(DGR has a new discovery he wants to share with you from the still-growing realm of melodic death metal, a German trio whose debut EP was released in March of this year.)
It isn’t too often that we get to arrive right at the ground floor of a group’s releases. The number of times we have pulled it off is, frankly, stunning, because we’re in a special circumstance built for discovery and even then… who has the time? The organic act of coming across a project on their first EP feels like one of those mathematical possibilities whose scale is so large that the mind fails to be boggled because it can’t comprehend the numbers to begin with. Yet, it seems like by sheer chance we’ve come across German melodeath group Serpent Icon and their debut EP Tombstone Stories, which saw release at the beginning of March.
This early third of 2026 as a whole has proven to be oddly fruitful when it comes to bands under the melodeath tent; perhaps the planets and nostalgia cycle have aligned just right that we’ve reached a critical mass of sorts, and the dam was bound to break at some point. That same chance at play seems to have made it so that quite a few of these bands hail from Germany, as if there was some sort of conference held and every musician in that region declared that they too could do well in the world of high-tempo thrash riffs combined with scene-stealing guitar lead and folk melodies.
Melodeath’s blueprint has been passed down through so many generations at this point that where we land feels less like ‘influenced by, influenced by’ and more like groups seeking to construct a monolith of their own, each band contributing one more stone to the still-growing colossus known as melodic death metal.
Germany’s status as a metal powerhouse is undeniable. Although culturally it seems as if the country has received accolades more often for being an absolute factory of power metal, like most of the world the country’s contributions to metal as a whole are leagues more widespread. What isn’t discussed as often is just how efficient and surgical bands that hail from the country have become. It isn’t often that you see the word ‘efficient’ ascribed to heavy metal but it is a challenge to describe how it seems any band from Germany seems able to take their own genre, blow it out into its wider constituent parts, and reassemble it piece by piece into a new machine even though the overall blueprint is one that is well-known. It is something that has been playing on our mind recently as the last two months or so have seen a raft of projects hailing from the country all releasing in nearly the same window.
Such is the case with a group like Serpent Icon and our aforementioned early entry into their career. All things considered, their debut EP Tombstone Stories is their first release but you’d never be able to tell by the five songs and twenty minutes present here. They sound like a group that has been battling their way through the melodeath scene for years, forged into a well-worn instrument of destruction as they are now. As highlighted earlier, a sort of terrifying efficiency is in play here, and Tombstone Stories is impressive on that front. Every piece is exactly where it needs to be at the exact moment it needs to be there. The foundations of melodeath are not shattered and reconstructed here but instead find themselves reinforced and strengthened by a new combatant in the fight.
As is the case with many a melodeath group, Serpent Icon are at their best when they find the sweet spot between a high tempo and a strong guitar lead. There’s a fine unification point in the genre where it excels when the songs are fast without going into full ludicrous-speed territory and at the same time have been constructed around great guitar melodies that worm their way into the school. It’s just aggressive enough but still approachable, which is often why for all the intensity that can be ascribed to melodeath it is still a source of comfort food for many a metalhead. It is something to shut off the higher brain functions to and rock out to, that fine intersection of circle pit and glorious crowd-sway. It can be an exceedingly hard line to define but it is one that Serpent Icon have found pretty quickly and they stay there for most of their twenty minutes on Tombstone Stories.
The first two songs of the EP, “Circus Of Mankind” and “Ashes”, are built out of multiple intersecting melodies that dance into and out of the song with rhythm-guitar riffs that make their nest right in the territory that lies somewhere between thrash, hardcore punk, and straightforward rock. It’s the surgical precision that could cast Serpent Icon in lab coats writing prescriptions for mosh pits, which is made all the more impressive by the fact that the group – much like Deserted Fear – are operating as a three-piece.
The titular “Tombstone Stories” is a little more multi-faceted as it careens from melodeath staple to melodeath staple. The song veers into ‘look, all the stars are here!’ territory a few times as you cross paths with different riffs in its near four-and-a-half minutes and think to yourself ‘Wow, that would’ve made Soilwork jealous, or elsewhere in the song ‘Wow, I’d bet In Flames would kill for something like that these days’. The song could be painted as mostly up-tempo but its dynamics change halfway through into something more mid-level stomp, which is often where melodeath lives and dies.
It’s a difficult hill to climb. A mid-tempo melodeath song frequently exists as a nebulous creature lying halfway on the folk-metal side of things and a festival-worthy drinking song, but when whole albums or the majority of them are constructed out of that style it seems as if the band are dragging their feet. Frankly, it’s dangerous ground, and considering how codified melodeath is as a genre you could forgive bands for never straying from the tried-and-true ‘one-two’ to keep the pacing high. “Tombstone Stories” avoids a big block of that trap and uses it more to segue between the closing of that song and the opening segment of “Final Witness” – which then picks up the pacing with a spotlight-thieving guitar solo. They could be treated as one larger song within the bounds of Tombstone Stories as a whole in that regard. Thankfully, closer “Sirens And Sinners” is all pedal-to-the-metal and leaves the EP on an adrenaline-fueled closing impression.
The gentlemen of Serpent Icon have history in the melodeath scene – vocalist Christian Müller for instance has over a decade as part of the group Night in Gales – and it shows on Tombstone Stories. Serpent Icon have a practiced precision for melodeath as a whole that is hard to find, and it is undeniable that they’re really good at handing you exactly what you want. They are one of many groups adding themselves to the monolith that is melodeath as a whole, strengthening the genre while also making it really clear that there is a crystalized blueprint that you can follow and if you excel at doing so you can create some strong-to-killer material.
The five songs comprised by Tombstone Stories are of that ilk; a strengthened understanding of the genre as a whole has led to some speedy three-to-four-and-a-half-minute songs that feel both glorious and punchy in about equal regard, doing an excellent job of maintaining aggression and approachability in equal measure for something to headbang and hum along to.
https://serpenticon.bandcamp.com/album/tombstone-stories-ep
https://serpenticon.com/
https://www.facebook.com/people/Serpent-Icon/61565712247089/
https://www.instagram.com/serpenticon.metal/