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?

Continue reading »

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 »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: NITE, MAGUS LORD, DISPYT, CABINET, CHIAROSCURO, POLISH, BANK MYNA

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Mar 082025
 

(written by Islander)

I can’t think of any reason to criticize Bandcamp for renewing their Bandcamp Fridays in 2025. Unless I’m missing something, it’s good for bands and labels that use the platform, not only because it lets them keep more of their sales revenue but also because it incentivizes fans to spend.

But it does make my life harder, because in weeks ending with one of those days the volume of new music swells significantly. Even in more normal weeks I can’t listen to everything I’m interested in. That’s an even greater impossibility in weeks like this past one.

But of course I did make some picks. Three of the picks are live videos that I’ve included at the end without much commentary, but the bands’ names ought to be inducement enough. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: BEHEMOTH, CYTOTOXIN, FALLUJAH, GHOST

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Mar 072025
 

(written by Islander)

Only five days ago Bandcamp announced that it would continue Bandcamp Fridays in 2025, with the first one happening today. Before that, it wasn’t clear that they would continue, so it caught most of us by surprise. But word obviously spread very fast. What was already unfolding as a packed week for new music became a typhoon over the last few days. I was already agonizing about what the hell to do for tomorrow’s usual SEEN AND HEARD roundup, but now I feel like someone caught on the beach as a towering tidal wave rushes ashore.

Bandcamp Fridays are always an ideal time to spread the word about new music, but because of other duties around here I rarely have enough time to pull something together until the day after. I really don’t have much time for it today either, but felt like I needed to do something to make tomorrow’s task even a bit less overwhelming.

What I decided to do is a bit out of character for myself and the site as a whole: focusing exclusively on some of the bigger names in metal (or in one case, metal-adjacent). We don’t ignore the big names around here, as long as what they’re doing is good, but we often use them as a way of luring people into music from bands whose names are much more obscure. If I’d had more time, that’s what I would have done with this small roundup. It was just easier and faster to stick with these four.

But of course, none of these four new songs and videos would be here if I didn’t think they were worth recommending. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): RITUALMORD — “THIS IS NOT LIFELOVER”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  1 Response »
Mar 072025
 

(written by Islander)

Few long-gone bands from the underground still have as passionately devoted a following as the Swedish group Lifelover. Two of that band’s surviving members have worked together under the name Ritualmord to create a debut album that will be released tomorrow by Unjoy – Art & Ritualia. That pedigree alone would attract Lifelover fans to the album like iron filings to a magnet, but almost like a rebuff of an old lover, Ritualmord named their album This Is Not Lifelover.

And the album’s name is mostly true, but not entirely true. It isn’t Lifelover, but to use a cliché, there are some Lifelover nucleotides in Ritualmord‘s DNA — though indeed it’s true that the other ingredients of their musical polymer are quite different from what a Lifelover fan would expect and possibly hope for — though it may reflect where Lifelover would have gone (to more vast and mind-bending places), had it lived.

In lieu of typical PR promotional texts, the two people behind the album, ( ) (Kim Carlsson) and 1853 (Johan Gabrielson) have crafted a different kind of introduction, and we ought to begin there in presenting today’s album premiere: Continue reading »

EMPTY THRONE: “UNHOLY”

 Album Reviews  2 Responses »
Mar 072025
 

(At the end of February Downfall Records released the debut album from a group of U.S. metal veterans who’ve taken the name Empty Throne, and today we have DGR‘s extensive and enthusiastic review of what they’ve accomplished on this first full-length.)

One of the most appreciable things about Empty Throne and their new album Unholy is that within the first minute of the opening song “Abbey Of Thelema”, you have a pretty good idea of exactly how this album is going to go and what the band sound like. It has been some time since we’ve had a release that has so clearly laid its cards on the table with an opening furnace blast of music quite like Empty Throne do up until the quiet guitar break in that opening song.

You’ll have a sense of just how much of the group’s death metal with a hint of melodicism, blackened thrash, and gnarly razor-sharp guitars you’ll want from the band right about that point. That’s not to say that Empty Throne aren’t happy to provide other things, but that opening minute lays out the core of a very ambitious band who across six songs and forty minutes have a lot to say — and as it turns out, at a very fast and teeth-shattering tempo as well. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: LISTLESS — “DEVOID”

 Premieres  No Responses »
Mar 072025
 

(written by Islander)

Listless is a new depressive black metal project born from the mind of Aidan Crossley, the guitarist and vocalist of the atmospheric black metal band Liminal Shroud from Victoria, BC in the Canadian West.

Those familiar with Liminal Shroud will detect some kinship in the music of that band and Listless, but in the case of this new project, Aidan has drawn inspiration from the likes of Austere, Woods of Desolation, Coldworld, None, and Gris, as well as depressive rock elements from bands like Lifelover and Psychonaut 4.

On April 25th, Hypnotic Dirge Records will release the self-titled debut album of Listless, and what we have for you today is a video for the first haunting and harrowing song revealed from the album. Its name is “Devoid“. Continue reading »

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