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The first time I heard this band was when I was listening to a song from their debut Union in an Infinite playlist 6 months before this review. I thought the song was a nice stylistic homage to Periphery from start to finish. And now I can say the same about their new album Legacy! They're a new addition to the melodic modern progressive metal league of Leprous, Haken, The Contortionist, and Tesseract.

It took 5 years for this British progressive metal/rock band to make this follow-up to 2019's Union. Part of the delay was due to the hardships of the COVID lockdowns. But now they're here to deliver us this progressive offering. Also, don't mind the small bit of electropop elements I seem to pick up on.

Kicking things off with ethereal electronics is "Wraith". You already hear both the production and talent from the two key members of the band; guitarist Phil Monro and vocalist Andy Robison. They, along with the other members, work together to craft this complex structure in which ambience turns into metal grace, practically channeling the way of Devin Townsend. A melodic opening track to get you hooked! "Replica" is more emotional yet calm. Soon the melody builds up into more technical riffing. The blend of melody and heaviness is so unpredictable! Then comes the heavy "Source", in which the riffing and synths have stronger power in the second half. It's greatly direct while hinting at the diversity that would come in later tracks.

The clean "Empire" continues the complex structure though more prog than metal. Although it starts off reminding some of Porcupine Tree, eventually there would be more of the heavy riffing. It then leads to the short interlude "Storm". Personally I think it should've been called "Storm Coming", because it sounds more like the calm before the storm. On second thought, we're still far from the storm as "Mute" gives us a softer track that balances joy with loss in the music and lyrics. It's still a memorable emotional track, and it ends with heaviness suitable for the lyrical subject. The loss described in that track still stands in "Cenotaph", let out in defiance via crushing riffing. Things would get more atmospheric every now and then while tension lurks. Andy's vocals also help make that track another ambitious highlight. Everything's executed well in top-notch production, and there's no denying the horizons they fly over.

There's some brighter light in "Haar", another short direct track. It's a nice way to settle down after that towering pair of 8-minute tracks and get geared up for the monolithic finale. But before that, we have the title track, with the beat guiding you through the atmosphere. While it doesn't have a huge amount of impact, it can get you hooked for the album's ending climax. The climax being the monumental 10-minute epic "Signal". Everything's in beautiful flow. The band lets the beauty drift by, only saving the heaviness for when it's the right time. In the end, the track and the album closes the way it should. Fantastic!

This beautiful album Legacy has all the melody and power you can get. Well, maybe a slight more metal heaviness would be ideal, but that's OK. I look forward to what path they would take. The modern progressive metal/rock shaped up by VOLA and BTBAM is in the good hands of these young British lads!

Favorites: "Wraith", "Source", "Mute", "Cenotaph", "Signal"

I seem to have a small curse of not encountering a band until shortly after a longtime member has passed away. I've already discovered In Vain last year shortly after the tragic passing of their longtime keyboardist/clean vocalist Sindre Nedland. This is my first time checking out a Harm's Way album, following a recommendation from Vinny when he submitted a track from this album for a Revolution playlist, just a month after their longtime guitarist Bo Lueders left the world. RIP

I'm quite thankful for this recommendation because what an album this is! Common Suffering shows many different modern elements in their metalcore sound, taking it through diverse horizons beyond their earlier albums that are apparently more hardcore. They've given an older sound new and fresh life!

Striking hard right away is "Silent Wolf", already getting their straight-up metallic hardcore kicks. The riffing doesn't light up with "Denial" cranking things up in the undeniable heaviness. "Hollow Cry" is a more evolved song that I love. It takes on the sludge-ish sound of later Converge with an alt-ish edge. "Devour" has one of the most hardcore breakdowns in recent times. I may need some neck pain medicine after all that vicious headbanging.

Then there's the experimentation of "Undertow", an amazing highlight featuring Kristina Esfandiari (King Woman). It has a more haunting industrial sound, and I don't know whether it would be for The Revolution or The Sphere. If you see this track in a later playlist for one of those clans, you know which one I pick. It's so different and powerful, and you can forgive the band for placing that track here. Well done! "Heaven's Call" is another perfect track. Just pure heaviness that I'm glad was submitted to a Revolution playlist. "Cyanide" maintains the heaviness as another favorite track of mine.

"Terrorizer" can very well define industrial hardcore, if "hardcore" wasn't used in the more electronic sense. "Sadist Guilt" has strong riffing rhythm that can cut like a blade through glass. Then finally we have "Wanderer". The diversity of elements is much more apparent in this spectacular track than the rest. It sounds so organic and makes me look forward to what they will do next in their direction, if they choose to continue in memory of their fallen guitarist.

Common Suffering is aptly titled for the band's hard work of making the album and coincidentally for the grief of losing one of their members that were with them for a long time. You can tell in the former from how much heart and soul the band has put in their sound. And there are twists into different genres while staying firmly in metalcore. They can sometimes sound more hardcore or deathly or industrial. The heavy rage can really bite down, draw blood, and leave scars, showing the emotion that has stemmed from their work. Harm's Way can really add variety to the more extreme side of metalcore/hardcore. No harm no foul about that, right? Just chaotic rage at its height!

Favorites: "Hollow Cry", "Undertow", "Heaven's Call", "Cyanide", "Wanderer"

I have been making more of a conscious effort to follow up on some of the tracks from the site playlists that jump out at me each month and that is how I ended up in front of the latest release from Georgian (as in the country not the period of English history) funeral doomsters, Ennui. The word Qroba is a Georgian word meaning “vanishment” or a “fading of presence”, representing the moment light withdraws to leave space for something colder and final. Symbolic of the temporary dissolution of the band themselves, the album explores the inevitability of the end. In short, classic funeral doom fare. With song titles such as ‘Mokvda Mze.’ (which translates to ‘The Sun Has Died’) and ‘Becoming A Void’, Ennui leaves the listener in no doubt that if they are seeking positivity, they are in the wrong place.

The band name itself is the French word for “boredom”, which I find to be particularly ironic given there is no element of that emotional state present throughout my experience of Qroba. I am starting to realise that funeral doom may well be my second favourite sub-genre of The Fallen, pushing sludge for that top spot as time goes on. In fact, I heard this record on the same day as the new EP from Chained to the Bottom of the Ocean, and I prefer Qroba in a comparison of the two releases. Everything I want to hear on a funeral doom album is present on this album. Well, apart from the panduri, a traditional three-stringed Georgian instrument that I have never heard of until today. Otherwise, there are dense keys and suitably desolate atmospheres being created around them, alongside punishing riffs and the deep rumble of bass and guttural vocals too boot. All the while the drums functionally add percussive markers in the background. You could forget they are there at all on some occasions, which is more testimony to the quality of everything that’s going on around them as opposed to any fault with the performance or mix even.

I do get the occasional flourish of hope in the music, which is not something I want to hear too often in my funeral doom. Here, I think it stays just the right side of providing balance, just like the prog-reminiscent guitars around the halfway point of ‘Becoming Void’ also add a touch of the unexpected. The melancholic lead work here, which is delivered via long, drawn-out notes, almost tells its own story outside of the vocals themselves. When you factor in those keys, you soon find yourself in some cosmic death trance. If I close my eyes to this track, I just see endless space, with the odd burst of light, or the odd colour of gases that I am floating through. Listening to Qroba soon becomes a very immersive experience for me.

With over an hour of music to listen to here, I do think that Qroba is a record that has a certain place and time to be properly experienced. This is not background music. For me, if you are not sat still with this record playing, you are doing it, and yourself an injustice. It is a record that demands to be experienced as opposed to simply being listened to. From an arrangement perspective, it sounds to me like this has been very carefully put together. Tracks develop as opposed to just progressing. Given the theme of the album, it is quite easy to see this album as a soundtrack to the slow destruction of life as we know it. When that day comes, I will have this on my headphones.

Slow is a funeral doom project of prodigious belgian Déhà, who is perhaps better known for his black metal and blackgaze work, but who is also a proficient doomster with acts like Yhdarl and Wolvennest. He has released seven albums under the Slow banner, with "V-Oceans" unsurprisingly being number five and, probably, my favourite. This is the last of the Slow albums that were produced as a solo project, Déhà since having been joined by lyricist Lore Boeykens who also contributes bass and backing vocals.

Anyone even remotely familiar with Déhà's other projects will be unsurprised to hear a significant post-metal and -gazey element to Slow's funereal dirges, but make no mistake this is still ponderously heavy stuff. The vocals are of the gravel-throated, abyssal demon bellowing kind that are the cornerstone of so many fantastic funeral doom albums and are more than ably delivered here by the main man himself. As he intones at the beginning of "Ténèbres", "This is not meant to bring you joy, this is not meant to give you any solace," and it surely doesn't if you take its message literally yet, ironically, if you are a lover of the melancholy and desperate atmospherics of funeral doom then it may well bring you great joy indeed (it certainly does for me).

With tempos that are measured by a calendar rather than a metronome, the five, 10-minute plus tracks here crawl under your skin and sit there draining your optimism like a vampiric parasite feasting on the mind's positive energy, leaving its host bereft and borne down by the weight of existence. The riffs are monumental chords that swell like tsunamis, given additional heft and gravitas by layered synths and choral effects which thankfully don't swamp the guitar and drums, but which add their weight to the crushing mass subtlely enough so as not to be distracting. "Oceans" covers a theme that has served funeral doom very well over the years with its huge swells of sound being an exceedingly effective artistic interpreter of oceanic environs and deep sea tectonics, here being used as a metaphor for the unalterable inevitability of death, in other words, all the best sentiments of funeral doom.

The number of ratings for Slow albums on RYM is paltry with this being the most-rated with a touch over 300, yet this is funeral doom of the highest order that deserves to be considered up there with giants of the genre like Bell Witch and Esoteric. OK, maybe not Esoteric, but everybody else anyway! Criminally overlooked, for me this is a top drawer entry into the funeral doom pantheon.

