Sonny's Reviews

Well, this is a bit of a strange one, I must say. Mare tranquillitatis is an album of synth-heavy cosmic black metal, so your first question I would imagine is "So what is so unusual about that?" The strangeness comes from both the sound of the synths, which is of a vintage, 1970's type, typically employed by the likes of Hawkwind on their late Seventies and early Eighties albums and the prominence of said synths in the mix. In fact, for significant portions of the album, the black metal component seems to be acting in support of the synths rather than vice-versa. Yet, somehow the band make this work far better than I would have expected, even though I found it to be a little distracting at times.

The black metal component is reasonable enough, if not exactly earth-shattering, with a decent quota of fiery blasting and the vocals possessing the requisite distant-sounding banshee shrieks which we all expect as a minimum from our atmospheric black metal. But then, where your usual atmo-black album fills out the atmosphere with an additional layer using often quite reedy and thin-sounding synths, Etoile Filante go a whole other way and dollop on the retro-sounding synths in a way that often pushes them as the focus of the tracks. What I personally found especially distracting by this though, is how the synths often brought to mind other songs and set my attention wandering away from the matter at hand. For example, there is a point midway through the opener where the synths sound just like parts of the Queen soundtrack for the Flash Gordon movie and, similarly during the next track, Fragments de Poseidonis - d'après Atlantide de Clark Ashton Smith, they felt identical to the mid-section of Hawkwind's Damnation Alley from their 1977 Quark, Strangeness and Charm album, all of which pulled me out of the current listening experience. Of course, I accept that this is a personal problem and most likely won't be experienced by other listeners and the issue doesn't really arise outside of the first two tracks. Either way, the resultant album has an atmosphere I have not encountered too often in a black metal context. I find most cosmic black metal seeks to convey the frigid coldness of interstellar space and the awe-inspiring effect of sources of unbelievable energy such as stars and black holes within this frozen environment, whereas Etoile Filante seem to be taking a warmer, more human-centric view as expressed by the synth-work, which more evokes man-made environments such as starships or orbitals. The final couple of tracks, "Naufragés de l'océan d'onyx" and "Le vent des éternels" strike a much better balance between synths and black metal and, for me, are the best two tracks on the album and this is the main reason I leave the album in a positive frame of mind, I suspect.

I'm not saying it is by any means, but my main worry with Mare tranquillitatis is that, in the crowded black metal world, the untypical synthwork is a "gimmick" to enable it to stand out from the slew of black metal releases destined to hit our shelves and streaming platforms in 2024. It's certainly got me talking about it for one anyway. I hope this isn't the case and the guys are all-in with this from a purely artisitic viewpoint because even though it sometimes doesn't work entirely, it is still an interesting listen throughout.

Evilfeast is a solo project of Polish multi-instrumentalist Jakub Grzywacz, who goes by the pseudonym of GrimSpirit. The project has been going since 1996, when it was then known as Darkfeast (changing name in '98) so he has some credibility as a relatively early adopter of the atmospheric black metal creed and not just some random bandwagon-jumper. So, I thought I hadn't listened to Evilfeast before and when it was pointed out that indeed I had, I still had no great recollection of the event. Not exactly a ringing endorsement I think you will agree. However, it says more about my insatiable appetite for listening to more and more unfamiliar metal albums and a resulting lack of retention of any but the most excellent (or utterly terrible), than it does about the quality of the release in question. This is because Elegies of the Stellar Wind is, in fact, a pretty decent slab of black metal with a pronounced symphonic element influenced by none less than the mighty Emperor, I would suggest. Although the keyboards are fundamental to the album's sound, it still feels like it sits more within the sphere of atmospheric rather than symphonic black metal because, although the synth sound can be traced back to Ihsahn & co, it isn't as bombastic as the Black Wizards, but rather it feels like it is heralding the majesty of the natural world rather than the machinations and achievements of powerful men.

The black metal component is generally of the uptempo, quite savage-sounding, thinly-produced type that harks back to a previous black metal age and doesn't contain the lushness of more recent atmospheric black metal efforts, but that feels no less effective for it. I must admit I like it's quite raw black metal stylings, whilst the keyboards are incorporated effectively and even though they have a significant presence they still work well in tandem with the riffing. It never really attains the hypnotic transcendence that the absolute top-tier atmospheric black metal releases achieve and, in truth, it probably feels a little more down-to-earth as a result, but whilst these ham-fisted attempts at describing Evilfeast's sound make it feel like it won't work, it absolutely does, it's just that it's not exactly what you would necessarily expect.

I am unfamiliar with californian death metallers, Skeletal Remains, but a quick glance at the ratings for their five albums on RYM reveals that they must be quite a consistent band, certainly in respect to their recorded output. The opening track is titled "Relentless Appetite" and you'd better have one for brutal-sounding, aggressive old-school death metal worship because that is what you get here, unapologetic and unrelenting, in-your-face death metal, torn straight from '90's Florida and dropped onto the opposite coast thirty years later.

There is little subtlety or innovation here, but I found myself swept along on a tidal wave of relentlessly pummelling riffs with no time (or inclination) to ponder anything deeper than just hanging on for the ride. Chris Monroy's vocals are of the excoriating, sand-blasting kind, the solos are energetic and chaotic and drummer Pierce Williams is a busy man behind the kit, all of which contribute to the dynamism and sensation of being actively propelled through the album rather than being a passive spectator. It is the riffs that are king here, however, and they come thick and fast in a dizzying maelstrom of thundering power, boosted by a meaty production that gives them an unstoppable forward momentum.

Skeletal Remains are obviously influenced by the older death metal stalwarts and are equally obviously uninterested in the modern tendency in death metal towards pushing the envelope ever further with greater technicality, dissonance or whatever is flavour of the season, but instead their only desire seems to be to lay down brutal riffs that promote the lost art of headbanging, rather than the modern obsession with chin-stroking artisitic micro-analysis. It may not be the most artistically demanding, but this is exactly my kind of death metal - aggressive, thick-sounding, heavy as fuck, no-nonsense, unpretentious old-school worship that will leave you with a stiff neck and a feeling of having had a good forty-five minute workout.

Monovoth is the solo project of argentinian multi-instrumentalist, Lucas Wyssbrod, and Pleroma Mortem Est is the sophomore full-length under the banner. It is an album of instrumental funeral doom, comprising six tracks and with an overall runtime of a mere 38 minutes, which is slight indeed for a funeral doom release. In a nutshell that previous sentence sums up the issues that I personally have with this. First off, six tracks for a measly 38 minutes! The funereal and doom-laden atmospheres for top-knotch funeral doom require expansive build-up and layering with the extensive runtime being a pre-requisite for the sense of an inescapable, soul-crushing doom awaiting all of us at life's end. Secondly, instrumental funeral doom just doesn't work completely for me. With such downbeat and morbid instrumentation as that produced by top-tier funeral doom practitioners, I believe a human connection, such as the wholly human sound of vocals, is an absolute requirement in order to mitigate the hopelessness of the music and to place the human condition, as posited by the funeral doom ethos, into context.

The actual individual pieces here show a lot of potential and it is obvious that Wyssbrod is plenty familiar with the big names in the field, as he unleashes dizzyingly towering chords of immense weight interspersed with passages of self-reflective melancholy, but their brevity and lack of vocals suggests to me a series of musical ideas waiting to be worked up into full pieces and not actually an album of finished work. I really would like to hear these ideas expounded and expanded upon with a truly anguished-sounding vocalist on board because there is really some good stuff here, in seed-like form.

Stygian Crown are a new one on me. They are a five-piece, Los Angeles band playing epic doom metal with twin guitars and a female vocalist, which is a combination I think works very well. Funeral for a King is the band's sophomore full-length, following four years after their self-titled debut. They take their cues from the usual sources, Candlemass, Solitude Aeternus and the more recently successful acts like Smoulder and Crypt Sermon. The riffs possess a nice crunchiness in sound, being both chunkily solid and memorably melodic, with the band being unafraid to change into a quicker tempo, "Bushido" and "Beauty and Terror" being particular examples of tracks in a more traditional metal, USPM-adjacent, rather than doom metal style. The plodding pomposity (in a good way) of the band's titanic epic doom forerunners is the general order of the day though and they have a solid grasp of what constitutes good epic doom, with a full sound, theatrical songwriting and powerful vocals. Singer Melissa Pinion has a strong voice and is well able to command the space, in true Messiah Marcolin or Rob Lowe style, with a soaring performance that is never threatened by the thick and meaty guitar sound, but which meets it head-on.

There are a couple of interludes in a more stripped-back style that provide a contrast to the ostentatiousness of the band's signature sound. "Let Thy Snares Be Planted" is a short instrumental piece with piano and strings in a classical style and the balladic "Blood Red Eyes", which also features piano and strings, sounds a bit like a track Tarja and Nightwish may have been at home with. All in all, this is a decent album that displays a great understanding of the epic doom genre and which is technically sound with a powerful lead vocalist. As such it is a worthy addition to the recent slew of releases in the resurgent sub-genre and whilst still punching a little below the weight of the true titans, Candlemass, Solitude Aeternus and so on, with tracks like "Scourge of the Seven Hills" and "Strait of Massina" I would suggest they are heading in the right direction. Definitely worth your time if you are into the more epic side of doom metal, especially if you are a fan of female vocals in the genre.

