Disarmonia Mundi are members of the quarter-century-club and at this point, it's safe to say that they will never learn how to produce an album properly. 

This was a struggle to listen to. Not because The Dormant Stranger is a poorly written album, but because the production is complete ass. The loudness war has taken full effect here and has been a staple of Disarmonia Mundi's music for a while now. So tracks that may have had potential like "Outcast" and "8th Circle" lose all of their grandeur by having brick wall soundscape. Nothing is allowed to breathe as the guitars just power away the entire time. The vocals are compressed to hell and only really ascend above the instrumental when the harmonies and vocal layering takes over. This would all be an issue on any record released in 2025, but could be forgiven if the mood was right, say for example this was a hardcore punk or metalcore record. The Dormant Stranger is not only neither of those things, but this record goes on for almost an hour! By the time I hit "8th Circle" at nearly seven minutes long, I was nearing the end of my rope. This band needs to streamline their albums OR write shorter songs more consistently. As it stands, it's an album that starts off underwhelming only becomes progressively worse the longer it goes on.

Best Songs: Illusion of Control, Crossroads to Eternity, The Dormant Stranger

Invictus are a death metal three-piece who formed in 2015 in Nagano in Japan. They play in an old-school style that plays very much to my death metal preferences, so it is unfortunate that I haven't come across these guys until now. They don't appear to rush their releases, with this being only their second full-length, following 2020's debut, "The Catacombs of Fear", and it shows because this sounds like well-written and well-rehearsed material that the individual musicians are apparently exceedingly comfortable with.

Musically there is a reach back through time to the late Eighties and early Nineties scene with influences from the likes of Bolt Thrower, Asphyx, Autopsy and early Death all shining through. The riffing is fluent and hard-hitting with some vestigial thrash metal elements underpinning the album's potency and inexorably driving the tracks forward. Like all the best old-school protagonists Invictus are also unafraid to drop the tempo into a doomier territory from time to time. The production is very dense, feeling like it is smothering and squeezing the listener and which possibly helps to make the album sound even more brutal than it really is. I say this because although it does sound damn brutal, it is actually also quite melodic (for want of a better word) and has some killer hooks in its riffs. However the foetid production always seems to subvert those hooks and presents such an atmosphere of filth and violence that this melodicism goes to work on a much more subliminal level, so you suddenly find yourself tapping your toes and nodding your head almost unwittingly.

This is quite a short album, by modern standards, with eight tracks and a brief intro clocking in at a touch over 35 minutes. With the final track taking up 8 of those minutes, the others are mainly in the sub-4 minute region, yet seem to have far more going on in them than such brief run times would suggest, a testament to the three guys songwriting prowess. The riffs are obviously the big draw here and there aren't many guitar solos but when there are they are pretty manic - check out guitarist and vocalist Takehitopsy Seki's frenzied shredding towards the end of "Altar of Devoted Slaughter" for proof. The rhythm section of bassist Toshihiro Seki and drummer Haruki Tokutake are both impressive here and their work is the foundation of all the brutality and filthiness that bursts out of the speakers and these two guys are definitely more than just supporting players to Takehitopsy's six-string antics.

I enjoyed this one immensely as it plays to all that I have grown to love about old-school death metal, the stampeding riffs, the foetid atmospherics, the chunky bottom end dynamics and the grizzled growls of subterranean demon vocals. One of my favourite OSDM albums of recent times that I will definitely return to time and again.

My initial thoughts after hearing Zerfall was how much more progressive this sounds than the previous record. This kind of had that transition from pure atmospheric black metal to progressive that a band like Fen had from Winter to The Dead Light. Ellende unfortunately do not have the same highs as Fen does and this record, while still okay, is far from excellent. With this bands roots in DSBM, the first track, "Wahrheit" is very fast and groovy and the technicality in the percussion takes away a bit from that feeling of isolation. The record does get progressively more slow as it moves on, which is a similar trait that Todbringerin shared and later moments like "Zeitenwende" and "Reise" excel. But the major key of "Ode ans Licht" set a very unusual expectation for not just the track itself, but what followed later on in the album. 

As a whole however, I think that Zerfall is a record that has some experience and has learnt from Todbringerin's mistakes. The changes in tempos and paces make Zerfall feel like a much more complete project instead of a monotonous drone the whole way through. Some progressive elements and a knack for dark storytelling help this record stand on its own. It's about the same length as Todbringerin and yet it feels much more concise. That being said, I do hope that Ellende plan on doing something else with this sound in the future. As it stands, while Zerfall is just a simpler version of Fen's The Dead Light, I would find it difficult to appreciate this sound if it didn't try to distance itself more from that influence. 

