We’re going to cut to the chase right away, because that’s what the song we’re premiering does. We’ll come back to provide some concrete information, but only after “The Journey Into the Depths” (and one other wild song) have flooded your body with adrenaline and thoroughly scrambled your brain (you probably weren’t using it for anything important anyway). Continue reading »
Transcending Obscurity Records introduces Abhorrent Dimensions, the forthcoming second album by Finland’s Sepulchral Curse, by drawing a picture of contrasts in the music — an integration of “crushing and domineering” sensations with others that are “intricate and complex” and still others that weave together “various shades of emotion” that create “engrossing tales” within the songs. Nuance, in other words, coherently co-exists with robust power, and in this way the new album represents an advance in the band’s songwriting.
Of course, as intriguing as those descriptions are, we prefer to form our own conclusions, and no doubt you prefer to form your own too. The conclusions based on the disclosure of individual songs become stepping stones toward the final judgments that will arrive after the album’s complete release, which in this case will happen on October 27th.
Today we can all take another step, courtesy of the band’s official video for the song “Onward the Legions“. Continue reading »
The Swedish band After Earth haven’t had the smoothest road forward. They released a favorably received EP named Before It Awakes during 2020 — in the midst of the pandemic — then suffered some lineup changes but managed to release the 2022 single “From Age to Aeon“. And then, in early 2023, just a few weeks before the recording of their debut album, two of the band’s guitarists departed.
Rather than abandon the enterprise, the remaining three members — Marcus Rydstedt, Anton Vehkaperä, and Olof Öman — forged ahead, picking up additional roles, and managed to get the album recorded (with some guitar solos outsourced to Christoffer Nilsson). And now that album, The Rarity of Reason, is set for release on August 18th, timed to coincide with After Earth‘s European tour supporting Swedish death metal band Mara.
To help spread the word about the album, today we’re premiering a lyric video for a song from it named “Legions“. As the band explain, this song “showcases a heavier side to us than our previous music”, showing “a bit more of our inspiration from purer “death metal”, while preserving the band’s emphasis on melody. Continue reading »
Since the release of their debut album When the Ravens Fly Over Me in 2006, the Spanish band Dantalion have followed a winding path through time, one that has seen them release seven more studio albums and a compilation record across a changing array of labels.
It’s also a path that for a time led them away from their black metal origins and into music that Metal-Archives has characterized as “Melodic Death/Doom Metal”. However, with 2018’s The Seventh Wandering Soul they began returning to those black metal roots and did so even more decisively with 2021’s Time To Pass Away.
On September 8th of this year Non Serviam Record‘s will release this band’s ninth record overall, a full-length named Fatum that Dantalion call “the declaration of our comeback” and “the definitive confirmation of the true identity of the band”. There’s also a good argument to be made that it’s the band’s best work yet.
As evidence of that, what we have for you today is a lyric video for Fatum‘s second single, and what an evocative name it has: “Sounds of Bells and Open Scissors“. Continue reading »
We invite you into The Astral Gloom, as today we pull back the veil between worlds and allow you to gain entry. But pay careful attention to those chosen words: Deep shadows lie in wait, but things move within them that aren’t the living things which might lurk around you in a midnight stroll through the woods or dimly lit urban canyons. Chilling dangers await, as well as chilling wonders, and little of it seems to have an earthly origin.
We’re speaking of the forthcoming second album by the international collective known as The Rite, a band first spawned in 2017 through the collaboration of A.th (Black Oath) and Ustumallagam (Denial of God) and now fully fleshed out to include drummer War D. (Morbus Grave), and guitarists Gabriel (Black Oath, Morbus Grave) and M. Desecrator (VomitVulva, Funest).
In listening to the new album it’s easy to fall into the kind of fumbling poetic reveries you saw in the first paragraph above, and a few more of them will follow in our introduction to the full album stream we’re presenting below on the eve of its release by Iron Bonehead. In much more mundane terms, you can expect an alchemical interaction of black metal, old-school doom, and (for want of a better term) “classic heavy metal”, equally prominent in nightmare atmospherics and imperious head-moving heaviness.
