THE MACHINIST: “TOWERS”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
May 232026
 

(Due to Islander being off in Baltimore doing Maryland Deathfest things, we will not have his usual weekend columns, but we do have (at least for today) another vivid review by DGR, who this time takes on a new EP by the crafty UK sonic terrorists who call themselves The Machinist.)

On the shorter and sweeter side of things we find ourselves landing upon the shores of the UK again with a new EP from the group The Machinist entitled Towers.

The Machinist are a self-defined industrial black metal band who cite Anaal Nathrakh and The Berzerker as being close comparisons to their sound. They are a three-piece consisting of a dual-vocal attack, walls of guitars, and enough programmed drums rattling about that it sounds like a hailstorm happening outside.

Towers is a three-song EP, arriving a year after their second full-length album Contempt For Life. And indeed, The Machinist have an overarching theme of dislike for humanity as a whole – as British bands tend to be experts in, disdain ranks fairly high – and if you did not have enough of it with Contempt For Life, Towers is the band on the offensive once again for another about twenty-five minutes worth of music dripping with dislike for the fact that you as a human being dare to exist. Continue reading »

VENTHIAX: “RITES OF RA”

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May 222026
 

(DGR continues to do the heavy lifting at our site while many of us (and him) are off at Maryland Deathfest, and today’s it’s a vivid write-up about a new EP from the Swedish old-school thrashers Venthiax, out now on Dying Victims Productions.)

Every year inevitably sees a smorgasbord of EPs released throughout the year. It’s enough that our own archive of them gets broken out into its own year-end post and usually runs just as long as our collection of album ratings.

EPs are often a realm of discovery, experimentations, and teasers of upcoming albums. This is something I personally enjoy quite a bit, because all of these snack-sized previews of groups and what sorts of headspace they may be in means you can sample so many groups in the same way a kid can go plowing through the sample segments of a candy shop. To be fair, I probably approach it with the same amount of joy.

It also allows room to explore genres that aren’t normally in your wheelhouse, not necessarily full-blown pig-ignorance but close enough. Old school throwbacks and thrash metal are definitely part of that on this end and the combination of the two have resulted in a fountain of bands that sound as if they’re time travelers from a bygone and especially kvlt era in heavy metal’s sound. Continue reading »

MORTUARY: “GREAT BLACK EARTH”

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May 202026
 

(This is a guest review of a new EP by the veteran Mexican band Mortuary (released last month by HPGD Productions) written by Jason Kiss, also known as Lonegoat from Goatcraft and Lord Abyss from Amorphophallus Titanum.)

As I have grown older, my patience for speed metal has waned substantially. Nevertheless, I continue to hold an affinity for proto-death metal expressions in which speed metal is driven beyond the confines of its own limited logic and, through excess, transforms into something altogether more menacing and expansive.

One might argue that Morbid Angel on Abominations of Desolation, alongside Necrovore’s Divus de Mortuus and Possessed’s Seven Churches, were among the first to exemplify this rupture; they produced the conditions for death metal to emerge as its own original coterie unshackled to its speed metal roots. What compels me not is speed metal in itself, but rather this fractured threshold where the spirit of extremity in metal is nourished and an Aristotelian potentiality is actualized; where speed metal dies so that something more sinister can take its place.

Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: DAUÞUZ, VYR MUK, GOD SHELL, EMBER VALE

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May 172026
 

(written by Islander)

I’m getting a very late start this morning. I wrote an explanation and then deleted it because my late start is the result of a level of stupidity that’s kind of embarrassing even for me. Better to just dive in.

What you’ll find below is a truncated version of what I originally planned. The collection begins with a single and then continues with three EPs, the last of which is a rehearsal demo that’s the band’s first release. Continue reading »

SUBMERGED: “RESURFACING NAUTICAL RUIN”

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May 152026
 

(We present DGR’s review of a new EP from the nautical brutal death metal band Submerged, which was released last month by New Standard Elite.)

We’ve been buried in an absolute gamut of albums over the past few months, and as is our usual tradition we have tried and failed to keep ourselves afloat in the flood of music. One day there will be maps drawn with shipwreck masts poking out of the water and one of them will just be the NoCleanSinging logo. Fitting then, given that today’s subjects are the San Diego, California brutal death metal group Submerged and their new EP Resurfacing Nautical Ruin.

A newer project of sorts, having been formed in 2023, Submerged were quick to break the dam on material, and after a demo in 2023, proceeded to pour out an album in 2024 titled Tortured At The Depths. Today’s EP Resurfacing Nautical Ruin – unleashed upon the world in mid-April via brutality merchants New Standard Elite – is the continued tale in Submerged’s torrent of music.

Gather up your diving gear then because we’re about to take a dip in the ocean of disgusting bass guitar tone, rattle-can snare, and vocals emerging from hydrothermal vents themselves for three songs and almost twelve minutes of singular violence and tremendous brutality. Continue reading »

GADGET: “COERCED”

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May 062026
 

(The Swedish grindcore veterans Gadget are returning with a new EP set for release on May 8th (on vinyl via De:Nihil Records), and what we have below are DGR’s enthusiastic thoughts about it.)

