With their 12th album, Cursum Perficio, there have been plenty of delays with this sucker. Drummer, Charlie Benante, went on to drum with the Pantera reunion act and that took a lot of time away from Anthrax, as they toured and opened up for the likes of non-other than Metallica, so his priorities were elsewhere. It’s been 10 years since their last album, the magnificent For All Kings and the same line-up returns on Cursum Perficio. Admittedly, outside of the previously released singles, this album did not hit me between the eyes like the band’s last two efforts. This was more of a slow burner, and after several listens I became hooked. The band incorporates some of the most extreme Anthrax moments in terms of speed and crunchy stomping mosh parts. So, let’s get to the review, dang it.

11 songs in 53 minutes, the album opens with a minute long intro, “Persistence of Memory”, that goes into “The Long Goodbye”. I was expecting the band to come outta the starting gates with a fast thrashy song, but they do not. A mid-paced crunchy number that has some commercial appeal to it. The chorus is exceedingly catchy, and the guitar riffing is outstanding, Ian on fire, as usual. Charlie lets loose with some cool drum rolls and there are some creative stop and start moments and soloing going on that is courtesy of Jonathan Donais. The rhythm section tight with Frank Bello’s killer bass lines and Joey’s vocals sound as great as ever. Overall, though, the intro and this song are both more of a whimper, rather than a rallying cry, from a band that has not released an album in a decade.

“It’s for the Kids”, was one of the singles previously released. After a little squealing guitar action, the song rips into the thrash the masses have grown to love and expect from the band with an aggressive and catchy chorus, that slows things down, into a killer circle moment. The squealing guitar returns, a nice drum roll, then BAM!!! Right back into the thrash speed. The Holy Shit moment is the 2.20 marker, and it hits, this is one of the best mosh/slam moments Ian has ever written. So much so, this takes me back to NYHC, with the groove. It is crucial. The pits will be monstrous during this part. Then a nifty and super killer guitar solo erupts that takes us over the speedy parts. This song should have come right after that opening intro, imo. But what do I know?!

“The Edge of Perfection” is that song folks… On Worship Music Anthrax had a little blast going on and this song brings it. At 6:46, this is the longest song, and the soft opening will fool you. The blast at the 32 second marker is fueled with black metal riffing. Something that was bound to rub off on the band with all the more extreme metal acts they have played with in the last 15 years. But that is pure black metal, and it brings a huge smile when Joey is doing some aria ahhhs over these moments. The song slows down with a super heavy lead guitar riff, that has an abundance of melody too. The blast returns with Joey singing over it and the song slows back down with terrific vocals and gang shouted vocals to accompany him. The back and forth of the varying speeds is breathtaking, making this the most extreme Anthrax song to date, and these bastids are in their 60’s now. This is my favorite song on the album.

“Infectious”, takes us back to Among the Living , with the groove and crunch and catchy vocals. The band also showcasing more of their melodic edge, they have also incorporated over the last two albums and I can see this song being played live. There are many points where I can picture the spotlights coming on and the fans headbanging in unison to this song. “NYC 93” brings back the speed and is a banger as it thrashes all over the place with the gang shouted vocals of It ain’t worth doing unless you do it to death is gang shouted over and over with Ian’s parts piped in a little louder, or else he is just much louder than everyone else. Another great song to be in their live set.

“My Victory” closes out the album with it’s tremendous double bass moments and lead guitar riff which will embed in your brain for days on end. The crunchy guitar tone is one of the heaviest Anthrax moments, ever. It is brilliant and Joey belting out the vocals, perfectly timed. This song must be in their live set. It is super catchy, fun, thrashy and has a cute little groove/stomp at the end. That lead guitar riff…..damnit it, Ian, you did it again, you crafty bastid.

Cursum Perficio is an excellent thrashy Anthrax album with the band bringing in all their decades of expertise and moments into this sucker. I’m not a fan of album covers without a band’s logo, therefore I wish the band logo was on here. On the virtual interactive album cover, on Apple Music, it’s actually super cool to look at what’s going on when the music is playing. The production is top notch and honestly if you never liked the band in the past, you’re not going to start liking them now. Although “The Edge of Perfection”, you should listen to for the black metal riffing, over the blasting. It’s not something you have ever heard Anthrax do. And that is why out of new ones, from the bigger bands this year, like Lamb of God, Megadeth, Kreator and Exodus, Anthrax have the best album. They are doing different things and incorporating new ideas, still all these decades later. Welcome back Anthrax, what a scorcher of a crushing album!!

So now that everyone is all caught up with the back story and the future release schedule. How is this debut full-length and is it worth your valuable time? Well first of all, yes it is very worth your time. A melding of Dark Funeral and Marduk sounds good on paper and fortunately the way Mindvile execute said melding makes it extremely fun to listen to.

The production is massive and in your face and the killer artwork brings it all together. The total package will be absolutely killer, according to the presser and since physical media is still a popular format, it is not showing any signs of going away.

“Bite by Bite” is first and it’s a home wrecker due to the need to fling and flail yourself into the walls. These aren’t long, drawn out songs. They’re quick and to the point. “Predator’s Mask” is next and there are those Marduk moments I was saying come blasting in. Roller-coaster rides aren’t even this intense, to the point where it’s aural brutality; a literal assault on your sense of hearing.

“Unholy Task” and “The Evil Siren’s Tongue” have more of a Dark Funeral-ish vibe to them, especially the latter which could have sat like Baphomet on Secrets of the Black Arts or Vobiscum Satanas. “Lord of the Threshold” and “Judge, Killer and Executioner” are my favorite tracks on Old Continent. Go for the jugular, precision blasts and riffs that roll over your ass like a tank.

“Craftman’s Legacy” and “Cellarbound” round out the album in proper bombastic fashion. Both are fast as fuck, boy! Although they do play around with tempos, not just here; but across the album. It’s all about diversity in the end, anyway.

While Mindvile aren’t reinventing the Black Metal wheel any time soon, Old Continent is a competent album. I’m anxious to see what they do with this concept series and as long as they keep up the caliber of music I’ve spoken about here, it’ll be a banger.

If this sort of thing excites you then you should automatically pick it up. Do yourself a favor.

What hasn’t changed is the band’s deft mix of multiple genres, from Bolt Thrower and Swedish death metal to some black metal, war metal, and some black/thrash, and even some Gothenburg death metal with damn solid results.

Those elements come together both between songs and smoothly within them. Case in point: the opening title track has a lot of everything thrown into one eight-minute mass of tumbling, rumbling riffs; the early  Entombed, “Revel in Flesh” styled gallop standout “Inexorable Slaughter”, the pure spikes-and-leather black thrash of “Fully Armed and Filthy”, the Bolt Thrower trundle of “Unto the Anvil of War” (which also has another “Revel in Flesh” type riff), the tremolo-picking riffs in “Warp Storm Imminent”. In all, I keep being reminded of fellow Kentuckians Abominant.