Deathcore and I are not the most comfortable of bedfellows, I could count the number of the sub-genre's albums I have heard on the fingers of one hand and I have actually enjoyed even less than that. So I went into Dark Secrets of the Soul expecting little and knowing the sum total of fuck all about the band. Turns out they are an italian, corpse-paint wearing, four-piece and Dark Secrets of the Soul is their sophomore full-length, following 2021's Sulphur Cvlt.

Well, I will just kill off any suspense and say it straight out up front - actually this isn't half bad at all. I know, right. What the hell is up with me? Well it appears that I might actually be a secret deathcore fan and I didn't even know it myself! I think where deathcore wins over other core-related subgenres is within the vocal department, which is where I notoriously struggle when faced with conventional metalcore releases. I don't especially dislike metalcore instrumentally, but the vocals often irritate me intensely, so the inherently more grizzled and guttural vocal requirements of a death metal sub-genre tones down the "screechiness" (for want of a better word) I struggle with so much in metalcore and results in something much more palatable to my ears. Another trick the band have up their sleeves is that they have included a perceptible influence from symphonic black metal, with synths imparting a sense of pomp and circumstance and mitigating some of the harsher elements of the metalcore aspect of the band's sound. Eclipse of the Sun of Eden, for example, has a really noticeable black metal influence from bands like Anorexia Nervosa or Dimmu Borgir that complements their deathly metalcore sound so well.

The band aren't afraid to change gear away from metalcore aggressiveness either with the balladic Lotus, which features the album's best guitar solo, sounding like the second part of Slipknot's "Vermilion" in places including the clean vocals. I'm no expert, but I reckon that despite all these variations from standard deathcore, there is still more than enough of that melodic hyper-aggression present to please the regulars whilst the other influences help to differentiate Drown in Sulphur from the pack and may even draw in newer listeners to the genre, like myself. I like the fact that italian metal bands in general are unafraid to take chances with their music and, for me, in this case, it has paid off big time.

Saturnalia Temple are a swedish doom metal trio led by guitarist / vocalist and founding member Tommy Eriksson and featuring a revolving door of bassists and drummers, the most recent of whom, bassist Gottfrid Åhman and drummer Pelle Åhman were long-time members of In Solitude (Pelle as vocalist). The band play a real fundamentalist style of doom metal which uses simple and repetetive, highly distorted stoner doom riffs taken straight from the Wino playbook, bolstered by a forceful bass presence which deliver a strong hypnotic effect upon the listener. The hypnotic riffs are usually accompanied at some point during each track by psych-tinged guitar solos of varying lengths which very much feeds in to a trippy, stoner atmosphere and which should really be accompanied by huge clouds of sweet-smelling herb smoke. All is not hippy-trippy love all round though as Tommy's vocals are derived from black metal tradition with a harsh, cracked, croaking style that is completely at odds with the hypnotic feeling derived from the instrumentation.

And that really is all there is to Paradigm Call. This is not sophisticated stuff, if you want convoluted songwriting, technical showmanship or musical experimentation then look elsewhere because this is for people who know exactly what ST are about and want to partake of that particular bong hit. Everything except the solos is real basic stuff, the production is quite raw and the band's intent to mesmerise the listener into a blissed-out state is obvious from the get-go. I'm all in with this and love the album's effect of blanketing the listener in huge waves of sound, which I find exceedingly relaxing. My only real bugbear is with the numerous fade-outs, a trope I am never a big fan of, much preferring bands to end their tracks properly, but overall it's a big thumbs-up from me.

I've been a follower of Obsidian Tongue for a decade or so now and am a big fan of their epic atmospheric black metal. The band is made up of multi-instrumentalist Brian Hayter and Raymond Capizzo who is drummer with Falls of Rauros and is Austin Lunn's live drummer with Panopticon. The Stone Heart is a three-track, twenty-minute EP and is their first release since 2020's Volume III.

The band play lush atmospheric black metal that utilises both cleans and harsh, blackened vocals. There has been a post-metal aspect of build-up and release creeping into their sound since their more straightforward early couple of albums and this works exceedingly well as a songwriting decision with more textural variation within tracks. Nowhere is this better illustrated than on the EP's main event, the almost nine-minute second track, Winter Child, which has become an instant favourite.

The title track opener begins in a gothic-like, almost gentle post-punk style with clean vocals before bursting into full-on black metal blast-a-thon with Hayter reverting to the ragged, full-throated shrieks he delivers so well. The sound is filled out with the addition of fairly subtle keyboard work that is well-placed without ever threatening to overwhelm or drag the track into symphonic cheesiness. The aforementioned Winter Child begins in similar vein to the title track, except that the clean-sung opening section has more of a viking metal feel to it and extends for half the track length. However when the duo drop the hammer on this one at midpoint it really cooks and sweeps away all before it in a wave of black metal fury. It possesses the kind of scope of a mid-era Enslaved track, although the duo still have a bit of a way to go to emulate the Norwegian Kings! The EP closes out with a nice enough, if somewhat superfluous, three-minute instrumental piece which would probably sound really good worked into a full song.

Here's hoping that The Stone Heart is merely a place-keeper and that a full-length in similar vein is in the offing without us having to wait another four years.

Exhorder, as all good thrash heads know, dropped the highly-regarded Slaughter in the Vatican way back in 1990, followed it up with The Law in '92 and then seemingly dropped off the face of the planet altogether. These two albums, however, lead to Exhorder, for better or for worse, being credited with inventing groove metal. As the band were big mates with Pantera, then this isn't too much of a stretch, although Exhorder's Kyle Thomas is quoted as saying that Pantera deserve all the praise for popularising the form as they worked much harder than his band. Now, in all honesty, I am not the biggest fan of groove metal and only a handful of albums have garnered any decent scores from me with Pantera in particular failing to resonate. So when Exhorder released the groove metal-oriented Mourn the Southern Skies upon their return in 2019 I wasn't particularly impressed, although there were plenty of commentators who took against it even more than myself, cursing it for not being Slaughter in the Vatican.

So here we are five years further down the road and Kyle Thomas and the guys are back with their post-return sophomore, Defectum Omnium, and this time they have long-time Cannibal Corpse guitarist Pat O'Brien on board. Now I don't know if I am just in a particularly good mood at the minute, or if this is a genuine improvement, possibly because of Pat's involvement, but actually this isn't half bad. A genuine energy and enthusiasm seems to ooze from every pore of this release, lighting a fire under the band and allowing them to turn in one of those late career successes that a select few bands are fortunate enough to produce. The album still sits nearer the groove end of the equation, but the riffs are so cool that their inherent grooviness in no way detracts from how absolutely badass they are, aided by a thick guitar tone that highlights their power.

There is also some decent variation in pacing with the surfeit of fast-paced aggressiveness countered by some slower, ominously hulking sections that preface even more fist-to-the-jaw sonic violence. The band are also unafraid to drop in a really catchy groove now and then, "Divide and Conquer" and "Taken by Flames" could both easily be released as singles, such is the catchiness of either track. Look, groove metal is never going to be a genre I salivate over and Defectum Omnium is probably not going to be in my top twenty albums of 2024, but respect where it is due, this has given me far more than I ever expected going into it and it's bloody-red-meat grooves have had me happily nodding along throughout the several listens I have given this so far. Definitely an album I can see me slamming on when I feel like a bit of no-nonsense metal riffing and memorable hooks might lighten up my day.

Spectral Voice consists of three of the members of Blood Incantation plus drummer Eli Wendler of Black Curse. The three alternate issuing material with the prog-death wunderkinds, meaning that it has been a full seven years since their previous release, the debut Eroded Corridors of Unbeing, was unleashed.

New album, Sparagmos, continues very much in the vein of the debut with an atmospheric approach to death doom that is derived by incorporating significant influence from funeral doom and atmospheric sludge metal. Containing only four tracks, three of which weigh in around the twelve-minute mark, Spectral Vein declare their intention not to be rushed in their song composition. Indeed, the focus isn't really on riffs or any kind of headbanging material, but rather on the building of doleful and ominous atmospheres designed to elicit an emptional response and impart a melancholy uneasiness in the listener. Of course, there are times when all the steady atmosphere building reaches a climax and then the band shift gear and drop into full-on deathly riff and blasting rhythms mode, dropping the hammer on moments of brutally devastating death metal riffage.

Vocals are provided by Wendler and he handles these duties exceedingly well, with a nice range of styles from gutteral growls to harsher-sounding, sludge-derived howls of fury which feed into the atmosphere-building of the chiming guitar chords and deep-rooted, booming basswork. The production gives the four tracks a nicely foetid and putrid sheen with an echoing, cavernous sound that has served death doom metal so well for the past thirty-five years and which has become the requisite for a certain species of death metal.

Overall, I think this is an album that is worth expending a bit of effort to get to know. Initially I wasn't especially impressed and didn't think that the tracks always held together so well, even though on paper I should be all over this. However, I am now on my sixth or seventh playthrough and the album has started to make much more sense, with the sometimes unsettlingly ominous and funereal atmospheres being the whole point and the contrast of the blasting riffs when they arrive feeling quite hard-earned and so much more rewarding as a result. I now consider myself won over bt Sparagmos' deathly charms.

