May 232025
 

(DGR continues to dig back into the earlier months of this year in search of gems previously overlooked at NCS, and found another in the debut EP of Texas-based Terror Corpse. Below is his vivid review of this sonic maelstrom.)

The union of death and grind has been fruitful for decades now. The deathgrind genre is one where the artist has had more capability to define what the music is than the listener does; over the years it has become a field wherein any death metal group with a taste for hardcore punk riffs or the classic circle pit grind guitar parts could find themselves standing side by side with groups for whom “slop” is the definitive way to describe their music, their peers within the sphere doing just the same, creating chaotic hybrids of unrelenting death metal that just happens to be very abbreviated.

The genre’s one unifying aspect as it has gone through its many mutations and transitions since the initial fusions began has been that the music is immensely abrasive. Terror Corpse is a union of Houston, Texas based musicians whose resumes delve deep into the death and grind underground (a block of Terror Corpse‘s lineup hails from the Necrofier crew). Their newest EP Systems Of Apocalypse will easily rank up there as one of the most chaotic, heaviest, and noisiest releases out this year, perfectly assembled for the deathgrind-loving ghouls of the heavy metal world. Continue reading »

May 222025
 

(Serenity in Murder‘s Timeless Reverie has been out since the end of February on Apostasy Records, but it won’t let go of DGR, and so even now he feels compelled to sing its praises.)

One of the joys of being an internet dork such as we are is that we get to witness regional scenes and tastes sprouting up across the world and then attempt to archive it. While the language barrier is always a little daunting, depending on the country, the need for loud aggression is more universal. It’s not surprising that the semi-permanent poverty and extreme artform of heavy metal has held appeal across the world in that regard.

Sometimes you need to just yell and share your band’s name with a Slayer song, and whatever gets filtered through that particular point in time is transformed based on the person’s ambition. It’s why you can have some of the most musically inclined and smartest people in the world playing essentially the dumbest fucking thing possible – either in an attempt to elevate the artform or the more commonly cited reason of “it’s just fun”. Continue reading »

May 212025
 

(The Polish titans Vader have bestowed upon us a new EP named Humanihility that will be sprung free by Nuclear Blast on May 30th. Below is our writer DGR‘s take on what it offers.)

It’s the most wonderful time of the year! It’s that time of year in which Vader drops a new EP on us that will no doubt offer a solid preview of things forthcoming from the now three-guitarist-armed band. Vader have done this like clockwork for years now, in between full-length albums offering up a two- or three-song EP that shows where their headspace is at, usually as a tight enough package on its own that it can hold people over for the extended wait that some album cycles tend to require.

They’re also a pretty good preview of what sort of Vader you’ll likely be getting on whatever upcoming full-length the titans have in store. Will it be death metal heavy Vader? Will it be thrashier Vader? Will Vader buck all trends and finally go full avante-garde and unleash some sort of blackened folk swing with extra emphasis on tuba? Will we get another fun cover song in the mix? Will we finally figure out how to work the word “lugubrious” into a review without calling attention to it beforehand?

Schrödinger’s Vader exists in multiple forms in the lead-up to the first spin of a new Vader EP and the sheer potential of it all is enough to keep things exciting. Continue reading »

May 202025
 

(Everyone here only writes about music they want to recommend, but as you’ll see from DGR‘s following review of Symbiotic Growth‘s new album, he is especially enthusiastic about what they’ve accomplished.)

As 2025 has wandered onward we’ve been afforded a few chances to dig backward through the pile of music that we missed. The compulsion to try and cover everything that you’ve been enjoying can sometimes be just as strong as the urge to constantly be at the forefront of the most recent music to hit. The battle of the two can sometimes turn ugly and the cuts made can be just as brutal as the music you’re listening to.

But sometimes you find stuff that’s so special you just can’t let it go, and the world be damned, you will make time to discuss it in one form or another. Thus, when we do get these chances to bring up releases that we’d been meaning to talk about for a while, we’re going to take it. And that brings us to Symbiotic Growth, a progressive black and death metal band hailing from Ontario, Canada. They share members with a few other projects we’ve written about, including the oppressively dense death metal act Fractal Generator, whom drummer Dan Favot has belonged to. Continue reading »

May 162025
 

(Sacramento-based DGR has at last caught up with the latest release by the pan-national doom band Aeonian Sorrow and shares his thoughts about it below.)

We’ll pry the mask off of our anonymity somewhat here but a few releases have hit this year that I’m genuinely surprised have flown under the NCS radar. Perhaps it’s just due to the weird flood/non-flood of pacing that releases have seen so far, but some that’ve floated past us feel like releases that have had neon signs hovering over them and calling out to us.

Maybe it’s just due to the fact that release season has been weird. I’m obsessed with finding a groove in things and that includes the flow of the year. Generally speaking, January has been my fall back for checking out Doom releases. It is about as cold as the home town will get (a frigid 29 fahrenheit at worst guys, make sure to hunker down) and also allows for a meditative slowing down of things.