If my ears are correct, there is even some slight keyboard usage in “Penitent Engine”, and then in “Iron Within, Iron Without”, the album’s other standout, gets blasty with some Dismember-y melodies before the closer “Eternal Enslavement” wraps things up with a song that does a little of everything, but i would have preferred the album go out with a bit more of a memorable bang.

The production has a slight Swedish buzz to it, but I wouldn’t call it a full-on buzzsaw guitar tone, and vocalist/guitarist Conqueror Horus has a throaty rasp and shout, keeping things in that black/thrash realm, though the odd gruff bellow reminds you this is mostly solid, enjoyable death/black metal at its core.

Their mix of Exhumed/Carcass is ever-present. Mark Wallace’s varying vocal tones — the gutturals and raspier vocals — are piped in excellently, as is the production of layering the vocals to make it appear there are two vocalists. At times, Deicide comes to mind with this effect. The guitar solo, hovering over the blast beat, is exceptional, and the grind blast is terrific. Adam Houmam continues to excel in his craft with his monstrous blasts. This song features some very cool drum parts, and the guitars of Mike Flory and his wife Ria Flory are brutal. Ria plays bass/guitars in the killer Emasculator band, by the way. This is a brutal opening number.

“The Autopsy: A Surgical Sonata” is a song title you would expect on a Carcass album, but Cartilage beat them to the punch. Melodic guitars with some of the harmonies are interwoven into brutal riffage over the blasts. The dizzying array of vocal tones and the layering is some of the best I have heard in a bit. Some of the monstrous blasts, especially at the two-minute timestamp, are going to rip your limbs apart in a nanosecond. The song slows down and gallops at a terrific headbanging pace. Once the blast takes over, you had better stop headbanging or else you might headbang that head of yours right off your pathetic shoulders.

“A Lymphatic Labyrinth of Roiling Rot” has an opening guitar riff that is so killer, then right into the Holy Shit blasting madness. This moment is pretty vicious, and with the vocals, I am wondering if another member of the band, during a concert, takes over maybe one of the tones. Because, with the layering effects, the vocalist is either going to have to stick to one tone and another member pipes in the other tone in order to replicate the album moments, or they just forgo the different tones. Hopefully one of the band members helps out with the other tone, since it sounds killer, just like how Dying Fetus and Exhumed have been pulling this off, brutally, for decades. This song moves and grooves, and the double bass drums sound great with one of the best snare drum sounds all year. This song is fun, brutal, and has some pit action moments here and there.

The rest of the songs all follow this formula, with the title track another strong standout, with the Carcass-inspired opening moments and galloping pacing taking over. The song slows down to a mid-paced, bludgeoning crawl and then double-pounding madness. The variety of vocal tones and tempo shifts will keep you on your toes and off your toes as well.

Operating Altar is yet another brutal release from Cartilage, who keeps upping their game. So much so that this band is one of the strongest in their genre class. Songs are memorable and catchy, and death/goregrind is not always something easy to pull off. There is enough harmony on this album to keep some of the technical fans happy, and so much putrid filth to keep us goregrind and death metal fans happy like a clam. Get this dirty, filthy, brutal album now!

So now there’s a live album called A Beast to Praise and of course it’s good. There’s crowd banter, you can hear the whoosh when the fire pots go off, and Heljarmadr sounds phenomenal. As a frontman, he is among my favorite vocalists… plus he seems like a cool dude, all down to earth and shit.

I’m not going to dwell on the songs so much here, you’ve heard them before, and since there’s no need for comparison to other bands, I’ll just be commenting on the quality of the performance and the sound, shit like that, you know?

The first live album review I did for TOTD was for the Amorphis opus Tales from the Thousand Lakes – Live at Tavastia album. You can read it here if you haven’t yet; I’ll wait.

Okay, so crowd noise or anything to indicate that other people are in the room is what makes a great live album. Period. Kiss, Iron Maiden, and Judas Priest have all released live music that has become the golden standard. Is A Beast to Praise as good as those? Hmmmm… no. But that doesn’t even matter because it’s capturing the essence of a veteran band who have nothing to prove, other than they are masters at what they do.

“Unchain My Soul” is first and it sets the tone perfectly. There’s crowd interactions and it lets you know that there is, indeed, a whole bunch of people there. They literally blast through their hiinteraction,track list is pretty fucking impressive (although my personal favorite, “Atrum Regina” is absent, but I’ve heard them play it enough when I’ve seen them so… it’s ok).

“Vobiscum Satanas”, “Let the Devil In”, “We are the Apocalypse”… every note, harmony, and bestial scream make it feel like you’re right there, front row; witnessing the spectacular essence that is a Dark Funeral show… the artwork is magnificent, and the booklet looks slick as f,ck.

They end the album with “The Secrets of the Black Arts” and “Where Shadows Forever Reign”; and then you walk out of your virtual venue to have a smoke before going back to listen to it again. A Beast to Praise is a solid live album, capturing an experience with the power of technology to deliver live blasphemy to the masses.

Go get it! This will tide you over while they’re hard at work on their next album (I’m assuming that’s what they’re doing. They could be playing golf for all I know). Anyway, what are you waiting for?

But here is Australia’s A Night In Texas (I’d love for someone to comment on the band’s name origins), with their 4th album, The Darkest Side of Humanity, to rectify the situation. Surprisingly, I’m not overly familiar with the band, only having first heard them on 2024’s Digital Apocalypse, but in going back and checking out the band’s first 2 efforts, 2015’s God Delusion and 2017’s Global Slaughter, I see that they’ve been pretty consistent with their sound: technical deathcore with some symphonic elements scattered generously around.

Now, when I say blackened or symphonic deathcore, I don’t mean a full-on Lorna Shore, Shadow of Intent, or Worm Shepherd sound. It’s close, but the band’s primary sound is firmly rooted in the band’s thriving Australian deathcore scene (To the Grave, Thy Art is Murder, etc.), but adds symphonic elements at times. But when they do lean into the more epic/dramatic sounds, which seems like tangibly more than prior releases, it hits pretty hard, as they are delivered/composed by none other than Francesco Ferrini (Fleshgod Apocalypse), so I’d expect nothing less.

This increased orchestral and choral presence is used well to enhance moments in songs, rather than being present all the time, but when they do show up, they are super effective. It makes already stout tracks like “Fed to Death” the standout “Metastatic Misery”, ‘The Infinite Maw” (where Ryan Vail of Larcenia Roe helps out), or the closing killer title track pretty fucking epic. At times, I’m reminded of when Bonecarver’s sound changed on Carnage Funeral (in particular, the start of “Metastatic Misery” recalls “Morgue Desecrator” from that album).

But there is plenty of straight-up brutal, brutal deathcore for the Crown Magnetar folks, like “Rot From Within” or “A Primal Conditioning”, where the orchestration is a little less present or more understated, if still there (I mean, why would you hire Ferrini and not use him at least a little?). The only track that’s a bit of an outlier is “When the Sun Burns Out”, a moody sort of ballad with clean vocals that, while going for Whitechapel’s The Valley/Kin sound, doesn’t quite work for me.