While it isn’t that long in terms of grindcore bands, given their “jump in and jump out just as quick” nature and the way so many grind projects are ephemeral blasts of sound that seem to appear and burn to the ground just as quickly, five years is a good-sized gap for new music from a project. Sweden’s Gadget haven’t had it easy either.

A period of lineup changes saw the group without a full-time vocalist for a bit and their first release post-2016’s The Great Destroyer was a split with Retaliation that saw Gadget contributing four songs, each with a different vocalist. The fire was still there and each song punched in at sub one-minute-and-thirty seconds. That was five years ago, though.

One of the highlight songs that did emerge from 2021’s Gadget/Retaliation split was “Intenso”, which featured vocalist Emilia Henriksson stepping behind the microphone for fifty-seven seconds of manic and relentless energy that was everything you might’ve wanted out of the blastbeat-driven firestorm style of grind that is composed entirely on the high-end, high-tempo side of things with little room for groove or chest-thumping low-end.

Emilia would eventually take over the vocals segment of the band in 2023 and be joined by Kristofer Jankarls on guitars as well as vocals for a double-headed attack, cementing Gadget in stable form for the three years since. 2026 marks the newest release for this lineup in recorded form, an eight-song and thirteen-and-a-half-minute blast of music known as Coerced. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: INFERNO, SCARAB, A BAND OF ORCS, EX CINERE, IEROFANIA, [4672], BEWARE OF GODS, THE DEVIL AND THE ALMIGHTY BLUES, STYGIAN BOUGH

 Album Reviews, Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
May 022026
 

(written by Islander)

My selections today were guided by strong memories, many of them quite distant and others more recent. And the music below is strong enough to make new memories. I’ll explain as we go along.

P.S. Be forewarned: There’s more than a little singing in this Saturday’s collection, especially in the closing segments, and it’s all very good! Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: SHAMORGA, MERESIN

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Apr 262026
 

(written by Islander)

Yesterday I riffed on how my plans for Saturday-morning NCS roundups can fall apart as a result of Friday-night adventures, even when those adventures don’t include self-immolation. Much the same could be said of Saturday nights and their occasional wreckage of Sunday mornings. This has happened again. I’ll spare you the details.

I also forgot that my spouse planned an outing by the two of us this morning. I tried to beg off, but she’s not having it, and I don’t have the strength to resist (it takes a lot of strength even in the best of circumstances). Coupled with my extensive over-sleeping, I just don’t have time to do very much with today’s column. The only reason I’ve done anything is because nature (even mine) abhors a vacuum (horror vacui!). Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: UNDERGANG, CORPUS OFFAL, FUNEBRARUM, BARÚS, VINTREGAL, LACASTA, THERE WERE WIRES, CLASS TRAITOR

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  4 Responses »
Apr 182026
 

(written by Islander)

As I often do, I made a list of links for new songs and videos I wanted to check out in anticipation of this Saturday’s column, i.e., things that had surfaced or that I had noticed since last weekend. Having done that, I counted the number of links, and there were 69 of them (I swear that number is completely coincidental!), including a few I noticed for the first time this morning. It wasn’t even a complete list; I had a bunch of other tabs open on my desktop that I didn’t add to the list because I knew time was running short.

I recognize this is odd behavior. Why make a list that long when you know you won’t make it through even a quarter of the items? Why make a list that long when you know it will only knot up your brain in deciding which of them to check out? I have no answer, though perhaps a trained therapist would have some theories.

As usual, I resorted to impulse. The only calculated part of the process was a desire to mix up bands I already like and others that were new to me, and a further desire to mix up the genres so that visitors here will be at least somewhat caught off guard if they move from one choice to the next and the next. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: SZNUR, ACOLYTHUS, SCYTHE OF MEPHISTO, NON SERVIAM

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  7 Responses »
Apr 122026
 

(written by Islander)

You could make a nearly endless list of traumas experienced by human beings that are more severe than having a sick pet. But having a sick pet can still be traumatic. I speak from experience — uncomfortably recent experience.

My wife and I live with two brother cats to whom we’re intensely attached. They have the run of our house but they’re never more than a few feet away from us. They’re very affectionate, very smart (for cats), very beautiful. We’re careful not to let them outside because they’re small, they’ve never been in the wild since birth, and we live in a forest full of predators of different species.

Last night after my wife and I had returned home from dinner and watching a ballgame, one of the cats began foaming at the mouth and manically racing around the room. We keep anything that might be an ingestive danger to them out of their reach, so it was perplexing. We scurried around trying to help him and trying to discover what might have caused this.

After about 15 minutes passed with no change, we managed to catch him and put him in a cat carrier, got in the car, and started driving to a 24-hour emergency animal-care clinic. Continue reading »

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