Aureole is a solo project of Markov Soroka, whose work I have enjoyed under a couple of his other projects, the funeral doom of Drown and the black and death metal of Tchornobog, but his output as Aureole has always left me a bit cold. This is mainly down to the excessive (for me) ambient content of the project's work, except on his split with Mare Cognitum, where he turned in a decent couple of tracks of icy atmo-black to outshine Jacob Buczarski on that one, which is no mean feat it must be said.

Well, he appears to have doubled down on the ambience with Alunarian Bellmaster, to the degree where what we have here is essentially an ambient album with very little actual black metal. There is some BM present, but it is so toned-down and steeped in ambience that it is barely detectible, at least to my tinnitus-ridden ears. I suppose I should state the obvious at this point and declare that I am not a huge fan of ambient music, it quite frankly bores me most of the time and if I need the kind of fix that ambient gives then I tend to turn to drone or funeral doom. I have sat through the album's hour-long runtime once and quite frankly, that's enough for me. It's not that I hate it by any means, it doesn't really register on a deep enough level for such a strong emotion, but I can live without it most easily.

I have been quite the fan of the Napoleonic Era-obsessed, Québécois black metal project since their debut album finally saw the light of day in 2019 after inexplicably spending almost a decade sat on the shelf. The band itself is comprised of three musicians, Crucifixus, Fanalis and Vinculum each of whose role within the band isn't disclosed, but all three are multi-instrumentalists and veterans of a dizzying number of other projects, so I doubt each has tightly defined roles within the band.

Satan Soldier of Fortune continues in the same vein as the debut, with the band laying down raw-sounding black metal riffs that still come across as remarkably melodic despite this rawness. The riffs are then overlaid with reedy-sounding synths, which are well-used as they don't swamp the riffing, despite being given equal standing to the guitar work in the mix. Production-wise this has a much more treble-y sound than the debut, which makes the riffs stand out better and gives the synths a thinner sound, thus making the whole feel just that little bit rawer than the debut. The vocals are suitably earnest and raggedly harsh, sounding heartfelt and shying away from the forced theatricality that can sometimes get a grip of black metal vocalists. The drumming is functional in the main with some decent blasting and feels perfectly placed within the mix to ensure it's presence is felt without it ever becoming over-dominant. In fact, the mixing is extremely well-handled and all the components are given suitable prominence so that the whole benefits rather than any single aspect sticking out.

It would appear that Departure Chandelier have hit on a formula for producing melodic black metal that may appeal to a wider audience, whilst still retaining the raw savagery for which the genre was known in it's earliest days. Personally, I think this is a step up from the debut, the improvement in songwriting has produced tracks that remain in the memory despite their base rawness, resulting in an album that should appeal to the most kvlt of black metal fans without alienating the more melodically-inclined.

4/5

Well I must admit up front that this one has been a bit of a head-scratcher for me. Big fan as I am of the chilean metal scene, I have never encountered Unaussprechlichen Kulten before, despite their 25+ years on the scene, so I am unable to comment as to how typical a release for the band this is.

Häxan Sabaoth takes a long-established style of death metal and incorporates a number of other styles within that framework to construct something a little beyond the norm. The most striking aspect of the album is the lead guitar work, which often has a jangling, chiming tone and which leaps off into shred-like guitar soloing at the drop of a hat. There are certainly some killer riffs, such as the very first one you hear after the occult-sounding intro ends, which is an absolute beauty that serves to draw you into the album's meatgrinder of mayhem. This mayhem and chaotic atmosphere is where those almost demented-sounding guitar leads come in. The neo-classical-adjacent excesses of the soloing when laid down over the archetypal death metal riffs has a similar effect to my ears as disso-death, with the leads sounding out of kilter and at odds with the riffing and blasting that is going on down below. The guitars are certainly the main event here with the deeply growled vocals and, to a certain extent, the drums, being pushed down into the mix where they feel like they are acting merely as support to the six-string depravity going on in the upper echelons of the mixing board.

I have detailed the challenges I face with a lot of dissonant metal and the same issues rear their head here again in this slightly different context, making it an uncomfortable listen at times as I struggle to reconcile the lead and rhythm work. That said, this does seem to be an interesting way to insert some dissonance into a standard death metal framework, although, due to my limited knowledge of death metal, I am unsure of how rare this approach is and I would be interested to hear what true disso-death fans think of it. It could be that a release like this needs more time devoted to it than I feel able to commit to, but for me this is an album where I respect the intentions more than I enjoy the result. Don't get me wrong, it occasionally drops into a riff I can really get a hold of and then it is a really cool blast, with the later tracks such as "Dho hna formula" and "Die teufelsbucher" being the ones where this happens most often and as such providing an album that I personally feel is back-loaded.

France's Necrowretch are a four-piece centred around guitarist, vocalist and founding member Vlad and, despite them being around for over fifteen years now, I have never crossed paths with before. Swords of Dajjal is their fifth full-length with the title referring to an evil entity from Islamic tradition. Musically Necrowretch play a muscular form of black metal that contains a significant quantity of death metal DNA which gives it a more solid, denser sound than you would necessarily expect, whilst remaining emphatically within the black metal realm.

Drumming duties are handled by Nicolas Ferrero, ex-member of Fhoi Myore and Brutal Avengers, under the pseudonym N. Destroyer and he turns in an admirably controlled, yet powerful performance which is pushed to the fore at times and thunders like the rumblings of the very heavens themselves. The riffs are fast and frenetic in the main, but the band are also able to throttle it back and drop into a more doomy sound that feels more ominous than any amount of out and out blasting. There is some decent lead work, handled by guitarist Wenceslas Carrieu (as W. Cadaver), although it is submerged in the mix to a degree and doesn't necessarily cut like it could as a result. Vlad's vocals are of the ragged, savage, shrieking variety that so well define the archetypal black metal singer and are spot on.

I think that ultimately appreciation of Swords of Dajjal will come down to how the listener views the mixing of the album, with the drums most definitely having a more dominant presence than is usual and their booming and thundering presence may be too overwhelming for some, although I confess they are one of the reasons that I like this so much. The flipside of this is that, for some the lead guitar may be too overwhelmed and buried under this all-consuming battery and although the riffs are perfectly audible the solos are swamped. As I said, I quite like this thundering style and am well on board with how this has turned out with it being a visceral-sounding and energetic blast of black metal indulgence.

I've got to admit, I never tire of Wino's grizzled, whiskey-and-smokes vocals and his grooved-out guitar tones, so a new Obsessed album is always going to attract my interest. One of the few still-active metal musos who is actually older than me (he is 63 at the time of the album's release), Wino is unlikely to be springing too many surprises on his audience at this stage and, indeed, Gilded Sorrow is exactly what I would have expected from a new Obsessed album. This, of course, doesn't detract from whether it is any good and, for me as a long-time fan, it delivers all I could wish for from the band. The band is pretty much Wino & Co. now, drummer Brian Costantino being the only remaining member from previous album, 2017's Sacred, bassist Dave Sherman having passed away in 2022 and being replaced by the fairly unknown Chris Angleberger. Wino has also added a second guitarist, Sierra's Jason Taylor, to handle rhythm guitar duties.

This new band sound terrific, as tight as any iteration that has gone before, and with a top-knotch production job they sound better than ever. The groove-laden, fuzzed-up riffs are some of the best Wino has contributed to the band and the songs seem to stick in the memory better than ever before. Lyrically it's great to see Wino hasn't mellowed any with age and still sounds as pissed off and confrontational as ever, determined to take no shit from anyone, with a track like "It's Not OK" railing against music biz rip-off merchants and the anti-war sentiments of "Stoned Back to the Bomb Age" sounding particularly meaningful to the guy. The title track is another one worthy of note, it has a cool psychedelic edge despite it generally having a hulking, menacing atmosphere that gives it a nice twist.

I know it's not usually cool to say a band in their fifth decade of existence have produced one of their best albums, especially in the oft-times elitist world of metal, but even though this has the occasional lapse, Realize a Dream doesn't hit quite as hard as the rest, when it is good it is really good. It's reassuring to hear that a long-established artist can still deliver the goods even so late into their career.

Darkspace is a vehicle for the impressive mind of Tobias Möckl, aka Wroth, aka Wintherr, the man behind Paysage d'Hiver and one of, if not the, premier exponent of frigid, frost-bitten atmospheric black metal, whether it be via the narrative journey of Paysage d'Hiver's Traveller through blizzard-riven forests or Darkspace's exploration of the icy voids of interstellar space.

It has been a decade since Darkspace last released any new material, while Wroth concentrated on Paysage d'Hiver, writing and recording the project's masterpiece Im Wald and then it's follow-up, Geister. Now that he has reached some sort of resolution with P d'H, he has been able to focus on Darkspace and this latest work, Dark Space -II. I think the minus 2 nomenclature is significant and places this latest piece before the very earliest Darkspace releases in the project's overall aesthetic timeline. This makes absolute sense, as it builds on elements from the early days, with Dark -1.0 from the first EP seemingly the base upon which the new album's sole track, Dark -2.-2 is built, the earlier work's ideas being expounded upon, resulting in an expansive forty-seven minutes reworking of it's icy ambience.