I have been a fan of London's Morag Tong for a good decade now, since the release of this debut. four-track EP back in 2016. They are named for the fictional guild of assassins featured in The Elder Scrolls game Morrowind and their reverb-drenched doom metal is as influenced as much by stoner metal as you would expect from a band of RPG-ing nerds. My original one-line review for this went "stoner doom that's nice 'n' slow and as heavy as an anchor strapped to an anvil that's tied to a millstone" and you know what, that remains true, but there is actually a bit more to it than just sheer weight so I thought I had better elaborate.

The riffs have an in-built bluesiness that reaches back as far as Sabbath's debut but which are delivered with such heft and distortion that they sound mountainously and crushingly heavy. The soloing, such as it is, has a psychedelic, spacey tinge that is fed from the band's stoner roots and which is aided by some Hawkwind-ish electronics buried quite deeply in the mix. I hesitate to call it trippy, though, because the tempo is so lethargic and the riffs just so fucking heavy that I am unsure if anything with this amount of heft can ever be labelled as such, although the title track "Through Clouded Time" does feature some quieter, more trippy moments, such as the introductory couple of minutes or so which almost sounds like a very heavy version of Fleetwood Mac's "Albatross" and a quite funky bass breakdown just after the halfway point. The two tracks either side, "Godhead" and "The Eyes of Men" are a bit more straight forward but deliver such devastatingly heavy doom riffs that they are still worthy of attention in their own rights.

Drummer Adam Asquith also handles vocals which are perfectly functional for this style of stonerised doom, whereas his drumming is really good within the confines of the genre and he and bassist Sam Lewis both featuring prominently enough in the mix to lay down a super-solid foundation upon which dual guitarists Alex Clarke and Lewis Crane can lay down the towering monoliths of the riffs. The four are obviously deeply steeped in the world of stoner doom and they sound like solid technical musicians perfectly able to translate their intentions into music, so there is a definite authenticity about what they delivered here.

In summary, this is a very impressive twenty-three minutes that handed out an attention-grabbing calling card to the UK's doom metal afficianados. Unfortunately I felt 2018's full-length "Last Knell of Om" failed to live up to this promise and I have yet to hear 2023's Grieve, so this stands as the band's high water mark for me so far. Truth is though, even if they never bettered this, it would still stand as a worthy testament. I was then and remain still, mightily impressed.

If eating air was a metalcore album, it would probably sound like The New Flesh by Sylosis. It's not even that bad of an album from a technical perspective, but good lord is it boring! The vocals sound painfully generic and lacking in emotional dynamic, the guitar work can be interesting from time-to-time, but it most noticeable when it's playing one of those Machine Head type thrash grooves. The percussion is mostly tasteful, but can be a little bit overbearing at times during the metalcore style breakdowns. I don't even like Sylosis and I can tell that the songwriting has taken a massive step down over the years. Albums like Monolith with their dynamic swells and deep engrained melodies are a thing of the past as the Architects style melodic metalcore of the 2020s has taken full effect.

Meet the new flesh, same as the old flesh.

Best Songs: Beneath the Surface, Lacerations

For Fans Of: Bleed From Within, Machine Head, Architects 

I have followed spanish doom crew Hela since their earliest days and have found them to be consistent deliverers of understated female-fronted doom metal. They are one of those bands that don't push the boat out too far from familiar shores and are quite unlikely to be anyone's favourites doom metal band, but keep plugging away, refining their sound and carving out a niche for themselves.

"A Reign to Conquer" features half a dozen 7-8 minute tracks that follow a similar pattern. Taking their cues from post-metal, they generally begin softly and serenely and build in intensity as the track progresses. The intensity level never really rises above a mildly elevated pulse rate, though, and the band don't really seem to be ploughing the old atmospheric sludge furrow of catharsis through ferocity, but are content to merely shake their proverbial fists at the sky rather than tear it down. They remain melodic throughout with some doleful riffs and new vocalist, Raquel Navarro, has a plaintive, yearning style of vocal delivery that underpins the melancholy atmosphere so vital to decent doom metal.

What Hela do they do pretty well and both the songwriting and performances are proficient and point to a very professional outfit who know what they want to deliver and exactly how go about it. This all sounds like criticism through faint praise I know and I like the band, but the simple truth is that they are a decent doom metal outfit who produce albums that are enjoyable enough, but which will seldom stick with you for too long after they end.

There is a serious side note which needs addressing regarding the production which may negatively impact most people's enjoyment - it certainly did mine. This is the fact that the album features terrible sound compression which makes it feel like it is being rammed into your ears, rather than allowing the nuances of the music as written to be experienced. This is especially sad because this feels like an album that is written with subtlety and contrast in mind. For example, listen to the album's best track "Emerald Mirror", which is amped up to levels that cause actual sound distortion when it is evidently written as a far more subtle exploration of light and shade which I feel is seriously undermined by the production. Even Raquel's vocals are distorted by the mix and a more sympathetic production job would have seen my score elevated a good half-star or more I believe.

Metal Archives lists Usnea as “Blackened Funeral Doom Metal” which instantly coloured me interested. Having snapped up this album into my digital library after hearing the track ‘Eidolons and the Increate’ on the April Fallen playlist, I was eager to explore the whole record in some more critical detail. A backlog of albums to review that seems to only get longer, has meant that I am only just now getting around to dumping my thoughts into type. Thankfully though, this period has not seen any of my initial enthusiasm for Portals Into Futility dulled at all. When your band sounds like a cross between Bell Witch and Graves at Sea, you are guaranteed to drag a smile out of my otherwise grizzled expression. That’s right, music that explores the hopelessness of existence, the depravity of a dystopian world whilst also introducing themes of cosmic horror is a pleasing concept to me. A sort of much needed dose of reality being laid bare alongside some extra metaphors to really underline what a shitshow this planet is most of the time.

Whilst I may have just laid praise at Usnea’s door for their blunt summary of life, it is the more cosmic sound to their funereal atmospheres that I think keeps me more interested. Portals Into Futility has a clever way of hinting things always have the capacity to get worse, to spiral further out of our control, to reach levels of despondency that are frankly unearthly. Whilst I am going to flat-out challenge the “blackened” description of their sound, the sterility of their bleaker passages of music simply asks, “is this is as good as things get this side of the dirt”? It is perhaps only their general disdain for life that I can match to any blackened references that are inferred. Vocally, there is a definitive desperation to how Joel or Justin (both appear to be credited for the vocals) deliver their musings. Yet I would not compare this to anything in the black metal realm, if anything they are clearly more sludge orientated. The guitars also may possess a swarming quality on tracks such as ‘Lathe of Heaven’ but he pacing here is very much funeral doom or glacial sludge riffs.

Give me the murky and unfathomable depths of ‘Demon Haunted World’ all day, any day and I will gladly bathe in them until that mire is engrained in my skin. When that Bell Witch bass kicks in I am in utter joy on this track even if it suggests one of the more positive sounding moments on the whole album (that’s how bleak this thing is). The album artwork (which Justin is also credited with collaboration on – busy chap) sums up the contents perfectly. Ultimately, there is no comfort to be found is what that artwork says to me, and Portals Into Futility is an uncomfortable listen. Closing with a punishing, nineteen-minute track shows that the end is more agonising than the run up. Buckle up folks. Strap on in. This is going to be a rough one.

I think we can all agree in the Dark Moor fanbase that the Elisa C. Martin era is the best. The albums from that era certainly beat the ones with Alfred Romero on vocals, though I still like the new era too. Shadowland is a solid start, and The Gates of Oblivion is the fan favorite. For me personally, the highest peak in their production and classical-infused symphonic power metal sound has to be their second album, The Hall of the Olden Dreams!

The production quality is crystal clear compared to Shadowland, and the neoclassical guitar shredding has the right amount of flavor. Nothing sounds distant. And those vocals by Elisa C. Martin pack a punch in every song.

The intro "The Ceremony" starts the album sounding like it came fresh out of the Old School RuneScape soundtrack. There was a time when I was focusing on more modern and heavier genres and put those instrumentals down as cheesy and sh*tty. But now I can appreciate the classical majesty, just like in the good ol' days of over a decade before this review. Then we really blast off into "Somewhere in Dreams". When I first encountered that song all those years ago, it was love at first hearing. I knew I had to listen to the rest of the album and the band's material right away. It's one of my favorite Dark Moor songs to this day and I'll never get tired of it. "Maid of Orleans" is another popular song from Dark Moor's earlier era, following the 1990s/2000s E-flat-tuned power metal trend. Some of the best vocals by Elisa appear in "Bells of Notre Dame", especially in the verses. She can belt out her vocal melodies that perfectly align with the emotional conflict depicted in the lyrics. And those vocals fit well with the guitar rhythm too. If Disney decides to make a live-action remake of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, they better include that song in the soundtrack.

Also showing their production improvement is "Silver Lake". The fast riffing and soloing makes the song another highlight in the album and possibly the band. As perfect as this album is, I admit that there's a bit of steam lost in "Mortal Sin". It's still great though. "The Sound of the Blade" has some nice variation as a softer ballad. Adding more variety on the heavier side is "Beyond the Fire" which I enjoy for its lean into Stratovarius-esque territory.

The one track that really threatens the album's perfection is "Quest for the Eternal Flame". The riffing by Enrik Garcia doesn't sound as majestic as the earlier tracks. At least Martin is holding the track up with her vocals, though the verses are losing their flow. The keyboard melodies sound a bit repetitive. And the chorus doesn't sound quite inspired or inspiring. Believe me, I was THIS close to giving this album 4.5 stars. Luckily, "Hand in Hand" saves the day as a fantastic closing track with its divine choruses, riffing, and soloing. I also love the Bach-sampled guitar/keyboard fiddling in the bridge (the same as in Children of Bodom's "The Nail").

I would also recommend the edition released in Korea that includes "The Fall of Melnibone", a 10-minute epic based on the Elric of Melnibone, though I don't enjoy the ballad "Wood's Song" as much. Either way, I highly recommend The Hall of the Olden Dreams for any fan of Dark Moor and power metal. This is where they truly leave their mark!

