Geheimnisvoll - Pale Triumph of the Hidden Flame (2026)

Now growing with the quiet assurance of a project settling into its own mythology, Geheimnisvoll's second full-length album moves with the confidence of a craftsman well into adherence to habit. 

Pale Triumph of the Hidden Flame is just over half an hour long, and offers Finnish-inspired melodicism that permeates across all its seven tracks, yet for better or for worse, rarely mutates. The production leans decisively toward clarity, especially compared to previous releases, and vocals remain steadfast in tone - melodic black metal on instinct, or rather, autopilot.

Weaknesses are difficult to pinpoint, but so are moments of ascension. Each track advances on familiar paths, always guided by an underground ethos, but there's a constant resistance to revelation, while at least also avoiding failure. Geheimnisvoll does not invest on an abrasive edge, as the album's guitar lines glide with a surprising warmth beneath the intended chill.

Aesthetically coherent, but possibly too recognizable, Pale Triumph of the Hidden Flame is pleasant enough for a melodic black metal album, but also only modestly effective. I wouldn't find a highlight moment or track even if I wanted to, but it's all enjoyable enough to leave a positive aftertaste. For fans only.

Rating: 3/5

Bronze Hall - Embers of the Dawn (2026)

Finnish output Bronze Hall from loses no time after their notable debut, Honor & Steel (2025), and comes out with a well-versed follow-up of heavy-inclined, epic black metal. 

A lot of influences, from Macabre Omen to Nokturnal Mortum, and of course the legendary viking metal era of Bathory, come to mind - tracks vary from three to almost ten minutes with a dusty production exemplary of the underground sound. 

Build-up are often used in the form of acoustic guitars (e.g. in the awesome opening track "Embers of Remembrance", and "In Northern Twilight"), classic dungeon synth atmospherics (e.g. on "Call of Steel"), or dimmer dark ambient (e.g. on "Ravaging Flames", which has an absolutely menacing tempo right after). 

The longest piece "Galloping in the Sunlight's Embrace" has all Bronze Hall can offer, from the dungeon synth opening texture to the amazing, middle-paced black metal melodies and the more abstract, higher-thrill ending to close the album. 

There's bits and bites of brilliance all over this record, from the shortest "Night's Black Wings" (one of my favorites, even though the least ambitious) to the guitar work on these longer compositions. I consider this an improvement on the project's debut, and a must-listen for fans of aforementioned references and artists.

Rating: 3.5/5

Krallice - Dimensional Bleedthrough (2009) Review

 

 Hands and knees grasping earth 

My first interaction with Krallice was right in the middle of my adolescent years and exactly at the time when my perception of black metal was taking form. Hence, looking at a band with colored contemporary art, a rounded logo and an arguably anti-frostbitten sound was a challenge to the traditionalist establishment on hold of the genre, which still didn't stop me from exploring the band when the self-titled album (2008) and Dimensional Bleedthrough (2009) were released. 

Fleshgod Apocalypse - King (2016) Review

Breathing the soul of the slain in battle

In the old forum era and during the time of Fleshgod Apocalypse’s first years of activity, it was a joke how they “put a photo of their drummer on the cover of the Mafia EP”. Word was for the incredible percussion technician Francesco Paoli and how special his contribution was to the band’s debut full length-album Oracles in 2009, as well as the EP that followed - but that wasn’t the only aspect that made them stand out. Mixing the gut-punch immediacy of technical death metal with a classical flavor, the project was an ambitious experiment in synthesis from day one. Following a trajectory defined by increasing integration of these classical textures in Agony (2011), and even more so in Labyrinth (2013), the blood-stained tuxedo gang from Italy were traversing a familiar path when King dropped in 2016. 

Whitechapel - The Valley (2019) Review

 I can't erase these memories, but I will erase humanity

Up to 2019, deathcore veterans Whitechapel from Knoxville perfected but never questioned the vocabulary that helped define the genre’s first major wave from the mid ‘00s and onward. While the band’s earlier work leaned on archetypal lyrical violence and sharpened musical blunt force, The Valley seriously shook the waters as a fundamental reorientation of their career. Explicitly autobiographical, it’s a deeply personal concept album built around the real-life childhood of vocalist Phil Bozeman, and chronicles his upbringing in Hardin Valley (Tennessee), a landscape marked by loss, mental illness and instability. Embedded in the textual architecture of the record are his father’s death when he was ten, as well as his mother’s struggle with alcoholism and schizophrenia before her overdose several years later, often drawing directly from her journals and charging the album a documentary gravity that’s a rare bird in extreme metal. The “valley” itself functions both as the literal setting of where he grew up, but also as a metaphor for the burden of emotional desolation.