The track begins with an emotionless female voice intoning scientific or philosophical theses over ambient keys, which continues throughout the entirety of the piece, but comes to the fore as an introduction and during an interval between the piece's two major "acts". After a few minutes, this ambient introduction is joined by programmed drums and a chugging, chunky, industrialised guitar riff that is reminiscent of the one used on the track Dark 1.2 from the 2003 debut full-length and which here sounds similar to the riff of Rammstein's Links 1-2-3-4. This industrial-sounding riff and the monotone way the spoken words are delivered sees Wroth exploring a different kind of coldness here, with reference to emotional frigidity in addition to his usual dissection of merely physical iciness, illustrating perfectly how the two can be equally debilitating. Eventually his own desperate shrieks and subdued black metal riffing join the fray, although they are deliberately buried down in the mix so as to merely add a further layer to the already-established ambient texture rather than taking centre stage and leading the way.

Around twenty minutes in, the riff subsides and we are treated to an interval of sorts with the spoken word outpourings of our female companion on this interstellar trip once more moving to centre stage. A portentious piano theme then takes up the reins, joined by droning guitar chords and a deeper, gruffer vocal that is once more buried such that it acts more as a textural addition than any kind of narrative device. This second act does see some slow progression and does feature some slight building of atmosphere, right up to the piece's ultimate release which sees the return of the opening act's chugging industrialised riff for the finale and sees it ending in probably it's most "metal-sounding" section.

The overall effect of Dark Space -II's subjugation of the black metal elements in favour of the more ambient and textural, sees the band using the toolbox of black and industrial metal to produce what is essentially a drone metal album which has more in common with early Earth or Nadja than any resemblance to more traditional atmospheric black metal. Now I'm not sure how this will be received by the usual fans of Darkspace, although Wroth has dabbled in this more textural style before, but for myself as a lover of quality atmospheric drone metal, I can see many analogies between that style and what Darkspace have delivered here with Dark Space -II and I found it to be a rivetting experience with a refreshing approach to drone metal.

This was The River's first album since Jenny Newton replaced longtime vocalist Vicky Walters. This is a much gentler affair than their earlier releases, featuring a lighter sound with an airy post-rock influence, Ms. Newton's vocals being reedier and less powerful than Vicky Walters'. There's still a reasonable doom metal presence on the album, but it just seems somewhat neutered, certainly compared to 2006's Drawing Down the Sun, an album I loved and one of the premier female-fronted doom releases, but the focus seems to have shifted towards the post-rock crowd. Ultimately I've got to confess to feeling disappointed by this, maybe time and additional listens may make me more amenable to it's charms, but I was hoping for something with a bit more heft and edge with more doom and less ephemerality.

Contaminated are a death metal crew from Melbourne who have been around for more than a decade now, but who have only just got around to releasing their sophomore, following a full seven years after their debut, Final Man. The man behind the band is Lachlan McPherson who, amongst a number of other projects, is also behind grinders Rawhead, with Contaminated (like Rawhead) originally beginning life as one of his solo projects before being expanded into a full band after the release of his Pestilential Decay demo in 2014.

The band's debut was a cavernous-sounding, raw kind of affair and they have certainly taken huge strides production-wise with Celebratory Beheading. The sound is cleaner and clearer and although I would often see that as a downward step, I think it better fits what the band are trying to get across. The focus here is less on creating a foetid atmosphere than dealing out an object lesson in bruatality, less the lumbering menace of a threat unseen than the more immediate threat of a fist in the face. I guess that Lachy has brought across some of the inherent brutality from Rawhead's grinding, on which he had been concentrating in recent years, which has contributed to making Celebratory Beheading a much more aggressive and violent-sounding album than it's predecessor.

The individual tracks are quite dense, mainly due to a quite heavily distorted guitar sound and a powerful, pummelling drum performance from skinsman Christoph Winkler who is a member of several grindcore outfits such as Internal Rot and Incinerated, where he deals out blastbeats for fun. Vocals-wise, Lachy's bellowing is exceedingly aggressive and he often sounds like he could strip paint off your walls, if not actually tearing them down completely. It's not all hypercharged velocity, however and the band do like to shift down and hit a slower groove from time to time, to add some telling contrast to the more explicit violence of the hi-speed blasting, giving the listener time to gather themselves in preparation for the next blitzkrieg.

Ultimately, this is an album of no-nonsense, raucous death metal, with deathgrind leanings that makes no pretention to being anything other than that and successfully delivers on it's premise of out and out aural violence. Approach it as such and there is much to get your teeth into here.

I was impressed by these french industrial sludge-meisters' 2021 album, Pantocrator, and although their Privation album from last year somehow passed me by, I have been looking foward to this one for a while now. Riff-wise and with the general instrumentation, this bears a significant Fear Factory influence, with some pretty immense and sludgy machine-like riffing and harsh distortion that often sounds like the sound of escaping steam buried down within the mix. The tinniness of the programmed snares adds another layer to the dystopian, Blade Runner-esque atmosphere the band is (successfully) striving for. Within this evocative, machine-dominated atmosphere intrudes the only-too-human, angered vocals of singer Matthias Jungbluth whose hardcore-style delivery gives the album a sludge metal twist with his railing against the world the band have so vividly created lays bare the alienation of his soul. I don't think any language is better than French at sounding pissed-off and Matthias here sounds really pissed-off.

The Fear Factory comparison is more pronounced here, I think, because the band have sought to add more melodic hooks into their overall sound, rather than doubling-down on the alienating atmosphere of Pantocrator. Now this is an approach I would probably normally be sceptical about, but I think it still works here and the band manage to retain the atmosphere of their alienating machine-like rhythms, even though they sometimes give the listener more of a handhold into the album. Is it as good as Pantocrator? Probably not, I guess time will tell, but it is still worth the mere thirty minutes of your time you would need to spare to lend it your ear.

Come to this expecting another Spectrum of Death and you will certainly go away disappointed. I have long ago learnt to approach new releases by long-mothballed bands with a certain degree of cynicism, so I went into this with zero expectations.

Morbid Saint now contains three of the members from their Spectrum of Death days with vocalist Pat Lind and guitarist Jim Fergades rejoining the only ever-present member, guitarist Jay Visser, bassist Bob Zabel and drummer DJ Bagemehl. Swallowed by Hell is a very different proposition from Spectrum of Death, with the raw aggression of youth being replaced by production values several magnitudes higher and the songwriting and musicianship of long-serving professionals. This results in an album that is perfectly satisfactory and that has some decent riffs and a high level of professionalism, but that simply fails to engage on a second and more important level with the listener, that of the passionate performer appealing to the passionate listener. I believe that, as a metal fan, inside me I still have the passion and fire that once burned so brightly for all to see, but which age and the trials of live have dulled to the point where it can be very difficult to summon it to the surface once more and a certain detached cynicism often wins out over my more passionate tendencies. That is exactly how I think Swallowed by Hell has manifested, with the band believing they still have that fire and zest they exhibited so profoundly more than three decades ago, whilst secretly finding it increasingly challenging to bring it to the fore. So that leaves us with an album that is perfectly fine when considered in isolation, with some decent riffs, nice solos, a rhythm unit determined to batter us into submission and an angry and aggressive-sounding vocal performance. But we (and maybe even the band) know that it is, in reality, a facsimile of what the band were once capable of, a bit like a grizzled old bare-knuckled boxer who could still give the average Joe a heart-stopping wallop, but who would be turned into a bloody mess by younger and hungrier bucks looking to make a name for themselves.

All things considered, this could certainly be a lot worse and is by no means a disaster, but as I often wonder when faced with obviously inferior product from any certain band is why would I listen to this in preference to the classic? And the truth is, I don't know as I would, so whilst this would be fine for a few listens I don't feel it has any real staying power.

I am a man of unsophisticated taste, particularly in music, as illustrated by my indifference to the dissonant and avant-garde, jazz in particular being anathema to me. In relation to this, for the longest time I considered technical death and thrash metal as also outside my comfort zone, but a dive into the earlier years of death metal resulted in the discovery that a certain level of technicality was indeed something I could enjoy, as epitomised by the Death and Atheist back catalogues. There is, however, a degree of technicality beyond which I switch off as it becomes more and more "jazzy" as per Gorguts and their ilk.

Anyway, this lengthy preamble to a review of Norway's Sovereign is relevant as they play a technical style of deaththrash that sits right slap-bang in the middle of my sweet spot for technical metal whereby the technical flourishes are sufficient to bring variety and interest without pushing into a more jazz-adjacent territory that I am more uncomfortable with. To be more precise, they play thrash metal with tech-death aspirations, influenced by mid-period Death albums and possibly by the current South American thrash metal, particularly that of Chilean bands like Ripper, Demoniac and Slaughtbbath.

Although this is the band's debut full-length, they are not newbies, with members, or ex-members, of Stormbeist and Execration and with Nekromantheon's live guitarist, Tommy Jacobsen taking on lead duties, a duty he discharges with impressive aplomb. His leads are incendiary and thrilling, with a high level of dextrous competency, sitting squarely on the right side of shredding, becoming neither flaccid nor self-indulgent and reminding me a little of how James Murphy's work lifted Death's Spiritual Healing, which is meant as high praise indeed - check out the final minute of Nebular Waves for a stellar example. They may not be the tightest band to play technical deaththrash, but they are sufficiently skilled that a slight looseness makes them sound more passionate than the stifling necessity of technical perfection often allows for. They have some solid riffs with energetic songwriting that incorporates the technical flourishes to add colour to the tracks rather than becoming the whole raison d'être. This is definitely an approach I wholeheartedly endorse and it has resulted the band coming up with an album that just sounds better with each repeated listen and which is one of a select few brand new thrash albums not from South America that I will happily keep returning to.

