SHADES OF BLACK: ASTERIAE, OPPRESSION, WORM

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK  No Responses »
Nov 232025
 

(written by Islander)

Greetings again on another Sunday, or whatever day it might be when you find your way here. Today’s collection is shorter than I would like it to be, because I have plans for the morning with my spouse that will take us out of the house, and I wasn’t able to spend much time pulling this together yesterday.

I’m beginning with an album released one month ago that I’ve been meaning to say something about for at least that long, and then following it with singles from two forthcoming albums that sound pretty exciting. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: ENSHINE, UNIVERSE217, CARRION VAEL, GHOULHOUSE, CH’AHOM, XAOC

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Nov 222025
 

(written by Islander)

I guess the word of the week is “piggy”, and not because Northwest Terror Fest announced yesterday that Piggy D will be one of the headliners at the May 2026 edition of the fest. In other news from the Department of Coincidence, we will post a review next week of an album by a band called Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs.

I guess I’ve been piggy myself this morning, ravenously rooting through the trough of extreme metal that got filled up with new releases over the past week. Now engorged, here’s what I decided to vomit up for your delectation this weekend: Continue reading »

UNALIGNED: “A FORM BEYOND”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Nov 212025
 

(Given our DGR’s proclivities in musical taste it was just a matter of time before he got around to reviewing the debut album from Unaligned, which was released by Transcending Obscurity Records in September. And now’s the time.)

Fireworks are pretty much illegal in the glorious nation of California. Something about the state being a massive tinderbox in the spring and summertime thanks to our brand new, shiny, and totally not climate change related weather pattern of atmospheric river into complete and utter drought means that even the slightest butterfly fart has the risk of igniting Santa Monica and reducing it to ash. That’s not to deny that the appeal isn’t there, and a brightly colored explosion is immensely and undeniably fucking cool, to say the least.

But, if we cannot have our yearly culling of hands and other extremities by some of the less bright among the shedful of lightbulbs that is our populace, we can seek other ways to chase after that high. What about musically then? Perhaps that is why even though it has long ossified into its own form of genre, tech-death seems to hold on out here. From any source, all across the nation, we will more than happily absorb that wall of notes and pyrotechnic instrumentation. We are the one of the homes of the big ramp of the X Games after all, and what is tech-death if not the musical idea of lining up a whole bunch of fireworks all in a row, setting them off at the same time, and then launching yourself across a forty-foot gap while attempting to land some sort of trick?

Tech-death is the very existence of “why can’t it just be the big ramp all the time”. With subtlety now strapped to a rocket and launched into space, tech-death itself has been a vibrant home to foster all sorts of wild musical showmanship, and surprisingly, it still shows no sign of slowing down. The latest evidence of that comes to us from all the way across the country in Florida’s Unaligned and their September-released album A Form Beyond. Continue reading »

BEST OF BRITISH: ASIRA / FALSE REALITY / GNASCH

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Nov 202025
 

(Andy Synn presents another terrific trio of albums from the UK underground)

I’m going to level with you, I’m running out of time… I’ve got recording to finish off, my annual work review coming up, and then I’m off on my mini-honeymoon at the start of December… and I still haven’t properly started work on my yearly round-up of all the “Great”, “Good”, and “Disappointing” albums of the year.

But that’s not stopping me trying to highlight as many examples of the “Best of British” as I can before the year is out, and today I’ve got a killer mix of “blackened” Prog, Metallic Hardcore, and nasty Sludge that should appeal to a variety of tastes.

So, without further ado…

Continue reading »

TUMBLEWEED DEALER: “DARK GREEN”

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Nov 202025
 

(Our site has had a long and warm relationship with the Canadian musician Seb Painchaud, whose year-end lists have always provided eclectic cornucopias of music for all of us to investigate. His band Tumbleweed Dealer released a fascinating new album way back in February of this year, an album that really needed the unusual voice of Vizzah Harri to express a review of it — which at last he has managed to do. It was worth the wait.)

Sometimes if we don’t carefully watch our daily intake of the ‘terribles’ online, it can seem a bit too much Everything Everywhere All At Once (warning, flashing images). It is good to keep oneself updated if any online life or profile exists because outside of our daily intake of horror, two pretty big leaks of personal data happened over the space of about 8 months. The Internet Archive (NPR link) was one, and on Saturday June 21st this one got confirmed too. It’s an AP link, not an attempt to hack you.

You won’t exactly need a machete to hack your way into the shadowy thickets of marshy vegetation when imagining the source material; but Tumbleweed Dealer’s album Dark Green pays tribute to one of the greatest pieces of fiction stemming from the 20th century, Swamp Thing.

Now that I’ve primed your frame of reference with the perils of the internet and mentioned horror at least once, well, Alan Moore is known amongst other things as having been the mind behind the resurgence of said comic book back in 1987. It is available to borrow or buy on the internet archives (it is probably safe by now) and Moore’s introduction to The Saga of the Swamp Thing has some passages that are worth sharing here for still being applicable in today’s climate, and also regarding the record being discussed: Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): SEDNA — “SILA NUNA”

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Nov 192025
 

(written by Islander)

Based on photographs, Cesena looks like a pretty place. A small city of roughly 100,000 people, it’s near the Apennine Mountains in Italy and about 15 kilometres (9 miles) from the Adriatic Sea on the east coast of the country toward the north. Of course, like every other place in Italy it has an extensive history, and its old architecture reflects that.