The band’s own guitarist, Cory Judd, produced and engineered the album, as he has on past albums, and it sounds great, making the entire effort one of the better examples of the genre in 2026, though right now it doesn’t have much competition.

So what does Necrocene have that Left to Die lacked? ORIGINALITY! I’m going to try and keep away from the comparisons to Left to Die. Necrocene’s Scumocracy is an ode to the Morris Sound studio … and it’s fucking excellent in case you were wondering.

Right away, “(Threshold)” is the perfect intro for Scumocracy, capturing the horror vibes from those visceral Italian films like Gates to Hell and Zombie. It ends abruptly as “Ordinary Enemy” kicks in and wipes the floor with your feeble sense of dignity. This is what I’m talking about, there’s a Death riff here that could’ve been right at home by the fire on Human. This makes me want to run around my backyard and mosh with my dogs.

“Tempestarii” has the tastiest riff and solo on Scumocracy. Guitarists Alex and Joy channel those days of early brutality, fledgling Death Metal bands that have become legends in their own right: Death, Obituary, and Cancer right off the bat. But this is more than an homage album, like I said, there is originality, and that goes a long fucking way.

I love Scumocracy because of moments like “Scale of Grey” and the absolutely bonkers title track that’s going to have those people who like to pretend they’re Sho Kosugi in Revenge of the Ninja spinning around like crazy people. “Scumocracy” is a great sing a long sing-alongen kidding) It’s pretty indicative of the current state of affairs that we’re being forced to endure. Listen to the lyrics, they’re pretty understandable since vocalist Apo has a voice on the cusp of Chuck Schuldiner and John Tardy.

“(Stillpoint)” is another crawling instrumental that sticks around briefly, giving the album room to breathe before the throttling begins again. “Human Lithifacation” I don’t know what that means, but it sounds painful. I do know that there are some sick riffs being fired off. This is just a crushing album and total experience overall. The production is on point, in your face with a bloody hammer, and the killer artwork brings it all together.

“Concrete Petrichor” starts off slow, allowing the track to breathe once again, which I love about Scumocracy; the tempo changes are surgically precise. “Weapons of the Damned” brings some Cancer to the proceedings, think Death Shall Rise and Sins of Mankind era. This is OSDM done absolutely right.

Last up is the “Lust of Us” it’s not exactly a sexy track, it’s slow-burning, and then boom! Blast beats show up briefly, and they make the song that much more devastating. This is the best way to end an album like this. No frills, just honest and savage meat and potatoes Death Metal that will have you banging your head against the concrete for all the right reasons.

If you like those bands I mentioned (even Left to Die) then you’ll be happy as a cannibal in a mass grave. Plus, these guys are apparently from Italy, and we all know that great things come from Italy. So go get it!

Fog Wall is a duo from Nevada comprised of Zak Brady on bass/vocals and Alex Malmquist on vocals (ex-Warbringer), with some session folks helping out on guitars and drums.

The style of death metal is a murky, musty style of OSDM (the Floridian sort, particularly like Obituary, Autopsy, and Morbid Angel) meets new ‘caveman death metal’ like Tribal Gaze, Frozen Soul, etc, though not quite a Bolt Thrower worship band.

Starting with “Manor of Ensnarement”, the band growls ( and screeches) and blasts and lopes through 44 minutes or so of decent death metal. Not great, just solid, enjoyable death metal.

It lacks some of the pure heft and stomp of some of its peers, though it does have a stout low end and isn’t overly savage or brootal, but certainly has enough of both to please the death metal fan curious about the Lord of the Rings and video game subject matter.

Tracks like “The Accursed”, heaving “Marzabul (Desolation)” (IYKYK), blasting “Belching Black Vapors”, rollicking “Strangling Gloom”, the most varied track, “Fleshpot Ritual” and the aptly named spider-y “Frantic Orb Weaver” are enjoyable and worth a relisten for sure.

The only outlier is the Type -O-Negative medley/cover “The Profit of Doom”, but seeing as I’m not a huge Type-O fanboy (I’m more of a Carnivore guy), I’ll let you fans out there decide for yourself if death metal versions of Type-O songs work or not.

For some reason, that cover/medley isn’t the last song (as covers should be, IMHO). The Elden Ring-based ” Traverse” ends the album with more of a doomy crawl that suits the band’s sound and motifs pretty well, and I hope they explore further on the next album.

Terrestrial Hospice have been in existence since 2018 and have three full-length albums (including this one) Indian Summer Brought Mushroom Clouds (2020) and Caviary to the General (2023). Neither of which I have heard, so I’m going in blind here.

Omnicide: Chapter I starts off subtly enough. It’s a bit gentle, lulling you into a false sense of security. Then “Phosphasc Salvation” hits like a ton of bricks with a nice acoustic guitar intro that goes on for a solid two-minutes before a very Bathory “Destroyer of Worlds”-ish track begins to beat you and that’s before the blasts kick in, it strides along pretty confidently. There’s some epic shit going on around the six-minute mark, when this totally unrelated riff comes out of nowhere and elevates the song to this two-minute level for the solo.

Omnicide: Chapter I pours on the atmosphere like a black rain. “The Couloir of Despair” and “Call of the Void” bring to mind more of a Bathory meets Dimmu Borgir Black Metal attack. Whereas “Serpents in the Grass” and “Menace” hover on the cusp of Behemoth and Gorgoroth. I can picture that fancy chef guy sprinkling the band influences all over this album and Terrestrial Hospice make their sound not overly derivative of their peers. Which is a good thing because this album could have been horrible and not make me want to listen to it ever again.

“Depraver (Black Invocation)” has a lot of that atmosphere that I was talking about. It’s hard-hitting, and that’s really all you can want from a hellish blasphemy. The production could have benefited from a bit more emphasis on the drums in that they are sort of buried in the mix and when we’re talking about Inferno on drums, they need to be loud as fuck.

“Drowning Spirit” and “The Gospel of Obedience” finish the album with two elite flourishes. Both go heavy on the ambiance, and ratchet the brutality up for the last hurrah. All in all, I’d say that Terrestrial Hospice has done a super solid job with Omnicide Chapter 1, as it doesn’t reinvent anything; it’s good on its own merit.

So if you enjoy Gorgoroth, Dimmu Borgir and even some Thunderbolt, then you should trample orphans to make sure you get this album.

Second, that is some killer album artwork. I need a shirt, guys. (edit: there is a shirt!)

So, now that’s over with; this is the duo’s (Ryan Ashmore on vocals and Trey Porche on all instruments) debut, and it’s pretty damn solid. 5 songs in 33 minutes of pure sludgey, doomy goodness that fits the press recommendations ‘for fans of Crowbar, Primitive Man, and Thou (though not as blackened)’. I’d also throw in some obscure 00s bands like If He Dies, He Dies and Samothrace.

Though from Louisiana, the guitar tone isn’t the usual fuzzed-out,  swampy tone, but a clearer, still very heavy tone. Ashmore’s vocals are a gruff, gravelly bellow, with a few bars of a spoken-word croon.

