(written by Islander)
Triskaidekaphobia is a recognized affliction, but no one should fear this 13th installment of our infectious song list. Instead, it should be relished, though in the case of some aspects of the following music it may be worth remembering that in the tarot deck, XIII is the card of Death, often depicting the Pale Horse with its rider. You’ll probably relish those aspects too.
HOODED MENACE
These doomy and deathly Finns have been a favorite menace around our blog for a long time, witness the 22 times we’ve published articles about their music beginning in 2012. And so it was a happy development to discover that 2025 would bring us the band’s seventh album, Lachrymose Monuments of Obscuration, one in which Hooded Menace continued to embrace ’80s heavy metal, along with a few other unexpected embraces (they also covered Duran Duran’s “Save A Prayer”).
I got hooked by the album’s first single and the video that came with it, hooked deeply enough that I decided to add the song to this list even after discovering other album tracks that also dug their hooks into my head.
The crystalline glitter of the guitars that open “Portrait Without a Face” certainly diverge from conventional death/doom, and as the music slugs and swells, that ethereal shininess persists. Things do get nastier as Harri Kuokkanen expels his savage snarls and furious screams, and gloriously blazing chords lead the song into more sinister and dismal phases.
The song is a big head-mover too, thanks to burly bass lines and gripping percussive grooves (which to my ears even include some post-punk rhythms). Rapidly darting riffage, sweeping musical vapors, and delirious soloing also give the music a fiendish aspect. In other words, it’s quite a multi-faceted song. It brings heavy metal grandeur, aspects of classic doom, punchy grooves, monstrous vocals — and more .
https://hoodedmenace.bandcamp.com/album/lachrymose-monuments-of-obscuration
https://www.facebook.com/hoodedmenaceofficial/
GRAND CADAVER
I wholly agreed with my compadre DGR when he wrote last summer that Grand Cadaver have flown under the radar of too many people during their five years of existence despite the presence of Dark Tranquillity’s Mikael Stanne as the frontman, in a lineup that also includes lots more veteran talent. Here’s a further excerpt from his extensive review of the band’s latest release:
There’s melodic death metal as a genre and there’s death metal with a lot of melody to it and Grand Cadaver are having a grand time sailing between the two. The group’s newest EP The Rot Beneath is another four songs of rollicking death metal that will do nothing to turn people away from that idea, instead melding what is tried and true with a slightly more vicious taste for the straightforward. The Rot Beneath clocks in at around fourteen minutes of non-stop headbanging that once again adheres to the pattern of sneakily being something far more than just brain-dead chainsaw riffwork and a constant drum-kit assault.
After hearing the EP, I was convinced that one of those four tracks deserved to be on this list, and I ultimately fixated on the song that we ourselves premiered — “Darkened Apathy” — in part because of its message. Grand Cadaver introduced it with these words, which are still true: “The world is burning, and the people set it alight with indifference and apathy. A death metal protest song, where the wise are silenced and the unconcerned are in control.”
In alignment with those words, this slow-building song is both bleak and brutal, both steeped in agony and raging, both massively heavy and ethereally chilling. And it packs a viscerally potent rhythmic punch. To repeat what I wrote before:
The track’s stricken opening melody, voiced by a lone guitar whose ringing tones are corroded, is a channel of grief and dismay — intersected by ominous and angry detonations whose reverberations sound like the sizzle of a radiation detector. That grieving melody continues to slither forward but the anger in the music swells as the rhythm section hammer with greater vigor and the words come forth in harrowing howls and gritty, furious screams.
Grand Cadaver continue depressing their accelerator. The drums kick into a gallop; tremolo’d riffing creates a vicious sonic swarm that rabidly writhes as it desperately ascends and dismally descends; the vocals reach new fever pitches of serrated-edge ferocity; a lead guitar wails overhead.
When the band slow the pace once more, the music extrudes tendrils of melodic misery but also hammers hard, and then the song escalates to a crushing crescendo of rage and despair, with a reprise of the sorrowful opening melody to close things out. It truly does sound like an anthem to mankind’s demise, and I haven’t forgotten it.
https://grandcadaver.bandcamp.com/album/the-rot-beneath
https://www.facebook.com/grandcadaver
DOOMSDAY
I eventually would have listened to Doomsday’s 2025 debut album based solely on the cover art. But I must admit that our Andy Synn’s review of this Oakland crossover crew’s full-length pushed me to check it out with less foot-dragging. Here’s an excerpt from what he wrote:
Doomsday seem to love Ringworm and Merauder as much as Exodus and Testament, meaning that their new album – which also, in my opinion, owes a fair debt to early Sepultura (who themselves weren’t exactly shy about showing off their Punk and Hardcore influences) – should be perfect mosh-fodder for anyone on the look out for the next Power Trip or High Command.
Andy made clear there’s not a weak track on Never Known Peace, and he drew attention to many of them individually, but he had some special words for one song in particular:
[I]t’s the anthemic, riff-tastic “Pain Dweller” which represents the absolute peak of the album, with its massive metallic guitars, hefty Hardcore gang-vocals (which also make multiple appearances elsewhere on the album, most notably during the excellent “Eternal Tombs”, and moody melodic hooks all combining into what is probably going to go down as one of the best (or, at least, “Most Infectious”) songs of the year so far.
Oh yes, it really is all that, and I agree. that it belongs on this list.
https://doomsdaycahc.bandcamp.com/album/never-known-peace
https://www.instagram.com/doomsday.ca/
https://www.facebook.com/creatordestructorrecords/