Cesena is home to the genre-bending black metal band Sedna. They have a new album that will be released in two days by the Dusktone label. The name of the album is Sila Nuna, a compound word of ancient origin that means “Sky and Earth”. But the language isn’t one of the many that have been spoken over time in the area of Cesena, or anywhere else in Italy. And you probably can’t guess what that language is, because it is so unexpected. Continue reading »

BORE – FERAL

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Nov 192025
 

(Andy Synn has gone Feral… and thinks you should too)

My love of Hardcore (mostly of the more “Metallic” variety) has been well-documented by now.

After all, many of my earliest, and longest-lasting, musical loves had their roots in Hardcore, and many of the genre’s ideals (or, at least, what I still think of as the genre’s ideals) – of promoting community and collaboration, of building bonds and breaking down boundaries – are ones which still resonate with me today.

That being said, I’d never claim to be an expert on the current state of “the scene”… I’ve always been a bit of an outsider, truth be told, and rarely do I have any idea what (or who) is currently cool (or not), which means I’m often late to the party (if I even get invited at all).

For once, however, I feel like I’ve got my finger if not smack-dab on the pulse (today’s band already have a couple of EPs and splits to their name prior to this release) then at least pretty close to it considering that Bore‘s debut album, Feral, was released just last week but is already making some well-deserved waves.

Continue reading »

CENTINEX: “WITH GUTS AND GLORY”

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Nov 192025
 

(We present DGR’s lively review of the 12th album by the Swedish death metal band Centinex, recently released by Black Lion Records.)

If the smoking rubble of the American public school system and, by some extent given how intertwined they are nowadays, Google A.I., are to be believed, then a famous playwright once wrote that “brevity is the soul of wit”. But, a curious idea arises in reading the quote as literally as possible, and a new quest alights as the result:

Is there wit to be found in something that exists solely for being brief? Are the attempted jokes and madcap hilarity of many-a-plug-and-play grind bands secretly the funniest things metal has to offer? Is there something of wit to be found in an album that has shown itself to be surprisingly and unexpectedly short? Is there wit to be found in that unexpectedly short romp in what might feasibly be some of the purposefully dumbest music put to record?

The Swede-death stomp, writ large, has been the proprietor of hundreds of markedly stupid circle pits, a lowbrow artistic effort of high reward in the unleashing of rotational energy, and the revivalism of the last decade of “old school death metal” has seen the dead walk anew; bands returning from long trips to farms upstate or groups who’ve been in the game for a while yet playing a different subgenre of metal’s increasingly fractalized musical tree declaring to the world “we can make that bullshit too!” and succeeding for the most part. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): LOCUSTS AND HONEY — “SHADOW OF MY END”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Nov 182025
 

(written by Islander)

The London band Locusts and Honey released their 28-minute debut record in May 2024. Its title was interesting (and still is): Teach Me to Live That I Dread the Grave as Little as My Bed. It was “inspired by the bog bodies of Ireland and Denmark – people of the Iron Age who were sacrificially hanged and found extremely well-preserved in peat.” They described it as “a meditation on death and living well.”

That debut release was the work of a duo — composer and instrumentalist Tomás Robertson and vocalist/lyricist Stephen Murray. Since then the lineup has expanded to five members, and the quintet now have a new EP scheduled for release on November 21st by Toronto-based Hypaethral Records. The title of this one is Shadow of My End. Its inspiration, as described by Stephen Murray, is also interesting: Continue reading »

PHOBOCOSM – GATEWAY

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Nov 182025
 

(Andy Synn enters the gateway… and likes what he finds there)

One of the biggest issues, for any band at any level, is finding a way to stand out from the crowd.

I’m not saying that every band has to be totally unique by any means – hell, there’s an argument to be made that the more “mainstream” side of the scene actively favours bands all sounding the same way (that’s how trends work, after all) – but, at some point, you have to have at least something distinctive to offer, right?

It’s an issue that Canadian catastrophists Phobocosm have been dealing with from the beginning, as the sound they’ve chosen – although perhaps “chosen” isn’t the right word, as it’s clearly more of a “compulsion” than a conscious choice – is one that sits smack-bang in the middle of the increasingly crowded and intensely contested sonic territory between Immolation and Ulcerate… two bands who cast some very long shadows indeed.

But while the influence of these two seminal acts has continued to loom large over Phobocosm throughout their career – beginning with their 2014 debut, Deprived, and then continuing to make its presence felt on 2016’s Bringer of Drought (a personal favourite of mine that year) and 2023’s Foreordained – the band have stubbornly persevered, refusing to divert from their chosen path in an attempt to assert their mastery over this particular brand of dense, dissonant, and doom-laden Death Metal through sheer force of will.

And now, with the upcoming release of Gateway, we get to see them take their next step towards domination.

Continue reading »

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