Funebrarum - Beckoning the Void of Eternal Silence (2026) Review

After 17 years of anticipation, the dream has finally become reality. Among the countless bands and albums of the "cavernous" death metal movement throughout the 2010s, Funebrarum's first two albums have been endlessly cited as predecessors and essential points of reference. Their 2009 masterpiece, The Sleep of Morbid Dreams, in particular (alongside Dead Congregation's Graves of the Archangels), is so complete that it almost renders further listening of this genre unnecessary. You don't feel the need to listen to anything similar once you have consumed it. 

Grabunhold - Frostheim (2026) Review

I remember anticipating Heldentod eagerly in 2021, due to the great impression I had of German outlet Grabunhold from their 2019 EP, Unter dem Banner der Toten. The debut album proved remarkable, and the band continued on a positive note with 2023's split release with Circle of Shadows, slowly drafting their own continuous landscape of Tolkien-inspired, triumphant and vigorous black metal. Half a decade after the first album, Frostheim is still characterized by mystique of the old world, winter imagery, and a higher than average aptitude for guitar-fronted melancholy in darkness buried deep, beyond all towers strong and high, beyond all mountains steep.

Pharmacist - Vertebrae After Vertebrae (2026) Review

There ain't a more entertaining early Carcass-worshipping force in the modern underground than Tokyo-based duo Pharmacist (among the many, a lesser known but totally admirable case is Finland's Galvanizer). The band has been around since 2020 and immediately made impact with the scene through the debut Medical Renditions of Grinding Decomposition, a true grindfest of grotesque medical imagery and pathological terror in the most Symphonies-of-Sickness-esque manner possible. While having been quite active until 2022 with another full-length album and several mini-releases, a four year break (an eternity in goregrind time) was taken before the release of third record, Vertebrae After Vertebrae - another round of valuing disgust as a charm.

Godless - Adversus Parousia (2026) Review

For me, absence never killed momentum. Despite being active since the late '90s, Chile's Godless released their debut full-length album in 2010, and circle back to studio action 16 years later with the second album, Adversus Parousia, having sparsely released only a handful of EPs and demos in between these three decades. My first experience with the band was on the Omega Omnipotens EP (2017), which left me an impression good enough to explore previous material, but I still almost didn't recognize it's the same band when I glanced at the news of Adversus Parousia earlier this year. The record's kernel, if you haven't already guessed, is one of archaic death metal, with a bombastic delivery and an undeniable South American harshness embedded to it.

Ivory Altar - Of the Land and the Woodman (2026)

 

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Mansvara - Sable Odes to Nihility (2026) Review

Since the earliest days, Polish black metal has maintained a firm presence in the underground scene and has notably evolved its psychological darkness over the years. What once was an obscure force of paganism and profanity later gauged interest into the avant-garde, the melodic and the theatrical, with a few names eventually landing their feet well into the mainstream. The younger generation of bands has a lot to absorb from their national markers, but it would be a mistake to assume you know what to expect. Fresh blood Mansvara formed last year and have already garnered enough firepower for their debut full-length album, Sable Odes to Nihility, a carefully organized black / death metal acrimony.

Eyes leering inward - Interview with Full of Hell

Watching Full of Hell continuously pile up on their fierce catalog has been a fascinating evolution to track. Over the last 15 years or so, the band has gone through the phases by always willingly re-structuring pieces of a large, fragmented grindcore / death metal / noise palette, as it seems they feed off the endorphins of bashing harder when the everyman would ease up. 

While laughing in the face of rigid genre categorization, their discography is rich as it is diverse, manipulating sounds that often saturate in volatility and suffocation. Older followers may remember our endearment for Trumpeting Ecstasy, and we've gone a long way since then in appreciating both their early, grind-driven first records, and their later more diverse and acknowledged works. 

On a talk with frontman Dylan Walker, we looked a little bit more into the details of creativity, collaborative appetite and the mindset behind one of extreme music's most hardworking bands.

Frozen Soul - No Place for Warmth (2026) Review

I've been really eager to listen to this album from the moment I saw this fantastic front cover: a step further than just encouraging your fans to play MTG during your live show is to adopt the aesthetics of the legendary game. The art of third full-length album No Place of Warmth by Fort Worth, Texas mammoths Frozen Soul features a fantasy-drifting art by James Bousema, who has a stunning RPG-inspired portfolio and has also designed actual MTG cards. As per proper promotion strategy, a few singles dropped before the release date and mistakes were made, in the sense of, checking a track before the album's out (something I usually never do). Then and there, I turned doubtful.

Looking at a band with a rather clear intent for larger and larger reception, choosing a weirdly murky production that is hard to appreciate if you don't have high-end equipment is an debatable decision. Instruments sound far from each other and the guitar tone is sort of a slapstick, revealing more of itself only under perfect conditions, while otherwise being too rough around the edges. This perception is boosted by how simplistic the compositions are, and essentially left out there exposed by the record's mixing. To me, No Place for Warmth sounds like what musicians and producers think old school death metal with a radically natural production would sound like. If you have the chance, choose best headset possible to listen and enjoy it.

The album's eleven tracks barrel through in about 36 minutes of direct, mostly middle-paced death metal that's effective at a handful of moments, never unforeseen and often indolent due to a familiarity that's more to its detriment than credit. One of its most engaging moments immediately hits with the opening, self-titled track and the wonderful vocal addition of My Chemical Romance's Gerard Way (yes), who offers legitimate higher-pitched lines along Chad Green's usual inhuman growls. Tracks like "Ethereal Dreams" and "DEATHWEAVER" also succeed at feigning menace, adopting a cogent Bolt Thrower stance that Frozen Soul have re-iterated only that much across their whole discography. 

