(written by Islander)
As someone who tries to keep a very close eye every week on the emergence of new metal across a range of sub-genres, I can tell you that the holiday break is well and truly over. Since last week, the relative trickle has become a flood. I now find myself staring at dozens of computer tabs I opened in just a handful of days for songs and complete releases I thought I might want to check out.
I haven’t yet made my way through all of them, and doubt that I can. But with no premieres on our calendar today, I thought I ought to at least make a start, so that the task of compiling our two usual weekend roundups won’t be completely overwhelming, just moderately overwhelming. Here’s what I unearthed from the underground and enjoyed this morning.
WOLFBASTARD (UK)
Wolfbastard is the only band in today’s collection I knew about previously. I’ve written about their music four other times before today, including hosting a premiere of their last album, 2022’s Hammer the Bastards. Their feral and ferocious barrage of D-Beat, crust punk, black metal, and blackened hardcore takes no prisoners and bestows no mercy, and they show no signs of stepping back on their new album Satanic Scum Punks.
You can listen to two songs from the album now. Both will get your motor running fast and hot (and belching noxious fumes because you haven’t changed your oil in a damn long time), and they provide a great introduction to Wolfbastard’s blood-pumping ferocity for those who might be new to them.
“Hail Satan Kurwa” races, roils, and batters immediately, then veers into a swaggering punk riff and d-beat grooves just as caustic snarls and inflamed screams spit their fury. Back and forth the song goes, alternately broiling and bounding, and Wolfbastard lace the onslaught with vividly rippling leads, ominously slashing chords, and savage gang yells.
“F.O.A.D.” comes racing right after, inflicting tremolo-driven viciousness that’s alternately grim and maniacal, a variety of knee-capping beats, and crazed vocals. Mayhem reigns, but Wolfbastard also bring in a quick bass solo and then a rabidly jabbing riff that gets its hooks in.
Satanic Scum Punks will be released by Apocalyptic Witchcraft on March 13th.
https://apocalypticwitchcraft.bandcamp.com/album/satanic-scum-punks
https://www.facebook.com/dbeatblackmetal
NINTH REALM (U.S.)
Transcending Obscurity Records has been on a tear for years now, and they show vivid signs of tearing up 2026 too. Specifically, they’ve just released a 2026 label sampler stuffed with 26 tracks from forthcoming records. It’s free to download, but any money you contribute will go toward the upkeep of the Transcending Obscurity-run animal sanctuary having over 40 rescued cats and dogs, and others outside being fed and taken care of on a daily basis.
I knew about this sampler because I follow T.O. on Bandcamp and social media, but I also got a message about it early this morning from the Maryland crossover/death/thrash band Ninth Realm. And so I thought I’d listen to their song on the sampler today before diving fully into it later on.
The Ninth Realm song, “Rituals in Thar’amath“, wastes no time attacking listeners with wildly roiling and brazenly blazing riffage, backed by clobbering drums and fronted by equally wild vocal ferocity. But the band also quickly segue into a head-hooking chugfest that’s spiced with weirdly contorting guitar leads.
The song is in constant flux as the riffing inflicts bouts of venomous circle-saw evisceration, punk beats, gut-punching grooves, woozily writhing and dismally dragging fretwork with an esoteric aura, a delirious guitar solo with an exotic flair, and a dose of neck-wrecking, pile-driving punishment.
The vocals are persistently insane; the drumming is persistently tremendous; and the song’s non-stop genre-splicing dynamism makes a very strong impression. Their new album for T.O., whenever it comes, seems like it will be well worth exploring.
https://transcendingobscurity.bandcamp.com/album/2026-label-sampler
https://www.facebook.com/ninthrealmband/
ACERBIC (U.S.)
As is my habit, I paid particular attention in scanning through my gargantuan list of new music to songs from the Pacific Northwest. Turns out quite a few of them surfaced this week. I think I’ll get to some others before figuring out what to include in the weekend roundups, but the one I got to this morning is from a band named Acerbic from Olympia, WA.
This song, “Shallow Grave“, was presented with a woodsy video filmed by our friend J. Donovan Malley, a video in which vocalist Gabriel Glandon’s animated face quickly seizes attention, as do his guttural bellows. The other guys put on a good show too, as they collectively unload diabolically swirling and feverishly skittering riffage that channels feelings of both menace and despair.
But what makes the song stand out even more is the emergence near the song’s mid-point of an exotic guitar melody, serpentine in its movement and somewhat Middle Eastern (or simply esoteric) in its resonance — one more thing about the track that makes it fiendishly infectious as well as blood-rushing.
The song will appear on Acerbic’s debut EP Abhorrent Atrocities Against All Humankind, which features stunning hand-painted cover art by Matt Stikker. It will be released in February of this year.
https://acerbic.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/AcerbicMetal
ABSENT RITUAL (U.S.)
To conclude today’s collection I picked a song from The Cryptic Descent: A Compilation of Madness, which is the three-track debut demo from NYC’s Absent Ritual. The Eternal Death label, which will provide a cassette tape release on March 6th, bills the music as “outsider black metal”, which is intended here to signify an unorthodox, idiosyncratic approach that isn’t hemmed in by strict genre boundaries. The first song revealed from the demo bears out that description in striking fashion.
On the one hand, the slowly writhing riffage within “Darkness Divine” is caustic and imperious, but also rises up in a way that’s infernally glorious. On the other hand, while the vocals howl and scream like a pack of rabid lycanthropes, the drums amble along with nary a blast-beat to be found, and a prominently burbling bass presents another intriguing dimension.
On the third hand, the guitars ring out like strange spirits from a netherworld realm, piercing in tone and both psychedelic and proggy in their style. Those guitar leads make a striking impression as they spear and swirl.
Eventually, the drums do start blasting away, and the riffing itself begins to scream in displays of ecstatic dementia before the band return the song to a reprise of its opening as the vocalist seems to rip himself inside-out, insanely shrieking somewhere out on the bleeding edge of endurance — but with one more orgiastic display of madness and mayhem to close things out.
https://eternaldeath.bandcamp.com/album/the-cryptic-descent-a-compliation-of-madness