Ah, Cuba, the home of the world's finest cigars, Twentieth century revolutionaries and the first, although in all probability not the last, potential flashpoint to nuclear armageddon. It is also the original home of Dakkar, the man behind black metal project Narbeleth, although he now calls Galicia in Spain home. It may just be my ignorance showing here, but I never heard of much of a metal scene in Cuba, yet it makes perfect sense for a band like Narbeleth, black metal being pretty much an outsider's style of metal, I would imagine Dakkar being very much an outsider in the Caribbean place of his birth.

Musically, Narbeleth are very much an old-school black metal act, with recognisable and memorable tremolo riffing in the style of luminaries such as Immortal and Satyricon, with a cover of the latter's "The King of the Shadowthrone" even closing out the album. The production isn't as raw as we would have expected from the band's influencers thirty years ago, but the modern production values don't rob the music of any of it's icy aggression and is such that it enables all the constituent parts to be heard clearly. Dakkar has a real ear for a frosty-sounding riff, with his true talent coming in knowing exactly when to throttle back the tempo and when to put his foot down, as it were. This transition between full-on blasting and a more mid-paced tempo provides a lot of the impetus and dynamism in his songwriting and is wielded exceedingly deftly. He also possesses one of those frost-rimed voices that has you imagining visible clouds of icy breath issuing from his lips as he shrieks his occult-heavy lyrics into the night sky.

I would also be remiss of me not to mention the second band member, Vindok, and his supporting role on drums, which he fulfills perfectly, providing a precise battery which injects added impetus to the faster sections and adds depth to the slower tempo parts. Nothing showy, but well-judged and effective black metal skinsmanship. All things considered, I found this to be an immensely enjoyable trip back to the 1990's black metal heyday, with a bit of a modern twist in the higher production values, but that manages to remain authentic-sounding and illustrating perfectly that you don't need to have grown up in the frozen forests of Scandinavia to be able to produce trve black metal frostiness.

I am unfamiliar with Ribspreader, but am acquainted with main man Rogga Johansson, particularly through one of his other bands, his death doom outfit, The 11th Hour. It seems that Rogga has acquired a reputation for producing predictable and uninspiring death metal, but as I am unfamiliar with the vast majority of his output, I will consider Reap Humanity on it's own merits.

With the band hailing from Sweden, I was fully expecting an Entombed / Dismember sounding album and whilst it isn't as heavily distorted as many of the band's compatriots, it does retain that Swedish wall-of-sound production that results in the riffs sounding exceedingly dense and doesn't depart hugely from the long-established template of Swedeath. As far as the riffs go, it is fair to say that there is nothing here that truly stands out as exceptional, yet by the same token there is nothing particularly terrible either. I do like Rogga's vocals, they have that gruff, caustic edge to them that sounds quite vitriolic and threatening, although at times they seem to get muscled out of the way by the riffing which sees them taking a bit of a back seat, where personally I would have liked to hear them pushed more to the fore.

The leads are handled by guitarist Taylor Nordberg and are well executed, although once more there isn't anything particularly outstanding to behold and you can pretty much predict the way the solos will play out. Drummer Jeramie Kling, who is also a member of Inhuman Condition with Obituary and former Death bassist Terry Butler, also puts in a creditable performance behind the kit with a lively exhibition of powerful death metal skinsmanship that helps to turbo charge the velocity of the riffing.

Overall, I would have to agree that the criticism of the band is valid and Ribspreader bring little to nothing new to the table, having turned in a solid, meat-and-potatoes-flavoured album of pretty standard Swedish death metal that is perfectly fine. The drumming and vocals were the big takeaways for me, but I suspect more seasoned fans of death metal than I will be largely unimpressed.

Inquisition have a distinctive sound, that's for sure, which is principally defined by Dagon's unique vocal style. His is less the role of traditional vocalist and more of narrator. With his virtually spoken-word, croaking approach he comes across like some twisted hobgoblin, perched atop a mossy boulder and expounding his cosmic satanic philosophies to any passing ear. Obviously this aspect of the duo's sound is as divisive as it is unique, although as I have become more familiar with it, it has become more of a welcome departure from the norm and less a source of irritation. In fact, on the couple of brief occasions when he resorts to clean vocals, Dagon's voice sounds even more weird and quirky than when delivering his usual croaks (Secrets from the Wizard Forest of Forbidden Knowledge, for example).

There isn't any real noticeable departure from their earlier material here, along with the vocals the duo have retained the lo-fi aesthetics and the swarming, buzzing guitar tone of their earlier work, along with the cosmic, satanist themes that they have explored throughout their nine full-length releases. The duo introduce some synth-driven overlays onto a couple of the tracks which I don't think particularly bring much worthwhile, sounding misplaced and robbing a track like "Memories Within an Empty Castle in Ruins" of it's momentum in my opinion.

I suppose Inquisition could be accused of repeatedly ploughing the same blackened furrow, thus making each subsequent release less and less relevant, but I think that their sound is sufficiently singular as to justify their approach, seeing as very few acts sound similar. It isn't like they are endlessly regurgitating tropes copied from someone else's work, but it is more a case of sticking with a unique-sounding formula and using it to explore the themes they find personally interesting. I suspect I would have enjoyed this more without the synths, but I was still swept along by it's distinctive, blasphemous atmosphere and it's memorable riffs, such as that on "Infinity is the Aeon of Satan", which even, dare I say it, bordered on the "catchy". If you are already familiar with the Colombians then I don't hear much that could change your mind about them, if you don't like them now then this won't convert you and vice-versa. For me, I would say to them "Lay off the synths" then all would be AOK.

Well, this is a real trip down memory lane, I must admit. I feel a bit unfair, reducing Saxon's latest offering to a mere nostalgia trip, but for me, that is definitely what it is - and in more ways than one. I can scarce believe that it is almost 45 years since I first encountered Saxon, supporting Motörhead on their 1979 Bomber tour, when both they and me were far more fresh-faced and less battle-scarred than now with entire futures ahead of us. Well, on the evidence of Hell, Fire and Damnation, the years have been kinder to the Yorkshiremen than to me and they are still seemingly able to call upon that youthful energy with some cracking classic heavy metal riffs, shred-like guitar solos and Biff shrugging off the years, his ability to belt-out the lyrics with siren-like power seemingly undiminished by time.

I was heavily into the NWOBHM scene at the time and Saxon were a huge part of that, but as the scene waned and those young bloods from the Bay Area revolutionised the metal sound, bands like Saxon suddenly seemed old hat and unable to compete with the heightened aggression and excitement that thrash metal brought to the table. So they, like many of their contemporaries, faded from my life, the gulf between us only being made wider by my discovery of even more extreme forms of metal in later years and Saxon faded into nothing but a distant memory. At least, that is until my attention was drawn to the band's 2018 album Thunderbolt which was a shot in the arm of modern-sounding, old-school heavy metal and opened my eyes to the fact that Biff and co still had what it takes to deliver a high-powered, vibrant and, above all, relevant heavy metal album. Admittedly I haven't kept up with Saxon's releases in the meantime, so six years and one pandemic on from Thunderbolt what have we got? Well, this is a step or two down from that top-level beauty and it does have a couple of clunkers on it, Madame Guillotine being the most egregious example, it just feels flat and a bit contrived, ending up somewhat less than thrilling to my ears, but a track like There's Something in Roswell is guilty of excessive clunkiness too. The opening Brian Blessed-voiced intro didn't help either. I like Brian well enough, but he is very difficult to listen to with a straight face and it is exacerbated by the fact that he is the voice of floor cleaner ads on TV here in the UK!

That said, the title track, which is the first proper track, is a glorious slice of triumphant, fist-pumping metal that takes all the pomp and circumstance of power metal and pares it down to what is important and leaves a shimmering core that rivals the band's heyday. Elsewhere Fire and Steel and closer Supercharger fair rattle along, reminiscent of the proto speed metal of Judas Priest's Exciter or multiple tracks on Painkiller. Kubla Khan and the Merchant of Venice, 1066 and Witches of Salem mine the historical themes so beloved of Steve Harris and have a similat grandiose feel to some of the tracks Harris penned for Maiden's last album, Senjutsu.

I mentioned earlier that this is nostalgic for more than one reason and the lyrics to Fire and Steel are an example of it, being a paeon to the hulking , smoke- and fire-spewing steelworks of England's disappeared industrial landscape. I myself live only a handful of miles from the site where one such industrial behemoth was once sited (now the headquarters of an online gambling company) where it was such a dominating presence over the city I inhabit. Elsewhere, on Pirates of the Airwaves the rose-tinted spectacles of nostalgia are used to examine the days of pirate radio when we used to try nightly to tune our radios to the unpredictable broadcasts of Radio Luxembourg in the hope of catching some decent rock music, which was unheard of on the legal radio stations and Supercharger brings back memories of a string of high-powered motorcycles and cars I spent all my cash on in my late teens and early twenties.