Best Songs: Wahrheir Teil I, Übertritt, Zeitenwende Teil I, Zeitenwende Teil II

I have given Neverbloom around three spins over the past couple of days and it has grown on me, from my first impression at least. When they settle down into rhythm and riffage, there are some genuinely entertaining moments for me. Tracks such as ‘Widower’ and ‘Maelstrom’ standout as being high points in this regard and I suspect there could be more of these moments if the arrangement was just a little better thought through. I think the piano is perhaps the worst conceived part of the instrumentation, often it sounds like someone has started playing another track over the top of the current one and it does take a couple of seconds to reconcile that it is actually on the same track. The synths stab perfectly well to create a sense of theatre and drama where they get deployed, but for a “symphonic deathcore” record, I find it surprising how little focus the symphonic elements actually get.

Vocally there is nothing here to surprise me as it seems to be pretty standard deathcore fare in all honesty, but it is the riffs that are my only real positive takeaway from this record. They are by no means perfect, but they certainly do land a lot better than most of the rest of what is on offer. I get the sense that Make Them Suffer had some good ideas going into this one, and I am of course giving them some rope as this was their debut. However, the ideas never really shine as I suspect they could, appearing to be sacrificed by a confusing, if not outright disorientating arrangement problem that is something of a curse on the album I feel.

I listen to a lot of deathcore during my workouts nowadays and so I am perhaps a little more desensitised to The Revolution clan’s previous penchant to overwhelm this well-travelled metal head than I was some three or four years ago. Although Neverbloom does not land all that well with me, I still enjoyed the discovery experience and could be tempted by a listen to a later album to see if they did improve at all.

Wretch were formed by former Gates of Slumber main man, guitarist and vocalist Karl Simon, after the demise of GoS in 2013 and this self-titled album was their only full-length release during their eight-year existence. The album also features former GoS drummer Chris Gordon, so it would be reasonable to expect the two bands to sound very similar. Well, kinda, but on "Wretch" Simon forewent all the classic metal sword and sorcery imagery so often indulged by his former incarnation and focussed more on personal and emotional issues, largely in rection to the death from a heroin overdose of his best friend and former Gates of Slumber bassist Jason McCash in 2014, as encapsulated in lines from opener "Running Out of Days": "Final day, Sad song, Sung again, The needle stole away my friend".

The album is really quite short, its seven tracks only spanning 32 minutes with two of those being instrumentals and another is a Judas Priest cover of a track from their Rocka Rolla album ("Winter"). Musically "Wretch" is authentic, Sabbath-inspired trad doom as plied by the likes of Saint Vitus or The Obsessed. In fact, in truth, Simon sounds incredibly similar to Scott Weinrich, both in his vocals and guitar playing, with the same kind of "tight but loose", bluesy guitar style and "cigs and whiskey" vocals favoured by Wino himself. Despite its brevity this is not an inconsequential album and has a deep and resonant feeling, both in guitar tone and with the grizzled vocals. A big feature are the blues-infused guitar solos that Simon unleashes at every available opportunity, which have a stoned-out, jamming quality (check out the instrumental "Blood Finger") but which retain coherence thanks to the excellent foundational work of drummer Gordon and bassist Bryce Clarke who hold things together whilst Simon heads off on his six-stringed flights of fancy.

The production is very good indeed with a crispness to the riffing and sound overall that doesn't negate the "smoky cellar" vibe that all the very best trad doom metal tries to reproduce, yet which allows every note to be heard perfectly, with a distinct lack of muddiness that can often bedevil many doom releases. Inevitably, I guess, my favourites are the slower, more down-and-doomy tracks such as the lengthy "Icebound" and "Drown", but there are very few missteps here with even the clean-sounding short instrumental "Grey Cast Mourning" acting as a nice contrast, sandwiched as it is between the album's two doomiest tracks.

Wretch split in 2021 with their only further release being a 3-track EP (two of which were GoS covers) and since then Simon has reformed Gates of Slumber who put out a new album in 2024 (which I have to shamefacedly admit I haven't heard yet). I would have liked to have heard a bit more from Wretch as this, despite its brevity, shows much potential for a top-knotch contemporary traditional doom metal outfit to show some of the less impressive contenders exactly how to do it.