Legendary death doom outfit, Cianide are one of my criminally underrated bands with them rarely getting anywhere near as much spin time as they deserve. This EP coming up in the feature release section this month has been a timely kick up the arse to remedy that for a few hours at least. Unhumanized is only a shade under twenty-six-minutes long and perhaps is not the Chicago trio at their absolute best, yet it is still a bruising and entertaining affair to listen to.

Coming out thirty-one-years after the band first got together, Unhumanized has the hallmarks of an established and mature band. The riffing sounds perfectly crafted and richly performed to accentuate the crunch and groove of the guitar of Scott Carroll. For a band with only one guitarist, he is clearly more than enough, and the mix lets him sit front and centre in proceedings alongside the barking of vocalist Mike Perun. The percussion is less prominent than the guitar and vocals but still does a fantastic job in the background. Check out the punky vibes on the title track for an example of how this is not just a standard death metal release.

Offering some of the best in extreme metal that the underground has to offer, Cianide give a decent enough acquittal of themselves on this release to pique the interest of any fan wanting to go and look at their earlier work. With a discography going all the way back to 1992 when their debut record dropped, this taster of the modern Cianide has enough of their familiar sound to tie it back to their earlier releases. Love me a short EP every now and again to whet the appetite for some further death metal listening afterwards.

Italian speed metallers Bulldozer have never featured very highly in my listening within the realms of The Pit clan. Whilst I would not put their limited airplay down to any problem they present to me, at the same time, I cannot pretend to have ever been overwhelmingly entertained by any of the stuff I have listened to from them. The Final Separation doesn’t put a foot wrong as such, yet nor does it tread anywhere particularly new or even influential either. At times reminiscent of Venom (‘The Cave’) whilst on other occasion being just as close to Motörhead, the album lacks any of the rhythmic riffs that would steer it in the direction of thrash metal and as a result I would suggest the thrash metal tag is irrelevant for this album.

If you a connoisseur of eighties speed metal, then The Final Separation probably holds more sway for you than it does with me after over three decades of listening to metal; I left this sound behind a long while ago I feel. Whilst I am not alien to humour in my metal music, tracks like ‘Don Andras’ are just juvenile to my ears these days. Serving only to break up the otherwise very similar tempos of tracks to this point, this song has little value and stinks of filler.

With, ‘Never Relax’ at least offering some hope of variety for the second half of the album, I could have been forgiven for thinking I was being a little too harsh on the first few tracks. It is cumbersome though and feels pieced together as opposed to a free-flowing track. ‘Don’t Trust the Saint’ is the nearest to thrash metal we get to on the album, but it bounces more than it chops and my interest soon wanes. Final track ‘The Death of Gods’ grumbles some promise of an epic closure to the album, however this is soon lost in an overly grandiose soundscape that pushes my interest onto other things in the room.

The new Lychgate album is likely the last new release in metal that we'll ever get before the new year dawns. And with only over 24 hours before it becomes 2026 in my country, I thought this would be the right album to check out as the clock is ticking down. It's probably the most experimental album of the year, and one that further shows how well I can keep up in The North despite that clan being the least likely for me to ever join.

You want extreme progressive metal more twisting than a supermassive black hole? It's all in this album Precipice! What we have here is the deathly progressive metal of Opeth blended with the avant-garde black metal of Dodheimsgard. Rhythm and melody are covered within heavy riffing, clean leads, and classical keys. The vocals are pretty much what to expect in extreme metal, including chaotic growls and screams. It is also lyrically based on the philosophical works of Forster, Wells, and Eliot, specifically the dark bleakness of humanity's dependence on machines.

The intro of this 9-track album, "The Sleeper Awaits" sets everything up in a haunting fashion, as heard in the piano and orchestration. "Mausoleum of Steel" crashes in with dark aggression balanced out with progressiveness. The devilish harsh vocals in front of the orchestration and metal is so strange yet tempting. "Renunciation" is even darker, further into the center of the world. Leads and vocals unite for a dissonant sound alongside the bass and drums. It's truly a beast lurking in the shadows!

"The Meeting of Orion and Scorpio" turns into clean light tainted by eeriness. Seems like the beast is having its rest. "Hive of Parasites" is a spooky progressive 10-minute epic. It may take some time for listeners to get used to what's going on, but when you do, you can fully embrace it as it embraces you. The vocals stay harsh throughout this cavernous quest. "Death's Twilight Kingdom" has some piano and bass in the intro before the metal beast moves again. Everything keeps changing before you can get a sense of what's happening, like something appears, disappears, and reappears.