So, for me, this is a solid enough slab of trad metal with some tasty riffs, cool lead work, a frontman with a distinctive and undiminished vocal delivery but it is most notable for it's ability to propel me back forty-plus years and leave me with a wide, if somewhat wistful, smile on my face.

Malist is a solo project of Moscow's Ovfrost (Nick Kholodov) and isn't a project that I have followed too closely, but I did enjoy his 2020 album, To Mantle the Rising Sun, which was a well-done and enjoyable slice of melodic black metal. I have missed the two intervening albums, but here we are now with his latest, Of Scorched Earth. Whilst he is still ploughing the fertile melodic black metal furrow, there seems to be a greater influence from atmo-black that gives the tracks a more sweeping, grandiose quality. One trope in particular Ovfrost employs on multiple occasions here, is a calm, quieter core to tracks, with acoustic guitar strumming and a keyboard overlay, be it organ or piano, that acts as the still eye of the storm that contrasts with the heavy riffing and generally more frantic pace of the tracks either side of the still spot.

The songwriting indulges a fair bit of melodicism for a black metal album, yet I think it still retains enough of black metal's intensity and inherent savagery to satisfy all but the most demanding of BM kvltists. I suppose there are those who will bemoan it's clean production, pauses in intensity and melodic phrases, but there are more than enough passages where he lets himself off the leash, letting rip some frantic, black metal battery. For what it's worth, I would score this down a bit from the earlier To Mantle the Rising Sun, but it is nevertheless an interesting enough expression of melodic and atmospheric black metal, that has it's roots planted firmly here in the modern day and not back in the savagery of the 1990s.

Norwegian thrashers Sepulcher are back with their first release since 2018's well-received Panoptic Horror album. Veins of the Void is a sixteen-minute EP, featuring three tracks, Derealization, Cryogenic Sleep and the title track. The production has the band's usual pseudo-lo-fi feel - it isn't actually truly lo-fi, it is as if they deliberately want to give their sound a garage band aesthetic, whilst still using a modern recording set up. I'm not an expert on the genre, but I guess Sepulcher could well be tagged as a stenchcore band with this crusty production and the thrash, death and trad metal genre fusing on show.

Opener Derealization starts off with a looming, sludgy feel with a quite infectious riff before alternating between fast bursts of deathly aggression and lethargic slower-paced moroseness. Middle track Cryogenic Sleep is the shortest track here, running for a touch over two and a half minutes, and is a slice of adrenalised crossover thrash with an energetic fast tempo and a bouncy, punky riff to it. In truth that is the only track with any significant thrash content. The title track closes out the EP and has a deliberate, sludge-like pacing with a chunky riff, a quite groovy drum track, a weird guitar melody and Andreas Fosse Salbu venting his frustrations at all and sundry with his pissed-off, shouted vocals.

Whilst no classic, this is reasonably interesting and with a fair bit of it running at a slower tempo than usual I'm not sure if this EP is signalling a change in direction for Sepulcher, or if they are just clearing the decks ready for the next full-length.

For sure there are a couple of things I liked about Objects Without Pain, the guitar tone is nicely pitched and best of all the drums sound amazing. I could listen to an isolated drum track of this quite happily and would prefer to over the finished thing. Unfortunately I couldn't take to it other than that. The songwriting is too spasmodic for me, it veers far too much into mathcore, djenty type territory for my preference and although I really like the tone of the album, the actual songwriting leaves me cold. But the absolute killer for me is the vocals. I would be the first to admit that I probably put too much weight onto vocals but I think I am quite tolerant of some very divisive vocalists, Silencer, Cirith Ungol, King Diamond or Demilich for example, but if I take against a singer then it is like a movie with Adam Sandler in it and no matter how good the rest of the production, it still has Adam Sandler in it! Such is the case with Demian Johnston, his vocals amount to little more than shouting at the top of his voice and just come over like some angry child berating his parents for some perceived injustice and which I find wearisome in the extreme. I don't have an issue with shouted vocals per se, but these are just irritating and off-putting to me to the degree where, by the second half of the album, my mind is wandering and I have pretty much tuned out. I seem to be a minority of one and good luck to those who derived far more enjoyment from it than I was able to muster, but this just isn't one for me I'm afraid.

Hauntologist are a post-black metal duo from Kraków comprising Mgła drummer, Darkside, and multi-instrumentalist, The Fall (Michał Stępień), Mgła bassist and backing vocalist for live performances. Hollow is the duo's debut full-length and seems to have been met with mixed reactions, a lot which seems to be based upon people's attitude towards Mgła and how much this does or doesn't sound like them. I don't mind Mgła at all, but I have only heard Exercises in Futility which I enjoyed, but not as much as many others did I suspect and so I'm going to buck the trend and take Hollow on it's own merit, not by it's comparison to another project.

I found this to be pretty interesting and hugely entertaining to boot, which may not be enough for some who need their world to be turned upside down by every release, but is more than enough for me. I often find post-metally BM to be a bit of a bore, to be honest, and went into this with a little bit of trepidation, but it kept me rapt pretty much throughout with some nice twists and turns, the three-quarters of an hour runtime seeming much shorter, which is always a good sign. Fast, intense passages of blasting atmospheric black metal are complemented by contemplative and melancholy airs that temper the furiousness of the black metal sections with more reflective atmospheres. There is a certain harshness to the production, coupled with The Fall's ascerbic vocals and icy-sounding tremolo guitar lines that gives the overall aesthetic an inherent frostiness. Darkside's drumming is top knotch throughout whether it's his withering blastbeats or skillful fills that are to the forefront at any one time. The faster sections aren't just composed of layers of indistinguishable tremolo riffing either, but rather The Fall focusses on producing cool and memorable riffs rather than just continuously swamping us with "atmosphere". Elsewhere there are the folky acoustic guitar and clean vocals of the title track and the gothic, post-punk vibe of Gardermoen but these sit well within the overall structure of the album and aren't at all distracting or obtrusive, giving the album a freshness of perspective. The album closes out with a gently self-reflective spoken word piece that leaves the listener slightly wrong-footed and provoking them to reconsider what they have heard during the previous three-quarters of an hour.

Overall this is a fine album of modern atmospheric black metal that draws on the tropes of post-metal and introduces influence from other, non-metal genres whilst still acknowledging the power of the riff in metal. It isn't very challenging to listen to and is, in fact, very easy on the ears, but I don't view that as an issue personally. The length is just about right and keeps things focussed with no tendency towards self-indulgence that may have blighted a lengthier runtime.

According to RYM I have listened to over 1500 doom metal releases, so I think I can be forgiven for feeling a little jaded when approaching most new doom releases, particularly those coming out at the start of the year when, for some reason, the quality isn't always the greatest and especially by little-known acts who have been plugging away to little or no acclaim for years. Parisian four-piece, Mourning Dawn, are exactly one such act and their new album, the oddly titled The Foam of Despair, tagged as a Doom / DSBM hybrid, didn't exactly have me trembling with anticipation either. So, by the time opening track, Tomber du temps, came to an end, I was pleasantly surprised to find myself with a big stupid grin on my face as I was completely won over and enchanted by the preceeding ten minutes of downtuned bliss. Actually the original tags were a bit off the mark, The Foam of Despair is not black metal by any stretch and whilst it is rooted in doom metal it is really an album which should come under the atmospheric sludge umbrella and one which is given a freshness by pulling in additional influences from the likes of gothic and industrial metal.

That opener that so grabbed my attention has some really infectious riffing coupled with Laurent's howling vocals and a post-metal structure that plants it firmly in the atmo-sludge arena. What elevates it though, is some really nice soaring guitar soloing and spoken word interjections (an effective trope the band use several times throughout the album) that impart a melancholy air, with the cherry on the top being a reflective-sounding sax solo that closes out the track, bringing to mind some of the great work from Belgium's Messa.

Although Tomber du temps is the best track on the album, it is by no means downhill from here on in. Second track, Blue Pain, features a guest appearance by our old friend Déhà (who also mixed and mastered the album - how does he find time to sleep) who lends the track his desperate-sounding howls to provide a bit of a twist to what is otherwise a slab of Paradise Lost-inspired gothic metal. Borrowed Skin, the album's longest track, delves into the atmo-sludge playbook with a layered build to it and featuring some fine percussion work from drummer Nicolas Joyeux, the track's emotional tides rising and falling from becalmed quiet to looming and towering anguished waves, the only niggle here being the rather abrupt fade-out at the track's ending (which is also the case elsewhere with Suzerain).

Apex has a plodding chug to it that gives me an industrial metal vibe, albeit not as obviously as on closer Midnight Sun which goes full-on industrial with Nicolas Joyeux once more featuring with some imposing-sounding metallic percussion hammering away like Vulcan's Forge itself. Elsewhere Suzerain has a nice bass-heavy chugging throb with, once more, those solemn spoken word vocals and The Color of Waves is a depressive and desperate-sounding slice of post-metal atmospheric building.

The production is crisp with all the band members' contributions being readily distinguishable and allowing their inherent technical ability to shine through. However, the biggest plaudits go out to these frenchmen for their mature and interesting songwriting that encompasses multiple genres and forges them into a coherent and flowing whole, providing a compelling listen for fans of atmospheric and emotionally-charged metal and has made this my first must-hear album of 2024.