Riff-wise, this lumbers with ample heft and lope, with a few moments of more gravitas, and very little buildup or atmosphere clogging things up (“The Mariner” has a few seconds of the tide washing ashore). And when the band does add a little more emotion or layered melodies, such as the standout “Poisoned Crown” or “The Mariner,” it’s pretty stellar.

The other 4 tracks are not chopped liver either. Notably, the steady “Dead Shepherd” and the moodier but massive closer “Passages”. And certainly Fane looks to have a promising future in the genre and carrying the Louisiana sound if they can build off this strong debut.

I have interviewed Ralf before, reviewed all of his bands, and have talked to him on the phone as well. The man loves death metal, and the Revel in Flesh breakup did not last long, as he put a new band together last year. He brought in Simon Abele (Inner Earth) on guitars, current Rotpit drummer Erik Barthold,

But how do you still capture that Boss HM-2 Pedal classic Swedish death metal tone, Revel in Flesh is known for???? Well, you bring in a longtime veteran and who I consider a friend, Jonny Pettersson, to handle the bass and, most importantly, the buzzsaw guitars. The man is in a ton of current and past bands. Current and past, check out this man’s resume: Henry Kane, Massacre, Heads For The Dead, Rotpit, Wombbath…I mean, I can go on all day. He is another death metal worshipper, and he knows this style of death metal amazingly well. So much so that the Revel in Flesh sound is preserved, mastered, and in some ways a bit angrier on this sixth album. I reviewed their last album, The Hour of the Avenger, and hot damn, that sucker is heavy AF. That was a tough one to beat. Flesh for the Kult of Death beats it.

No cute intro, just a total ‘Fuck You’, we are back. The title track erupts. Getting right into the speed, it’s not long before a brutal blast beat is tossed in. Ralf sounds great, throaty, and alters his vocals back to Revel in Flesh, as he does sing a tad differently in the other bands he is in. There is an exceedingly strong Dismember – Like An Ever Flowing Stream guitar tone on this album, and it’s monstrous. The main tempo of the galloping is sure to keep the headbanger happy. There are a few moments of slowdown with the atmosphere and beautiful guitar harmonies. Melodious, and that is what Jonny knows how to toss in, amongst the brutality.

“Bodybag Inferno” is next with a scorching opening guitar riff that is pounding heaviness. Slow, groovy, and will see some pits moving about here and there. The isolated guitar riff around the 2.20 section is excellent as it gives way to the isolated bass guitar. This stop-and-start moment is a great testament to the rhythm section. It will be a true test to play this sucker live. This is a great middle of the live set song.

“Pool of Blood” brings forth the speed. The buildup is short and right into a blast beat, then into a monumental galloping attack. Then right back into a brutal blast beat. Stupendous lead guitars and soloing. More blast beats, and this is a full-throttle death metal assault on the senses.

“Priest of Flesh” offers a slower and more melodic edge that the band has now incorporated on this new album. This song is moody and has a great double bass rumbling heaviness during the mid-paced moments. Guitar harmonies throughout this song, and quite honestly, some spoken word moments, would have actually worked if they had tried it out. The song gallops towards the end with an ethereal, emotive section that calls to mind what fellow countrymen, Chapel of Disease, started doing on their later albums. Truly is amazing.

The band always closes out with a cover song, and this time it’s Crowbar’s “All I Had (I Gave)”. A very heavy original song, and it’s great to hear the Dismember guitar tone in this song. All the elements and pacing of the original are intact, and Ralf lets loose on some extra growling. Such a fun cover.

Flesh for the Kult of Death is not only a terrific return and improved Revel in Flesh I am very happy to see the band continuing with their color-themed covers. This time we get blue, and the artwork is amazing as the reaper makes a return on this album, as it presides over the festivities.

The production and musicianship are impeccable. I am wondering if the band will be laid to rest maybe next year? The song preceding the Crowbar cover is called “The Last Farewell”, which I am unsure insinuates in any way that this is the last Revel in Flesh album? I am just speculating. Suffice it to say, this album owns and must be in your collection pronto!

At the end of my review of The Star, I rhetorically asked if the band could return to the more blistering, scathing sound of the first two albums. Sure, Arkivet and The Star were amazing, but the more despondent and restrained hues just left me wanting more.

So I open the promotional email. And…. (sad trombone noise)… this is a 2-song, concept-based, 16-minute EP, not a new album.  And they didn’t read my review of The Star, as this continues the sound of the last 2 albums.

But, of course, it’s still brilliant, as both the songs on Å (‘stream’) deliver what you have come to expect from Wormwood: elegant, exquisite, but regally despondent melodic black metal.

The 9-minute “Yra/Extas” initially had me pumped as it comes out of the gate with a searing blast beat for a few bars. But over the next 9 minutes, it takes you on an emotional journey with riffs, emotional moments, atmospherics, and knee-wilting melodies (I mean, the last 3 minutes have a riff and solos that are just unfair).

The haunting child choirs from The Star kick off “Purposelessness Geometry”, a more restrained and mid-paced track that fully sounds like the last 2 albums. But it’s still damn good stuff, with some leads and riffs that just hit that despondent yet gracefully searing sweet spot, especially after the bluesy mid-song break where the choirs and moody riffs deliver the goods in all their somber glory.

I’ll try again, though; even though this is fantastic, can we get a return to the debut’s sound on the next full-length, please?

Straight away, I can tell I’m going to be blown away; the opening track, “Anqa,” bursts from the speakers like a rhinoceros on Crack. It’s got it all figured out with a sort of Fear Factory-ish vocal delivery, and the music itself is reminiscent of Fear Factory’s best album, Demanufacture. The clean vocals battle for dominance against the growling, and it all coalesces in a powerhouse of an opening song.

“Hex Of The Frenzied Decay” brings in the Blackened aspect, and holy fucking shit, this is mesmerizing. Effortlessly brutal, but within the brutality there’s a sense of beauty that cannot be ignored. You’ll see what I mean when you listen to it. It’s brooding, yet blistering at the same time, making for a brilliantly delivered wall of death, think, like, Onward to Golgotha or something in that vein, and you’ll be in the right neighborhood.

According to the presser, the band leans heavily into their Persian and Arabic backgrounds, creating some ultra-brutal World Music that has to be heard to be believed. This is a whole other level of Folk Metal insanity, trust me, you need to hear this album.

“The Soaring Enigmatic” is a massive one. The mid-paced bits are interspersed with moments of unhinged brutality and raw emotions. Zvindiyar have moments where they blast and thrash their way through the boundaries of Hell (there are a few scattered riffs and tonal shifts that will remind you of Slayer. Spoiler alert: they’re there, but I’m not going to point them out.)

“Fell” is the slammer here. Knuckle-dragging riffs interspersed with moments of insane violence and one breakdown after another, it’s like Suffocation and Internal Bleeding showed up to lend some neck-snapping destruction and then split directly after.