Favorites: "Somewhere in Dreams", "Bells of Notre Dame", "Silver Lake", "Beyond the Fire", "Hand in Hand", "The Fall of Melnibone" (bonus track)

The transition for Gaerea from Season of Mist to Century Media Records has become a tumultuous one. The melodic black metal band who had previously released two high quality albums (Mirage and Coma) have done away with a significant portion of what made those albums so special and replaced them with mostly watered down melodic metalcore trends. Now Century Media Records does have a strong class of artists who release music under their label, but not many of them can be truly categorized as black metal. But it does seem like that has been changing in the last couple of years. In fact, the band who Gaerea beat out for this review spot, Blessings and Curses by Non Est Deus, are also signed to Century Media Records! But calling Gaerea exclusively black metal is a disservice to the band. Their last two albums had a lot of progressive and post-metal elements infused, which made them stand out, and that's before you start with the obvious melodic death metal hybrid.

Now on Loss, Gaerea have decided to turn down the black metal from before and make it more accessible. The death metal influence that was previous before has taken center stage and could even be debated that their sound has moved closer to that of the heavier melodic metalcore bands like Bleed From Within. And with that comes clean vocals... and they don't sound very good at all. Clean singing has its place in metal music, even extreme metal music, but more often than not, these modern bands try to replicate the Chester Bennington pitched singing with a rasp and it sounds terrible. Chester could do it well for two reasons: the first was these singing moments were usually the apex of the song dynamically. The second was that most of the time, he sung in a hushed, clean timbre without rasp and they would be more impactful. Part of the reason why "Stardust" works is because the vocals enter over a hushed, Sleep Token-esque electronic backdrop, then after a while, the band enters and crushes the listener with blast beats and tremolo picking guitars and powerful vocals. There is strong variety here and the quasi scream/sing chorus becomes more impactful.

Unfortunately this is not the case for the rest of the album. Once the listener has an idea as to what Loss is going to sound like after the first two tracks, the listener can turn their brain off and let the atmosphere take them away. They might be surprised by a clean guitar break during a songs interlude, but they can also be assured that the volume and monotone vocals will return momentarily. And this happens every time! From "Cyclone" to " Nomad" and "Phoenix", you would be hard-pressed to name one distinct feature between the three. I think the most disappointing aspect of Loss is that, structurally, it sounds solid. But the execution is so severely lacking and I don't know whether to blame the band themselves, or Century Media, which have lost a lot of favour with me in the past three years (see my Orbit Culture Death Above Life review).

Best Songs: Submerged, Stardust

For Fans Of: Bleed From Within, Harakiri for the Sky, Groza

I first encountered Germany's Bethlehem through the mid-90's tape trading scene through their 1993 demo tape & 1994 debut album "Dark Metal" (both of which I quite liked) which led me to track down their sophomore record "Dictius te necare" through the same channels once it hit the shelves. It saw Bethlehem adjusting their sound somewhat, mainly off the back of a lineup change that saw vocalist/keyboardist Andreas Classen (Darkened Nocturn Slaughtercult/Shining) being replaced by new front man Rainer Landfermann (Pavor) whose psychotic howls are the main talking point with this release. The blackened doom metal instrumentation isn't all that different to what we heard on "Dark Metal" but it's the over-the-top theatrics of Landfermann that the clear focal point & will ultimately decide on your reaction to "Dictius te necare" as I think it's fair to say that he's more than a little divisive. He is also the main catalyst for the album's DSBM credentials as he sounds like he's in all sorts of agonizing pain on these seven tracks. Personally, I think the album needs him too as the riffs & single-guitar lineup aren't all that exciting but I do really enjoy the deep, stripped-back atmospheric material that pops up from time to time on most tracks. The doomier material is also where I think Bethlehem are at their best with lengthy closer "Dorn meiner Allmacht" being the clear album highlight in my opinion. I can't subscribe to the general consensus that "Dictius te necare" is some sort of classic release but it's certainly worth a listen for those with a penchant for the doomier & more depressive side of black metal.

For fans of Silencer, Shining & Forgotten Tomb.

When it comes to weird experimentation (avant-garde metal or otherwise), I prefer when the non-metal influences aren't the main focus and the band has some metallic heaviness to balance things out. That's the problem I had with the 1982 Warning album. 4 decades later, a different band would get it all right within their progressive/tech-death sound, and that is Australian band Growth!

Extreme metal in the 2020s seems to lack experimentation for the sake of going the mainstream route. Growth makes up that in their debut The Smothering Arms of Mercy. It is the first album in an ongoing trilogy that would be continued over 5 years later in their next album Under the Under.

The debut album already gives you a great deal of dissonance in the opening "Cigarette Burns". Things get rough and tough in the furious growls and neck-breaking blast-beats. It is nothing short of a dark twisted frenzy. "The Treatment for Melancholy" isn't as melancholic as the title would imply, as the speed and intensity is leveled up. There's wild guitarwork while making room for mesmerizing melody. "Fortress of Flesh and Bone" takes a break from the face-punching action, starting off softer and more captivating. But don't think you're safe from the monster in the shadows as it lurks around for the right time to attack. Before you know it, the monster of aggression would strike and rip out your heart, leaving it hanging from its teeth, like in the title of this next track...

"Our Lady of the Hanging Heart" is more experimental while flowing in this storm of dissonance. Each instrument has its time to shine, and eventually they all combine to make an intense vortex of destruction. "Lead Us to Our Glorious Times" is more chaotic within the screamed vocals, guitars, and drumming that are all so crushing. Soon we get some clean melodic singing to show a less savage side of vocalist Luke Frizon. "Darkly, It Tightens Its Grip" doesn't loosen the band's grip on how much they can do in the many demonic twists. There's wild riffing hellfire with only glimpses of light in the darkness.

"Soul Rot" has more ferocious riffing and drumming to penetrate your ears and brain to make you find the structural construction and deconstruction worth appreciating. "Something Follows" continues the pulverizing dissonance while having some haunting riffing atmosphere. "Gird Your Loved in Armour While Yet You Wither" is the 11-minute closing gauntlet, and they're not gonna leave peacefully. The technical fury is here to stay until the very end.

If I had stumbled upon this album at the time of its release in late 2020, I'm not sure if I could've made it through this hour of brutality and seldom beauty back then. Now I can, since I've become more experienced with this sound and can find some heavy treats there. The Smothering Arms of Mercy shows Growth without mercy or limits!

Favorites: "Cigarette Burns", "Fortress of Flesh and Bone", "Our Lady of the Hanging Heart", "Darkly, It Tightens Its Grip", "Gird Your Loved in Armour While Yet You Wither"

This one has been eating away at me for a while. Whenever I look at the earliest releases I haven't rated yet for the Fallen, this ugly, yellow and black fucking cover is always there staring at me like some recurring monochrome nightmare. I mean, look at it, it is fucking horrible. So today, as I am ploughing through some 1985 releases, I decided to get to grips with it and see what hides behind that menacing and manic-looking face. Well folks, don't be fooled because behind that ugly cover is an album of even more ugly-sounding music. Taking the idea of merging hardcore punk with the slower, looser and more distorted sound of Saint Vitus as originally posited by Black Flag's "My War" released the previous year, YDI have produced a noisy bastard child that dispenses with all the niceties of Black Flag's trailblazer.

This is filthy-sounding, virtually demo quality hardcore punk that has taken on board some of the aesthetics of the emergent doom metal scene to produce an album that sounds like it was recorded in an afternoon in the gutter of a Philadelphia back alley littered with used syringes and condoms. If anybody ever thought The Dead Kennedys and Black Flag were street punks then they will find "Black Dust" a fucking revelation that makes those guys sound like they went to Eton with singer Neil "Jackal Ssexzombie" Perry spewing forth a rasping bellow that makes Henry Rollins sound like a right stuck-up toff! This is such a dirty-sounding, gritty and groundbreaking record that I am genuinely not even sure if it really belongs in the Fallen at all. As is often the case with such revolutionary records, this is not easy to pigeon-hole, its hinting at what sludge would become being still in a very rudimentary stage of evolution. It is, however very noisy, very brash with an abrasive sound, ugly lyrics and a fuck-you-we-really-don't-care-what-you-think attitude that demands respect even if you don't enjoy the album itself. For myself, I am going to need to spend a bit more time with it to try to really get under its skin. I have it pegged at a 3.5/5 at the minute, but I feel this may rise as the album's essential ugliness smoothes itself out with further exposure and the involuntary gag reflex that it arouses subsides.

A week after Green Carnation's new addition to their Dark Poem trilogy, Lord of the Lost have just released another part of their own trilogy, Opvs Noir Vol. 3. That's right, it's the final part of this trilogy of albums that showcase their blend of gothic/industrial/symphonic metal. This ambitious guest-filled saga is coming to an end, and while I still think it should've ended as strongly as Vol. 1, I'm quite satisfied...

Frontman Chris "The Lord" Harms, guitarists Pi "π" Stoffers and Benjamin "Benji" Mundigler, bassist Klaas "Class Grenayde" Helmecke, keyboardist Gerrit "Gared Dirge" Heinemann, and drummer Niklas Kahl are still going. Opvs Noir Vol. 3 is the band's 12th album, and closes this long great trilogy.

Starting things off in an eerie note is "Kill the Lights". Here the verses are kept to a minimalistic style that then leads to a cool chorus. "I'm a Diamond" features Alea der Bescheidene of Saltatio Mortis. Honestly, her vocals adds more melody to this track that's already one of the most melodic ones here. "My Funeral" blends symphonic majesty with heavy dissonance. I love it! Then they really go aggro in the lyrics in "I Hate People", feature the rough vocals of Wednesday 13, plus some catchy riffing.

"The Shadows Within" has an ethereal start before reaching the more intense chorus while staying accessible. "La Vie Est Hell" is based on Les Fleurs du Mal, complete with some French singing by Kissin' Dynamite vocalist Hannes Braun. It's filled with perfect melancholy, which is kinda what I'm looking for in a ballad. "Square One" is kind of an one. The sound is generally synthwave, though I guess it allows Chris Harms to guide his vocals through those dancey verses without having to go edgy. Xandria vocalist Ambre Vourvahis appears in "When Did the Love Break?", and once again, all the vocals match with the soft verses and mighty choruses. So beautiful!

