Vafurlogi - Gneisti af eldi Guðs (2026) Review

We're no strangers to the glory of the Icelandic black scene, which has always aimed for production of music with ever-present ferocity, and continental significance. Most of the bands active during the previous decade dominated my playlists of favorites, some of which I still consider recordings or such magnitude that elevates the whole genre. 

One could argue that one of the perpetrators of the movement was Svartidauði with their earliest demos in the mid 00s, then continued by numerous impressive bands, such as Sinmara and their 2014 debut, Aphotic Womb, as well as the more well-rounded continuation, Hvísl stjarnanna (2019).

Saidan - Fangdriller: Scars Beneath Memory's Wrist (2026) Review

This act has caused significant turbulence within the scene since its formation only a few years ago, yet in that short span it has already assembled a quite formidable catalogue of full-length albums. Saidan's frenetic brand of black metal, amplified by overwhelming melodicism and blended with the dismal aura of Japanese horror, has grown a large audience through the effectiveness of its riffing and mercurial style of songwriting. Evolution has been evident throughout their entire discography, with each release surpassing the last.

Devourment - Pious Impiety (EP, 2026) Review

After a seven-year void, Texas pioneers of brutal death metal, Devourment, have returned with a surprise new 12-minute EP that emphatically proves they haven't diminished an ounce of their purpose: absolute heaviness. The '10s saw the band releasing two albums with fairly different responses from the audience, yet I fully enjoyed both Conceived In Sewage (2013) and Obscene Majesty (2019), the latter being of course better.

 As with everyone else, I didn't see Pious Impiety coming, a three-track 7" of the band's relentless, trademark slabs of slam death, heavy in a way that suggests the band can take any kind of hiatus they want and still remain on point afterwards. 

Goetia - Mortuary Cult (2026) Review

 

I've known Washington D.C.'s Goetia for a while now and have enjoyed their series of highly regarded EPs from 2023 to 2025, bursting into the underground scene with a sort of boosted ferocity considering a band that barely existed a few years prior. 

 

Debut full-length album Mortuary Cult takes advantage of the momentum and embraces a straightforward yet highly volatile take on death metal, influenced by the classic era of the genre's birth and the style of heavy thrash's bands from the late '80s and start of the '90s.

Olhava - Memorial (2026) Review

I never quite ventured into Olhava's earlier works, and my introduction to the Russian atmospheric black metal duo came through the arresting artwork of 2022's Reborn, which was the reason that led me to discover their horizon-reaching interpretation of the genre. By 2024, the band had signed with Avantgarde Music and released the conceptual album Sacrifice, an album whose thematic touch appears to be further elaborated on their latest record, Memorial. 

Tracing back to Ladoga (2020), the "Ageless River" series of interlude tracks have functioned as connective tissue across the three albums, incrementally numbered throughout with Memorial advancing from X to XIII. In between these pieces, are four monumental compositions of elevated atmospheric black metal, injected with generous quantities of post-black and blackgaze sensibility, as well as ambient passages that appear frequently on the surface. The prevailing intensity of the record is of a kind more attuned to post-rock or post-metal fans, rather than to the freaks that dwell in the dungeons of black metal. Main tracks span from seven to above 20 minutes in duration, a structural approach entirely aligned with Olhava's established modus operandi, and in many aspects, cleanly mirroring Sacrifice in its presence.

"After I'm Gone" emerges perfectly from the introductory "Ageless River X" unfurling atop a bedrock of ambient and post-rock texture that demonstrates the band's contemplative nature, and the album's incandescent energy. The track gets dreamier and dreamier as it progresses through fast-paced, cyclical motifs emblematic of Olhava's identity. The 20-minute colossus "When the Ashes Grow Old" sustains the post-black metal radiance before submerging into purer heavenly ambiance in its middle part. Memorial's riverine flow of sound exhibits fluctuation only when the "Ageless River" interludes appear - the same signature sound of blackgaze psyche is strongly maintained all across the album.

At nearly 80 minutes, Memorial's length fits both the genre's and the band's scale. Compared to Sacrifice, I noticed a tiny improvement on the more balanced sound of the drums, but other than that, the album delivers a form of post-black metal strikingly similar to its predecessor, perhaps a bit too much. For adherents of Olhava's state of expression, however, there is little to resist here.

