(written by Islander)
Thinking back on the last week’s domestic and international news, it sure looks like humanity is circling the drain at an increasing rate of speed and frothiness. (Speaking of which, if you haven’t listened to the new music from Circular Ruin you should, and not just because their name so perfectly captures the current moment.)
On the other hand, the flow of new metal during the past week was more like the opposite of that, a great spinning flow surging up and out of the drain like a reverse-whirlpool of dark waters flooding out of the underground. New songs spun out from bands with prominent names but also from groups whose names are dramatically more obscure (but should becoem better known).
Even with my high waders on, I was only able to divert a small amount of the surge into this weekly column, and it’s a rarity in that all but one of the bands are from the U.S. Hopefully I’ll be able to divert more of the surge toward your attention in tomorrow’s Sunday column, but the Seahawks are in an NFL playoff game tonight and I’m not sure what kind of shape my head and heart will be in come the dawn, so who knows?
photo by Stephanie Gentry
IMMOLATION (U.S.)
I hesitated to lead off with Immolation’s new song because I suspect everyone who checks in with us today will already know about it, and not just because it’s from such a long-running and widely respected band but also because the song is SO fucking good. I saw so many people popping off about it on what passes for social media and in other online publications that I thought, no one really needs me to put my dim spotlight on it too. But I decided to do it anyway because… the song is SO fucking good.
In “Adversary“, the drumming is electrifying, the riffing diabolically wild, the bass bludgeoning, and the vocals gargantuan. The guitar leads and the soloing scream and whirl like expressions of demonic ecstasy. And the band also gas up their rhythmic jackhammers at the same time as they begin creating an atmosphere of infernal menace, augmented by fretwork fanfares of hellish glory.
The song was launched with a video directed by the band’s own Bob Vigna, and it’s a kick to watch. To quote my pal DGR in a message this morning: “New Immolation is great, video is good because it has Bob Vigna looking weirdly relaxed while playing guitar for the first few minutes instead of him fighting off invisible flying demons, I enjoy watching that dude play.” So do I.
Not only are the song and video really fucking good, so is the cover painting by the always-astonishing Eliran Kantor for the album that includes it. That album, titled Descent, is set for release by Nuclear Blast on April 10th. You may also have seen that Immolation is joining Mayhem on a European tour that begins in February, and that in April they’ll embark on an expansive North American tour with Behemoth, Deicide, and Rotting Christ.
https://immolation.bfan.link/adversary
https://immolation.bfan.link/descent
https://www.facebook.com/immolation
INFERI (U.S.)
Inferi aren’t as big a name as Immolation but their notoriety is still very impressive, and they too brought forth new music this past week as they begin their 20th year of existence (with an altered lineup). The song below is from their new album Heaven Wept, which will be released by The Artisan Era on April 10th (same day as Immolation’s new full-length).
Given the proclivities of Inferi, what you’ll get from “The Rapture of Dead Light” is of course a lot of very fast string-slinging and weaponized high-speed percussion, but this isn’t an unformed waterfall of notes and beats. Even at high speed, the riffing sets up a crazed but head-hooking pulse, and it also slows and swirls in ways that eerily channel moods of misery — but also jubilation.
I should add that the vocals are berserk, whether growling or screaming, that the soloing is spectacular, and that the song is a hell of a lot of fun to hear. Like Immolation’s new song, this one also arrived with a video, but one that’s much funnier and more hare-brained than Immolation’s — and I won’t spoil it for you with further commentary.
I mentioned an altered lineup: After the departure of guitarist Mike Low, Inferi brought in Sanjay Kumar (Wormhole/Equipoise) and began re-writing their material for the album. With Andrew Kim’s exit to join Brand of Sacrifice, Malcolm Pugh took over bass duties alomg with his other roles. The album is also the last one to feature Spencer Moore on drums before he moved over to Archspire (who also released a new song and video last week, which you can find here).
The amazing cover art for the new album is the work of Helge C. Balzer.
https://ffm.to/inferi
https://www.facebook.com/Inferimetal
HELLRIPPER (Scotland)
James McBain has elevated Hellripper to the point where Century Media has signed on to release the next Hellripper album, Coronach (named after the vocal lament traditionally sung at funerals in the Scottish Highlands), which will happen on March 27th. And that gives us the chance to share the third piece of tremendous cover art in a row today, this one the creation of Adam Burke (Nightjar Illustration), and it’s also the third new song in a row that arrived last week with a video.
This song is “Hunderprest“. Here’s McBain’s comment about it, interesting enough to share:
“‘Hunderprest‘ hits immediately with a chaotic deluge of dissonance, and is what I felt to be the perfect way to open the album — leaving the listener with no time to prepare. Based on the legend of ‘Hunderprest,’ or ‘dog priest’ – the vampire of Melrose Abbey. The sinful chaplain inherited his nickname because of his habit of hunting on horseback with his pack of hounds. After his death, legend says he was buried in the graveyard of Melrose Abbey; and because his spirit could not find peace, he would rise from his grave when night fell to harass the villagers and his former mistress to satisfy his bloodthirst. He was eventually defeated when a group of monks from Melrose Abbey exhumed Hunderprest’s blood-soaked body in broad daylight and set it on fire, throwing the ashes into the wind to be sure that the vampire would no longer be able to torment the town.”
Musically, the song is a ripping black thrasher, drawing influence from the likes of Kreator, Merciless, and Metallica on the one hand, and on the other, such bands as Watain, Rotting Christ, and Tribulation, but (as McBain says) “with a healthy dose of some more ‘atmospheric’ d-beat elements from the likes of Oathbreaker and Fall of Efrafa.”
