OUR LIST OF 2025’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 12): TOMBS, VACUOUS, CLAIRVOYANCE

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2025  2 Responses »
Jan 192026
 

(written by Islander)

I spent some time this weekend trying to figure out what I should add to this list after the three segments I’ve planned for the first three days of this week, which is as far as I’ve gotten. I thought I ought to pay more attention to songs from albums that didn’t make any of our year-end lists, and albums we didn’t even review, and songs I didn’t comment about in weekend roundups. I have a lot of listening ahead of me.

But today’s choices are all from albums we paid attention to in print last year. They were all on my radar back in late December when I started mapping out the first two weeks of this January rollout. They are all from albums we reviewed and that rightly received their fair share of acclaim during YE list season. Continue reading »

ECTOVOID – IN UNREALITY’S COFFIN

 Album Reviews  4 Responses »
Jan 192026
 

(Andy Synn gets his Death Metal on with the new album from Ectovoid, out now on Everlasting Spew)

Playing “Extreme Metal” – whatever your chosen flavour may be – is, as we all know, serious business.

That being said, it’s not a crime to have some fun while you’re doing it, and Birmingham, Alabamaniacs Ectovoid – whose line-up comprises members of serious death-dealers like Metaphobic, Father Befouled, and Seraphic Entombment – sound like they’re having an absolute blast (pun only marginally intended) on their recently-released third album, In Unreality’s Coffin.

Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: BONG-RA, UDRĘKA, VERDUN, FERNDOM, SEAR, LUCERNA MUNDI

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  2 Responses »
Jan 182026
 

(written by Islander)

Two days ago people in the tiny Spanish village of San Bartolomé de Pinares renewed a tradition that’s purportedly five centuries long — building bonfires in the central streets and riding horses through the flames. This is done on the eve of the festival of Saint Anthony the Abbott, the patron saint of domestic animals, because what honors domestic animals better than forcing some big ones to hurtle through an inferno?

I always look for photos of the event because they’re typically amazing and because they’re usually pretty good metaphors for people here and around the world trying to brave whatever fiery hells are burning around us. Lots of those to choose from these days.

Oddly, when I went looking for photos of this year’s ritual I had to wade through snowy photos of armed Greenlandic polar bears and sled dogs. What the hell was that about? (Well, I knew, and I guess it’s proof that AI is good for something besides kicking people out of work and threatening humanity with extinction.) Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: IMMOLATION, INFERI, HELLRIPPER, BONE WEAPON, BOSSE-DE-NAGE, TEMPLE OF VOID

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Jan 172026
 

(written by Islander)

Thinking back on the last week’s domestic and international news, it sure looks like humanity is circling the drain at an increasing rate of speed and frothiness. (Speaking of which, if you haven’t listened to the new music from Circular Ruin you should, and not just because their name so perfectly captures the current moment.)

On the other hand, the flow of new metal during the past week was more like the opposite of that, a great spinning flow surging up and out of the drain like a reverse-whirlpool of dark waters flooding out of the underground. New songs spun out from bands with prominent names but also from groups whose names are dramatically more obscure (but should becoem better known).

Even with my high waders on, I was only able to divert a small amount of the surge into this weekly column, and it’s a rarity in that all but one of the bands are from the U.S. Hopefully I’ll be able to divert more of the surge toward your attention in tomorrow’s Sunday column, but the Seahawks are in an NFL playoff game tonight and I’m not sure what kind of shape my head and heart will be in come the dawn, so who knows? Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: CIRCULAR RUIN — “PERISHER”

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Jan 162026
 

(written by Islander)

“Circular Ruin is the ever-recurring end of everything once great, the endless cycle of temporary prosperity followed by death and devastation, and the inevitable demise of humanity by its own hand.”

Yes indeed, anyone with even a passing interest in human history could agree with that depiction of our past and our future, a recurring and millennia-long sequence of self-inflicted ruin in which no important lessons are ever learned and what we have to look forward to is a circling of the drain.

Apart from being a succinct encapsulation of where our species has been and where we are going, Circular Ruin is also the name of a Swedish extreme metal quintet whose debut album is about to be launched upon a helpless public.

