“Buy everything they have put out! You will not be disappointed!”

“Perfect in every way.”

“Quite simply the best black metal album of this millennium…”

These are just some of the accolades posted on the Bandcamp page for this release. High praise indeed, as you can all see. For an artist that I have never heard of until this month, it appears that I may have been missing out on an underground treat based on these lashing of superlatives at least. With demos appearing as far back as 2009, Black Cilice are hardly a new outfit either. Perhaps their shady persona/s have kept them off my radar, given that “none” is the consistent lineup information for each release they have done (a similar trait to fellow Portuguese bm outfit, Candelabrum). The cavernous black metal, littered with Xasthur-esque howled vocals, produced with a muffled overall sound effect, certainly points to a one-man project. Raw is the order of the day here, and whilst that can spell “indecipherable tosh” for some ears, to me it is my preferred style nowadays.

Having done a couple of listens through the record now, I am not as excited by it as some of those exuberant reviewers are. Likewise, I cannot say I dislike the album either. One of the key aspects that I do find challenging are the raw values in the production, as they aren’t all that raw to my ears. The vocals most certainly are, but the rest of the sound has such a muffled filter applied that it almost blunts the rawness of the intended approach. This can make listening to tracks quite a jolting and disorientating experience (closing track ‘Boiling Corpses’ being a particularly difficult one to follow).

Yet, I must balance the above against the melodic tremolo that shines through on ‘Timeless Spectre’. Spending some headphone time with Banished from Time does unearth more detail that is otherwise buried in the initial, speaker-only based listening experience. The acute sense of isolation and desperation of the vocals take on a whole new level of impact when you bring the music that bit closer. It sounds like there is someone trapped somewhere cavernous, howling out all the negativity of their life in its most terrifying moment. I would describe Banished from Time as a culmination of sound. The pinnacle of pity, sorrow and suffocating misery laid bare in audible format. In a way it is acceptable for things to sound lost, for the component parts to clash in places to highlight the confusion around such a tumult of emotions. Maybe that jolting and disorientating effect is more intentional than I first thought. Definitely one for future revisits as not sure I have a full wrap around on this release yet.

It has been a decade since Ripper's terrific "Experiment of Existence" album was released and there have been wholesale lineup changes with mainman, guitarist and vocalist Patricio Spalinger, the only member remaining from the lineup that recorded that sophomore album. For most of the intervening decade Patricio has been concentrating on his Venus Torment solo project as well as featuring in several other outfits such as Slaughterhousse and The Missings, but has now decided that the time is ripe for a new Ripper offering. He has assembled an impressive array of talent this time around with guitarist Nicolás Young (Critical Defiance, Demoniac) and drummer Javier Buzeta, who appeared on Mayhemic' s excellent 2024 "Toba" album, being joined by bassist Tomás Barriga of heavy metallers Axe Battler.

If you are in any way familiar with the chilean thrash scene then "Towards Rebirth" will be instantly familiar. After a short 'spooky synth' intro we are treated / subjected to an onslaght of breakneck riffs, pulsating basslines and screaming solos accompanied by gruff, bellowing vocals and an intensity that references death metal as much as thrash, with it all barely seeming to hold together as it tears past as a gale of energetic velocity. Buzeta sets the pace, battering away in a flurry of machine-gun double kicks and pulverising thrashbeats that goad the riffs into a demonic charge, ably bolstered by Barriga's busy and kinetic basslines. The two combine inordinately well and are as much a force of nature as a metal rhythm section. The riffs are mighty beasts indeed and are actually quite memorable and melodic, despite the fact that they hurtle past like an express train, providing more than enough ammunition for a damn good neck wrenching. As we have come to expect from chilean thrashers, the solos are where they like to go to town, with hyper kinetic shredding and smoking fretboards being the order of the day, providing the artistic flights of fantasy in contrast to the tightly focussed ballistics of the riffs and rhythm section. The album is, arguably, slightly front-loaded with the final three tracks from the instrumental "The Secret Dawn" onwards not feeling quite as awesome as the rest, but even these three are still pretty decent thrash workouts.

What I think appeals to me most about the chilean scene is that it takes the intensity and vitriol of the older, late eighties and early nineties, deaththrash records and transforms them with ultra-tight focus and undoubtedly superior technical skill into an even more impressive beast and, with ultra clear production, finally realising the potential that so many of those earlier records possessed. In so doing albums like "Towards Rebirth" don't just rehash a thirty-plus year-old trope, but present a thorougly modern sound that taps into the vigour and energy that thrash once possessed in spades, but which long ago had started to feel staid and stilted.

I was not expecting much out of a new Haste the Day album in 2026. But what we ended up getting was a really solid performance of quality metalcore choruses and production. Haste the Day prove that they are still capable of writing very catchy and infectious choruses throughout their career and Dissenter is no exception. Standouts for me include "Grave", "Liminal" and the closer "Oblivion". The songs themselves are well performed with a mostly forgiving production; sometimes when the guitar changes to a chugging riff pattern it does get wonky, and parts of the percussion become mushy near the end of songs like "Heretic" and "Shallows". But the real letdown is in the vocals. Stephen Keech makes a fine return on vocals as a harsh screamer, but this clean vocal timbre does not work for me. It all starts on "Shallows" with a plain, monotonous delivery that does not reflect that songs intensity at all. While the album does get better after that, the fact that this was the bands first impression left a sour taste in my mouth the rest of the record. Dissenter is a record that has some great highs for a modern metalcore album (it almost feels more like a nostalgic 2000s throwback) with its back-to-basics songwriting, but questionable production choices and a poor vocal performance prevent these longtime metalcore giants from achieving anything higher.

Best Songs: Grave, Gnasher, Oblivion

For Fans Of: Imminence, Blessthefall, Oh, Sleeper

Taubra were founded in 2022 by swiss guitarist Berg, who also plies his trade as the multi-instrumentalist behind Aara. Now, Taubra are a new one on me, but I am quite familiar with Aara, particular the earlier releases and I would count myself as a fan. I got to hear the track "Rembrandt of Death" whilst compiling the North playlist (nice nomination Vinny) and I kept sneaking back to it as it stood out to me, so good vibes abounded as I dived in to check out the full album.

The band hit an aggressive and vicious pose with some vibrantly brutal riffing thanks to a death metal style production job that beefs up their sound with a significant amount of bottom end and is perhaps a bit more bludgeoning than usual with the tremolo riffs not quite as dominant and high in the mix as you might normally expect. This pummelling viciousness is counterbalanced, though, by a degree of melodicism that gives it more memorability than an unrelenting blast-fest would and I am getting a decided Mgla vibe from a significant proportion of the material on offer. Vocals are provided by Norway's Ruben Haug who has been around the scene for many years and is a writer for the Heavymetal.no website. He does a damn good job too and has a ragged, barking scream that is aggressive, savage sounding and very much in your face.

We all know how far and wide the black metal umbrellaI spreads nowadays and it seems to widen every year as the genre always seems to be innovating, so I can almost feel a fair few black metal fans rolling their eyes and shrugging their shoulders at Taubra, but I have never hidden the fact that I am perfectly happy to listen to metal that isn't particularly original or groundbreaking as long as it is done well and provides some kind of buzz to my cynical soul and on that level "Therizo" hits the mark for me. It is powerful and aggressive-sounding, yet is still reasonably accessible and passes the test of getting this old dog nodding his head and pummelling imaginary kick drums in an ankle-strain-threatening flurry of flapping feet. What can I say, I love this sort of shit and I love metal that makes me feel alive as much as metal that makes me think, so a big thumbs up from me.