Sardonic Witchery is a solo project of Portugal's King Demogorgon (Ricardo Mota) who used to be one half of black metal duo Infernal Kingdom. After a, frankly awful, intro, King drops the hammer on some reasonable blasting black metal with riffs that sometimes fly close enough to traditional metal that they almost come over as black 'n' roll. He has quite an acerbically harsh, roaring style of singing that comes across more as angry than evil at least until Merciless Warrior of Steel when he just sounds hokey as he tries to pull off some kind of Tom G Warrior-like "death grunts".

The production of the album is good, with the bass lines being nicely presented and boosting the riffs well, although the snares are pushed forward and get a little bit annoying after a while. There's not really a whole lot more to say, this is a decent enough piece of black metal that is best when it's blasting hardest, but which is also prone to fly close to black 'n' roll grooviness with trad metal influence shining through and some inherent cheesiness. As such it treads familiar ground, albeit mostly with professional aplomb. There aren't really enough stand-out moments that will keep you wanting to respin this, with the duo of Barbaric Bastards of Mass Destruction and Horizon's End being the section that meritted most attention from me and had me wishing the quality of those two tracks was reproduced throughout the album's almost forty minutes rather than being confined to a mere ten. So, ultimately I guess, it will end up on the pile of releases of the year marked "solid if somewhat unremarkable black metal" - and I am sure it won't be the last.

Another quality outfit from the Chilean metal scene, death metal four-piece, Deconsekrated, have now unleashed their debut album upon the world. They aren't reinventing the wheel here, or really doing anything that hasn't been done hundreds of time before, but it is skillfully executed and full of vitality and energy, with the occasional breakdown into a more considered death doom pacing providing tempo variation. Vocalist Gûl Evokator has a harsh barking growl that gives the vocals a convincing howling abyss-demon quality that sits very well within an old-school-influenced death metal context. Alongside that there are a couple of ritualistic-sounding ambient, chanted parts in the intro, "Invocation" and the first part of the album's longest track, "Litany of the Blasphemous". Mostly though, it must be said, this is pummelling, no frills, blasphemous death metal, a style of DM that I am very much at home with and can appreciate for it's lack of pretension and focus on providing neck-wrenching blasts to inspire even the most reticent of moshpits.

The production is spot-on with the riffs sounding beefy and precise, aided by the muscular rhythm section of bassist Fides Naash and drummer Rigor Mortis (something tells me these guys may be using pseudonyms) who sounds at times like he is pounding on the inside of the listener's own skull! Guitarist Agorh Skullptor unleashes the odd short, Slayeresque solo, but nothing indulgent or ill-fitting to distract from the impending battery. There are plenty of lines to be drawn to OSDM classics like Mental Funeral, or Diabolical Conquest, but with a more modern production which may not deliver the full cavernous experience, but does sharpen up the riffs and provide a sharpness to the sound that gives it a focus away from a deathly, foetid atmosphere and more onto musical precision. The strength of chilean metal is that it shows a reverence for metal's former glories whilst unafraid to adopt a modern approach and production that ensures that the material has relevance. And so 2024 kicks off in solid style with the chilean scene showing exactly why it is growing in reputation within the metal world.

Árstíðir Lifsins have become one of my favourite pagan black metal bands over the last few years, mainly due to the quality of their two Saga á tveim tungum (Story in Two Languages) albums and their ability to craft sweeping nordic epics that stir the blood and lift the soul. Their latest release, Hermalausaz, supposedly an EP, consists of two lengthy tracks, Ýrr and Þistill, with a total runtime of over forty minutes, which once again illustrates the Icelanders' ability to compose saga-like epics as befits their own cultural heritage. The lyrics are written in Old Norse poetic form, as were the sagas of old and are, as is revealed on the EP's Bandcamp page, "inspired by the runic inscription of the western Norwegian Eggja rune stone", which is a rune-carved grave-covering from around 650-700 CE, the runes upon which tell the tale of a shipwreck caused by a mighty sea-creature and the journey of the lost to the land of the dead.

The instrumentation is first and foremost powerful and epic-sounding black metal, with quite a thick bottom end over which the tremolo riffing can sweep and soar and featuring a variety of vocal styles from throaty, shrieking howls to harmonised, baritone nordic chants. The pummelling double kick drums and punishing blastbeats of Árni Bergur Zoëga's drumming propel the tracks along with an intense fury borne of raw, old-school black metal. However, interspersed within this sweeping, metallic maelstrom are folk-inspired, mournful-sounding acoustic sections, that are mercifully bereft of the inherent cheesiness often associated with folk metal, but rather serve as tonal contrasts, representing the rising and falling of the narrative threads within the tales and allowing moments of respite from the black metal intensity. Other times a slower, melodic theme will take over, often with a piano or keyboard accompaniment, to introduce a different narrative thread and further variety within these epics' tonal pallette.

I see Árstíðir Lifsins very much as the torch-bearers for a narrative style of black metal championed by Enslaved on their early releases such as Vikingligr veldi's "Lifandi lif undir hamri" and Eld's "793 (Slaget om Lindisfarne)", although those were more stripped-back than Hermalausaz' powerful-sounding production, there is still a direct line of epic-storytelling running from one to the other. With only three members and only two being instrumentalists, the music Árstíðir Lifsins' put out is testament to the technical proficiency and adaptability of the band members, sounding like a veritable horde of norse heroes on a musical rampage through some poorly-defended coastal enclave. A massively underappreciated band with a glorious and epic vision of what they are about and the music they want to produce, I hope they ultimately get the praise they deserve.

Richmond three-piece, Lair, are back with their sophomore, four plague-ridden years after the self-titled debut. They play bereft and pissed-off sounding sludgy doom metal that sounds very much like a band with an axe to grind about many things, but particularly the bleakness and futility of existence, so if you come into this with a sunny disposition, then don't expect to leave it feeling the same!

First off, it does plug into the post-pandemic, confused and bereaved mental space very well, giving vent to a hopelessness and desperation borne of things out of one's control as expressed in heavy, towering and slothful riffs, primitive-sounding drum beats and a vocalist who's throat-wrecking howls to the sky are the epitome of bleakness. So, if that doesn't float your boat then you are definitely looking up the wrong alley here, but for those who worship at the altar of acts like Eyehategod, Acid Bath or Toadliquor, then come on in my red-eyed friend and pull up a chair. OK, so the vocals do become a bit samey and you find yourself wishing for a change in delivery or inflection and the riffs aren't the most inventive, but this type of sludgy doom is more about the overall aesthetic than individual moments, the repetitiveness seeking to add layer upon layer of despondency upon the listener to achieve that atmosphere of alienation, desperation and anger, that anger being the prime ingredient of good sludge metal I would suggest. Even saying that, this isn't completely monolithic, with an instrumental breather in Something’s at the Door, it's gentler sound setting up the faster, almost death metal of (To Step Into) A Noose of One’s Own. Although normal service is soon resumed and they get back onto the dreary, doom-laden and sludge-filled treadmill for the final three tracks.

The Hidden Shiv is a fairly solid slab-o'-sludge that ticks a lot of the right boxes and, in all fairness, is growing on me the more I listen to it, but I wouldn't speak of it in the same tones as the earlier-mentioned sludge flag-bearers. But that said, they have come on a fair bit since I last checked them out via their 2018 EP "In Exile" and they are definitely moving in the right direction.

Sunn O))) were formed in 1998 by Goatsnake's Greg Anderson and Stephen O'Malley, who was looking to form a new outfit after the splitting-up of Burning Witch, their name intended as a pun on Earth's moniker as the drone pioneers were huge influences on Anderson and O'Malley. The Grimmrobe demos were released in 2000 as the band's debut release, with the duo's worship of all things Earth resulting in the album containing a track called "Dylan Carson" after the Earth mainman. The sound on Grimmrobe Demos is heavily based upon that explored by Carlson on Earth's debut, the seminal "Earth 2: Special Low Frequency Version" with super-slow tempos, heavily distorted and downtuned guitar tones and feedback, all designed to present a monolithically towering sound with which to swamp the listener. Drums are entirely absent as there is no percussion required here, the tempo being so slow and crawling as to render any sort of timekeeping irelevant. Even for Sunn O))) there is little variety offered here, these are unflinchingly slow and crushing primal soundscapes, with zero evidence of the experimentation the duo were to introduce on some of their later releases. This is the music of nature, the music of tides, the music of tectonic plate movements and I imagine, in my more fanciful flights of fancy, that this is what it would sound like if you could get close enough to a star to hear those awe-inspiring cosmic furnaces burning off their plasmic fuel.

I have touched on elsewhere how busy experimental and technical metal often causes me difficulties because of the challenges I often experience with sensory overload, well Sunn O))) are a perfect antidote to that for me, these bassy and monolithically repetitive aural experiences enveloping like a comforting blanket, providing a calming and meditative experience that I don't often find elsewhere. I get it that these guys really aren't for everyone, or even most people, but they are amongst some of the best at what they do and personally I would hate to live in a world where Sunn O))) didn't exist.