Release: February 27th, 2026 | Avantgarde Music
Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Belzebong - The End Is High (2026) Review

A long time ago, I shared how back in 2009 my accidental initiation into the smoke-drenched corridors of stoner metal came courtesy of Belzebong’s first demo, soon followed by the debut full-length Sonic Scapes & Weedy Grooves (2011). That record, alongside the equally effective follow-up, Greenferno (2015), remains one of my favorite releases of the genre, even while only instrumental. For me, the absence of vocals amplified the narcotic density of the riffs, allowing groove and atmosphere to rule over everything else.

I somehow lost interest in subsequent releases by the band, never delved into Light the Dankness (2018) or the tongue-in-cheek live recording in Norway, De Mysteriis Dope Sathanas - Live in Oslo (2021), it was enough to laugh a bit though. Early material has retained a certain replay value for me, even though the overall aesthetic doesn’t stick today. With The End Is High, reconnecting with Belzebong feels seamless, not a single day has passed, and all the hallmarks are intact: vivid weedy artwork, track title wordplays a la Cannabis Corpse (and others), a wordless approach, but above all, pudgy groove-laden stoner doom.

The characteristic slow-burn build unfurls with opening track “Bong & Chain”, while “420 Horsemen” is faster in tempo and introduces buzz and abstraction into the haze. “Hempnotized” remains obsessed with hulking, middle-paced riffs, but for me the closer “Reefer Mortis” is what truly lingers, and especially the mid-section guitar lines that evoke the morbid swagger of Church of Misery, just without the serial killers. At the end of the track, you get to hear again an epic voice sample quoting the cult classic horror comedy The 'Burbs from 1989. If you know the movie, you know what scene they’ve mashed up.

Production remains polished as always, at least in the same way as it has been since Greenferno and onward. While surpassing the highs (pun intended) of their debut proves to be a tall order, The End Is High finds Belzebong committing no missteps. An enjoyable return to the studio, but leaves me wanting… Well, to listen to the first one again.

These are eyes of young girl, barely out of high school. Her name is Alice Trenton and she's been on a long, long trip……

Release: February 20th, 2026 | Heavy Psych Sounds Records
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 

Atavistic Passage - Demonstration Two (Demo, 2025) Review

Second demo of strongly similar philosophy as the first, laid out by UK black metal project Atavistic Passage, an one-man entity by the same person behind Hibernian Abyss (you may not be familiar with either, but it's high time you looked into them). Continuing the necro-sonic path paved out by the 2024 demo Demonstration One, the template is familiar - two main tracks between an intro and outro, cohesive and direct at just over fifteen minutes of lo-fi prayer.

The central pieces “Ecstatic Power” and “Physical Manifestations of Psychic Spite” scratch speakers and headphones with the abrasion of quality raw black metal, as the guitars surge on a trance of distortion, and the vocals screech atop the din with determination. It's cold and secluded, rooted in the classiest of the genre's classics, echoing skeletal chants in cavernous halls accessible only to the ears most devoted to this music.

With a handful of rudimentary harmonic shifts, the demo's simplicity is its identity. Buzzing ambient threads of the opening and closing tracks, give it a spatial depth that belies their minimal framework. Demonstration Two is sincere and epigrammatic in delivery, with a certain intrigue that justifies its existence within the raw black metal underground. Every bond is a bond to sorrow.

Rating: 3.5/5

Geheimnisvoll - Pale Triumph of the Hidden Flame (2026) Review

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) Review

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

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.

Enmity - Illuminations of Vile Engorgement (2005) Review

Whoever sets on a path to discover the sickest kind of extreme music that has ever been recorded, sooner or later will come across Enmity’s debut and only album, Illuminations of Vile Engorgement. Released in 2005 through Permeated Records, the album has accrued a reputation as much for its divisive sound as for the discourse it sparks about the limits of brutal death metal, and how it forcibly melds absurdity with brutality while ignoring all expectations. The band has little interest in conventional structure, butchering the notion of accessibility by plunging headlong into a torrent of blast assaults, guttural chaos and relentless slam death noise. Forget pretty descriptions like memorable riff progressions, discernible melodies, technical prowess, as all that’s musical is sacrificed in the pit of barbarism and repulsion.  

