SEEN AND HEARD ON A NEW YEAR’S DAY: KARLOFF, TOMBSEEKER, HEXER, 1986, KATHAREIN, HURSAN

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
Jan 012026
 


Seattle Space Needle in the fog, Dec. 31, 2025, photo by Akash Pamarthy for The Seattle Times

(written by Islander)

Yesterday a newsletter I subscribe to (“This, Not That“) compiled quotations by many famous writers about New Year’s Day and the ending of the previous year, some of them humorous, some of them depressing, some of them wise. One of the quotes, by Charles Lamb, seemed to sum up all the others: “No one ever regarded the First of January with indifference.”

I’m certainly not indifferent. I’m determined… determined not to let the day go by without posting here about new music, notwithstanding the likelihood that many people are too hungover or sleep-deprived to wreck their heads with our preferred sonics today. It’s a compulsion of long standing, one that has resulted in our making some kind of music post 365 days a year, or close to that, with fewer than a dozen missed days over the 16+ years of our site’s existence.

As it always does, the new year of heavy music won’t waste much time taking off and achieving orbit velocity. We’ve already seen and spotlighted lots of songs from albums slated for release in the new year’s first quarter, and more will begin surfacing at an accelerated rate after this relatively slow week ends. I’ve picked an array of recent surfacings in this New Year’s Day column.

But, for better or worse, we haven’t completely finished reflecting in other ways on the music that 2025 brought us, including a few of today’s picks. Continue reading »

THE SYNN REPORT (PART 190): JOURS PÂLES

 THE SYNN REPORT  4 Responses »
Dec 312025
 

Recommended for fans of: Heretoir, Harakiri For The Sky, Gaerea

Well, here we are everyone, the very last post of the year… before we begin all over again tomorrow.

And it’s fitting that the last post of 2025 gets to be another edition of The Synn Report, as this series of articles was always intended to mark the transition from one month to another… or, in this case, from one year to the next.

I will say, however, that it is absolutely shocking to me that this is the first time we’re writing at any real length about prolific French “Post” Black Metal project Jours Pâles, as while we may have mentioned them here and there before (including just recently in my end-of-year round-up) the timing has just never been right for us to give them the attention they’ve so clearly deserved.

But now, at last, it’s time to change that.

So if you like your music rich in both blackened intensity and moody melodic energy – their most recent album, Résonances, in particular has some serious late-90’s/early-00’s era Dark Tranquillity vibes to it – all topped off with a blend of heart-wrenching emotional highs and immersive, introspective lows which owe a fair bit, in my estimation, to the viscerality and vulnerability of Punk/Hardcore, then you might just be about to discover your new favourite band.

Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: GRAUFAR — “VIA NECROPOLIS”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Dec 312025
 

(written by Islander)

Everything that happens today will be the last this or the last that or the last that other thing that happens in 2025. This is the last NCS premiere of 2025, and it’s a very good one.

To help ring out 2025 and to help ring in the New Year we’re premiering the first single and the title track from a new Graufar album named Via Necropolis. We present it with a lyric video that includes live footage of the band’s performances filmed across 9 different shows, including Wacken Open Air Festival.

Graufar, whose name is an old German word for the color “grey”, are a relatively new group but have quickly achieved some notoriety. Founded in 2020 in Linza, Austria, they released their debut album Scordalus in 2024 and in that same year won Wacken Metal Battle Austria and went on to place ninth in the international finals at Wacken Open Air. The forthcoming second album builds on these foundations. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2025: A YEAR-END LIST FROM THE GOAT TAVERN

 LISTMANIA 2025  5 Responses »
Dec 312025
 

(Last May we published an excellent interview of the Polish band Polish band Wędrowcy~Tułacze~Zbiegi by a metal enthusiast with some roots in Poland but based in the UK whose moniker is The Goat Tavern. With that as our introduction, today, as part of our 2025 LISTMANIA series, we’re sharing The Goat Tavern’s year-end list of 25 favorite albums. To follow The Goat Tavern, go here and here.)

Whenever it’s time to look back at the year that’s just passed, I always face the laborious task of selecting the albums that have tickled me the most and the ones I think are worth a special shout-out. I try to take different things into account but, in the end, it’s the emotions that matter to me in the first place.

Extreme metal is in a fantastic place at the moment. Each year brings more and more astonishing albums and 2025 was no different. The variety and range of music within the metal scene is overwhelming and it might be a real battle to follow everything that’s coming out.

This year, I selected 25 full-length releases that I consider my favourite ones that I’ve been listening to the most this year. The definite majority involves black metal and, this year, the list has been dominated (again!) by Polish bands.

I hope you can find something new there that you like. Enjoy! Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2025: A YEAR-END LIST FROM JOHAN HULDTGREN (OBITUS)

 LISTMANIA 2025  2 Responses »
Dec 302025
 

(For the 15th year in a row, our friend Johan Huldtgren of the Swedish black metal band Obitus (find them here and here) has again allowed us to share with you his year-end Top 10 list, originally presented on Johan’s own music blog here.)

Lists like this are always somewhat arbitrary, it’s ten releases I picked, from the longer list of albums I liked, whittled down from albums I’ve heard, released in 2025. Often times which get picked and which get left off is mood dependent, and that is only the albums which I’ve heard; experience has taught me that I will sometime down the road find albums released this year which could easily have made the list. As at least a few of the releases below I’ve not seen on other lists published here, I hope you find something you enjoy which you may otherwise have missed. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DENOMINATE — “LIMINAL”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Dec 302025
 

(written by Islander)

The Finnish band Denominate have been on an increasingly fascinating musical journey as they’ve moved from release to release over the last decade. In one sense, they’ve always been a death metal band, but they’ve been consistently exploratory since the advent of their 2015 debut EP, Realms of Confusion, and their music is now best described as progressive death metal.

