Argentine black metal has got to be one of my more niche geographical listening habits. But with the likes of Brazil and Chile now regularly appearing in my listening explorations, it seems natural that other parts of South America start to cross my radar. Dark Blasphemer seem to be a long-standing outfit having formed way back in 2011 and here releasing album number three some seven years after their last album, Suicidal Catharsis.

All three albums to date have been released independently, but based on Winter of Darkness, they could easily find themselves a record label if they so wished. This is grim black metal of a suitably depressive nature but has a lot more to it than just a tape machine on record and some instruments being murdered in the same room. There might only be three of them in the band with one of them doing both guitar and drums for this record, but the sound overall is strong. All the instruments standout in the mix nicely enough, with even the bass twanging in now and again from behind the scathing riffs.

Although most definitely rooted in black metal, Winter of Darkness possesses some death metal elements for variation here and there. Those galloping dm riffs on ‘Lord of Misery’, show the band stretching their legs early in the record. Whilst the picked tremolos of ‘Legal Fiction’ is pure Burzum worship, complete with the chants for good measure. Overall, there is nothing here to note that this is not a record released by a band from Norway and the authenticity to the sound of the album is testimony to the band members experience to date. I sense there’s a lot of years in the band and that maturity comes across well in the music.

It would be remiss of me to indicate this would place high in my year end list in five months’ time. However, I must acknowledge the genuine black metal article when I hear it, and Winter of Darkness ticks all the boxes for being a veritable feast of the dark arts. Not too showy but also devoid of shabbiness at the same time, there is hopefully a lot more to come from Dark Blasphemer. For now, I can be satiated well enough by this though.

Had it immediately upon release and 36 years later own original promotional and consider it an example of unmatch, mind blowing virtuosity so beyond all other progressive metal before,or after that it stands as the bar set all others are defeated in their endeavoring to match much less even near. All the critiques posted are by resentful envious individuals throwing stones at those prodigies they can never emulate. 

Devouring Radiant Light is the album that shows the diversity of Skeletonwitch as a band, in addition to the bands first (and so far only) progressive pivot. The 2000s were very kind to the blackened thrash group, but in 2018, Skeletonwitch put their thrash roots on the backburner for some progressive sounding black metal. 

And the result was a mixed bag. For starters, going from very short, fat free thrash metal the bands is known for, and replacing it with extended song structures as well as open chordal progressions in the guitar seems like a recipe for disaster. Songs like "Fen of Shadows" and "The Vault" have some decent passages that sound good on their own, but when paired with other, more clunky riffs, they begin to lose grandeur. The album does have some callbacks to the bands thrash roots, but their usage is not only minimized in importance, but also far more mellow; that is to say the overall tempo of the album feels much slower than ever before. Guitar solos are present with longer runtimes to help nurse the genre transition a little bit, and the percussion has not lost a beat and is just as ruthless as it was on previous records.

So why don't I like Devouring Radiant Light as much as previous albums? Well to explain, we have to look at it from a technical point-of-view. Here is a band who self produce all of their albums and have all but mastered the art of production of thrash with a blackened flare. Now here's that same bands reversing the order of genre hierarchy. The end result produces two glaring flaws. The first is in the production; because the riffs are more connected and flowing instead of choppy thrash riffs, the guitars can become overbearing and, on a number of occasions, block out the vocals of Adam Clemens entirely. Some of those climax points on "Carnarium Eternal" and "The Luminous Sky" sound crunchy as the mixing peaks and starts to explode in my ears.

The second great flaw comes in the compositions themselves. Now, as I mentioned before, some sections on these longer tracks sound great and prove to me that Skeletonwitch can write good songs even when they are pushed outside of their comfort zone. But without an outside voice who is more familiar with the traditional black metal sound or even the "new traditional" sound, Devouring Radiant Light loses some points just because it is not as well composed. If they could have employed someone familiar with bands like Wolves in the Throne Room, Deafheaven or Panopticon, it could have helped Skeletonwitch to write more concise tunes in this style. Instead, the composition of Devouring Radiant Light feels like a thrash metal band trying to make black metal.