"Your Love is Colder than Death" strikes with their heavy side hard, breaking the earlier lightness with its aggression. Cats in Space's Damien Edwards comes in for the mesmerizing "Take Me Far Away". They really hit it with their respective vocal power. "The Days of Our Lives" is the grand finale of the entire saga. Chris and Gerrit perform their respective roles, shining as the vocals and keys close the gates on a solemn note.

So it seems Lord of the Lost has dropped the experimentation of the first two parts to give things more grandeur in Part 3. It's not perfect, but it's a very solid way to end this trilogy, all in the instrumentation and vocals. Serene, heavy, they can do it all....

Favorites: "I'm a Diamond", "My Funeral", "La Vie Est Hell", "When Did the Love Break?", "Your Love is Colder than Death", "The Days of Our Lives"

Yet another metal album themed around the global conflicts of the first half of the previous century. I really like how this one has been put together, it's nine tracks of gnarly, old-school, death metal are interspersed by archive recordings of popular WWI songs and clips of US recruitment speeches and propaganda announcements, to give the album's lyrical theme a feeling of time and place. I've been critical of modern death metal on many occasions, but this Morbid Angel-style with the emphasis on aggressive, rather than overtly technical, riffing and desperate-sounding, barked vocals is right up my street. Couple this with a period of history in which I am particularly interested and, for me at least, this is a winner.

The earliest Infinite album is apparently this album by Warning, a short-lived band in Neue Deutsche Welle (different from Neue Deutsche Härte that started over a decade later). They released two albums in 1982 and 1983, then that was it. They split up and never reformed again with both members already passed away. RIP... Would I call their debut album avant-garde metal? I don't think so. It's more like alternating between the then-popular post-punk/new-wave sound and atmospheric doom. And with some of the earliest death growls ever witnessed, I can almost consider proto-death-doom, before even death metal was a thing.

"Why Can the Bodies Fly?" is an interesting catchy start, as the growls run through alongside operatic female vocals. See, this is their new wave-ish side, and the guitars are more like an afterthought. I can almost imagine Therion covering this, though it was instead covered by Austrian death metallers Pungent Stench. "Magic Castle" shows the band's doomy side with slow guitar heaviness, blended with electronic experimentation.

As for the rest of the album, it's just weird-a** sh*t. Emphasis on weird, emphasis on sh*t. As much as I wanna enjoy and appreciate this, I just can't. I also would rather hear Morgoth's cover of "Darkness". Not the most appropriate f***ing release to consider the start of The Infinite. I'll be doing another judgement submission ASAP....

Favorites (only tracks I even slightly like): "Why Can the Bodies Fly?", "Magic Castle"

Apparently the guilty as charged culprit of being the very first progressive metal album is the (as of now) sole album by Seattle band Culprit, Guilty as Charged. Unfortunately, that theory has been debunked. I'm not sure how this album got tagged as progressive metal, when the sound is really just heavy metal and an early example of US power metal. And while there are prog-metal elements in the ways of Queensryche's Operation Mindcrime 5 years later, it's not enough to consider it prog-metal gate-opener...

Mislabelings aside, this is some great-a** sh*t! This is true classic heavy metal from Seattle, years before Nirvana's grunge sound took the city by storm. Such a shame they only lasted one album, though they've recently reformed with a live album and compilation. And the energy they have is like what Riot were doing at that time.

The 6-minute title opener has some heaviness in the guitar while staying melodic, which adds to the ambition. The fast pace has great variation to keep listeners awake. It's pretty much a grand example of the sound from both the album and the band. Also showing their heavy metal sound is "Ice in the Back". F***ing killer vocals and lyrics there! "Hell is but a flame..." When Jeff L'Heureux sings his highs, I get chills down my back like the title would imply. "Steel to Blood" continues pushing the guitarwork forward.

"I Am" is another great track, though sounding a little too mainstream. "Ambush" levels up the memorability as the catchy chorus is in sync with the focused instrumentation. "Tears of Repentance" is an amazing highlight.

Slowing things down is "Same to You" which has the melodic emotion of UK bands. The slow intro transitions through a mighty scream into that US power metal gallop that would be then adopted by German bands. With those f***ing powerful vocals and guitar, it's practically a bridge between Riot's first 5 albums and Thundersteel. "Fight Back" instrumentally made me remember a YouTube musician I forgot about for a while, Edward Sitnikov. I prefer his material though. "Players" plays off as a decent ending track.

All in all, Guilty as Charged is a solid underrated album, and more people need to hear about this band. A 2000 re-release includes a few live bonus tracks from one of their one-off reunion shows during their 25-year split including a cover of Queen's "Stone Cold Crazy". The leads and riffing throughout the songs make this a great offering. This was basically what people expected in heavy metal; lots of that 70s melody with a dash of the aggression hinted in later years or even later genres. What are you waiting for!? Wake up and smell the Culprit! The band Culprit's material, that is....

Favorites: "Guilty as Charged", "Ice in the Back", "Ambush", "Tears of Repentance", "Same to You"

I quite liked some of Hellenic black metal heavyweights Necromantia's early works like 1993's "Crossing the Fiery Path" debut album & particularly their 1992 split album with Varathron, both of which I picked up through the tape trading scene during the first half of the 1990's. This led to me purchasing their highly praised 1995 sophomore record "Scarlet Evil Witching Black" on CD at the time of release & I gave it a decent chance to win me over like it did a number of my tape trading associates. While there's no doubt that I generally enjoyed the experience, I'd only spend a week or so with this record before it would be placed towards the back of my CD collection & I wouldn't find myself reaching for it very often over the few decades that have passed since. This week I thought I'd see if I could discover why that is as "Scarlet Evil Witching Black" appears to have gone on to become somewhat of a classic release for the Hellenic black metal movement over time.

For those that aren't already aware, Necromantia offer a unique take on black metal given that they've overlooked the requirement for a rhythm guitarist, instead opting to replace it with two bass guitarists (one a four-string & the other an eight-string), both utilizing a distorted tone that gives them a very identifiable sound. Necromantia also incorporate symphonics quite readily although I don't think it's enough for the symphonic black metal tag to be considered. Does it work? Well, in a word yes but that doesn't mean that it's always exciting &, as a guitarist myself, I do find myself missing my usual frequency band. There are some guitars thrown in for random solos here & there but they're not particularly well executed & their neoclassical approach doesn't feel like the best fit for black metal either. On the positive, the vocal screams of front man Magus Wampyr Daoloth are very good & the faster, more aggressive passages really appeal to me & are largely the reasons I enjoy the record overall. During the times when the four-piece outfit embrace more of a traditional heavy metal influence, I find myself losing a bit of interest & it's hard to deny that the first couple of tracks are clearly the best (particularly my personal favourite in opener "Devilskin"), leaving the remainder of the tracklisting to chase those levels of quality in vain.

Still... I think you have to hear this record at some point if you regard yourself as an avid black metal nut, if only to experience the bass-driven assault, & this release is generally considered to be the peak of Necromantia's powers so it's probably the box you need to tick. I just can't see it as any sort of classic myself. It's decent enough but rarely draws me back.

For fans of Mortuary Drape, Varathron & Thou Art Lord.

I was 12 when this was released. I bought the album at the little record store in my town. Those were the days. Anyhow I fell in love with this album and I never got tired of it. This to me is my favorite Metal Church album. There is so much emotion and power to it. Yes it’s a tad lighter than the self titled album but there’s something richer about the music. I’m so partial to David Wayne’s voice /style. I will listen to the Mike Howe albums but I kind of pretend it’s a whole different band. 

Gorrch are over fifteen years into their existence and are only just getting around to their sophomore album. The duo of Chimsicrin (drums, vocals and keyboards) and Droich (guitars and bass) make for a quite a melodic take on the sound stylised by DSO. They lack the foreboding edge of the DSO sound, forming a more urgent and dashing movement to the music with a frankly excessive use of the tremolo. Nonetheless, the comparison is unavoidable.

Over only six tracks, the repetition of the guitar does get a little tiresome, however. That sounds like a dumb thing to say for a black metal record, given that repetition is a key factor of black metal in general. However, I do feel that the tremolo is simply overused, certainly across the first half of the album at least. For the latter three tracks there does appear to be a little more variation, and the album improves for it.

The drums are perhaps the best part of the whole album for me. Well produced and unobtrusive, yet at the same time they are as varied as they are prominent. I do not get the sense that they are particularly complex in their patterns, yet the skill of the musician is still obvious. The other standout from the second half of Stillamentum is the use of dark choral vocals. Their inclusion gives tracks a ritualistic theme that grabs the attention well.

Eleven years between records is a long time, and I have not heard their debut record to know how marked a difference, or not, there is to what goes on throughout Stillamentum. Both members have roles in other bands I can see which may explain the huge gap in output. I cannot say that Stillamentum suffers in any regard, more that it labours somewhat. If the guitars could match the drums in both variety and positioning in the overall sound, then I would enjoy the album more. However, this is not a bad record by any means, and I will be keeping an ear out for album number three if it ever arrives.

I'm not too surprised that I've never heard of Mirrorcell until sometime this week. They released their debut album Long Nights in Lovescape (sounds like if someone spent all night using an AI dating app) two months ago. It's an album that can go back and forth from ethereal to intense, but it ends up inconsistent with only a few exciting tracks.

The album's sound is basically alt-metalcore with some shoegaze. I find the more shoegaze side of them a little too much, often interfering with the times when the band is meant to go heavy. As a result, the offering is plagued with generic tracks. And in the few that are actually fun to listen to, it's because of the experimentation they add to the sound. It's really only then that I realize the band's true potential...

I'm not gonna go through most of the first half of the album in detail because of how sh*tty it is (the Cane Hill feature making me remember why I'm done with that band), the worst offending track being "Otherside". It sounds worse in the composition than everything else and shows how f***ing generic ALT-metalcore at times, which is part of why The Gateway is no longer for me. Let's just skip through some tracks to the ones I like, starting with a reminder of this album's 3-star rating, "Hurt Me". An incredible highlight with well-executed electronics and breakdowns. It has really gotten me hooked with fun catchy melody. I consider it the album's true standout!