The guitars are tuned so low and mixed so murkily; they basically blur into an amorphous, impenetrable wall of sound. Guitar lines are pounding, abrasive and unrepentant, while drums throb with literally non-stop blast beats, producing an effect so visceral and overwhelming, that you’ll probably have a physical response to it. Track titles are right up there when it comes to the ugliest brutal death metal filth, while the gurgling, intentionally grotesque guttural vocals just double down on the whole element of distortion. I would freely admit it’s impossible to tell one track from the next, yet the total of 33 minutes of this experiment, somehow needs to be listened just to see how a band reaching sounds like. It’s unclear whether Enmity did this deliberately or not, but they orchestrated the conditions for the perfect storm inside extreme metal fandom just with this one album. 

Wildly divergent reactions have been drawn over the years about Illuminations of Vile Engorgement, and the audience will never come to an agreement about it. For some, a misguided experiment that lacks quality and direction, standing as a bizarre outlier in brutal death metal that overstretched itself to complete incoherence. To others, a sonic anti-thesis, dismantling the tolerance of even the most durable listeners with its ceaseless propulsion. To me, just the vastness of different opinions is what stands out here, and how chaotic the record actually is – repetitive and uninviting. Pushing itself to such a ludicrous edge, there’s a performative audacity in Enmity’s approach that’s at least acknowledgeable. It’s not going to be in my death metal favorites any time soon, but I somehow get both why people strongly hate or strongly worship it. 

I’m not going to mention any specific track or moment, except for the outro “Severe Lacerations”, which is fully in acoustic guitars and quite virtuosic to my ears. And the only reason I’m mentioning it is to maybe confuse you even more, in case you read the vivid breakdown of the rest of the record done in the paragraphs above. In the end, Illuminations of Vile Engorgement refuses to moderate itself (except from the end), it’s polarizing and impossible to digest or be processed logically. There’s a series of works of this kind that do take the extra mile, and this clearly is one of them.

Dead and Dripping - Nefarious Scintillations (2025) Review

One can't help but wonder what the hell of a direction death metal could possibly take in 2025 to not sound regurgitated, yet the strikes of brilliance seem to land on spot way too frequently to ignore lately. Artists with some of the most anamorphic takes on the genre have taken a toll on our attention and stamina the last few years, one of them being (glory to Cryptopsy's legendary track with the same name) Dead and Dripping from New Jersey - a project fixated on songwriting debauchery, yet with blistering inspiration and unquestionable skill in chopping up whatever characteristic you think you like in this music. There's already a series of three full length albums between 2020 and 2023 for you to get an idea about what kind of hazy, polluted swamp you're stepping into, and right after that I'll be here to salt the wound with fourth and scarily distorted fourth record, Nefarious Scintillations.

Trying to point down certain specific riffs, tempos or sequences that you like in this maze of claustrophobic havoc that immediately bursts into motion with the opening track "Nefariously Scintillating through Vacant Galactic Reservoirs", is a task that's laughably impossible. Imagine taking the work ethic of Defeated Sanity and drenching it into the poison of Demilich (what a legacy this band has proven to have left behind after all), then slashing the musical horror that arises with a flair of tech-death as in Suffocation, all delivered on a psychotomimetic rage and a sound straight from a hallucinatory experience of an altered reality. I'm still in the process of absorbing Kakothanasy's new album right before the end of the year, and here comes another equally unfathomable but instantly extraordinary release, from just one guy (only member is Evan Daniele) no less?

A ceaseless riffing barrage always works against the listener's sanity. At its slower moments, the album works its way through with more patience, and the more expressed guitar lines swell and stress on how otherworldly Dead and Dripping aim to sound here. It mostly works, and it's a challenge. My favorite moments are the mindblowing two-minute "Sickeningly Vague Anatomical Silhouettes", the insane acoustic guitar intro of the last track "An Utterly Tenantless World of Aeons-Long Death" and the general guitar lines in "Horrifying Glimpses Into Inconceivably Demented Cityscapes", and "Swollen Torsos Adorned with Pustulating Hexagonal Crania". Really, try listening to these all at once. If there's one issue that can be more difficult to put up with on Nefarious Scintillations, it's the Demilich / almost Inquisition level of caricature froggy vocals.

The fans of these vocals are superfans, and the rest stand on the opposite side, but I can't decide where I wanna be on the matter. As impressed I am with the music, it's a persistent need from inside that makes me want to listen to vocalists with the growl of a thousand mythic giants, and I somehow feel like it always fits to the track better like that, but it's probably not the case for Nefarious Scintillations. Dead and Dripping does well with these choices and the record has so much effort and content in it, that it's just worth it whoever you are, and wherever you may reside. As far as I'm concerned, the foreseeable future is paved with many re-listens and possible notes, just to make sure I've noticed all there's to notice, i.e. a losing battle. Endless creativity, blackened rifts, cerebral eulogies and everything nefarious and trippy, in the scariest sense of the word. That's Evan's world.

