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IMPERIAL TRIUMPHANT – GOLDSTAR

Mar 132025

(Andy Synn welcomes another decadent dose of weirdness from Imperial Triumphant)

There comes a time in every band’s career… well, not every band’s career, let’s be honest… when they have to decide what to do with their success.

Do they allow it to change them, and their sound, in an attempt to chase the always alluring, ever-elusive dragon of fame and fortune (more the former than the latter, these days)?

Or do they stick to their guns, refuse to bow to outside pressure, and maintain their integrity, in the hope that success will continue to find them regardless?

Well, I’m sorry to say that with the upcoming release of their sixth album, Goldstar – which is neither a direct-to-video sequel to 2022’s Spirit of Ecstasy, nor a throwback to 2015’s breakthrough Abyssal Gods, but a special, third thing – it seems that Imperial Triumphant have decided that it’s finally time to cash in on their growing celebrity/notoriety and produce something with more artistic accessibility and marketable mass appeal.

That’s right everyone, Imperial Triumphant have finally “sold out”.

CANTU IGNIS: “THE FATHOMLESS DOMINION”

Album Reviews No Responses »

Mar 132025

(In mid-February the Colorado-based metal band Cantu Ignis released their second album, adorned by wondrous undersea cover art by Mark Erskine. DGR came across it and found the music pretty wondrous too, as you’ll see from his review below.)

Much as we would like to pretend that we are cooler than having a schedule or anything resembling a routine, the year in heavy metal has developed a flow to it. Some things you could set your watch by, while others are a bit more nebulous but are still guaranteed to happen. Metal’s obsession with water and chthonic depths is one such predictably recurring aspect. Even when used as base set-dressing for album art and title, there is some sense of a certain heavily-referenced mythos weaving its way in through the cracks. As cliffs will all eventually break down into piles of sand via the crashing of the waves, you can expect at some point within the year we’re going to head into the depths below.

If anything, what is shocking is that it took until the middle of February to stumble upon one, though you could argue that even then the kind of group drawn to it is to be expected as well. What is alien in the galactic sphere is also alien in the waters below, and if there’s anything the modern age of tech-death groups love it is something alien. They can bend realities to their will in song form and subject matter, and the latest to lap from that particular font of inspiration is Colorado’s Cantu Ignis with their second full-length album The Fathomless Dominion. Continue reading »

FROGG – ECLIPSE

Album Reviews 1 Response »

Mar 122025

(Andy Synn puts the debut album from New York weirdniks Frogg under the microscope)

Metal, as we all know, is a serious business for serious people.

And what could be more serious than a colossal cosmic amphibian attempting to devour the moon?

Honestly, it kind of puts all our common, everyday concerns into perspective, doesn’t it?

SADIST: “SOMETHING TO PIERCE”

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Mar 122025

(What we have for you here is DGR‘s review of the tenth installment from Sadist, just released last week by Agonia Records.)

We’ve reached an interesting period in heavy metal wherein it seems as if every Sadist release is going to be the last one, as if Sadist are held together by fierce determination and super glue – though it’s not clear which one is doing the most work.

At this point in their career the entity bearing the Sadist name has been reduced down to its two founding members: vocalist Trevor Nadir and multi-instrumentalist Tommy Talamanca. Drummer Romain Goulon seems to have bowed out after a four-year stint with the band – which, granted, brought us a pretty mean release in 2022’s Firescorched – and it does not appear that Sadist have settled on a permanent rhythm section since then.

The group nowadays seems to be largely reinforced by the Italian death and groove band Fate Unburied, with three of its four members taking up live duties with the band and its rhythm section performing session work with them as well. Which is the way we loop back around to how Sadist is being held together and what they consist of these days – because clearly someone believes in this band’s angular and bizarre take on death metal. A large part of the explanatory weight is left to the group’s newest material then, an early March unleashing of death metal entitled Something To Pierce. Continue reading »

SPIRITWORLD: “HELLDORADO”

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Mar 112025

(SpiritWorld‘s new album Helldorado will be arriving on March 21st on Century Media Records, and we have Gonzo‘s take on it today.)

I’ve often described metal as the perfect additive to any other type of music. When done right, it can be an incredible marriage of styles. Results may vary, of course, but the ongoing explosion of subgenres within the metal realm will prove the point either way.

This fact will undoubtedly be obvious to anyone reading this. But the fun part of such experimental alchemy that so many bands have tried over the years? It creates new sonic territory yet to be explored by anyone else.

Enter Stu Folsom and his bedazzled cowboy cohorts in SpiritWorld. I was (and still am) hopelessly hooked on their 2022 album DEATHWESTERN, with its furious Slayer-inspired riffs and paint-peeling vocals. The fusing of country, folk, and dust-crusted Sergio Leone-style storytelling made the album worth its weight in gold. Three years later, the big question about new album Helldorado is whether or not it holds up to its predecessor.