After a couple more bad generic tracks, we have "Ichi", which deserves attention for its VCTMS guest feature and its intense heaviness. I heard that it's a common song to start listening to Mirrorcell, but that would've raised some people's expectations too high. Either way, another fantastic track! I also love "U(phoria)" (Wait, did I just admit my love for the band Phoria? I'm not into art rock!). "Prey" is a solid beautiful ending track.

All in all, I would consider Long Nights in Lovescape a decent album, just not really a great one. The alternation between generic and anthemic tracks is just underwhelming for me. Still they're a new band with some potential, so I'll give them the benefit of a doubt. They just need to improve on their sound and seal it as something unique. I have nothing totally against shoegazey alt-metalcore, yet the generic sh*t is what made the sound stop being one of my favorite metal styles in the first place. There's still some good in the fusion, they just need to really let it out. Otherwise, we would have another decent yet generic release like this. We'll see what the future holds....

Favorites (only tracks I really like): "Hurt Me", "Ichi", "U(phoria)", "Prey"

Anytime I see at least two bands that I enjoy in the "for fans of" part of an album review, I feel the need to check out and review the album myself. Such is the case for Saxy's reviews for this album and that Archspire one. And they also happened to be those two tech-death albums in a week! What are the odds?! Seems like tech-death with some slight touches of math/deathcore is the hot metal topic of this month. Though for this Growth album, I say it's more like progressive tech-death...

This Melbourne-based band released their second album Under the Under over 5 years after their debut. Apparently, the two albums form part of an ongoing trilogy like what Green Carnation and Lord of the Lost are doing right now. Most of the 6 tracks here are 9-minute epics of heaviness and experimentation.

"Remember Me as Fire" kicks things off with no time to waste, filled with guitar fury and bass picking. Within the aggression is some melody to make an incredible contrast. The title track begins with ominous guitar/bass strumming. And that's just the start of a 9-minute ride of multi-time riffing. Well it doesn't cover all 9 minutes, as the second half has clean melody and clean singing by vocalist Luke Frizon, at a baritone range that I can probably do myself.

You can hear more of those clean vocals in "Slings That Shatter", sounding more emotional than the previous track. It helps with the desperation for recovery that the lyrical concept is centered upon. The melody is greatly balanced with the chaos in the music, thereby making this one of the most well-rounded tracks of the album. Although nothing new is brought into "Pain is Never Far Away", it displaying their raging moods quite well. They continue kicking things up in the drumming and riffing, showing their progressive almost djenty side. Not a total loss there!

We get some buildup in "Forward, Further, Spirit Killer" which wanders through technicality. As great and heavy as it is, I was hoping for a little more adventure. Luckily, I'm about to get my wish... Closing track "Death Cannot Hold Me" is both f***ing heavy and progressive. This is what I really want to hear from this band for diversity's sake. Nothing's hold me back from enjoying this epic!

Under the Under has great consistency and a heavy/melodic blend that should catch the attention of open-minded listeners. I wish the structures were more balanced and diverse in some songs though. Still, Growth have made a progressive tech-death blast. Something Rivers of Nihil could've done instead of going the mainstream route....

Favorites: "Remember Me as Fire", "Slings That Shatter", "Death Cannot Hold Me"

Archspire are known for their ultra-fast tech-death sound. And I mean ULTRA-FAST, like going as fast as Sonic. In fact, they're probably one of the most well-known tech-death bands to be heard beyond the underground today. Actor Jason Momoa, who you may know as Garrett "The Garbage Man" Garrison from A Minecraft Movie, once had two members of the band appear in an episode of the show See. Archspire have so much speed in them that not even death can catch up. They're TOO FAST TO DIE!

This gem of speed and glory wouldn't have been possible without a crowdfunding Kickstarter campaign to help them out without a record label. With $125,000 raised, vocalist Oliver Rae Aleron, guitarists Dean Lamb and Tobi Morelli, bassist Jared Smith, and new drummer Spencer Moore continuing taking the metal realms by storm.

"Liminal Cypher" has a soft melodic intro before unleashing the usual speed in the riffing and vocals. Complex guitarwork and brutal blasts add to the technicality. One impressive track is "Red Goliath" which continues the technical violence. The guitars and bass are in quite a rapid pace, and I'm surprised they're not broken in half by now. Great searing melodies too! You do have to wonder if "Carrion Ladder" is actually fast or just sped up. The music and vocals are insane, even when there's ethereal majesty.

"Anomalous Descent" doesn't lighten up the fury maintained throughout the song. The vocals continue to attack as much as the instrumentation. Every album needs a small break from the action, which is where "The Vessel" comes in with its calm intro. And when the brutality comes back on, it has some interesting melodeath-like guitar.

Up next, "Limb of Leviticus" cranks up the heaviness and speed that would stun even the most legendary guitar gods. It's a sonic firestorm of riffs and harmonics, apart from a soft bridge allowing you to take a breather. Following a smooth outro from that track, the next one "Deadbolt the Backward" has some more of those high-speed chugs and harmonics. The title finale is a perfect send-off with the last bit of destruction from the riffing and vocals that would turn a mosh-pit into a black hole when performed live.

Did I mention that they have a new drummer in Spencer Moore? Luckily, he's able to pull off that Sonic-speed drumming the way Spencer Prewett could. Archspire have made a fast complex masterpiece that is Too Fast to Die. They gotta go fast!

Favorites: "Red Goliath", "Carrion Ladder", "Limb of Leviticus", "Too Fast to Die"

I suppose that comparisons with Darkspace are par for the course with Aara. Two atmospheric black metal bands, both from Switzerland and both rather good at what they do. Although the ambient streak that runs through Darkspace material is perhaps not as prevalent in the sound of their fellow Swiss counterparts. There is possibly a straighter line to be drawn to Mare Cognitum in all honesty. At least to my ear also. Whatever comparison you want to draw, Aara makes atmospheric, melodic and very enduring black metal on Eiger. The enduring nature of the sound feels like a sound representation of the tragic story of one climb undertaken by a handful of individuals that resulted in significant loss of life on the mountain. The Eiger is a mountain that has claimed multiple lives over the years. Those brave enough to try and take on not only its perilous climbing height but also avalanches, treacherous weather and of course freezing temperatures have certainly helped it live up to its nickname of “Murder Wall”.

The freezing cold represented on the album resonates with a crystal-clear hue out of the melodic and poignant notes of the riffs. The blizzard like conditions is summarised wonderfully in the blitz of drums and guitar and the harsh environment could not be better represented overall by those scathing vocals. One of the main successes of Eiger is that despite all this multitude of metaphors, a listener can easily still hear the storytelling as it narrates. The swarming guitars of ‘Felsensang’ suggests the fingering stealth of icy flakes of snow, jabbing at the faces of the mountaineers as they make their way along this imperilled journey. Unafraid to bring a folk-tinged element to the strings at times, Aara are at home in all tempos it seems here. They can have quite forthright drums with the most subtle of guitar strings atop of them and still make it all sound cohesive.

Given the dark outcome of the story here, there are a lot of hopeful and positive sounding moments in play across the record. As such, the songs feel very human. To me they capture a lot of the determination of those who did try and reach the top (five turned back and the remaining four were killed in trying to complete the ascent) as well as leaving the listener in no doubt of the dangers in front of them at any given moment. The songwriting here is so well balanced that it is difficult not marvel at it. It seeks to remind us I think, that regardless of the respect the album affords to the mountain itself, ultimately this is a story of human endeavour.

This has been my first Aara record, and what a place to start. From reading other reviews, this is a break from what is usually a more gothic-themed storytelling, which would also be right up my alley and so I do plan to build on this positive experience by exploring more of the discography. Meanwhile, Eiger is a mature piece of black metal delivered with a level of melody that often eclipses its atmospheric promise. Yet this is by no means a bad thing.

This is the best Hanging Garden have sounded in a very long time. After 2017's I Am Become, they seemed to step away from their sombre, gothic texture in favour of a more atmospheric/post-metal one. And while I think that change was a nice turn of events, the songwriting became less refined and their more recent albums have become lackluster as a result. This time, Hanging Garden are heavier and have returned to that older songwriting style and it turns out really well. The opener, "To Outlive the Nine Ravens" with its blast beat introduction gives the listener somewhat of an idea what they are in for, in the same way that Aeonian Sorrow introduced themselves on their last album From the Shadows. As the album progresses, you really get a sense that Hanging Garden have learned how to incorporate dual vocals as they compliment each other beautifully. The backgrounds with the guitar make a third melody that weaves in-and-out of the two vocalists for even more dramatic effect. The bass lines are strong and tasteful and even the implement of synthesized instruments is very well done; unlike many modern metalcore bands, the synth an embellishment tool to give the album a slightly different timbre, such as keyboard countermelody on "Arise, Black Sun". 

Best Songs: To Outlive the Nine Ravens, Eternal Tress of Turquoise, To the Gates of Hel, Arise, Black Sun

For Fans Of: Draconian, My Dying Bride, Ethereal Darkness

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.

I will be honest, when I saw this record put forward for a feature release this month, I groaned inwardly. Having tried to understand the hype around this album on many occasions previously, I could never quite fathom its cult status. For me personally, it has always been Empire that is my go-to Queensrÿche album. A factor in my opinion of Operation Mindcrime has always been its arrangement. Metal/rock operas are tedious affairs to me, often where songs get snarled up in acts at various points in the record, completely disrupting the flow of the album usually. Here on this record, there is the double whammy of two, largely non-musical intro tracks to open proceedings, so my irritation soon becomes difficult to control.

Arrangement challenges aside, this outing with album has been much more fruitful than I expected. If I divert my attention away from the actual storytelling, I can acknowledge that there are some fantastic tracks on this record. I recalled that I had always liked ‘I Don’t Believe in Love’, but on this outing the class of ‘Suite Sister Mary’ shone through. I am confident that with future listens I will be able to expand on the list of standout tracks as some made a more subconscious impact this time around.