Even the presence of Robb Flynn (Machine Head) does little to salvage a track as generic as "Invoke War", and yet the rampaging bass and snare tone (again, remember to get a peak sound system) that erupts at the beginning of "Dreadnought" (with Devin Swank of Sanguisugabogg) are impactful enough to distract the listener from the otherwise substandard response of these compositions. Elsewhere, the slower tempos between "Chaos Will Reign" and "Eyes of Despair" tend to blur into indistinction if one excludes the hackneyed solo of the latter. Here, direct comparisons to previous efforts sadly favor the band's past. The penultimate piece, "Frost Forged", is a great example of a track aspiring for impactful conclusion, but frustratingly wears out halfway through and resorts to stereotypical one-note groove dragging.

Lastly, I am sure crowds will enthusiastically chant along the shouted lines of "Killin Time (Until It’s Time to Kill)" in concerts, but really this last track lands with a hook as thorough as the title's Scary Movie-level word play. For its guest appearances, guitar solos or extra little elements, previous albums had a punch I didn't find on No Place for Warmth, which often exalts hardcore grooves in a way that is meant to appeal to the hardcore sphere rather than to death metal fans. Time will tell, but this might be one of the most accessible death metal albums of the recent years and a possibly excellent entry listen for people unaware of the genre's dismal depths. With its real dungeon-crawl, dragons-and-sorcery vibe, and the neat pulp-fantasy sensibility, it is however worth to have a go with No Place for Warmth, which lands at a sweet spot that somehow doesn't let you be that mad at Frozen Soul in the end. 

Release: May 8th, 2026 | Century Media Records
Rating: 3 out of 5

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Immolation - Descent (2026) Review

Instances of monumental awe are so rare, that they remain unforgettable. Only at a handful of cases have I had so rapid a transition from analytical to overwhelmed when first listening to an album, one of them being my introduction to Immolation and their 1996 masterpiece, Here In After. For a band of this magnitude and everyone else, time has carried with it no small measure of change. To fast forward to the twelfth full-length album, Descent, bypasses a lot of context. Related at least to most recent affairs, it's the third installment in a loose thematic arc following Atonement (2017) and Acts of God (2022), in what seems to be a period of growth and opulence under the wings of Nuclear Blast Records. 

Everything about Descent is as formidable as the circumstances demand. Stunning artwork by Eliran Kantor reflects the album's hellish plunge into the complex of spiritual degradation and anti-religious sentiment, which Immolation discuss as adroitly as ever. The production sets the bar for modern crystalline extreme metal, and the record's duration has been adjusted to the algorithm-favored perfect ballpark of around 40 minutes, something I am sure they noticed and fixed compared to the slightly excessive length of Acts of God. Staggering precision in delivery and bona fide metaphysical suffocation by the band that itself shaped these landscapes of death metal.

I still find myself confronting a familiar paradox, listening to another admirable work by one of the genre's most meaningfully successful names ever, that somehow stops just short of arete. Immolation moves efficiently with a lean but expressive album that directly presents the rather specific elements that make them great, spearheaded by the idiosyncratic and dominating compositional style of guitarist Rob Vigna and the frightful growls of leader Ross Dolan. The band has never quite fitted the Tampa mold or the Stockholm royalty, and Descent is full of both aggressive and mournful guitar lines alongside marvelous solos on a multiplex of tempos, bending death metal's common sense with great aplomb.

Scanning through the tracks of the album, as systematically tailored for impact as they are, makes me miss the infernal darkness I was forced into with past releases. Descent gives me an impression that not an extreme amount of effort is required from Immolation to amaze the audience (including me), who now follow a familiar immediacy that forcefully works. The ominous clean guitar notes of the opening piece "These Vengeful Winds" rapidly announce the tone, as the track soon unleashes the first salvo of ferocious riffs and dissonant contours you know and love Immolation for. The tension of the album's first half speaks more to me, as both the notable "The Ephemeral Curse" and "God's Last Breath", or even more so the clearest highlight "Adversary", are the ones that tend to speed alterations and unfolding melodies the best.

For these standards, the mid-paced main guitar lines of "Attrition" are so catchy that you might miss just how stripped down to the basics the track is, and I felt the same for "False Ascent" as well as Descent's weakest, "Host". That's where Immolation is at their slowest, where they almost narrate the album's topics rather than fluently communicating them with kinetic energy through the tracks - it works only if I shut down part of my brain that tries to break each second of the composition down to its decisions. "Bend Towards the Dark" is still limited, but commendably more epic than adjacent tracks, while the highly discussed piano / guitar instrumental "Banished", is to me just a filler. 

Thankfully, Descent ends with the compulsive, punishing self-titled rocker and not only leaves a sweet aftertaste, it magically achieves what Immolation always does for me: whole fully enjoying the album despite the criticism. I have returned to it repeatedly these weeks with a feeling of certainty and comfort, proving it quite possibly may be one of my most-listened releases for the year. I don't even know what I think I expect from the band, if not a polished and potent record as this, maybe a little bit more uniform nerve, surprise, or a challenge. Taking into account the fantastic aesthetics, lyrical direction and their attachment to a cathartic presentation of worldview, it all ultimately coalesces into substance.

Raise these walls
Of blood and stone
This Kingdom you've built
Becomes our tomb

Release: April 10th, 2026 | Nuclear Blast Records
Rating: 3.5 out of 5