"Terror Silence" has a more straight structure that's easy to understandable. Still they have the Opeth-like aspect of shapeshifting riffing. "Anagnorisis" adds to the album's lyrical focus of discovering the true existence of someone else rather than your own. Everything's so dark and deadly, and for me, it's my sweet dessert. Doom is impending... And it comes in "Pangaea". For just 3 short minutes, you feel the black hole engulf you in darkness and death. Then before long, your journey ends on a satisfying note.

Like the edge of a cliff that the album title means, Precipice will give you the feeling of hanging on to your life. It's an experience so unsettling yet pleasant. And in the end, it's all worth leveling up your metal soul!

Favorites: "Mausoleum of Steel", "Renunciation", "Hive of Parasites", "Death's Twilight Kingdom", "Anagnorisis"

Another feature whose subject is an act I have no previous knowledge of is this latest album from Icelandic black metallers Nexion. This is only their second full-length despite their decade of existence so, hopefully, they are a band who favour quality over quantity. Now I am a big fan of Icelandic black metal bands who deliver sweeping epics that conjure up images of the mountains, hot springs and ice-fields of their native land, such as Auðn and Árstíðir lífsins, but the initial impression I got from "Sundrung" was of a less epic and more violent record that incorporates significant influence from death metal, especially production-wise. This isn't necessarily the case though, as I think the band still deliver an album of epic black metal, although it is delivered in a different way to the aforementioned acts.

The death metal influence is evident and does beef up the bands sound significantly, yet the twin guitar tremolo riffing and frequent use of harmonised, viking metal-like backing vocals does imbue it with a sense of the epic. This saga-like feeling to the tracks is futher accentuated by the use of a significant layer of atmospheric dissonance, similar in tone to that utilised by the superb Ulcerate, which makes the album feel like an Árstíðir lífsins album recorded by Deathspell Omega (this is a good thing, by the way). So, despite the violence on display, in no small part due to the savagery deployed by vocalist Jósúa Rood, there is still a sense of a striking and epic scope to the instrumentation.

For me at least, this was an album that didn't instantly grab my attention and whose inherent viciousness just sort of washed over me at first, but it is a multi-layered beast and ultimately rewards the listener the more they are willing to invest in it as it is a fairly complex entity hiding in the skin of a visceral and savage beast. While I am a metal fan of fairly simple tastes, it is great to sometimes be presented with an album that challenges initial perceptions and which makes me want to keep returning to it to dig deeper into its labyrinthine depths and "Sundrung" is definitely one such album. The only real downside for me was the drums which felt quite one-dimensional and dulled in delivery, but that is a minor issue in the scheme of things here.

One of the things I love about metal is the diversity. When different genres come together, they bring some uniqueness to the table, creating a sweet feast. And one band that kinda do that is Ithilien. In their second album Shaping the Soul, these Belgians decide to do something that was unusual at the time, mixing together folk metal and metalcore to make... folk-core! And this album came out 4 years after their more melodeath-oriented debut.

Throughout this thunderous 10-song 50-minute offering, expect some Eluveitie-esque epic folk metal with more hardcore riffing, bass, and vocals. There's still some of their earlier melodeath here and there, only in smaller chunks, leaving most of the heaviness to their modern metalcore side.

"Blindfolded" starts the album with a slow march of guitars and Celtic instruments, then when the screaming vocals enter the picture, the drumming tempo really speeds up. This is basically the kind of soundtrack Game of Thrones needs for their enemy-slashing battles. And when the mid-paced folk sections come back on, they're for getting hammered, partying, and simply headbanging to the loud heaviness. "Lies After Lies" continues that pace with added flute. It's more emotional while still having that heavy energy. The title track may be the closest we have to their melodeath roots. Everything's so frantic with bursts of melody and the usual background Celtic instrumentation. This killer opening group of tracks reaches its peak in the next track...

My favorite track here, "Walk Away", is the band's longest song at nearly 8 minutes. Slow folky melancholy is its main purpose, sounding epic without having to resort to much metal. The emotion is sadly lost in "If Only", which has nothing but hollow filler. The interlude "Emma" nice and relaxing but doesn't do much either.

"Edelweiss" is named after a flower in Switzerland, though the song's relation to Switzerland has more in common with Eluveitie, complete with heavy raging fire. Another exceptional track is "Hopeless". There's more variation in the vocals and atmosphere, and maybe they can have more of that in their possible next album. "The Dive" explodes in melodic rage, though I feel like there could've been slightly more to ignite. "The Bear Dance" is a fun instrumental worth a LOTR-style victory dance party.

All in all, Shaping the Soul is a better Ithilien album. This folk-core sound with small melodeath doses is quite fun and unique. And there's barely any of the repitition the debut has, other than that small mid-album slump. This should get metalheads interested and on the edge of their seats for their next album to come. Very soon, I hope....

Favorites: "Blindfolded", "Shaping the Soul", "Walk Away", "Edelweiss", "Hopeless"