There are still some gripes, however. I struggle to describe much of this as metal in all honesty. The extravagance of the leads perhaps is all that keeps the sound this side of the hard rock style that I recognise as being more prevalent. I don’t really buy the progressive tag either. I doubt if it were all that progressive, I would have found as much positivity in the album as I have. However, let’s try to keep those positive vibes coming and end on a high note. This has been a successful revisit for me, albeit an unexpected one. I have a feeling if I edit the track listing myself on this, I could even get a higher rating for this album in the future.

At this point in their thirty-eight-year reign, Immolation can almost do no wrong. Whilst they may have had periods of inferior output (Kingdom of Conspiracy, Majesty & Decay), I can think of few bands of such long-established activity who’s output I look forward to. Descent continues this tradition of the Yonkers crew once again creating another distinctive sounding record that is immediately identifiable as their signature sound, backed up with their deft song writing skills and seemingly undying passion for this artform that they have epitomised for so long. It would be very easy for Immolation to sound a little jaded if not downright tired by now. However, whilst not a flawless record, their twelfth studio album shows no lack of energy and no signs of the battery levels even starting to diminish.

Perhaps one of the most consistent death metal legends of recent years, Immolation have made another assured sounding album. The line up of Ross, Robert, Alex and Steve has been stable now for three records now and you can almost feel the unity across these tracks. Great production also helps of course, and the mix here is kind to all elements of the instrumentation with Steve’s drums coming off best in my experience. Those dancing, swarming, and urgent riffs perform their dizzying deeds as always, with that keen ear for marauding melody getting a lot of room to shine also. Ross’ vocals are satisfyingly beastly, without suffering from the artificial edge to them that haunted the bands previous album, Acts of God. Indeed, the only element that is lost here is the bass, which is hardly rare in death metal anyways. Dan Lilker makes another guest vocal appearance on a couple of tracks, just as he did on the previous album.

Once again using the striking artwork of Eliran Kantor, the image that adorns the album cover of an angel immolating into the fiery depths of Hell (perhaps) is a good representation of the content that lies in the album itself. The sacrifice she appears to be making (or be forced to make) appears to have the perfect soundtrack in the instrumental track, ‘Banished’. For once, I find an instrumental track that is not overbearing and is placed in a sensible position on the record as the palate cleanser before the title and closing track. If you have enjoyed any album from Immolation in the last nine years, then Descent will not disappoint you. Whilst there is always an element of predictability to an Immolation record, for now that still presents as familiarity and I still find their sound to be one of the more unique in death metal still.

Okay, so I really tried to like the new Archspire album, even though it should be no surprise that it sits well outside my comfort zone of death metal. Dave Otero, the albums main producer, is an absolute beast here and has found his niche; producing several of the most recent releases by Cattle Decapitation and Allegaeon. Like those bands, this album is super clean and precise. Every single note in the guitars, bass and percussion is delivered with pin point accuracy and the bass carries a lot of the records intensity forward. 

Where the album falters is in its lyrical presentation. I'm just gonna come out and say it: I think that early Tom Arraya is ass, so why the hell would anyone want to try and replicate him? I can give Slayer a little bit of credit here, since Tom balanced it out with a few slower passages as well as dueling guitar solos. Archspire have taken the word vomit from Reign in Blood and put it on steroids! Shawn's vocals just sound like gargled mush. In a genre where the intention of the vocals IS to sound like gargled mush, why waste your energy? If it was meant to be a novelty/comedy album then maybe, but this is meant to be taken dead seriously, and the vocals are very technical and flowery. It seems like a poorly thought out idea to me.

Best Songs: Red Goliath, Carrion Ladder, Limb of Leviticus

For Fans Of: Cattle Decapitation, Shadow of Intent, Rings of Saturn

Moody, atmospheric shoegaze that should satisfy on those grunge, hazy filled days during the summer months. It's well performed, has a strong foundation and low end, which really emphasizes the style on display. Vocals have a carefree presentation that is reminiscent of Hum and their 2020 revival album Inlet. Besides that though, True Blue is lacking heavily in substance; a common issue that persists throughout the shoegaze genre of music, but this one is extra dazed. This sounds like Deftones on autopilot. However Deftones have proven that they can still make quality music when they are on autopilot into the 2020s so to be a step below that has to be concerning.

Best Songs: Levitate, Summer Skin, True Blue

For Fans Of: Deftones, Teenage Wrist, Astronoid

As you can see from the rating, The Search is not without its challenges for me.  Notwithstanding that this album was recorded nearly forty-years ago and that I suspect that they did not have the most advanced studio to work with, this took me back to the wrong side of the old school, blunting some of the sharper nostalgia that can normally carry a portion of such albums.  I mean, I have no experience of Necrosis before this month and so I had no familiarity to work from that may have been triggered somewhere in my aging brain.  Hence, the performance, although adept enough, is not captured as well as it could be.

In the main though, I just can't get past the vocals.  They are just too weak to the point of being whiny; unable to stack up against the rest of the instrumentation, especially the guitar work which is a good few notches above the vocal performance.  Increasingly, as I listened through the record, I found it hard to penetrate the skin of the record and pick out any individual moments to reflect upon.  The album as a result just became this mass of thrash music, without any clear delineation between tracks.  In short, it soon became a bit of a slog.

In the end I found myself listening to the album to almost try and outrun the vocals, just so I could hopefully get long enough away from them to enjoy the music itself.  Alas, I did not have the legs to last the course of that little mindgame and so The Search remains a discovery that I am unlikely to revisit.

Well colour me surprised that I ended up with two technical death metal albums in the same week, but life can be funny that way sometimes.

Growth are a fresh new Australian band in the tech-death variety and, according to the early reviews of Under the Under, I got the impression that it was going to be in the style of early Ulcerate such as Everything is Fire. Now if you know me, that should come as a huge boost, since Ulcerate were the band that singlehandedly broke my shell when it came to technical/dissonant death metal. So I threw my headphones on, hopped onto Bandcamp, pressed play and what I was hit with was a fruitful display of technical/progressive metal, but sounding like Ulcerate? I don't know about that one.

When I think of that band, it comes with the expectation that the word "dissonant" can be taken very lightly. The songs are extremely melodic, make use of both its loud and soft spaces, and always backed by an atmospheric foundation. By comparison, Under the Under is much closer to the hardcore side of the genre that became popularized by bands like Cattle Decapitation and, more recently, Replicant. As a result, this album is lacking a fair bit in that discomfort that should be expected when the phrase "dissonant death metal" is used. As such, many of my returning criticisms of metalcore in general have made a return here: a lot of decent ideas that are kneecapped by the simple fact that, "hey we need a slow breakdown passage here!" and the use of clean singing as a point of melody feels forced.

But it isn't all bad for the Australian combo. Growth have some progressive chops that have been taken from the playbook of An Abstract Illusion and even some clean guitar intros/interludes that sound inspired by the same sections on Ulcerate's last album. Compositions have plenty of variety between them as they power through the gauntlet of emotions. The production is all done in house and executed remarkably well. so as to sound indebted to their inspirators, but not a full blown copycat.

I quite enjoyed Under the Under but I would be hard-pressed to call it great. It has plenty of great moments, but many of them feel muted by the metalcore influence and it leaves the album feeling hollow at times. Now is it disingenuous of me to critique this record as trying to be like Ulcerate when they are clearly NOT trying to play like Ulcerate? Absolutely! So if you're looking for some modestly accessible technical death metal, this record should aim to please. But those who are more familiar with the genre might be left underwhelmed.

Best Songs: Remember Me as Fire, Under the Under, Pain Is Never Far Away

For Fans Of: Ulcerate(?), Dillinger Escape Plan, Converge

Best Songs: Oath Ov Prometheus, Penumbrian Lament, Death Is Forever

For Fans Of: Sólstafir, Dreadnought, Heretoir

I picked "Writhe" up on its release via Bandcamp and, at time of writing eight years later, it remains the only release from the New Hampshire trio, amounting to two tracks spanning 25 minutes of material. Boghaunter's version of doom metal is heavily atmospheric and dips its toes into atmospheric sludge waters more than a little. Opener "Constellation Vows" builds on clean and clear lighter motifs and then batters them down with some crushing riffs and corrosively harsh vocals, only for them to reassert themselves in a to-and-fro of contrasting and complementary tidal shifts. This feels to me to be more than the usual atmo-sludge trick of build, build release, the two atmospheric poles weaving together like the intertwining twin serpents of celtic legend and displaying a nice level of songwriting maturity. Second track, "Ordeals in Stillness" is less intricate and more straightforward doom metal, albeit no less impressive, employing a memorable and melodic, gravitationally heavy riff which is accented by sparely used keys and soaring lead work. These provide a doom-laden foundation, dripping with melancholy over which the sludgy vocals bark and snarl in protest.

I was impressed by this opening salvo from Boghaunter back in 2018 and remain so to this day and it is a great shame that so promising a debut wasn't the springboard for a career of note. Even sadder is that there seems to have been very little activity from the three guys elsewhere, although I have just found the 2025 debut three-track EP from death doom band Departure which features Boghaunter guitarist and vocalist Michael Demers on lead guitar and which, although it is more straight-up death doom, is still a good listen. I guess the history of metal is strewn with such tales of exceedingly promising acts, for whatever reason, falling by the wayside while lesser talents thrive, but I am grateful that we got this beauty of a release anyway.

In my more attentive death metal listening days I was specifically drawn for a period to the sounds of Portal, Grave Upheaval, Impetuous Ritual and Mitochondrion.  Across this cross-section of bands I had found a sound that had moved beyond the simply inaccessible depths of conventional death/blackened-death metal, and had gone on to a whole new level of murk and squall.  Song structures where a redundant concept.  Dissonance and swarming chaos ruled these despairing depths.  Whereas some of my peers were utterly alienated by such music, the sheer abandonment of all conventional tenets of music theory really struck the right chord with me.

Cabinet are a modern version of that sound. Except Cabinet's version is like listening to Vexovoid if Portal had recorded it whilst out of their minds on crack.  Not content with just taking extremity far beyond any known levels, Cabinet add a cinematic quality into proceedings to create some real drama.  Now, do not get mistaken for thinking this is disorder.  It comes across to me that Cabinet have managed to download all of our nightmares from our subconscious minds and commit them to tape.  As punishing as it does often get, Hydrolysated Ordination never loses my attention at all,  Whilst I could be forgiven at times for thinking that the riffs were recorded in a whole different dimension altogether, and with the noise elements also being well-dialled in, this record never actually veers wildly off-road.  It does sound for the majority of the runtime like it is driving in the flow of oncoming traffice I grant you, but this is what makes it such a deeply immersive experience.