Release: November 28th, 2025 // Transcending Obscurity Records
Rating: 4 out of 5

Noise Trail Immersion - Symbology of Shelter (2018) Review

The swarm of equations that operate inside Noise Trail Immersion's mechanized dorsal nexus for once in 2018 collapsed into a single violent solution, firmly grounded on two rather volatile branches: pressurized mathcore, and geometric dissonant black metal. The result was the nightmare of a musical and existential crisis under the name Symbology of Shelter, a record that demolished structure and ritualized implosion with a sort of acuteness only individuals allergic to convenience can muster. With an emphasis on spacious negativity, Deathspell-esque chaos and punchy blackened hardcore, the band played with tension like a deranged man with a scalpel, as riffs either burst or wait, drums pivot between frenetic off-axis blasts and metronomic beats that crack the floorboards.

The spirals formed by the dominating guitar work rip traditional lead / rhythm logic to shreds, notes hang like loose exposed wires sparking against concrete, and melody is treated as a chemical with unknown outcome upon contact. Buildup is handled well, as shown, e.g. by the more restrained, almost atmospheric post-metal sections of "The Empty Earth I" and "The Empty Earth II", but all hell breaks loose in their shorter pieces, like the "Repulsion and Escapism" series or "Acrimonious". The self-titled track offers a particular clarity of manic desperation towards the end, while the whole of Symbology of Shelter brought lines of bands like Ulcerate, Serpent Column and Plebeian Grandstand together, yet their -core touch shines genuinely throughout.

Strangled transmissions from someone clawing at the inside of a cell. Our Great Depression, is our minds.

Conceiving a new dimension

 

Release: November 2nd, 2018 // Moment of Collapse Records
Rating: 4 out of 5 

Abysmal Descent - Dismal Thoughts (2025) Review

Here's a record dug out of a cold, subterranean seam where the light is poor and the riffs are venomous, honed straight from the guttered hush of the Belgian underground and by members affiliated with numerous fine projects (previously known as Dehuman, now members of Putrid Offal, Echo Solar Void and Neptunian Maximalism). The bleak, expressionist vision where human form dissolves into shadow and texture on the cover, alongside a neatly-designed and Grave Miasma-esque band logo, is already enough to invite notice, but the music lives up to the commanded focus too. Abysmal Descent's debut stands as a formidable slab of old-school death metal, with some ounces of doom and inspired by the genre's founding titans, while flowing naturally alongside its modern torchbearers.

The influence doesn't stop on the logo, but the band remains distinct from its pack. Dismal Thoughts sits in a sweet, ominous place, with a production that provides clarity while retaining atmosphere, and influences that are clear without being slavish. The record's sound and sharp riffing reminds a lot of the two Cruciamentum albums, as the band's compositional instincts are of the same rotten nature. Spirits of old from Incantation and the perplexed structures of mid-era Morbid Angel, with some of the ritualistic groove of Immolation under a microscope of more recent technology is what makes Dismal Thoughts effective, and directed to certain sets of ears. The production provides clarity without undermining atmosphere, as Abysmal Descent sweeps through mental ruin with a death metal avalanche that, however, doesn't seek innovation.

All tracks are long in duration (six to seven minutes) and frequently roll on middle-paced tempos, but either then or when the band accelerates, guitar lines are always dominant. Vocals range from cavernous roars to rasping declamations, having a front and center personality along the instrumentation. With an one-minute introduction and the opening of "Labyrinth of Distress", things take time to set in. "Death Rope" is a faster piece and one of the heaviest of the album, as the faster / slower sections are in a constant tango on "Dismal Thoughts", "Obscured Visions" and "Imaginal Horror", where most Abysmal Descent's creative framework is unfolded. The slow build in the first minutes of "Fragmented Soul" reminded me of "Promulgation of the Fall" by Dead Congregation, even though here the track erupts way faster.