I cannot lay any claim to being a source of much knowledge when it comes to death metal, having come to it quite late on. I turned away from metal during the nineties and was listening to hardly any, let alone the burgeoning death metal scene, at the time of the release of Neuropath's two demos in '95 and '96 that make up the contents of this compilation. Luckily for us all, we have the inside track on this release from the horse's mouth, so to speak, in the shape of Academy co-creator Daniel, lead guitarist and songwriter with the Sydney brutal DM pathfinders. From the CD liner notes and the interview with Hessian Firm, it is apparent that Daniel and vocalist Mark see the evolution between the earlier demo, Nefarious Vivisection, and the later, Desert of Excruciation, as a quantum leap in both technical and songwriting abilities. I certainly would not disagree with this assessment as the technical skills on show are obviously much improved and the songwriting has matured with an increased emphasis on technicality and complexity that is testament to the hard work and dedication that the guys put into the band during what amounts to just a few months between the recording of the two demos.

Now I don't know if Daniel and the rest of the band may consider this blasphemous, but I must sheepishly admit that I like the tracks from Nefarious Vivisection a bit more than the Desert of Excruciation material. I guess it has become apparent that I am a bit of a caveman when it comes to my taste in metal, the more technical, avant-garde, experimental stuff often leaves me cold and I would much rather have something relentlessly brutal and bludgeoning than any number of time-changes and finger-knotting guitar leads and to this end Nefarious Vivisection fills my criteria perfectly. The filthy-sounding riffs stick in my head better than the more complex stuff of the DoE tracks, Masticated Cadaver and the closer here, Rectal Palpitation, being the favourites that stick with me most. Then the clincher is the absolutely fucking brutal vocals supplied by Mark that are some of the best death metal vocals I have ever heard, rivalling Reifert, Vincent, Chuck and even Demilich's Antti Boman.

I really love digging through early metal demos and, sure, there are a lot of poorly-recorded shit out there, but sometimes you find a genuine pearl or two and I would suggest that is exactly what we have here, a rugged, uncut death metal diamond.

Cirith Ungol were originally formed in 1971 and split in 1992 after releasing a string of reasonably well-received albums. They reformed in 2015 like so many other legacy bands, but unlike a lot of those their first album after reforming, 2020's Forever Black was actually pretty good. Three years later the guys are back with another offering, having once more defied the odds and turning in a terrific album that is even better than Forever Black and stacks up pretty well against the band's '80's "classics", King of the Dead and One Foot in Hell which is good going for a band that is over fifty years old.

Dark Parade is chock full of hooky riffs that stick in the memory and give us old metalheads some decent headbanging action, often switching down gear to a more considered, almost trad doom, pacing to give our aging neck muscles some respite. The riffs aren't all there is to DP though, there is plenty of nifty and often extended soloing that should satisfy the most demanding of six-string enthusiasts, in a couple of places reminding me a bit of Blackmore's brilliant soloing during Rainbow's Stargazer, especially on second track Relentless and the later Sacrifice. The Blackmore reference isn't the only Deep Purple related influence though, the fast section of the album's epic Sailor on the Seas of Fate, with it's soaring keyboard overlay takes me back to the days of Highway Star and Burn.

Of course you can't talk about Cirith Ungol without addressing the elephant in the room that is Tim Baker's vocals, his screeching style not being to everyone's taste. Personally I have got used to him and now even view him as having a distinctive and unique style that works really well on it's own terms. But even if you aren't the biggest Baker fan, I think you would find his singing less irritating here, maybe age has mellowed his voice to a degree and rendered it less grating.

All in all this is a really good trad metal album that flaunts it's roots whilst still sounding modern and vital, which is quite a feat for a band four-fifths of whom are well into their sixties (yes even older than me). Gives me great hope than metal blood never fades!

First off, I have to say that this is an enjoyable slab of metal but, in truth, it isn't really any more than that and I'm not sure I can get onboard with all the hype that has been behind this release. I think people are playing up the black metal content because, beyond the shrieking vocal style I don't think there is too much by way of black metal here. What it is is high-octane speed, thrash and good old heavy metal with a shit-ton of energy and vibrancy that exploits an assosciation with black metal by utilising black metal vocals, allowing an out-of-fashion musical style some relevancy within the modern metal scene.

Obviously James McBain, the sole muso behind Hellripper, is one hell of a talented guy and he can write riffs and hooks seemingly effortlessly as he glorifies fist-pumping metal hedonism, to which end his soloing is energetic and over-the-top. He certainly can't be accused of being boring or lacking ideas, but maybe therein lies the rub. It feels ocasionally like a pick'n'mix metal comp of Eighties worshipping retro-metal bands where every track works really well in isolation, but when consumed all together it becomes a bit too much. The only truly consistent factor is James' shrieking black metal vocals which do work very well in most instances.

Like I said at the start this is enjoyable stuff and I feel like a bit of a curmudgeon for saying it, but I really can't feel it enough to get me reaching for those higher scores. Maybe it just doesn't chime 100% with what I look for in my metal listening nowadays but it can't be ignored and has rightly has earned much praise for it's creator.

Taake mainman Hoest is an interesting and somewhat underappreciated contributor to the history of Norwegian black metal. Beginning the band in Bergen as Thule in 1993 he has been around that infamous scene since it's earliest days. Whilst undoubtedly taking his cues from those raw, primal black metal beginnings, he has always been an artist who treads his own path. He has never shied away from longer tracks, having several clocking in around ten mibutes, but here he goes all-in with the album's 42 minutes being taken up by just four tracks, with opener "Denne forblaaste ruin av en bro" and following track, "Utarmede gruver" running into each other and coming off as one long twenty-minute-plus epic.

The album is jam-packed with tremolo-picked riffs that are generally quite catchy and melodic, yet Takke's skill is in not making it sound at all like a melodic black metal album and believe me when I say that this is jam-packed with riffs then you had better believe it, the tracks switch from riff to riff like a hyperactive toddler in a Coca-Cola factory. Despite his riffs incorporating influences from everything from trad metal to post-punk, he still imbues them with enough true black metal rawness to leave no one in any doubt that this is indeed a norwegian black metal album. That aesthetic is more than ably reinforced by Hoest's searing, screeching vocals, that provide that quintessentially authentic nordic black metal vocal experience and leave you in no doubt as to what type of album you are listening to.

The opening diptych is followed by the album's shortest track, Gid sprakk vi, which is the most obviously black metal of the tracks here, it's icy blasting reaching reaching for us through the years from the time of Darkthrone's unholy trilogy and producing a shiver down the spine of real black metal afficianados. That blast of nostalgia is followed by the closer and the album's longest single track, Et uhyre av en kniv. This has a progressive feeling to it with an overarchingly melancholic atmosphere, sounding to me a bit like something you may have heard from Ihsahn early in his solo career.

In summation I would say that Hoest has pulled off quite the trick here, releasing an album that is atmospheric, melodic and progressive, but that wears the monochromatic clothes of blistering and raw true norwegian black metal, leaving the listener with a decidedly original experience. I don't suppose this will receive too much attention but it really should as I think it is a wonderously creative slice of modern black metal that appeals to me far more than the preponderance of unlistenable dissonant and avant-garde black metal that everyone seems to be championing nowadays.

For me, Isole have been on a bit of a downward trajectory since their late-2000s high water mark and listening to Bliss of Solitude and latest release, Anesidora, back-to-back gives an illustation of why. The latter release feels stripped of any real emotional weight, with the band seemingly seeking a sound more palatable to the mainstream, stoner doom crowd.

So, enough of what went wrong and let us focus on what the band were doing well fifteen years ago, with Bliss of Solitude and it's follow-up Silent Ruins. After forming in 2004 the Swedes released a couple of solid doom metal albums in 2005's Forevermore and '06's Throne of Void, but it was with 2008's Bliss of Solitude that they found themselves nearing the summit of the doom metal mountain. Obviously they were influenced by Candlemass' bombastic style of epic doom metal, but that was certainly not the full extent of what Isole were about, that bombast being tempered by a sorrowful, emotionally resonant side like that being displayed by the likes of Patrick Walker's Warning. The result of this for a release like Bliss of Solitude is that it sounds at once romantically triumphant, but also heart-rending and mournful, like the emotions of the victors of a savage battle won at great cost.

The production is spot on and producer, drummer Jonas Lindström (also of Ereb Altor), have fashioned a perfect guitar sound, being at once huge and weighty whilst still possessing a sorrowful emotion that also keeps it quite personal-sounding. Additional weight is provided by the thundering basswork and Lindström's well-pitched drumming, which act as a perfect foundation for the emotionally-charged dirges of the riffs. The band employs dual guitarists / vocalists in Daniel Bryntse and Crister Olsson, their style of esoteric, layered clean vocals being another source of the album's essential melancholy, particularly on a slower, more inward-looking track like "Imprisoned in Sorrow" or "Dying".

There is a classiness to Isole's best work, of which this is definitely an example, to which not all doom bands are able to aspire. This isn't just about playing super-slow riffs, dragged-out to inordinate lengths, but it is about portraying sadness and sorrow in a relatable and humanly resonant way, being able to express negative emotion in a manner that hints at both redemption and hope without sounding trite or insincere. Bliss of Solitude is a classic slab of emotionally-charged doom metal that deserves a larger share of the praise that is heaped on lesser releases.