“الهمس الأول” is an instrumental with some soft, spoken words in the background. It sets up the big ending, which comes in the form of “Shadhavar”. This six-minute epic is worth the wait, blasting out of the gate; it weaves through tempo changes with ease, and it’s a punishingly beautiful song. The perfect way to close out Six Rites, and I love it all. This is too fucking good to pass on.

Zvindiyar has hit it out of the park with Six Rites. This is a complex album, melding technical brutality with subtle ambience that comes creeping in when you least expect it. I hope they have nothing but total success in the future. If you like Fear Factory, Suffocation, and Internal Bleeding, but with some Blackened influence to boot, then you know what you need to do. Go get this album now!

“Trait d’Union” has an excellent opening sequence with an Atheist Unquestionable Presence influence on the sound and texture. The instrumentation is superb, with terrific bass lines. Andrea Feltrin has a great set of pipes that will have you thinking of Martin van Drunen. Powerful and enunciated well. The 2.15 section gets right into a blast beat, as the song had been galloping previously. Killer guitar solos and some deep spoken word moments are throughout the song. The rhythm section is on fire!

“Vision” is up next, and once again that bass guitar sound is tremendous, with its techy and proggy plucking away. Jean Claude Rossignol does a tremendous job. Spoken word vocals enter around the two-minute mark, and there is a little bit of a duet, as the growly vocals seem to answer the spoken word moments. Creative. Impressive signature time changes, and any fan of Pestilence/Gorguts/Death/Atheist in the 1991 time period is going to salivate at this album. And if you do not have the debut, you are going to want that pronto! This song is very complex but also very catchy.

“Synaptic Cortex Dissection” starts things off slower as the song has a great crunchy guitar riff, with phenomenal vocals. Thinking I am going to see Martin van Drunen did the vocals on this, I mean, close your eyes and listen to this, to see what I mean. Some stupendous drum work, prior to the 90-second mark, is going to have you thinking of Neal Peart from Rush. Feltrin’s drum work is some of the best I have heard in years. This may be the best drum work, thus far, on any 2026 release. The song gallops along, and the moment at 3.36, with the guitar harmonies and rhythm section, is godly.

“Mirage” closes the album with some extraordinary musicianship, and the double pounding blast at the minute mark will have you headbanging furiously. The song settles into a slower death/thrash gallop with some Cynic madness and guitar soloing. This is mainly an instrumental; however, the whispered vocals throughout the song are mesmerizing. Some growls enter into the picture, as the song fades with classical instrumentation to close this album out.

Reminiscence may be the best walk down memory lane of all those bands I mentioned, in recent memory. Miscreance injects a fire and spirit into this technical wizardry of death metal. Sure, the thrash elements are present, but this is death metal through and through. The musicianship is top-notch and not something I would expect from a band this young. The album cover captures the music, with the swirling and layered moments throughout this album. Just like the album cover, the music is a work of art. What an amazing band.

Anyhoo, hailing from Tasmania, The Absolution Sequence is a technical death metal band with some deathcore/djent leanings. Apparently, they started as a ‘groove/death metal’ band for a plethora of singles and demos since 2014, but on this debut album have developed a little more.

And the development into a more technical band is a positive one as all the players (some being around since the band’s inception in 2013, and some joining in 2020/2021) are skilled musicians, notably the two guitarists Luke Tucker and Steven Mason who are also in prog metal band Scoparia (along with bassist Alistair Boone, who isn’t quite fret less and twangy, but it shows here and there), and this injection of prog metal talent that has lead to the band being far more technical and intricate.

While not quite in that mathcore realm, some tracks like “The Sordid Miasma”, “Promethean Pilferage,” and “Diary of the Emaciated” certainly dip their toes in with choppy stuttering, chaotic rhythms.

But the large amount of solos, noodly twisty riffs, short atmospheric bridges, and light programming on tracks like “Diary of the Emaciated”, “The Nightmare Sigil,” and “Idols of Confraternity” keep things a bit more grounded in prog/tech realms.

That said, the vocals of Shawn Pybus and stammering, lurching songs like “Ghost Mantra” or “Grinding the Sphere” keep this partially in deathcore/death metal realms, as does the razor-sharp production. Think a sort of Psycroptic meets Periphery and a modern deathcore (i/.e. label mates and fellow Aussies Complexant or say bands like The Zenith Passage),

But when it’s all said and done, I’m not clamoring to re-listen to Dread Cycle. While the musicianship is top-notch, there’s no riff or song that I keep coming back to, but certainly many of you it there should and will enjoy and appreciate this much more.

It’s been since 2019 that Austin’s Trench Warfare released their debut album, Hatred Prayer, and finally the underground gets to rejoice on album #2, Achtung! Destroy The Weak.

A bunch has transpired since the debut album in the band’s camp. The recording lineup and current band lineup are a bit different. The debut album was recorded with Jay H. Gorania on vocals, Tony Goyang Jr. and Dustin Putz on guitars, Jake Holmes on bass, and Ronnie Parmer (Malevolent Creation, Brutality, Amon, etc) on drums.

The current line-up is Jay on vocals, Dustin on guitars, and JP Campo on drums. The current lineup hails from Texas and Oregon, and their debut was suitably brutal with nods to Morbid Angel, Terrorizer, Dismember, and some black metal nods and thrashing too. This new one is a whole different animal. As taken from the promo description: The album was recorded at Come And Track It Studios in Austin, Texas, by John Petri and Justin McClenny, and mixed by none other than Jarrett Pritchard in Florida. This production slays.

“Follow the Circling Vultures” starts with a filthy guitar riff right into the old-school blasting, with Jay sounding a bit more like Martin Van Drunen on this, if MVD also went a little hardcore. Supremely powerful and brutal, Ronnie’s drumming is exceedingly tight and destructive. So yes, some Malevolent Creation influence creeps into this sucker in that respect, because of the increased intensity. This opening song is relentless. This is how you open up your new album after being away for so long. The guitar tone also takes on a Terrorizer tone, so there is a little grind element to the guitar riffs.

If “Dissenter” is not in the band’s upcoming live shows, then I will have to challenge Jay to an arm-wrestling contest. This song has a huge Terrorizer tone and influence on it, in terms of the song length, blasting, and filth. This song is catchy, and the riffs are memorable, with enough time changes to swivel your head clean off your pathetic shoulders.

“Embrace the Flames”, at over five minutes, is long, but encompasses the band’s full sound. Dirty guitar riffing, monster double pounding blasts, and some black metal slow down riffing prior to the minute mark, then right into the fast parts. The song slows down more that gets into the faster realms. Intense. We even get some guitar solos, and the double bass drums are mixed perfectly. They will collapse your chest cavity in a nanosecond or less. Jay sounds like a madman in this song, and this is pure aggression.

“Gluttonous Feast of Perversion” features a nice doomy opening riff for a while that pounds you into dust, as if George “The Animal” Steele is stuffing that turnbuckle down your throat. The speed comes in, then an old-school, early 90’s drum pattern that has Morbid Angel all over it. The midsection part has atmosphere, barking vocals, some cool harmonies, and allows the listener to catch their breath for a moment. This is a beatdown, pit-heaving moment as well.