On "Abyss of Despair", the band stresses more on melancholic melodicism that approaches doom / death metal, with a moment of growling vocals on top of clean guitar riffs that goes closer to funeral doom metal even. This piece has, in my opinion, the clearest influences from traditional doom in the entirety of the record, and connects nicely with the final "Imaginal Horror". Overall and in one sentence, here lies old-school death metal. If you're familiar with any of the aforementioned names, or additional bands from the roster of Nuclear Winter Records like Excarnated Entity, Sarcophagum and Mortual, this one is right for you. Dismal Thoughts is a rigorous statement inside an already explored idiom, but the band surely knows its purpose in it.

Shadows loom ever closer 

Release: October 31st, 2025 // Nuclear Winter Records
Rating: 4 out of 5 

Barren Path - Grieving (2025) Review

In a sense, Barren Path's Grieving is indeed a debut album. However, one will feel a tensely familiar cataclysm once the needle drops, as such musical debauchery can be conceived and reproduced by only a few individuals on Earth... Or maybe even just one: Takafumi Matsubara. Alongside him is also the infamous gang behind now defunct Gridlink, and the new addition of Mitchell Luna (Maruta, Noisear, Shock Withdrawal) on vocals. You guessed right, modern technical grindcore's deadliest tacticians once again channel their collective fury into a work that's clean-cut as it is merciless, with twelve tracks and barely a quarter of an hour total duration of precision-feral mayhem.

Brevity remains a virtue here. In its compact and tight presentation, Grieving is extremely packed with terrifically moving ideas, going down as a deliberate but masterful tantrum of noise. The violence is directed and quantified, the tempos are cleaved, and the blastbeats constantly dance with cross-sectional riffing. Barren Path moves in confidence and delivers with exceptional clarity, something that is sometimes amiss in grindcore albums, yet this is not your everyday collective we're talking about. There's an unexpressed connection to the clan of No One Knows What the Dead Think and Gridlink, but Grieving isn't nostalgic. The record slices in both ways, provoking internal entropy as well as external terror.

Musically, the band glances slightly more towards old-school death and crossover thrash metal instead of the distinctive cybergrind overload that Matsubara has spewed in the past. Yet, the technical, chaotic edge is fully maintained throughout, and recognized basically immediately when the opener "Whimpering Echo" flares up at mind-blowing speeds. "The snare tone is meaty" and the material is relentless but articulate, with all the micro-fills, pauses and twists perfectly calibrated for maximum impact. As exhilarating as the music feels, it also comes out intelligent, full of nerve and mechanical precision. Barren Path slash and hack towards the ultimate purpose to perfect this form of existential manic-grind, and they almost succeed with Grieving. 

Tracks like "Relinquish", "Subversion Record", "No Geneva", and "The Unreliable Narrator" (if you liked the latest Wormrot album, here we are again) are hallmarks of this sound. The melodic tremolo picking in "Lunar Tear" and the furious fret board maltreatment a la Brain Drill on "The Insufferable Weight" are exquisite, while even the noisy atmospheric respite in "Celestial Bleeding" adds some sort of a strange tenderness, like a moment of negative space among highly ferocious tracks. "Horizonless" is wonderfully connected to the last piece "In the End… The Gift is Death", where the band delivers a final delivers a concluding blast of melodic-death laced grind. I'm not the biggest fan of low-volume spoken vocals like on "Isolation Wound", but the riff in the back is so formidable, you might not even notice.

Despite the overall musical massacre, you would wonder why Grieving, a grind record, might leave you feeling mournful. To me, Barren Path examine alienation and dissolution without failing to keep a self-awareness under the constant duress caused by their creation. It's extremity as an existential spectacle, through brutal techgrind of the highest order from a set of musicians known for their non-stop hustle, (r)evolution and refinement as their own act of defiance. Despite its hostile side, the record's underlying vulnerability was an instant win for me, but what instantly catches the ear, is of course the trademark Matsubara inspiration. They have survived, and they keep morphing into scarier and scarier entities.

To be atoned a flat world

Release: October 31st, 2025 // Willowtip Records
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 

Bongripper - Empty (2024) Review

Doom-sludge titans Bongripper from Chicago have always dwelt in the low end. With their eighth full length album Empty, the band keeps ripping boundaries of repetition to shreds, expressing themselves through immense instrumental doom metal weight at levels of meditative heaviness that almost no one can replicate. Four tracks (two of them above 20 minutes in duration) and a total of more than an hour of crushing doom in the purest form, at which you'll either surrender to or wholly pass by. 

