GONZO’S HEAVY ROUNDUP, END-OF-SUMMER EDITION

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Sep 152026
 

(Our Denver-based writer Gonzo had an eventful summer, and reported on some of those events in our pages, but he now returns to reviewing and recommending albums — six of them released earlier this year.)

Well, fuck.

To say the past three months have been busy would be my own personal understatement of the year. Said months included, in no particular order: My wedding, three festivals, one World Cup road trip, one trip to North Carolina to see Acid Bath at a brand-new venue in Asheville, and other random adventures I’m somehow blanking on. June now seems like a blurry haze, July was like a metalhead’s paradise, and August was mostly spent recovering.

As a result, life forced me to break routines and generally fall behind on business as usual this summer. Among the normal routines I broke: Posting my usual monthly roundup here. And like any routine, once it’s broken, it’s hard to get back on the horse and continue riding. As it turns out, my will to write prevails.

But now that we’re about 75% of the way through 2026, it’s been quite the year for heavy music—much of which we’ve already covered here. The following five albums are some of the best I’ve heard during that stretch that still slipped through the cracks. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: VERDUN — “LA LAME ET LA CHAIR”

 Premieres  No Responses »
May 142026
 

(written by Islander)

On June 26th of this year Transcending Obscurity Records will release the third album by the French band Verdun, and their first one in a long seven years. Its name is Abyssal Womb. As the label describes, it represents an evolution of the band’s music into “a form of blackened sludge with a dissonant edge” — “mind-numbingly heavy yet catchy and direct, making it highly effective and memorable.”

Those are good descriptors. Verdun’s new music is humongously heavy and powerfully channels an array of damaged and dangerous moods with riff-driven compositions that get stuck in the head. Moreover, the songs incorporate contrasting melodic accents that are ethereal in tone, and the drum rhythms will routinely get a listener’s muscles jumping.

Two infectious songs from the album have already surfaced (and eventually we’ll have something to say about them below), and now we premiere a third one — “La Lame et la Chair“. 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 »