The title track ends this highly intense album. There is plenty of blasting and high-intensity moments, and about ¾ of the way through, the slower moments take over for a bit. Heavy, moody, and punishing, this moment is one of the best on the album, then more blasting.

Achtung! Destroy The Weak is brutal. With a minimalistic album cover design, Trench Warfare comes out of the starting gates and never really lets up on this. Some of the slower and moodier moments, the band should expand upon and stick with those elements, rather than blasting right after them, all the time. It just makes the faster parts more intense and abrupt slower moments more of that gut punch we all want when listening to brutal music. Aside from this, the songs are catchy, brutal, and this is so frickin’ vicious. Welcome back, fellas!

Now, certainly, techno and dubstep beats/programming in metal, specifically deathcore, have been used plenty over the years ( The Browning, Beyond All Recognition), but Disfiguring the Goddess, I feel, is one of the first (I’d say The Berzerker, but while they used techno drums they had little dance/programming beats, and yes I know about Fear Factory‘s and Avulsed’s cyber efforts), to really lean into the dubstep influence, despite starting as a standard deathcore/slam band.

But of late, he and his more recent songs have been all over social media, with some even going a bit viral (namely the 2025 EP Galapagos). Especially with the popularity of bands like PeelingFlesh, Infectious Jelking, and Filth, where programming and rap are now commonplace.

So I went back and checked out post-Katerpiller albums like Softly With You, Blood Era and the Brutal Machine – and it’s all pretty consistent; massive, groovy slam/deathcore with oodles of samples, beats and programming. And that’s what Bloom offers, though it appears singing to Seek and Strike has given him a bigger production budget after being pretty independent for his career.

Most of you will hate this. But if you like the aforementioned PeelingFlesh, you will eat this up, as while not using rap, there are tons of dubstep beats and programming/samples amid the generally mid-paced, massive, loping slams. And those bite-sized slams (16 songs in 50 minutes) are pretty satisfying and head-bob-inducing; I imagine the likes of “Samba of the Faceless”,  “Echoes Fade, I remain”, “Deathcore Song”, “Mask off (feat. J-Figure)”, the lumbering “Goddess Box (feat. Bodybox)”, “Low Slam Low”, and “Black Widow Spider” would be pretty fun in a live environment.

That said, there are a few more ‘out there’ tracks like “AWOL”, “Sweet Dreams ” and “Dapper” (both feat. Four Stroke Baron)”, “Permission to be Claimed”, “Kiss the Dice” and reggae-laced “Pleasure Island” with either a lot more…. weirder? programming and some other vocal styles used than the brutal slam growl/burp.

Admittedly, 50 minutes is a bit long for this. Around “Pleasure Island”, the schtick wears off a bit, and I’ve heard the same riff a few times now (but I could see he t “Penance” being a live fixture). But like the albums before, this will be a random guilty pleasure of mine when I want something a little different if I want to shake my booty for a bit. (Ewwww, sorry for that visual).

There have been a couple of lineup changes, with Alex Taylor coming over from the now split-up Aklash. Still, the most impactful addition is Lydia Williams on soprano vocals, joining Freya and her hawkish screams and her own clean vocals. And it’s this brilliant duality that drives this 6-song, 42-minute gem.

The core sound, musically, is still rooted in the 3 above-mentioned bands, and done really well, with some gorgeous, uplifting riffs, but when Williams and Freya play off each other, which is thankfully pretty often, it’s really special. Imagine a sonic representation of that elegant cover art.

It happens on most, if not all, the tracks. And it’s intertwined with the expected builds and moments of acoustic/atmospheric introspection, and some sumptuous riffage and solos. For example, Williams takes the lead for the majority of the largely very chill opener “Nervosa”, until the  7:18 mark where Freya jumps in, and the song explodes into a jangly, 6/8 canter.

Second track “The Guide” might be my favorite track, with an alluring sway early on before a shimmery bridge and eventual 6/8 crescendo at 6:07 that is truly stunning. The same sort of breathtaking light/dark structures appear in my second favorite track, “Wildfire”, an utterly perfect album closer, with riffs that could have come right off Deafheaven’s Sunbather.

 The emotive “Retrace” has a surprisingly feral, urgent explosion (as does the more Opeth-inspired “Dissociate”) around the 3:08 mark, and also delivers a pretty special transition at the 6:46 mark, after a few minutes of lovely acoustics and William’s vocals. The song ends with a really emotional bridge.

How these guys aren’t on AOP, Season of Mist, Northern Silence, or Personal Records is beyond me. Wilderness is a pretty much perfect example of the genre, and they seem like a nice group of folks based on my interactions with them a few years ago. 

Weather aside, it’s ‘western’ black metal act, Sunscorched, that I’m here to talk about… I’m not Max Velocity, hahaha!

This debut album is called Blood of the Badlands, and let me tell you one thing straight away: they are NOT a clone of Blackbraid! These guys are in Arizona and Blackbraid are from New York, so there’s a difference right there. But their approach couldn’t be more different.

The first track is an instrumental called “Whiskey and Oak” it meanders along like a peaceful creek running through the desert, it reminds me of “Blackout Bar” by :Skull&Dawn: mostly for the swagger it has; like that of a gunslinger who has just won a duel in the streets of some shitty western no name town, leaving his opponent lying in a pool of his own blood.

“Stranger’s Land” should be enough to dispel any notion of Blackbraid worship. Where Blackbraid plays sort of a Swedish style of Black Metal (think Marduk and Dark Funeral), Sunscorched is more Eastern European than anything else in that they almost sound Finnish, on the Behexen and Horna path, but there’s also something else that I can’t put my finger on. Maybe when you listen to it yourself you’ll see what I mean.

Really quick, I want to talk about the artwork. I’m quoting from the release: “Visually, the album is anchored by Frederic Remington’s 1901 painting The Old Stage-Coach of the Plains, reinforcing Sunscorched’s focus on the mythologized American frontier, a world where movement, violence and isolation define existence.” That picture is cool as FUCK! It perfectly describes the music played on Blood of the Badlands.

“Slaughter at Camp Grant” balances tempos and emotional gravitas with an edge of Enslaved-style urgency as Sunscorched paint devastating tapestries across the Southwestern skies. It’s a violent track that is representative of the story being told. Next up is “Vultures that Circle my Grave” and this is one of my favorite songs; it’s a punishingly beautiful ode to loss, existence, and the human experience.

“The Gallows Tree” and “Thousand Year Drought” are sloooow, doomy… borderline DSBM on the scale of Happy Days. “Blood of the Badlands” literally starts off as a bloody stallion racing across the desert and ends up as a soaring eagle with wings of fire. The title track is a blistering whirlwind, an instrumental powerhouse, and it roars like thunder over a mountain.