The unpredictability of the record soon becomes its trademark.  Tracks begin and end where you don't expect them to, sounds that you think you recognise the orign of turn out to be questionable in origin after repeated listens.  Is that a horn being played or just another wildly distorted guitar?  These are the type of questions that I found me asking myself as I worked through the terrifying yet wonderfully deviant eleven tracks on offer.  All hope abandon, ye who enter here.

Doom and sludge when measured in the correct quantities on a record can make for a delicious combination to satiate the appetite of a lover of extreme metal.  My preference with such blends is to go heavier on the sludge, forming a kind of sludge crust if you like and then let the doomier filling ooze out as I gorge further into the unholy pie in front of me.  Quiescent in many ways is the à la carte of the sludge/doom menu.  Seasoned with ethereal dissonance and packed still with the meaty density of CHRCH, these four tracks are filling, but all are of a length that gives the discerning diner the opportunity to savour each course.

Often resembling a slightly less ghastly Primitive Man, Dvvell possess that same pummelling yet torturous percussion that Joe Linden brings to the table.  Vocally, Kristy Senkor-Hall is not a million miles away from the style of Ethan Lee McCarthy either.  Dvvell in the comparison have the upper hand in the atmosphere stakes though.  ‘Mother’, ‘Father’, ‘Son’ and ‘Daughter’ all have individual presence about them, and with no track under twelve and a half minutes, the band do a fantastic job of making every minute interesting.  The combination of oppressive intensity and sonic ambushes certainly kept me on my toes throughout the album.

There is no time for polish here, no tolerance for avant-garde moments.  Dvvell have all their ducks lined up, have addressed any elephants in the room and are well underway with frying any big fishes they have lying around the place.  Indeed, Quiescent is so tight sounding that you could be forgiven for thinking it got laid down in one take.  When a band manages to get into such a wonderfully dark zone so early on in a record, it is hard to see much that can distract them out of it.

I discovered this band from the November 2025 The Fallen playlist and I knew within one listen through that this was a purchase.  Hence it now sits in my Bandcamp collection.

For an album typically categorized as blackgaze (including on the bands own Bandcamp page), I was shocked by how little reverb Subglacial was given in post-production. It gives the album a unique sense of raw and grounded emotion brought forth in the music and lyricism. However, the record's unique tonal quality might also be its biggest flaw, since the low end of the mix is painfully lacking throughout. Credit where it is due; there IS a bass presence that can be felt at times during the slower moving sections and the acoustic breaks, but when the guitars take over and start their tremolo picking, the bass is pitiful. And that turns out to be a huge shame because somewhere beneath the surface is a pretty solid album from Ashbringer. The stories told through the music are memorable, while also feeling engaging and immense. The transitions from soft to aggression are executed at the right time, the album isn't scared to flex its muscle in the long song department, without going overboard. But all of that feels like a mute point when the grounded bass lines are so flimsy and non-existent. It makes the whole concept of being grounded, back-to-reality, feel like a fools errand. In an attempt to swim, Ashbringer got their feet frozen underwater.

Best Songs: Subglacial, Send Him to the Lake

Lord of the Lost isn't the only band with a trilogy of albums having been released this year and last year. Green Carnation already have their own trilogy going on, titled A Dark Poem. The second part Sanguis was released just 7 months after the first part The Shores of Melancholia. And just like Part I, this part continues the band atmospheric gothic progressive metal sound, shining as bright as ever! That should help them stand in the prog-metal league alongside Amorphis and Opeth.

Now this alternation between heavy anthems and soft ballads may put some people off, particularly in a short 6-track album. However, I'm quite used to those kinds of jumps in some bands. Though a slight change in the order would set the style a little more straight.

The 9-minute opening title epic kicks things off hard. Music comes from the heart and mind, and they clearly have some melancholy going on, along with groovy keys. So amazing! It is followed by the ballad "Loneliness Untold, Loneliness Unfold" which goes as light as late Anathema. I would change a couple small things about it though. 1. Shorten the title so you're not just repeating it with one letter change. 2. Put it before the title epic as the album's intro, it sounds better that way. Other than that, good track!

Then things speed up in "Sweet to the Point of Bitter". Don't expect anything extreme in the vocals though, it's all clean. "I Am Time" has more melancholy in the music and the smooth vocal modesty of Kjetil Nordhus. In that sense, this is like a more progressive take on Demon Hunter's more melodic tracks.

"Fire in Ice" is bookended by an audio sample that I think is from Lord of the Rings. The music itself has the dark winter sorrow of Wolfheart (minus the harsh vocals). It's another long epic (though not as long as other progressive metal epics out there) that I enjoy, to end the action on a sweet and not bitter note. "Lunar Tale" is an uplifting ballad that is the most distant from the band's usual sound, even having some lovely flute by Ingrid Ose.

The Dark Poem saga may not be over yet, but so far those first two parts have quite impressed me. They're well connected to each other while each being their own offering. Sanguis maintains the strength while adding different moods to their writing. And I look forward to the third part to conclude the journey later this year or next year!

Favorites: "Sanguis", "I Am Time", "Fire in Ice"

I was about two minutes into In Your Blood before I a) checked this wasn’t Biohazard and b) where Biohazard’s two first releases came out in relation to this one. By 1995, we had already had two Biohazard records, and I was a bit of a fan at that point, so the similarities were obvious to me from the start of this album. This got me to thinking about how close my listening tastes could have gotten too early metalcore had my teenage years been more driven by the internet. Then again, I am not sure how much of what passes as metalcore nowadays can be compared to this record, it certainly sounds more hardcore than the increasingly rap metal-based style of Biohazard, albeit those gang chants are still very much prevalent here also.

As usual with my forays into The Revolution clan features, if I am not totally alienated and horrified by what I hear on the first track then chances are that I am going to stay for the album duration and that I will have some positives to highlight, and this is the case once again here with Excessive Force. There is no point that I lose interest in In Your Blood, since it maintains a frantic and pummelling pace for its entire duration, it is hard for me not to be engaged throughout. The punk elements get room to shine (‘Backtrack’) whilst the metallic riffs remain the order of the day very much. I like how this stays true to that 90s hardcore sound whilst still being able to inject some new life into that sound.

Vocally speaking, the style is desperate sounding whilst still maintaining that very aggressive front at the same time. I don’t mind the gang chants, although I suspect my entertainment levels wouldn’t drop if they were absent. Whilst I will not pretend that In Your Blood is big on variation, it is one of the reasons why it works for me, I think. When I look at what carries the “metalcore’’ tag nowadays, I cannot help but feel it is a heavily distorted tag that is perhaps overused. If this is what 90s metalcore sounded like, then it is not very far away from a familiar format in all honesty. In Your Blood is most certainly under my skin, if not quite able to penetrate my veins as the title suggests. What it has done is opened my eyes and ears to a scene I had written off too early it appears.

I quite liked the first couple of mid-1990's releases from Poland's Behemoth but they went through somewhat of a lull after that &, in doing so, managed to lose my interest during that 1996-98 period for the most part. It wasn't until my return to metal in 2009 & that I'd reconnect with these guys & I've generally checked out everything that they've put out since. I know a lot of people will place 2014's "The Satanist" record up on a pedestal as Behemoth's finest work but I've always felt that their 2004 seventh full-length "Demigod" had a slight edge personally, mainly because I really don't like the very popular "Ora pro nobis Lucifer" from "The Satanist". Other than that, the two releases are of a pretty similar standard although I'd suggest that there is slightly less of a black metal component to "Demigod" which is more of a straight down the line death metal release with the occasional hint at black metal. There are no weak tracks included while front man Nergal's vocals are aggressive & sinister & talented drummer Inferno's blast beats are savage & precise. I will say that the clicky drum sound doesn't work as well when Inferno goes for a standard blast beat but the alternating ones are both powerful & spectacular. Check out the underrated "Before the Æons Came" which is my personal favourite. "Demigod" is a very solid death metal record that should satisfy most of our The Horde members.

For fans of Hate, Belphegor & Sulphur Aeon.

The “boxes” argument used to come up quite a lot back on the old Terrorizer forum days. Any member trying to conveniently place anything even slightly eclectic into a specific genre, sub-genre, niche, thimble or mere tag usually found themselves suffering the ire of one or more of the regulars on that board. For a forum that was associated with the extreme metal and was billed as the” world’s most dangerous music magazine”, there was a surprisingly open-minded group of regulars present there and as such an album like this month’s The Fallen feature release would have proved to be a divisive discussion point.

Smote don’t have any recognition on Encyclopaedia Metallum: The Metal Archives. To be honest, I can almost understand why. As much as there is a heavy streak to Songs from the Free House, there is a lot of other elements for the listener to contend with. Drone, psych, folk and doom all occupy the forty-minute space in front of the listener. To my ear this record embraces a very similar sound to that of Wolvserpent, a band who despite my tendency to avoid drone metal, get regular revisits each year. When I pick up such reference points, I do wonder if it is just that Smote have simply not been put forward for submission at The Metal Archives as opposed to being outright rejected. Clearly, these tracks are not always arranged with the heavier elements in sharp focus; the chaos of psych often disrupts any sense of outright doom metal from topping the charts of influences driving the bus. You may easily find then that Songs from the Free House is a little too rarified a listen if there are no albums by Hawkwind in your collection.

At the same time, I do not think that you must be a fan of the output by Sunn O))), Earth or Boris to enjoy this release. The drone elements here possess an atmosphere I have rarely been able to pick up with the above artist’s releases that I have ventured into. The haunting pipes of ‘Chamber’ and those dense, droning keys and vocals create a real sense of immersion around me as I listen. But above all else, in comparison to other albums I have experienced across these multiple genres/sub-genres, there is still a sense of very definite start and end points to tracks. There is no blurring of all tracks into one and as such tracks are permitted a good expanse of individual identity.

