AEONIAN SORROW: “FROM THE SHADOWS”

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May 162025
 

(Sacramento-based DGR has at last caught up with the latest release by the pan-national doom band Aeonian Sorrow and shares his thoughts about it below.)

We’ll pry the mask off of our anonymity somewhat here but a few releases have hit this year that I’m genuinely surprised have flown under the NCS radar. Perhaps it’s just due to the weird flood/non-flood of pacing that releases have seen so far, but some that’ve floated past us feel like releases that have had neon signs hovering over them and calling out to us.

Maybe it’s just due to the fact that release season has been weird. I’m obsessed with finding a groove in things and that includes the flow of the year. Generally speaking, January has been my fall back for checking out Doom releases. It is about as cold as the home town will get (a frigid 29 fahrenheit at worst guys, make sure to hunker down) and also allows for a meditative slowing down of things.

Not this year though, as a certain moron decided to get high on his own supply and proceeded to add an addendum to the year’s most infectious list which took a surprising amount out of them. On top of that, Doom didn’t really hit in the massive wave that it usually does in January. Finland as a whole did, dominating the early part of the year somewhat, but the Doom releases were a little more scattered.

This is a roundabout way of saying that I am legit surprised we missed Aeonian Sorrow‘s new EP From The Shadows when it saw release in late March. We’ve had a pretty good track record of keeping up with the Finnish/Greek superhero team-up, but for some reason From The Shadows flew right past our dazed skulls. Well not anymore, let’s rectify that now. Continue reading »

How the fuck is it already mid-2025 when 2020 was just a few months ago? Yeah I slept on some shit last year, I was going through some stuff, what`s your fucking excuse for listening to the same 5 albums over and over again? YES, it`s all the title including this sentence. Haven`t you picked up on my way naming these articles yet?

 Album Reviews, LISTMANIA 2024  No Responses »
May 152025
 

(“Eclectic.” There’s that word again, the one we almost always use in sharing year-end lists from Tumbleweed Dealer‘s Seb Painchaud. We already did present Seb’s 2024 YE list during our LISTMANIA series for last year, but it turns out he overlooked a few — 16 of them, to be precise.)

How the fuck is it already mid-2025 when 2020 was just a few months ago? Yeah I slept on some shit last year, I was going through some stuff, what`s your fucking excuse for listening to the same 5 albums over and over again? YES, it’s all the title including this sentence. Haven’t you picked up on my way naming these articles yet?

So, are we really doing this again? I swore I was done with these lists as no one seems to read ‘em but god damn it, I kept discovering amazing 2024 albums I wish I had included and I made a playlist of ‘em on spotify and it’s just there, mocking me with its smugness, shoving my face into the failure that is not reporting these albums to you, the people not reading these lists.

On we go… Continue reading »

GENUNE – INFINITE PRESENCE

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May 152025
 

(Andy Synn returns to the site with praise for the new album from Romania’s Genune)

As you may be aware (or maybe not, it depends on how much attention you’ve been paying to the site recently) I’m currently over in the USA enjoying the post-festival relaxation period after this year’s edition of Northwest Terror Fest before then heading over to Baltimore to attend Maryland Deathfest.

As a result I haven’t been doing much in the way of writing/reviewing… heck, I haven’t been online all that much at all… and have just been focussing on hanging out with some friends and listening to music purely for the enjoyment of doing so.

That being said, I do have a few things in mind for the next couple of weeks (including one highly-anticipated new release that’s guaranteed to be one of the best albums of the year), with the following review for the upcoming third album from Genune (out this Friday on Consouling Sounds) marking the end to my short (but necessary) hiatus.

Continue reading »

THE HAUNTED: “SONGS OF LAST RESORT”

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May 142025
 

(After a very long wait The Haunted are returning with a new album now set for release by Century Media on May 30th, and below you’ll find DGR‘s musings about it.)

We’re not doctors around here. We have crew on the staff of this site that have higher education degrees and have made something of themselves – not yours truly, though – but at last check we don’t maintain anyone with the ability to diagnose anything or write a prescription. That said, if you’ll allow for some folksy wisdom, we can definitely see patterns and recognize solutions that seem to work.

Given that The Haunted experienced a second extended hiatus where it seemed for a while that the future of the band was up in there air, only for them to return with a ferocious new single that makes them seem scrappy again and with some vitality in their step, perhaps an argument is to be made that The Haunted are a band best served with a nice break between albums. Continue reading »

AN NCS DEMO PREMIERE: VEIA — “TUCHULCHA / IL RITORNO DI TUCHULCHA”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
May 132025
 

(written by Islander)

Frequent visitors to our site (and other people equally intelligent and tasteful) will know the names Thecodontion and Clactonian. If you don’t know those names, you can find out why I think you should know them by plowing through the volumes of words we’ve spilled about their music (collected here and here, respectively). Both bands are the brainchildren of Italian musician G.E.F., joined with other very talented friends in each group.

Now we have another name you need to know, another brainchild of G.E.F. This one is Veia. Under the banner of Veia G.E.F. is the vocalist and lyricist, joined here by bassist extraordinaire G.D. (also from Thecodontion) and exceptionally talented people from Svart Vinter and Veil of Conspiracy on drums and guitars.