I fucking love Blood of the Badlands. This album isn’t Blackbraid, and it doesn’t need to be, since there’s already a Blackbraid and they’re doing just fine, thank you very much.

I mentioned a few bands here, trying to help with the tags, but it’s your journey to take in the end. I recommend it, so go get it.

There has been a bit of a shift in some of the writing, with the band incorporating more technical and progressive moments. For one, the band opens with “Guillotine Horizon”, with an acoustic opening moment. A far cry from what I was expecting. It does not last long as the brutal blasts and pinch harmonics come in, with the musical landscape taking on more of a tech approach. Tyler’s vocals are excellent, with his varying brutal tones as the brutality bludgeons us. The 2.07 section is technical with the guitar solo. The song shifts to a brutal beatdown slam and then clean vocals. What the hell? Fans of this brutal band better be open to new ideas. For me, these new influences are enhancements to the band’s overall sound. And the mastering from Alan Douches makes this the best Torturous Inception has ever sounded.

“Do What You Will Then Die” is up next, showcasing the progressive and technical aspects the band is throwing at us. Then the brutal blasts and Tyler’s filthy vocals take over to slap us from one side of the pit to the other. Some polyrhythms are tossed in with the start and stop oft-kilter drumming. The brutality flourishes with the blasts, the technical moments, the slow grooving slams, and moodier moments. The blasting and technical aspects do take on more of what Job For A Cowboy is doing nowadays.

“Crushed by the Weight of Hubris” has a great opening gallop, taking me back to 1991. The song rolls into a blast, slows down with aggressive vocals and gutturals. There is some dual layering of the vocal tones, and it takes on a Glen Benton – Deicide vibe. The song slows down with softer vocals and more atmosphere, to the death metal. Killer blasts ignite, then the song slows down, with quite a badass guitar riff. Yet another winner of a song.

“I Am What Remains” ends the album, and I think this is more of a realized version of what we may come to hear from the band in the future. Technical, slower moments, but no less heavy. Clean vocals over the blasts, with influences from The Faceless and Fallujah, the band is incorporating a lot more into their cache. There is plenty of brutality and squealing guitars alongside the progressive and technical nature of this song. This song is the band’s most mature and creative song to date. I will go further by saying this is one of the best songs they have written.

Life’s Worth, even at a brief 27 minutes, is the step forward Torturous Inception needed to take in order to separate from all the brutal slam bands in the Northeast section of the States. The music is more intricate and creative, and while I love all their past material, this is the band’s greatest achievement. This is forward-thinking, and I must say the clean vocal moments work exceedingly well during the parts they are inserted. The band is on fire vocally and musically, creating some complicated song structures. Amazing album, fellas!!

The whole reason I grabbed this promo was because of the mention of The Birthday Party; they’re such a wild, balls-to-the-wall part of Nick Cave’s history that name alone drew me in. The Back of Beyond is a fucking banger; it’s ridiculous how good this album is.

Right off the proverbial bat, Dry Wedding grabs you by your pathetic cerebellum with “Arrowhead”, and there’s that raucous abandon that made The Birthday Party so awesome back in the day. Chugging along with gusto, it becomes a Gothic Western number with a bit of Fields of the Nephilim flavor.

There have been setbacks in the past that might have destroyed a lesser band, but they have soldiered on. There was the pandemic and the release of The Long Erode (2020) that had the band doing shows behind glass, and then in 2023 some asshole stole their van and gear during a West Coast tour. The second album was released independently and is titled Sway (in case you were curious).

Moving on, track numero dos is “The Serpent Box” it is super upbeat, like a court jester on Meth. It jingles and jangles to a crazy Birthday Party beat. It’s wild and unhinged, and is followed by one of my favorite tracks on The Back of Beyond, “Sure as a Gun”. It’s angry, spewing vitriol and resentment, but it’s taking its time while doing so. It’s in no hurry whatsoever, a slow, meandering ode to murder.

“Blood-Red Vengeance” features some killer slide guitar and, for the most part, just exists in its own psychotic story; it’s also the shortest song on The Back of Beyond, coming in at just 1:59 minutes. Nonetheless, it leaves its bloody handprints all over the album. “One Last Strand” feels like a Punk-Western version of “Whiplash” by Metallica. It’s ridiculous fun, and it will get your ass moving. It gathers power and unleashes it until the vibrations shaking the earth have subsided. Chadwick Ferguson treats his bass like it owes him money. A vibrant, malicious track if I ever heard one.

“Moths” is haunting and triumphant, the chorus is massive, and it all swarms around your head, bouncing off and coming at you from all directions. It’s a hair raising track and I fucking love it. “Shifting Wilderness” is the last track and it fucking smokes like a wildfire in June. It’s not fast, it’s just steady sailing on black waters. This is the kind of music that is perfect for 100+ weather, dry and brutal and utterly unforgiving.

It’s safe to say that I’m all in for Dry Wedding. Albums like this are rare and I grab them when I can. The Back of Beyond is a stellar album. It’s mixing of genres and the way it grabs you from the get go are the reasons why I think you need this album in your life.

If you like Nick Cave, Fields of the Nephilim, Swans and 16 Horsepower; you will no doubt eat this album for breakfast. So run, walk, drive or fly to your nearest mom and pop record store and pick it up. You won’t be disappointed.

Norway’s Dimmu Bongir is new to me, but you can tell by their moniker, the Hordanes Land-based album cover, and prior album titles like Hvis pipen tar oss and Dark Medieval Hash, what scene and bands they are parodying, all based around marijuana of course.

Even though the Jaldaboath songs are listed second, I’ll start with them. I thought they had called it quits after The Further Adventures…, They teased a comeback with three singles in 2023: the pub questing “Alehorn Battalions” (of which I am a member, owning the namesake shirt), bouncy “Fayre Robin”, and the catchy “Ogre of Ogmore” (though I can’t place the song it is parodying). Those three songs are contained here, as well as a new song called “Beefeater” (a very English food chain as well as the Royal Guard you probably know).

They deliver what you’d expect from Jaldaboath;  ‘Hammering Heraldic Metal’, \’Crusader-core’, ‘Tumultuous Teutonic Templar Thrash’. Their words, not mine. Though the first three are lacking the usual UK TV/ kids show stuff as before, they are still catchy, folky jaunts with sing-along moments. The new song “Beefeater”, however, does return to the band’s very English roots and references, even the child’s hymn “He’s Got the Whole World in his hands”, and another kids’ playground song you’ll recognize. I hope it’s a sign that a new album is in the works.

Dimmu Bongir‘s songs are all new, and as they have on their two albums (i.e “Bongblåst”), are much more pot parody-based, with song titles like “Her Ghost in the Smoke” and “Inno a Marijuana”. Of course, they play a tinny, early 90s form of Symphonic black metal, and it’s OK.

Early, more raw Dimmu Borgir is the backbone of the style, but certainly Satyricon, early Emperor, and Cradle of Filth are in their crosshairs. The keyboards are suitably and possibly intentionally hokey, but as they werer back then, they work. Sound-wise, if you didn’t know they were a parody band, you’d be forgiven for thinking they were just a band paying homage. Which they, of course, could be as well.