That album, A Sermon in Tongues, follows up the band’s 2023 EP Future Graves, and it will be released by Vendetta Records on January 30th. One song from the album has already exploded, and today we’re premiering a second one — “Perisher“. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: PUTRED — “DEVORAT DE ÎNTUNERIC”

 Premieres  3 Responses »
Jan 162026
 

(written by Islander)

Almost one year ago we published our contributor Zoltar’s very insightful interview of veteran guitarist Uriel Aguillon, riff-writer of the Romanian death metal band Putred. The discussion included this revealing Q&A:

Do you think that Putred would have sounded different if you hadn’t been born in the first half of the ’70s, and thus had the chance to catch the whole death metal boom when it all started?

Absolutely! I’ve been in the metal underground since the mid ’80s and it is what I know how to do, it comes naturally, and I couldn’t continue listening to new stuff after 1996, so I got stuck in the past for good. Putred is old rusted murky and filthy rotting death metal based in that feeling/mood rather than anything else.

This is an honest claim, and an accurate one when it comes to the music of these Transylvanian ghouls. One year ago Putred had just launched their second album Megalit al putrefac​ț​iei, and this year they’re returning with a new album titled Blestemul din Adânc that’s set for release in March by a trio of conspiring labels. What we’ve got for you today is a visualizer premiere for the record’s first single, “Devorat de Întuneric“. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2025’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 11): RIVERS OF NIHIL, FIMBUL WINTER, GRAVETAKER

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2025  No Responses »
Jan 162026
 

(written by Islander)

After today there will be 10 days left to complete this series before I stop at the end of January (unless I panic and post a segment on a weekend). I’m guessing some of you are wondering when I’m going to include more of the 2025 songs you played most often, because I’m confident there’s no way we’ve hit everyone’s favorites so far — there’s just way too many good candidates out there. But I also suspect that this list is already serving as a reminder of that very fact.

My own mind has reached the boggled stage where I know I’m going to have to leave off a great many songs that really got their hooks in me (and you) last year. I also know I’m incapable of ranking the remaining candidates in any way that will make the decisions easier, even with 10 more installments to come after this one.

Well, I’ll leave those agonies for another day and focus instead on today’s trio of addictives tracks. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: MORS VERUM — “CANVAS”

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Jan 152026
 

(written by Islander)

Lest any poor deluded souls think it’s okay to relegate cover art for albums to afterthoughts, mis-believing that half-assing the artwork won’t matter as long as the music is strong and will sell itself, just take a look at the above artwork created by Arifullah Ali. We venture the guess that even people who have never heard the music of Mors Verum will be so intrigued that they can’t help but want to hear their new EP.

As it happens, this writer was already familiar with Mors Verum’s past releases (for example, we’ve hosted two premieres in support of their previous music), including their dissonant, dizzying, and strangely beautiful 2021 EP The Living.

The band’s previous releases also obviously caught the admiring attention of the Transcending Obscurity Records, because on February 6th that prominent label will release a new Mors Verum EP named Canvas, which features the fascinating artwork up above.

Fittingly, this Ontario band’s new EP is every bit as fascinating and frightening as the artwork — a conclusion we think you’ll share when you hear our premiere of its title song (and one other we’re also sharing). Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: FOETOREM — “ESCALATING ROT”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Jan 152026
 

(written by Islander)

Human beings have been beset by nightmares for as long as our species has been able to speak or write about them, and undoubtedly before then too. Blessed by intelligence (relatively speaking) and the ability to communicate, and plagued by the fear of inescapable death, we stumble through life hand-in-hand with frightening dreams.

Among the oldest and most persistent of horrors is the fear of being buried alive — in coffins, tombs, or beneath a weight of freshly turned earth, deprived of oxygen, unable to move, and with naught but worms or the natural liquification of flesh eagerly awaiting the heart’s final beat.

Visions of hideous death have (of course) also walked hand-in-hand with Death Metal from its earliest day, and some bands have wholly devoted themselves to rendering musical visions of human pain and putrefaction, conjuring ruination, putridity, and stench through notes, beats, and voices.

The Danish band Foetorem are one of the newest exponents of death metal oppressiveness, rot, and foulness — their name itself translates to “stench of decay” — and they’re so powerfully good at it that Everlasting Spew Records has joined forces with them for the release in March of their debut album Incongruous Forms Of Evergrowing Rot. To help spread the word, today we’re premiering the album’s first single, “Escalating Rot“. Continue reading »

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