Let’s find out.

SPIRITBOX: “TSUNAMI SEA”

Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule 1 Response »

Mar 102025

(Late last week the Canadian heavy metal band Spiritbox released their second album, and today we’ve got Wil Cifer‘s review.)

Before you throw the LaPlante out with the bathwater, it might be easy to write this band off as a pop act. After all, they are an evolution of Myspace metal. However, I might go as far as to say that this album is more inspired than Knocked Loose’s You Won’t Go Before You Are Supposed To, which was one of the heaviest albums since Sunbather to catch the ear of more mainstream audiences. It certainly takes more chances and employs a wider range of sonic colors, rather than hits you with blunt force you bob your head to.

If your eyes have skimmed any of the reviews I have done for this fine site or other of the more devious ones you might have stumbled across on the Dark Web, then you know this is outside of what I normally listen to. If you caught the trail of breadcrumbs that starts with Chelsea Wolfe covering one of their songs, then you might be getting warmer. Continue reading »

K L P S – K L P S

Album Reviews No Responses »

Mar 102025

(What sort of difference does a name make? Andy Synn sets out to find out!)

Hands up… how many of you have heard of Danish existential extremists Kollapse?

Well, this is not that band.

How about Swedish Post-Metal noisemongers Kollaps\e?

Well, it turns out that the latter group, in an effort to differentiate themselves further from their fellow Nordic neighbours just across the water (who, in fairness, did have the name first), recently re-branded themselves as K L P S (still pronounced the same way) and decided that the best way to celebrate his new era was with a brand-new, self-titled album.

All of which begs the question, does a ~~rose~~ band by any other name still ~~smell~~ sound as sweet?

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): NOMADIC RITUALS — “FUST”

Album Reviews, Premieres No Responses »

Mar 102025

(written by Islander)

It often happens that we, like everyone else, find our first exposure to an album in a single song provided in advance of the album release, even when we later find ourselves premiering the entire record. That is what happened here in the case of Fust, the apocalyptic fourth album by the sludge/doom band Nomadic Rituals from Northern Ireland that will soon be released by our friends at Cursed Monk Records.

One of their early singles from the album was “Change“. It greeted our ears with clobbering beats and demonic snarls, with vicious sizzling tones and shrill demented decibels. The song’s mangling low-frequencies lurch like some enormous primeval beast; the vocals scream and bay at the moon; the beats crack and tumble.

The music also pounds like a sledgehammer and seems to moan in agony, and the beasts come out in the doubled vocals too. It might have ended there, but doesn’t: the drums vividly clatter; the guitars go off like sirens; the low end brutally gouges with gruesome claws; the voices scream bloody murder.

As a welcome sign placed before listeners, “Change” was very fucking intense, an experience in rage and ruin, like a welcome sign made of skull and crossbones. How indicative was it of the album as a whole? You’re about to find out. Continue reading »

SYNAPTIC: “ENTER THE VOID”

Album Reviews 1 Response »

Mar 102025

(This is DGR‘s review of the debut album by the German band Synaptic, which was released in January by Lifeless Chasm Records.)

Dwelling in the earlier part of the year has so far presented a handful of pleasant surprises but none came out of left field quite like the first full-length from Germany’s Synaptic, a tech-death, thrash, and melodeath hybrid that has resulted in a sub-thirty-five minute blistering whirlwind of an album known as Enter The Void.

Synaptic have existed in one embryonic form or another for over twenty-plus years of on-and-off activity but up to this point have only had one release to their name, a twenty-seven minute EP dating back to 2008 entitled Distortion Of Senses. Since then, the whole lineup has changed save for one main project-driver, and it seems as if the entire sound of the group has shifted from those days. It means that in a lot of ways Enter The Void is a full relaunch of Synaptic – now a three piece – and is the sort of release that makes it seem as if the seventeen years between releases were put to good use.

Even though there’s only an eight-minute difference between Synaptic‘s full-length and the aforementioned EP, there is a lot more packed within those thirty some-odd minutes than you might expect. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: AMALEKIM, DERNIER SOUFFLE, FRYKTELIG STØY, SHEOL BLANC, KEXELÜR, AKVAN

Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET No Responses »

Mar 092025

I got a really good head-start on this column yesterday, so good that I thought I’d be able to post it much earlier today than usual. But of course the best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft a-gley.

This mouse forgot that Daylight Savings Time would go into effect overnight, springing the clock forward. And then this mouse slept for 9 1/2 hours. Put those two together, and the morning was well underway by the time I turned to finishing this. Oh well.

What you’ll find below is an alternating sequence of songs from forthcoming records and complete releases, most of them head-spinning in different ways, but with a more meditative and deeply haunting experience at the end. Continue reading »

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