Our last encounter with them was in the context of their second full-length in 2020, Isochron, reviewed here by our Andy Synn. Even then, Andy highlighted the band’s prog-metal magic in an album that had its fair share of ingredients from the realms of technical death metal.

And now Denominate are returning with a third album, Restoration, which represents the culmination (to date) of their adventurous evolutions. It still displays a lot of eye-opening technical skill and includes a fair share of ravaging attacks, but it’s also the most multifaceted (and prog-inclined) release by Denominate so far, one in which captivating melodies and atmospheric passages play prominant roles — as you’ll learn for yourselves through our premiere of a stunning second single from the album today. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: ILLA

 Interviews  No Responses »
Dec 302025
 

(Here we present our Comrade Aleks’ interview with Saїmon Ramov, frontman of the Siberian black metal band ILLA, whose new albnum Dialogue was released this past September.)

Born in Novosibirsk two years ago, ILLA claimed to be quite an active project as it took just one year to give a birth to the first full-length, Sarva-Saktan (2024), and one more year was spent on finishing the sophomore work Dialogue, released on September 16th by SoundAge Productions and Svarenne Music.

One of ILLA’s main features is their sheer interest in Hindu mythology and culture. Thus their (mostly “post-“) black metal has its atmospheric and epic charm. As Saїmon Ramov, the band’s frontman, states: “Each track is a journey into unexplored corners of consciousness, where culture, tradition, and music intersect. We strive to convey to listeners not only sound, but also the significance of stories shrouded in mystery”. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: DEAD SUN

 Interviews  No Responses »
Dec 292025
 


L-R: Thomas Ohlsson, Rogga Johansson

(On December 19th Emanzipation Productions released This Life Is A Grave, the latest album by Rogga Johansson’s long-running melodic death metal band Dead Sun. And that event led Zoltar to contact Rogga for the interview you’ll find below. We’ve stitched in some of Dead Sun’s new music too, which is well worth your time.)

Oh yeah. Rogga Johansson. Like again. I know what you’re thinking: with no less than 48 (!) bands/projects listed as ‘active’ on his metal archives page, and don’t get me started on those considered ‘inactive’ as there are as many, it may be hard sometimes from an outsider point of view to take the man seriously. I mean, who does have 48 bloody different aliases, especially since in most cases it more or less is to do the same kind of chuggin, old-school and full of ‘ugh!’ style of death metal whose foundations were laid out by his main band PAGANIZER back in 1998? Isn’t it all the same all over again?

Well, as one of the few psychos who own, if not all, say, most of his works (give or take, over 120 + albums dude), I (slighty) beg to differ. Yep, you need first of all to be a sucker like me for this brand of Swedish mid-tempo rudeness but believe me when I tell you you’ll find different flavors here and there, that is if you know where to look.

Case in point being DEAD SUN: next to his solo albums or EYE OF PURGATORY, this is probably as close as ‘melodic death metal’ goes, Rogga Johansson-style. Meaning: catchy as fuck, because let’s face it, the man knows a thing or two about coming up with instantly memorable in-your-face crusty riffs. Yes, This Life Is A Grave is their (his?) official ninth full-length, but next to the criminally overlooked 2019 Night Terrors one of their best under that moniker. Plus it’s DEAD SUN’s first under the banner of Emanzipation Productions, who already has a long history of partnership with Mr. Johansson thanks to STASS or THORIUM.

So come on, don’t be shy, come on and have a taste! Continue reading »

UNDERGROUND METAL FOR THE TRVE CURMUDGEON (BEST OF 2025 EDITION)

 LISTMANIA 2025  9 Responses »
Dec 292025
 

(This marks the 12th time in our history when our ornery old friend SurgicalBrute has weighed in with a year-end list of favorite albums and/or EPs. As expected, his list (in alphabetical order) adds many names that haven’t appeared before in our 2025 Listmania series, and this year there’s a lot of variety on offer, though the prose is just as curmudgeonly as ever.)

It’s been about three years since I last did one of these lists for No Clean Singing. Since then, hardcore kids have taken over old school death metal, black metal has become a meme on TikTok, slam metal continues to exist, and for some reason there are still people convinced Deafheaven is a black metal band.

What the hell, people!? I step away for five minutes, and all hell breaks loose! Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2025: ROLLING STONE’S LIST OF “THE 15 BEST METAL ALBUMS OF 2025”

 LISTMANIA 2025  6 Responses »
Dec 292025
 

(written by Islander)

The first two parts of our year-end LISTMANIA festivities are nearing conclusion — our sharing of lists from sites and zines with much bigger audiences than our own (but often, audiences who aren’t as devoted to metal as ours) and lists compiled by our own writers and old friends. In this post we’re again including Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the year’s best metal albums because it has become a tradition, a largely comical tradition at this point which dates back to the halcyon days of 2013 when a commenter somehow just skipped past all our introductory text, looked at Rolling Stone‘s list, and chastised us for not naming Gorguts as AOTY instead of Deafheaven.

Of course, Rolling Stone hands-down qualifies as the kind of “big platform” site or zine that we pull from in this part of our LISTMANIA orgy, as a way of getting a glimpse into what the top-side world perceives as great metal.

This year, Rolling Stone compiled a Top 15 list (the number seems to vary from year to year). Ususally their list displays a lot of “scatter”, for want of a better term. Often, it includes albums you wouldn’t be surprised to see on one of the lists assembled by our own writers, and often it includes others that makes us cringe. By our lights, the rankings themselves are often eye-rolling. Continue reading »

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