So... new Ecchymosis.  Honestly had no idea.  Seeing this on the RYM charts on my phone was a bit of a surprise.  To be perfectly honest, slam is really something I only explored out of curiosity but not out of any love for it.  There are so many bands in this vein that have absolutely no interest in creativity.  Even Devourment is much like Lynne Ramsay in the sense that they only produced one thing I love and the rest is either meh or decent.  In the case of Ecchymosis, a 65 and a 61 are all they managed on their first two albums.  So if the slam fans are gonna unite and put this in the RYM top ten of 2026 this late in said year, then it better be good.  But I need real creativity, like the early death of Big Chocolate a.k.a. Disfiguring the Goddess.  But I doubted I'd get that.

It's quite the case.  The first track makes a case of shoving the snares in our faces with crystal clear production.  And it's a cool sound at first, but it loses its charm all too quickly by becoming the focal point of the album.  Honestly, does this guy even know what a SECOND piece of a drum kit looks like?  Can I just bang my pots and pans like four year old DW cheering about the circus being in town?  I get more musical creativity out of brushing my teeth.  I can't even hear the guitar riffs at all because they're too noisy to do anything, much like the overly fuzzy camera on the only porn film I've ever watched, and the drumming drowns out what could be made out anyway.  The first real solo happens 10 minutes into this 28-minute album, so I just spend a good third listening to a laundry machine washing clothes and banging a cowbell on the walls at rapid speeds as it spins the clothes around.  Thankfully, track 4 makes use of a breakdown, which lasts 30 seconds (long as hell for this type of album).  And the vast majority of creative decisions last like two seconds, and are scarse among the album.

God.  Just... God.  This is the type of album that really challenges my moral conviction not to say "objectively" this.  It's really testing me not to say it's "objectively overrated," especially on a metal forum.  This is currently the number 3 metal album of 2026?  Not likely.  I really hope it doesn't stay.  It has NONE of the spark I got from Dripping, DTG, Katalepsy or Devourment's rerecording of Butcher the Weak.  Not only did Ecchymosis fail to convince me for the third time that the slam genre is for real artists instead of just dumb metal heads who wanna hear speed and growling, but their currently highest-charting album on my go-to music recommendations site is easily their worst to me.  What a slog, hiding behind a clear sound to justify the band's inability to operate on proper musical channels during recording.  Wrong guitar sound, bad focus, same song over and over again for a drawn-out 27 minutes.

Best Songs: Masochist Machine, Anywhere But Here, Bleed Enough, Die Slow

For Fans Of: The Callous Daoboys, Static Dress

Deeds of Flesh are a blast. Anyone who admires the technical brutality of Suffocation, Decrepit Birth Dying Fetus or Defeated Sanity would struggle to find much to dislike with the quartet who put together Path of the Weakening. Released at the end of the 90s, this album is played with the vigour of a band releasing their debut album in 1989 or 1990 when the world was just warming up to the wonder of death metal. It is a record that has aged well too, still managing to sound relevant nearly three decades after its release. The band are still active some thirty-three-years after their inception and run Unique Leader Records, the label ran by the late vocalist/guitarist for the band Erik Lindmark.

With my interest in death metal starting to pique again, it is records like this one that remind me of just why I was drawn to this style of music nearly forty years ago. There’s something to be said about bands who can take an already arcane form of music and not only squeeze every drop of brutality from it whilst also keeping things interesting at the same time. On Path of the Weakening, Deeds of Flesh make no attempt to provide any accessibility to proceedings, however. Yet there is a clarity to those riffs. Even though the listener will experience multiple changes to tempo and time throughout the album and individual tracks even, they remain prominent, not being allowed to get lost in the mix or indeed the listeners experience either. Given the barrage of percussion that is going on at times here, this is even more of an achievement. I can see there was a returning drummer on this record and Joey Heatley managed to make an impact on his return without going overboard and dominating proceedings.

There is underlying groove toa lot of these tracks also, again this is something which helps the interest levels for me. Vocally, we are treated to consistent death metal fare. Cruel shrieks dash out at you from seemingly out of nowhere, yet we are never to far away from the guttural gurns that dredge up untold hells from the underworld itself. I am unsure why I have not tapped into Deeds of Flesh before this feature release. I could see as I streamed the record that I had saved one of the tracks (‘Summarily Killed’) to my Liked Songs, which could also easily mean this was a nomination for me in The Horde playlist at some point in the past. Either way, I am glad I have completed the full listening experience now as I may well have found a new cult favourite.

An album of two halves on a debut is not going to be winning Mirrorcell any "hot new bands of 2026" awards. The first half of the album starts off slow and meditative. "Glitter" gives warm expectations, despite the down tuned guitars and those feelings remain intact even through the promotional single "Pleasure". Then "Candy" hits and the album takes a major pivot, channeling metalcore/djent riffs, harsh vocals and industrial touches of percussion and wonky guitar techniques. It certainly took me by surprise, even though I should have seen it coming.

Long Nights in Lovescape's bait-and-switch was not a pleasant one considering how muffled the mixing is. I guess that is to be expected from guitars that are as downtuned as this, but the low end is so booming and massive that any attempts for a treble line to be given substance are effectively neutered. This certainly is not my preferred style of metal production.

Best Songs: Glitter, Candy, Lovebomb

For Fans Of: Greyhaven, Issues, Volumes

This has been my first time listening to a full length by Melechesh, with the band having only ever managed to previously float on the periphery of my black metal listening taste. You see, I have never really been possessed by the urge to explore Melechesh in depth and off the basis of this record I doubt that this will change very much moving forwards. Despite some early promise on The Epigenesis it falls some way short for me in being a complete experience. Which seems like an odd statement given just how much is going on during the hour and eleven-minutes duration of the record. Somehow though, it just doesn’t all fit together for me.

I am not surprised to hear the musical influences on the record. The band bill themselves as Sumerian/Mesopotamian themed extreme metal and this certainly shows on this album. Those black metal roots are obvious underneath all the middle eastern sounds and the potency of technical death metal and the swarming sounds of progressive metal each get turns to take the steering wheel at times during the album also. For the first five tracks of the album, I don’t really have much of a problem. Tracks like ‘Grand Gathas of Baal Sin’ are absolute romps, full of pace and energy. Regrettably though, this is an album of two halves, and the second half is a very lost sounding and directionless affair to my ears.

The middle eastern influences just seem to take over after the instrumental track, ‘When Halos of Candles Collide’ and the tracks seem to lose a large portion of their metal credentials along the way and my attention starts to fade, badly. Whereas the non-metal instruments seem to blend relatively well with the more standard fare for the first part of the record, they seem to almost take over the longer the record goes on for. Add to this there is a definite accessible edge to tracks such as ‘Sacred Geometry’ which has a really irritating chorus section, which is not how I like my black metal I am afraid. Fair play to them for trying and I can see this works for other members, based on comments on the site already. However, this is a bit of a bugger’s muddle to me overall.