From the outset, Empty reeks of riff-devotion: detuned guitars, distortion thick as molasses and drums slow-rolling like glaciers in motion. The album has a constant, overwhelmingly dominating hypnotic nature, standing out due to the band's everlasting patience for the long haul. Melodies ruminated upon and stretched to uneasy forms, twisted into murky drone / sludge before returning to clearer doom metal stomps, all delivered with lumbering brute force. 

Opener piece "Nothing" features the slowest build-up and features some interested, distorted Sleep worship towards its last five minutes. Mid-tempo dirges that flirt with crunchy tremolos and ghostly leads appear both at the very end of that track and in the one that follows, "Remains". On "Forever", the band takes a more atmospheric approach that hints at post-doom grandeur rather than blacksmith hammering, reminding of YOB but still quite distinctly played as a Bongripper jam.

The final, self-titled track consolidates Empty's themes of doomy repetition with subtle yet substantial variations, but includes a cathartic release of a blast-beat induced black metal section, that breaks free from the drag of the rest of the rest of the record. At that moment, it brought 2010's Satan Worshipping Doom to mind, as they did something similar on a track on that album, yet I have to admit that I am not sure if it's a more frequent stratagem by the band or if it just appears these two times.

No sound is reinvented on Empty, but that's not what Bongripper are about. The band takes its time on how long to hold notes, when to pull the rug out, and how to compose the most direct, low-tuned and heavy doom metal possible, with neat influences from sludge, drone and stoner. It takes time, and it needs time. The formula might be a bit too comfortable by now, the terrain too familiar, but in this genre, this mastering of atmosphere is what counts. If it's your first time, welcome to the underbelly of doom. [4 out of 5]

Nothing remains forever empty 

Pendaison - Haut & Court (2025) Review

Grief moves like smoke. Shapeless, endlessly circling, always clutching at what little warmth remains. Somewhere between the cracks of screaming and the silence, beauty still dares to shape. Montreal-based duo of Kevin Barrier and Cymon Lamarre (former bassist of Plebeian Grandstand..?) whispers the decay of the living with a new and obscure outlet named Pendaison, and their first work Haut & Court that makes the edges between black, death, doom and post-metal indiscernible. Carving deeply into experimentalism along the way, the project manipulates sound and ambiance with layers of electronics, guitars and a variety of vocals that make for an outcome that's both vividly avant-garde, but also surprisingly listenable from the get go.

The fuzzy wall of riffs and painful shrieked vocals on the opener "LRDTVBI" immediately bring the listener into a hostile territory of modern black metal, reminiscent Debemur Morti-inspired French artists active in recent years, yet Pendaison springs around its influences totally unexpectedly. Soon enough, fiery post-metal streams of energy pour into the track, which dissolve into an ethereal outro that links perfectly to the second and highlight piece, "Mausoleum". The longest in duration and in funereal pace, abdicating any sense of commitment to technically impress, it's cathartic doom metal anointed in beautiful clean female vocals, that will also dare to slap you in the face when you're laying comfortably five / six minutes into the composition (once you're there, you'll know).

A one-minute dark ambient / noise interlude, "Ci-gît la Dignité Humaine" (=here lies human dignity, such an Anaal Nathrakh-inspired line, right) gives way to one of the most menacing moments on Haut & Court, "Exil du Néant". Its discordant, lethal doom / death metal opening melodies, along with the lowest growling vocals found on the album, very distantly reminded me of bands like Krypts, especially in conjunction with the open notes of the closer "F.A.L.L.". Apart from the scattered noise-based fillings in these two tracks, Pendaison dances on harsher and more anguished black / post-metal toward the end of the album, before the absolute destruction of chord monotony and tormented screams in the final seconds of "F.A.L.L." that ends it all.