I could use the word ‘enchanting’ to describe this record. It has a sultry, brooding appeal to it that lures me in; perhaps at this early stage of listening even without me being able to fully understand why it connects with me so well. There is something primal about the tribal percussion that is on display. The uncertainty of the deep drones and bass lines only seem to add to the allure of proceedings as opposed to alienating me from them. And so, it eventually comes back to the fact that there is no “box” to put this record in, which is sort of why I like it so much.

Manchester’s Winterfylleth have had a mostly “off” relationship with me (as opposed to an “on/off” relationship that is).  Their most enjoyable release for me has always been their acoustic folk record The Harrowing of Heirdom which I thought was fantastic in a kind of underground Fleet Foxes kind of a way, not too commercialised or harmonised either.  Fact is that most of their outright black metal records have left me cold, and not in the desired black metal experience kind of “cold” either.  I cannot deny that they are a talented bunch of lads, and that they do have a well-established following of loyal fans.  The music is never bad when I experience it, yet nor does it come across as being particularly memorable either.

The Unyielding Season caught me off guard therefore.  Soon after hearing it through a couple of times, I found myself able to predict songs on subsequent visits.  Opening track, ‘Heroes of a Hundred Fields’ has a fantastic section (which I heard called a “breakdown” the other day) after about two thirds of the way through.  Likewise, the title track has etched its flow into my memory banks also, much quicker than expected.  As with my favourite album of theirs, the two acoustic tracks are probably still my two preferred ones.  That favouritism has more to it than nostalgia for the previous release though, the band do have a genuine talent for writing beautiful acoustic pieces I feel and again it is these two moments that stay with me as the most positive experiences of the album.

It is not that the rest of the album is awful, more that these other tracks do seem to blur into one another.  This is a trait that only seems to get worse with repeated listens sadly.  Even on purely critical listens, it is hard to discern vast quantities of the album as having much in the way of individuality.  By far the greatest problem I have though is the poor choice of a cover track that sits right at the end of the album.  I am not Paradise Lost’s biggest fan, regardless of the fact that ‘Enchantment’ is one of my least favourite songs of their’s.  It was bad enough hearing Nick sing it but the vocalist for Winterfylleth somehow makes the experience worse.  Maybe I have overplayed this album in trying to settle on some reasonable understanding of it.  Looking at the score I have applied to the rating now, I would have thought it a shade higher upon initial discovery listens.  However, the reality over time has proven a different outcome is necessary.

The newest album from Ice Nine Ki... wait... The Gloom in the Corner is a peculiar record and exercise in structure. Right out of the gate, it takes heavy influence from Ice Nine Kills and The Silver Scream records. It's littered with symphonic strings, bombastic and erratic song forms and sequencing and a heightened sense of grandiose. Unlike Ice Nine Kills, The Gloom in the Corner are making this to be it's own standalone movie. Royal Discordance is a concept album, but it's hard to get into the concept from the outset. It's an album that is explosive and at points, dank, so the sardonic and destructive nature of the lyrics and themes feel out of touch. The way the album progresses from "The Problem with Apocalyptic Tyranny" and ends with "Love II: A Walk Amongst the Poppy Fields" almost feels forced.

Part of that inevitably comes from the music as well. Like I said on the outset, because of how heavily influenced Royal Discordance is to Ice Nine Kills, it is a heavy album. Lots of heavy chugging guitars, fat percussion mixing and a healthy dose of aggression in the vocals. I personally think that the vocals are the albums glowing highlight because for every "Nope (Hollow Point Elysium)" there is an equally strong ballad like "Shadow Rhapsody II" and the balancing of the vocal styles is very well done. Besides those vocals, there isn't that much innovative or interesting through the instrumentals. You might occasionally hear a blast beat coming from the percussion which sounds cool and the hardcore riffs are fun, but without a truly special hook locking them into place, it just feels hollow. 

Despite the negativity, I didn't hate this album. Just know that it is not my cup of tea when it comes to the type of metalcore that I enjoy. If you like Ice Nine Kills but wanted them to make a concept album for a movie instead of tributes to classic slasher films, you might enjoy Royal Discordance.

Best Songs: You Didn't Like Me Then (You Won't Like Me Now), Short Range Teleportation (A Guide to Guerrilla Warfare), That's Life (Carry Me Home), Love II: A Walk Amongst the Poppy Fields

This was my first time hearing about this Djentcore band from Australia and I enjoyed my time with I Guess It Was Nowhere. My initial impressions were that Above, Below would be following in the footsteps of bands like ERRA with their down tuned guitars and chunky hardcore breakdowns. And while we get a fair bit of that here, Above, Below also throw in some progressive/atmospheric sections as well. Those sections serve as a nice change of pace for the record, so that when the next chunky hardcore breakdown hits, it connects with authority. 

I use the word "atmospheric" very strongly here because I believe this album could have used more of that. I kept thinking back to early Astronoid records while entrenched in a dreamy sequence and felt myself getting kicked out of it unceremoniously by the vocals. I like Jacob Wilkes clean singing, but his harsh vocals are too brash and unkept for the clean stylings of djent. I'm quite sure that this was part of the point; highlighting more of the hardcore influence through the vocals so maybe its just a difference of direction, but that doesn't excuse the vocal mixing, which is pushed so far back in the sequence. And Jacob did all of the mixing and mastering on I Guess It Was Nowhere too! Guess he really loves pumping his band up and not himself.

Overall it was pretty good. The time flew by and I enjoyed my time with I Guess It Was Nowhere. The band executes a decent variety of styles and are really good at giving the listener space before the next hardcore assault. Hooks are hit-and-miss; quite a few of them felt too much like alphabet soup instead of clear and concise phrases with catchy melodies, but the album is well played/performed and the mixing (minus the vocals) is superb.

Best Songs: Heat, Starbreather, Collapsing Eden, I Have Lost My Appetite for Spring

While 1993's "Pure Holocaust" sophomore album was the record that cemented Norwegian black metal icons Immortal as a band that commanded my interest, it was third full-length "Battle in the North" that saw them joining the top tier of the genre for me personally & I still regard it as a black metal classic today. I purchased the digipack CD upon release (along with a long-sleeve shirt that I wore around the scene religiously for a while there) & it received a good ol' flogging during the back end of 1995. Immortal upped the brutality significantly once front man Abbath took over the drumming duties on "Pure Holocaust" but this? This was a whole different kettle of fish & still sits amongst the most intense extreme metal releases ever recorded. The riffs are swarming & inhuman, the drumming is relentlessly pummeling & Abbath's signature croaky vocals are demonic & sinister, not to mention ridiculously catchy. There are those critics out there who criticize Abbath's drumming as being incompetent but that's not a valid concern if you know a thing or two about extreme metal drumming. Sure, his kick drum work isn't always super-precise but the clicky kick drum triggers that are right at the front of the mix go a long way to highlighting every blemish & these imperfections aren't anything unusual for black metal drummers. His arms are not a problem at all though & it's really the guitars that struggle to keep up with the frantic rhythms at times. That's what people are complaining about without actually realising the root cause. This minor flaw is not a significant problem for me anyway though with songs like the title track, "Cursed Realms of the Winterdemons" & "At the Stormy Gates of Mist" being some of my all-time favourite black metal numbers. There isn't a weak number amongst the ten on offer & I'm gonna suggest that "Battle in the North" is easily Immortal best album, leaving highly regarded releases like "Diabolical Fullmoon Mysticism", "At the Heart of Winter" & "Sons of Northern Darkness" in the dust.

For fans of Inquisition, Abbath & Mayhem.

Battle Ballads... That's an album title can either be aptly titled and have mostly ballads, or be misleading. Fortunately, it's the latter. I say "fortunately" because it's another good album from these Faroese metallers Tyr. In truth, there are only as many ballads as there are in a DragonForce album; one or two. The rest are power metal anthems with some melodic harmonies and bombastic orchestrations.

Oh yeah, this offering continues the band's later power metal direction, with their earlier progressive folk metal style in fragments. Their power metal side is in clearer display than before. However, the difference has caused less balance in their sound. Still there's a lot to look forward to, particularly in some of the first few tracks.

"Hammered" starts the album as an early hint at this approach. It's quite fun and hammering! Also a great way to introduce their new lead guitarist Hans Hammer, with the song title fitting well for that occasion too. Another 3-minute metal tune follows, "Unwandered Ways", yet it doesn't impress me as much as the surrounding tracks. "Dragons Never Die" is yet another 3-minute track while being another incredible standout. I especially love its chorus.

One of the most diverse songs in the vocals is "Row". While frontman Heri Joensen continues his unique singing, he also tests out some death growling (not as much as in Hel's opening track) and throat singing. Sadly it doesn't reach the heights of those earlier highlights. Still not a bad song though. Up next, "Torkils Dotur" is one of 3 songs with Faroese lyrics. It has quite some climatic emotion for a ballad. "Vaelkomnir Foroyingar" has more of their native language, while having a more straight direction in the music and vocals. However, their attempt at adding speed and heaviness comes out a bit weak and out of line. Thankfully, they still have their power in "Hangman".

"Axes" levels up the quality, showing that they still got it after around 25 years. The somewhat title track "Battle Ballad" is one of the most mighty tracks here. Everything's a small journey in this song! It's almost like Devin Townsend helped produced it alongside the album's actual producer Jacob Hansen. The bass should still be as audible as the rest, honestly. The closing "Causa Latronum Normannorum" starts off promising yet falls flat, compared to at least the previous two albums' ending epics.

Battle Ballads seems to take on the simple tight aspect of songs being mostly 3 to 4 minutes long each, similar to Valkyrja. The problem with their new album is, most of the progressiveness of their previous albums, including Valkyrja and Hel, have been discarded. At least a lot of the unique vocals by Heri Joensen is still around. And the formula they have is never downgraded to generic. Plus I am grateful for those other two albums I've checked out that make me up for more of this band. So although Battle Ballads doesn't reach that amount of greatness, nothing is jinxed, and Tyr is a band I'll never forget....

Favorites: "Hammered", "Dragons Never Die", "Torkils Dotur", "Axes", "Battle Ballad"