This record is a band attempting to experiment, but going too far past their limits. I feel very similar to this record as I did when I reviewed Critical Defiance's The Search Won't Fall last year. Both are bands that have written very punchy thrash metal in the past, but are now going closer to the critic meta of blackened thrash. The short, quippy songwriting was a main feature of these bands earliest records, and that compositional style has been sidelined for more progressive songwriting. I know that this probably sounds hypocritical coming from me, since I always criticize groups for not pushing their sound forward, but perhaps some bands do not need that constant chase of progress. If Skeletonwitch ever come back to make music again, I hope they consider that.

Best Songs: When Paradise Fades, The Luminous Sky, Carnarium Eternal, Sacred Soil

I don't recall ever having crossed paths with this Brisbane disso-death crew before - and I think I would remember if I had! In all honesty, Vexovoid inhabits a place so far outside my comfort zone that I need a telescope to see it. It consists of the kind of dissonant elements that provides me with a notion of what it must be like to teach a class of ADHD-affected toddlers. Flitting from musical idea to musical idea like a moth round a flame, it doesn't give me anything to attach an anchor to and so leaves me feeling adrift and detached from the disconcerting and infernal chaos they summon. The sound is huge for sure and it bludgeons and batters like any good death metal should, but it piles elements upon each other like a motorway crash and has a similar effect on me, making it terrible to behold, whilst also making it hard to ignore. Occasionally, such as during the first half of the track "Plasm", it reminds me of some of the more brutal war metal efforts, and this is when it appeals to me most, but its constantly shifting focus means I find it difficult to stay the course and I end up wishing I was listening to actual war metal instead.

All this being said, I can't help wondering that if I were to persevere with this whether it might reveal the appeal others evidently find in it. There are individual fragments that sound great with a huge tidal wave of sound that threatens to sweep away all before it, but I find these to be momentary and fleeting as the band soon turn yet another sharp corner and leave me wondering where they have gone. Look, I know that the problem is mine and that my low tolerance for both the dissonant and experimental is the deciding factor informing my opinion here, but that is a barrier that Vexovoid is never going to surmount, I don't think. Even though it may be one of the best examples of its ilk available, I would venture that this is never going to find much favour with me. On the plus-side, it is very short.

2025 has seen me really stretch my legs in The Fallen clan for the first time. According to my spreadsheet I have hammered through ninety-four releases from this year alone. Ranging from sludge through to death/doom metal, there’s a healthy section of doom metal in there also. The two most under-represented sub-genres are clearly drone (not my bag) and gothic metal. The latter category has seen CoF make a couple of splashes in the pool before dropping out of rotation quickly enough, and to be honest there’s been little of anything else that way inclined that I have picked up on. A couple of weeks ago, that changed with the discovery of the bold artwork that adorns the cover of the sophomore release from San Antonio band, Marble Orchard.

The band have a dramatic logo, dressed in gothic font, much like the album title. Then we have the just as dramatic artwork, with its bold use of red against a backdrop of grey and black. Ruminations of Ruin certainly grabs the attention visually in the first instance at last. Musically, the bands sound fits the logo and artwork perfectly. Dripping with Type O’ Negative style vocals and littered with Swallow the Sun and My Dying Bride musings, it is soon clear that no curved balls are being served here. The vocals have been an on and off challenge for me in all honesty, and right now (for this review at least) I am onboard with their bellicose nature. They do sound a bit goofy at times still, yet for most of my listens through they have certainly settled nicely with everything else I am hearing.

It is hard still to not get too drawn into them ahead of the other activity that is being performed alongside them. The guitar sound is thankfully prominent also which does give opportunity to tear your ears away from the vocals for a few sections of each track. The riffs are big and crunchy, and the leads are sorrowful forays, leaden with melancholy as we would expect. The percussion does appear to have some challenges with the mix (what is going on with that jangling noise that intermittently appears on tracks, or is that just me?), but still the drum work is commanding. The organ on tracks like ‘Anti-Mirth (Anhedonia)’ adds lashings of atmospheres and that taught sounding bass also helps here.

The main problem I have with Ruminations of Ruin is that it is just too long. The intro track is instrumental and takes forever to get through and then another two instrumentals at nearly a minute each at later points in the tracklisting don’t help with this sense of design triumphing over content a little. I get the album is a bold undertaking (I have called out all the signs of this already in the review), but it does seem that the band have gotten a little carried away with themselves here, and a trim would have helped. That having been said, there is still much to enjoy on the record. However, it has taken more than few listens to bed in, so it is not an immediate type of a record for me.