I (almost) don't know what Pendaison is about textually with Haut & Court, but maybe it's better to not even look under that rock. The record is raw and immersive, from a band seemingly adept in taking steps either toward visceral fury, or ambient sorrow. The cello / piano / viola additions in "Mausoleum" are still my favorite here, but the whole album makes a good case for attentive listening. Through well-conceived tonal shifting, atmosphere and context, Pendaison calls for an engaging journey through human grief, cursed but with its glimmers of transcendence. Clearly, lots of artists' toil has been put into this sublimely disorienting effort, and fans of more atypical underground metal may resonate. [3.5 out of 5]

Each kiss a veil of shadowed stars

Gorod - A Maze of Recycled Creeds (2015) Review

While missing input on Gorod’s debut full-length album Neurotripsicks (and while the title sounds promising) from 2005, I hold both Leading Vision (2006) and A Process of a New Decline (2009) in quite high regard, as prime examples of top-notch technical death metal fueled by great musicianship and not lacking in heaviness. In 2012, the band released the exquisite A Perfect Absolution, which got them even more traction in the scene, but it still didn’t live up to their previous two works for me, despite its excessive bombast. The first thing that caught my eye with A Maze of Recycled Creeds (2015) was the fantastic cover art, almost to a point that I hoped for the album to become my favorite from them, even before listening to it. While it may not be the case, eventually, it remains a high point in the band’s discography, highlighting all the elements they excel at. And in some of these elements, they excel ridiculously much.

The virtuosity and musicality that overflows A Maze... is immediately noticeable, but it comes as no surprise to anyone familiar with this band. It is not a case of a record that is characterized by clear-cut brutality, as the progressive and jazz intersections throughout the death metal corpus are frequent, expertly executed, and highly effective. Through tempos constantly chopped and re-wired in new frequencies, unfurling fierce riffing in between fretwork aerobatics and thrilling soloing, Gorod communicates their story from their own, particular perspective. A Maze... is a clear tech-death album, yet it separates itself and makes the band’s sound, completely recognizable. Despite the complexity of the compositions, the record succeeds in being accessible and pleasant to go through, as it also isn’t shy of uplifting moments, when things dare to get more fun. 

By flashing a short, hopeful piano introduction in “Air de L'Ordre”, it’s almost as if it’s unsuspected of what’s about to follow. Both “Temple of the Art God” and “Celestial Nature” burst with tense and airtight, prog-driven death metal played on time signatures impossible to count, and the first listen serves purely to sit back and appreciate the mind-bending capabilities of all the members and their instrument worship. Harmonies are used and abused in the entirety of the record, but it’s also the spectacular bass lines and drumming that lives up to the needs of such material. There’s not a lot of space for pure headbanging here, as the brain will constantly be trying to catch up with the number of exciting ideas constantly appearing and dissolving. 

Gorod’s jazz adeptness sometimes takes over (check “The Mystic Triad of Artistry” or “An Order to Reclaim”), and the heavier moments are more distinct when they unfold, than constantly being in the forefront. For example, potent grooving is what opens “From Passion to Holiness”, which transforms into an almost funk metal crescendo later, and the intro of the last track, “Syncretic Delirium”, is possibly the album’s most aggressive instance (nearly reminding me of Spawn of Possession). I must admit, I am not the biggest fan of the shouty vocals sometimes employed in the tracks, like in “Rejoice Your Soul”, which was the weakest for me in the record. Pieces like “Inner Alchemy” (despite the vocal elasticity) are among the strongest points in A Maze..., while e.g. “Dig Into Yourself” were for me, significantly less memorable. 

I still haven’t heard The Orb (2023) properly but remember Æthra (2018) positively, which shows that there’s still homework to go through when it comes to Gorod. In A Maze..., I found the framework in which this band operates quite exciting, despite not enjoying all parts of the album at the same extent. There are so many hooks and twists in the tracks, so much energy out of the band, and so much creativity, that it’s hard not to recognize the musical level of the record, even if such a demanding genre isn’t your cup of tea (as it might not be mine). Naturally, the band has moved on from what they had been trying to do up to that point, but it’s not a matter of abandoning previous approaches, just reinventing them. [3.5 out of 5]

Out of reach of idle hands

Brutal Truth - Sounds of the Animal Kingdom (1997)

It’s unfortunate to say this since this album has maybe one of my favourite grindcore related openers ever, which is a phrase that I find myself repeating in my head when I generally listen to suboptimal music: still not loud enough, still not fast enough… As much as Brutal Truth is not your typical band of the genre, and Sounds of the Animal Kingdom was definitely another bold creation, it’s a bit all over the place, with damaged production and not nearly as good as the first two masterpieces from the band. The 22-minute mayhem at the end was kinda unnecessary and numerous tracks are skippable, yet there’s a few really amazing riffs and sections around, but you have to find them. I dig the Marvel-like cover, the title and the first three tracks. Then it’s a hit or miss. [2.5 out of 5 - Average]

Release: September 23rd, 1997

Label: Relapse Records

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