Unlike Thecodontion and Clactonian, Veia is predominantly a vehicle for black metal. The band’s members have been at work on a debut album to be entitled Vacal, and they expect the recording sessions to be completed later this year. But to help introduce Veia to listeners, G.E.F. decided to release two “raw excerpts” from the album this month through his new-ish label Prehistoric Sounds, and we have premiere streams of both songs for you today. Continue reading »

…AND OCEANS: “THE REGENERATION ITINERARY”

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May 122025
 

(We present DGR‘s review of the new album by Finland’s …And Oceans, which will be released on May 23rd by Season of Mist.)
When it comes to Finland’s …And Oceans, sometimes I wonder if there are black metal fans out there who get a thousand-yard stare whenever the band starts up due to being constantly tossed the unexpected on an almost visceral level. …And Oceans have never been shy about a love for industrial and electronics and it has become their calling card within the extreme metal world.

I also often wonder if perhaps people are telling the same stories I am, wherein you’re describing this ambitious and explosive song barreling through guitar part and riff after riff as if they were being given away, a wall of drums behind them, and ear-burning vocals lofted above… only to then get completely sideswiped by some out-of-left-field electronics that barge their way into the song as if every story finds its ending at “and then the keyboards began.”

…And Oceans are stubbornly and wilfully unconventional, burning as many musical bridges as they have built, and just as easily turning to dust every bit of conventional good will they might have bought. Continue reading »

CAUSTIC WOUND: “GRINDING MECHANISM OF TORMENT” (TWO REVIEWS)

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May 092025
 

(Our writers make their own decisions about what to review. Our editor tries to coordinate so that two people don’t review the same album. In this instance his wires got crossed, and so in this feature we have not one but two vivid reviews — by DGR and Chile — of Caustic Wound‘s new album, which is out now on Profound Lore Records.)

GRINDING MECHANISM OF TORMENT — A REVIEW BY DGR

Washington’s Caustic Wound was only ever built to travel this particular path. The sense of inevitability that comes with knowing the musicians involved with this group, and how much further down the path into the dankest corners of the pits of death metal with their grinding side project, is natural. The combination of parts – Motiferum, Fetid, Magrudergrind… – makes perfect sense; there was no way it wasn’t going to sound like this.

When Quill Onkko asks you “was it ever thus?” after seeing all possibilities laid out before him while you’re visiting the backroom of Cetus, it contains similar feelings evoked by all the possibilities that Caustic Wound could have sounded like, given the band members making up the roster here. It was only ever going to narrow down to this. Everything else was a smokescreen. Continue reading »

BENEDICTION (“RAVAGE OF EMPIRES”) AND CANCER (“INVERTED WORLD”)

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May 082025
 

(Todd Manning prepared the following dual reviews of the latest albums by two UK legends, Benediction and Cancer, out now on Nuclear Blast and Peaceville, respectively.)

Resurrecting old school bands can often be a hit or miss affair. At least half, if not more than half, fail to capture anything resembling the magic of their earlier years. However, for those who do pull it off, listeners are beyond thrilled.

For some of us, the early ’90s were one of the greatest eras of metal. The death metal bands from then created such amazing music, full of brutality and a unique atmosphere. While we often hear about Swedish, New York, or Floridian death metal bands, we can’t forget the great British masters as well. Carcass and Bolt Thrower, of course, top that list, but Cancer and Benediction were important as well, and they both have new albums out. Continue reading »

LIK: “NECRO”

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May 082025
 

(Here’s DGR‘s review of the latest album by the Swedish death metal band Lik, out now on Metal Blade Records.)

We are now eleven years and four full-length albums into the death-obsessed career of Sweden’s Lik and it feels as if the group have been ever-present in one form or another. Formed right as the OSDM and Swede-death resurrections were full steam ahead, Lik have been steadily present just under the surface of the wider metal world.

There have been some decently long gaps between the group’s releases as well; a quick glance over their musical timeline suggests a pretty traditional three years or so gap between material but it always seems as if the band are always there in one’s listening habits. Perhaps it’s the fact that many of its members are spread out among larger bands like Bloodbath and Katatonia, so it seems almost inevitable that you’ll find yourself musing “Oh hey, it’s one of the guys from Lik!”

Or it could be that despite their clearly prescribed formula and tribute-paying at the altar of gore, Lik have proven themselves to be savants in the genre of death metal and happen to be particularly good at this. Continue reading »

FRACTAL UNIVERSE: “THE GREAT FILTERS”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
May 072025
 

(Today DGR circles back around to one of his favorite tech-death bands, the Parisian unit Fractal Universe and their new album The Great Filters, which was released by M-Theory Audio on April 4th.)

When did we settle on France’s Fractal Universe becoming tech-death’s younger brothers? Other than the part where it seems like they’ve discovered a fountain of youth and seem to appear perpetually young.

Founded in 2013, by the time of their second album Rhizomes Of Insanity Fractal Universe were already a polished and terrifically talented band, constructing songs out of guitar riffs just on the left side of bizarre and forever jagged as rocks slowly worn down by nature. Over time, they’ve become a being all their own that have absorbed as many influences as they themselves have influenced, each release some new permutating on a core sound honed well over the course of a decade.

Yet, it seems that the tale of Fractal Universe is just as much a tale of “well fuck you, I can do that too!” on every album. Continue reading »

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