There’s also a cover of “Naked When You Come” by The Lollipops. More on that later. Continue reading »
If you’ve been a regular visitor to this site over the last 7 years you’ve seen the name Geist a lot, because over that span of time we’ve published a multitude of Geist song and video premieres, record reviews, and show reviews. The reasons for all that attention can be summed up in a few quotes pulled from some of those articles:
“Coming across like a younger, hungrier, and – more importantly – groovier, sibling to bands like Cursed and Converge, the Newcastle-based quintet strike a careful balance between raw intensity and pinpoint precision….”
“…delivering an absolutely stunning set of pissed-off, punk-fuelled polemic and scalding sonic shrapnel… both impressively tight, yet as raw and fractious as the wildest of riots, every track… detonated like a pipe-bomb flung into the audience….”
“Geist unleash some of the angriest, most vitriolic Metallic Hardcore I’ve heard in a very long time, pulling a total of zero punches and taking no prisoners in the process.”
“Through a feral mix of dark hardcore, crust, and metal, they channel emotionally raw and devastating sensations (and bone-busting force) through their debut album Swarming Season.”
There’s a lot more where all that came from, but you probably get the point. We’re very high on Geist‘s music, and thankfully they show no signs of slowing down, because they’re now preparing to release their second album Blueprints To Moderate Sedation in September of this year through Cursed Monk, Black Omega, and Trepanation Recordings. And as you can tell, today we’re premiering an explosive song and video for the new album. Continue reading »
Today we are most happy to revisit the music of the German band Orphalis after spending a lot of time with them around the release of their second album The Birth of Infinity back in 2016. Shame on us for not paying nearly as much attention to their third album, 2019’s The Approaching Darkness — definitely a case of oversight rather than dissatisfaction.
What brings us back to them again today is the rapidly approaching advent of the band’s fourth album, As the Ashes Settle, which is set for release by Transcending Obscurity Records on August 25th, and more specifically our premiere of an extravagant new song from the album named “Staring Into Ruin“. Continue reading »
A band whose members hail from such groups as Anhedonist, Triumvir Foul, Ash Borer, and Dagger Lust? Say no more, we’re drawn to what they’re doing like iron filings compelled by a big magnet.
Those are indeed some of the many band names on the resumes of the now-Portland-based quartet who call themselves Excarnated Entity. They’ve devoted their talents to the creation of doomed death metal, as revealed in desolate and devastating fashion on their forthcoming debut album Mass Grave Horizon — a title that’s entirely fitting as a preview of the music within.
The album is now set for release on September 8th by Nuclear Winter Records. One single has already emerged, and today we present a second one, a song of hideous majesty, pulverizing power, and otherworldly misery that goes by the name “Corridor of Flame“. Continue reading »
Cursed To Occult is a German one-man band, the solo recording work of one Micha Eibisch, though it expands to a full band for live performances. Because it is a one-man project, the music is very much a reflection of its creator’s personal experiences, and those experiences are distressing — as you might guess from both the name of Cursed To Occult‘s debut album Mind Wreck, and the title of its forthcoming second album, Diary Of A Broken Man.
What we have for you today is the unnerving and exhilarating first video and single from that new album, in advance of its release by the Crawling Chaos label on September 1st. Entitled “Cultleader“, it’s a viscerally compelling amalgam of crust punk, black metal, sludge, and hardcore, all roped together to lash and pummel the senses with shattering intensity.
But before we get to that song and video, it’s worth sharing what Micha Eibisc has stated about where the music on the new album comes from: Continue reading »
At the end of every year for the last 13 years our site has rolled out a list of each year’s “Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs“. Barring some unforeseen calamity we will do it again at the end of 2023. We don’t start seriously thinking about which songs should make the list until the waning days of each year, but sometimes some of the choices become immediately obvious, and this is one of those times. There absolutely WILL be a song from GraveRipper on the 2023 edition of the list. The only thing up in the air is, which song?
The choice won’t be easy, because GraveRipper‘s forthcoming debut album Seasons Dreaming Death (set for release later this month by Wise Blood Records) is packed to the brim with highly infectious black-thrashing romps, the kind of exultant escapades that are loaded with hooks, bury them deep in a listener’s brain, and get hearts pounding and heads banging.
No, it won’t be an easy choice, but the song from the album we’re premiering today — “Resist Against the Light” — will certainly be a leading contender. Continue reading »