riffing and the leads (so many different tones!), which includes ingredients of psychedelia, prog metal, and even moments of jazziness.
And while the music is terrifically head-spinning and inclined to keep listeners off-balance, the band also make ample room for hammering and highly headbangable groove in the midst of all the pyrotechnics, as well as episodes that are supernatural and surreal.
In a nutshell, Repulsive Summoning is a shocker in more ways than one, not just because it’s from a band with a name we all thought was dead and gone, and not just because this really isn’t a Construct of Lethe album despite the significant overlap in members, but because it’s so extraordinarily stunning. What Andy Synn wrote before holds again here: This is a real dark horse contender for one of the best Death Metal albums of the year.
https://edgewoodarsenal.bandcamp.com/album/repulsive-summoning
https://www.facebook.com/constructoflethe
https://www.facebook.com/edgewoodarsenalrecords/