Not this year though, as a certain moron decided to get high on his own supply and proceeded to add an addendum to the year’s most infectious list which took a surprising amount out of them. On top of that, Doom didn’t really hit in the massive wave that it usually does in January. Finland as a whole did, dominating the early part of the year somewhat, but the Doom releases were a little more scattered.

This is a roundabout way of saying that I am legit surprised we missed Aeonian Sorrow‘s new EP From The Shadows when it saw release in late March. We’ve had a pretty good track record of keeping up with the Finnish/Greek superhero team-up, but for some reason From The Shadows flew right past our dazed skulls. Well not anymore, let’s rectify that now. Continue reading »

May 142025
 

(After a very long wait The Haunted are returning with a new album now set for release by Century Media on May 30th, and below you’ll find DGR‘s musings about it.)

We’re not doctors around here. We have crew on the staff of this site that have higher education degrees and have made something of themselves – not yours truly, though – but at last check we don’t maintain anyone with the ability to diagnose anything or write a prescription. That said, if you’ll allow for some folksy wisdom, we can definitely see patterns and recognize solutions that seem to work.

Given that The Haunted experienced a second extended hiatus where it seemed for a while that the future of the band was up in there air, only for them to return with a ferocious new single that makes them seem scrappy again and with some vitality in their step, perhaps an argument is to be made that The Haunted are a band best served with a nice break between albums. Continue reading »

May 122025
 

(We present DGR‘s review of the new album by Finland’s …And Oceans, which will be released on May 23rd by Season of Mist.)
When it comes to Finland’s …And Oceans, sometimes I wonder if there are black metal fans out there who get a thousand-yard stare whenever the band starts up due to being constantly tossed the unexpected on an almost visceral level. …And Oceans have never been shy about a love for industrial and electronics and it has become their calling card within the extreme metal world.

I also often wonder if perhaps people are telling the same stories I am, wherein you’re describing this ambitious and explosive song barreling through guitar part and riff after riff as if they were being given away, a wall of drums behind them, and ear-burning vocals lofted above… only to then get completely sideswiped by some out-of-left-field electronics that barge their way into the song as if every story finds its ending at “and then the keyboards began.”

…And Oceans are stubbornly and wilfully unconventional, burning as many musical bridges as they have built, and just as easily turning to dust every bit of conventional good will they might have bought. Continue reading »

May 092025
 

(Our writers make their own decisions about what to review. Our editor tries to coordinate so that two people don’t review the same album. In this instance his wires got crossed, and so in this feature we have not one but two vivid reviews — by DGR and Chile — of Caustic Wound‘s new album, which is out now on Profound Lore Records.)

GRINDING MECHANISM OF TORMENT — A REVIEW BY DGR

Washington’s Caustic Wound was only ever built to travel this particular path. The sense of inevitability that comes with knowing the musicians involved with this group, and how much further down the path into the dankest corners of the pits of death metal with their grinding side project, is natural. The combination of parts – Motiferum, Fetid, Magrudergrind… – makes perfect sense; there was no way it wasn’t going to sound like this.

When Quill Onkko asks you “was it ever thus?” after seeing all possibilities laid out before him while you’re visiting the backroom of Cetus, it contains similar feelings evoked by all the possibilities that Caustic Wound could have sounded like, given the band members making up the roster here. It was only ever going to narrow down to this. Everything else was a smokescreen. Continue reading »

May 082025
 

(Here’s DGR‘s review of the latest album by the Swedish death metal band Lik, out now on Metal Blade Records.)

We are now eleven years and four full-length albums into the death-obsessed career of Sweden’s Lik and it feels as if the group have been ever-present in one form or another. Formed right as the OSDM and Swede-death resurrections were full steam ahead, Lik have been steadily present just under the surface of the wider metal world.

There have been some decently long gaps between the group’s releases as well; a quick glance over their musical timeline suggests a pretty traditional three years or so gap between material but it always seems as if the band are always there in one’s listening habits. Perhaps it’s the fact that many of its members are spread out among larger bands like Bloodbath and Katatonia, so it seems almost inevitable that you’ll find yourself musing “Oh hey, it’s one of the guys from Lik!”

Or it could be that despite their clearly prescribed formula and tribute-paying at the altar of gore, Lik have proven themselves to be savants in the genre of death metal and happen to be particularly good at this. Continue reading »

May 072025
 

(Today DGR circles back around to one of his favorite tech-death bands, the Parisian unit Fractal Universe and their new album The Great Filters, which was released by M-Theory Audio on April 4th.)

When did we settle on France’s Fractal Universe becoming tech-death’s younger brothers? Other than the part where it seems like they’ve discovered a fountain of youth and seem to appear perpetually young.

Founded in 2013, by the time of their second album Rhizomes Of Insanity Fractal Universe were already a polished and terrifically talented band, constructing songs out of guitar riffs just on the left side of bizarre and forever jagged as rocks slowly worn down by nature. Over time, they’ve become a being all their own that have absorbed as many influences as they themselves have influenced, each release some new permutating on a core sound honed well over the course of a decade.

Yet, it seems that the tale of Fractal Universe is just as much a tale of “well fuck you, I can do that too!” on every album. Continue reading »