This will get your blood pumping and your head moving, but it does also prominently include flowing tendrils of guitar melody that seem to channel fear and bleakness, and even a few haunting keyboard accents, plus some gloriously blinding, blistering, and joyous guitar solos, and riffing that spins like a wild Bacchanalian dance.
The video, assembled from Hellripper’s live appearance at Damnation Festival 2025, is also fun to watch.
https://hellripperband.lnk.to/Coronach-AlbumID
https://www.facebook.com/Hellripper1
BONE WEAPON (U.S.)
For how long have human beings been killing each other? It’s not a tough question, is it? For as long as we could. Prehistoric humans probably used rocks to brain each other at first, but maybe at the same time or soon after they also used bone to beat each other senseless.
(The earliest archeological evidence of murder is 430,000 years old, a skull discovered in Spain bearing what appears to be lethal, deliberately inflicted blunt force trauma (read about it here). No way to know which implement of murder was used.)
Which brings us to the Philadelphia-based trio Bone Weapon, bringers of Paleolithic death and doom. Following up their 2023 debut EP Thrive or Starve, they now have a new EP named Chaos Marked by Death of Sun that’s marked for release by Transylvanian Recordings (and Morbid Chapel Records in Europe) on January 23rd — when Bone Weapon will play a release show in their hometown with a bunch of other hellraising miscreants:
Based on the description at Bandcamp, the new EP narrates the lore of centuries’ long “Blood Wars” between two ancient tribes, the Katu and the Matu. But it’s a conflict that in Bone Weapon’s telling has prominent supernatural aspects: “The Matu thrive only off of the Katu’s blood and flesh. They regenerate and spawn with the blood of Katu while absorbing the spirits of the warriors within it.”
The story builds toward the occurrence of a blood ritual in which the Katu will try to free the souls of their ancestors from the Matu’s evil black magicks and achieve their own survival for a period of 300 suns. More details can be found at Bandcamp, but for now let’s turn to the first song revealed from the new EP — “Retching Poison: Divide And Purge“.
Blunt-force trauma remains a key aspect of this new Bone Weapon song — the vocals are monstrous in multiple ways, the drums bludgeoning, the bass gut-roiling, and the music brutishly pounding — but it manifests other dimensions as well.
The abrasive tremolo’d riffing is also viciously eviscerating, and the guitars feverishly writhe, morbidly groan, savagely slash, and miserably blurt. The drums explode in episodes of maniacal hammering, and the vocals (sometimes horrifically layered) vent mad howls, strangled screams, and guttural vomit.
The experience is violent and catastrophic; the song creates nerve-rending tension and hopeless agony; and much like the tale it tells, it has a narrative quality, segmented by frequent changes in tempo as well as the shifts in riffing and mood. In some respects it’s primitive, but like the conceptual narrative of which it’s a part, it’s also hideously fantastical.
https://transylvanianrecordings.bandcamp.com/album/bone-weapon-chaos-marked-by-death-of-sun
https://morbidchapelrecords.com/
BOSSE-DE-NAGE (U.S.)
We’ll now make a giant leap across the country from Philly to San Francisco to check out a new song from a new (and long-awaited) album by the post-black metal band Bosse-de-Nage.
“No Such Place” tips the scales at more than eight minutes, and earns all of them. Its ringing main riff, and variations on it, are simultaneously unsettling and mesmerizing, both anguished and absorbing; the vocals are passionately unhinged (except when grimly speaking); and the drumming a non-stop attention-grabber.
Speaking of variations, the song is packed with them. The moods of the frequently dissonant riffing range from frenzies of distress to episodes of wrenching confusion and hopeless gloom. The overarching impact of the song’s main course is to create nerve-rending tension, though in its final minutes it breaks open into a flurry of heart-bursting (and head-hooking) resilience.
In a nutshell, this is a tremendously elaborate but extremely well-plotted song, beautifully performed, and with relentless emotional power in all of its morphing aspects. It’s a treat to have this band back after an 8-year absence.
The title of the new album is Hidden Fires Burn Hottest. It will be released by The Flenser on March 6th.
https://bosse-de-nage.bandcamp.com/album/hidden-fires-burn-hottest
https://www.facebook.com/blackbossedenage
TEMPLE OF VOID (U.S.)
To conclude, here’s a song from another major-label release, this one from a new Temple of Void album that will be ejected by Relapse Records on March 6th.
“The Crawl” is the album’s title song, and I probably should have placed it right after Immolation’s new song in this collection, because it leans pretty hard into savagely exhilarating death metal in ways that pair up well with “Adversary“.
The whirring riffage and miserably whining guitar-leads are both demented and distressing. The guttural bellowing is abyssal, and the howls rabid. The band also brutishly stomp and inflict battering-ram blows, conducive not just to headbanging but to rhythmically bending listeners at the waist, though they also yield the floor to insectile fretwork frenzies.
It’s not until near the end that the band bring more fully forward the doom ingredients of their death/doom hybrid, slowing the pace to a staggering crawl and accenting it with the miserable ring of the lead guitar.
Like the first three songs in today’s collection, this one arrived with a video — a really well-made video in which an ancient king seems to play a game with hooded beings, a game that through dark magic directs the fate of human beings (and ultimately fells the king as well). It also includes good footage of the band desecrating some church with their performance.
https://orcd.co/templeofvoid
https://templeofvoid.bandcamp.com/album/the-crawl
https://www.relapse.com/
https://www.facebook.com/TempleOfVoid