“Her Ghost in the Smoke” actually has nice riffs and synths I enjoyed (and a parody Dani Filth screech), and the mid-paced “Alt mekk er svunnet hen” is actually a pretty cool little song as well, with clear early Dimmu influences that could have been on Enthrone Darkness Triumphant. “Inno A Marijuana,” of course, has a take on the classic Emperor song’s clean chorus as well as a guest spot from The Grand Master Jaldaboath delivering his special take on TheLord’s Prayer.

I’m just glad to see Jaldaboath ‘back’, though they never officially went away. The Dimmu Bongir material was a pleasant benefit, if even if just for the sound they are parodying, as the whole weed theme didn’t do it for me.

Hydrophilous Brood is their Willowtip Records debut, and this is eight songs in thirty-eight minutes. The band packs a ton of time changes, technicality, and brutality into these tongue-twister-named songs. “Nebulous Appendages of Vacillant Seafoam” begins with a short sci-fi intro, which gets right into the guttural growl, and the song blasts along. Allen is a damn good drummer, and he even lends some guitar solos on tracks 5 and 6. He’s also in like a bajillion bands, Tombseeker and Sanguinary Consummation, just to name a few. Garry has a variety of vocal tones, and the influences from Antti from Demilich and Phlegeton, from Wormed, are highly evident in the filthy, burpee gutturals. The time changes and brutality, in this song, are a thing of beauty.

“Driftmoth Vivisector” begins monstrously with the opening blasts and some creative galloping moments, and then goes back into the ruthless blasting. Excellent isolated guitar riff that erupts into a blast beat. You will enjoy the excellent guitar harmonies and the brutal madness, really calling to mind Wormed and Demilich. I love the varying vocal tones and the complexity of the space-themed brutality. We are even greeted with some gravity blasts.

“Biohybrid Virulence” has soft galloping moments, then brutal time changes with the music blasting at full force with mind-boggling instrumentation. The snare drum is able to cut through all the heaviness and has a deep, resonating sound. It is mixed in quite well. The throw-up type of growl at the 1.15 section is pretty gnarly as the proggy moment erupts. The killer double bass comes in over the ethereal/prog moments, and the start and stop moments are played with conviction. Such a great song.

“Serene Aqueous Leech” ends the album. Slow opening moments with jazzy moments. Think of lounge music to get a picture of what is happening in the beginning. Then, at the 55-second marker, that jazzy lounge section turns into the jazz circle pit from hell. The brutality is on full display with the swirling blast beats, and they are fast AF. Pinch harmonics sweep right in to realign your back in 0.0 seconds. The massive amount of time changes is enough to drive you mad and is super creative. The song eventually slows down and ends, kind of how it started.

Hydrophilous Brood is a most excellent release by Sallow Moth. From the trippy and fantasy-laden album cover to a warm and inviting production, this band is class. Super guttural brutality, with tons of time changes and interesting musical passages. Sallow Moth is creative and one of the better, lesser-known, underground bands. You must give this band a listen; they have conviction and are ruthless!

So when I started listening to Apex, and got further and further into the album, and there were no keyboards or orchestration, I was a little disappointed, as it appears the band, going against the grain, has removed the ‘blackened/symphonic’ element, and gone for a straight-up technical death metal/ deathcore sound. And that’s Ok, so once I got over myself and listened to the album for what it is, what Complexant has delivered is a solid effort of that aforementioned sound.

There’s been quite a bit of lineup shuffling for the band since their inception in 2017. And that might be part of the shift, notably, new vocalist Dan Greigsy replaces Brendan Clark. He’s a serviceable growler, but his semi-clean vocals don’t quite work (“i.e “No Angels Weep”, “Heretical Supremacy”), and some true singing makes the band a little more commercial than their early work.

So if you are familiar with when Whitechapel or Fit For an Autopsy went more experimental/commercial, you’ll have some idea of the still sometimes bludgeoning, technical but cleaner take on deathcore.

The mix/master from Crytopsy’s Christian Donaldson is, as you expect, tight, clean, and heavy. And the riffs from Shannon Zivkovic and Gavin Bradley are razor-sharp and tight when they go full force, like “Afterlife”, the more blackened “Swing Myself to Sleep” and “Cyclops”, a couple of minutes into “Critical Mass” and “Eye For An Eye”.

But as I mentioned, there’s a slightly more commercial, metalcore element here mixing with some more blistering stuff, and along with some of the clean vocals, some of which kind of bring killer songs to a halt (“Afterlife”), the album ends up being a little bit of a letdown for me personally.

I hate to be ‘that guy’, but it’s clear my bias based on a three-year-old EP and a single song the band put out 2 years ago is coming through here, despite my best efforts. The removal of the keyboards might be a boon to some, as that style is pretty saturated, so the band’s choice to remove them is to be praised, and fans of no-synths metalcore/deathcore should still enjoy this.

But at the same time, a track like the massive mid-paced closer “No Hope for Sanctuary” screams for some big orchestral bombast, and when they teased something as magnificent as “Your Sacrifice”, Apex is a bit of a let-down, as the band doesn’t stand out at all from the masses now.

Holókauston makes me think of Incantation first and foremost. Onward to Golgotha and Mortal Throne of Nazarene more than any of their other albums. Holókauston has that sort of cavernous feel to it; Sedimentum comes to mind also, as well as Writhing. Its murky atmosphere resembles a Louisiana backwater dripping with pitch-black malice. But there’s also a Black Metal undercurrent, which is why vocalist Naas Alcameth describes Holókauston as a “heretical black opera forged in adverse esoteric and eschatological tradition” and “a madman’s alchemical experiment”.

“Hellmouth” is the opener, and it’s bursting out harder than Cronos, with a runtime of 10:33. This shit rips open wide swaths of the earth with how heavy this is. An echoing bell tolls, and right away there’s that murky atmosphere, pounding, body-shaking heaviness beyond heaviness. It gets ethereal at the 6:06 minute mark, where it takes on this whole other level of extremity… an epic fucking opener if there ever was one.

“Obscurator” is next, and there are blasts right away, no time to recover from the “Hellmouth” you just got shoved through. You’re in the fucking belly of the beast, baby. This is also the shortest track on Holókauston, coming in at a respectable 8:25. Near the middle of the song, it gets almost somber, but not by much. There are still violent whirlwinds in this oppressive storm just waiting to see the light of day.

“Howling” is the Christ-obliterating 11:09-minute third track, and it’s a fucking whopper! Slow, dripping menace like a bloody nose. It drags itself across a moldy earth before it goes completely off the rails with subtle ambience for about 2 minutes before returning to the soul-crushing heaviness. Screams echo from behind an awesome wall of sound, and it elevates this song to unbelievably huge heights.

Last up is “Iniquity”, and it’s a killer, raging track. Moving like a pissed-off bison towards an idiot tourist, it literally runs you over. You’re being gored to death by the most vicious 2000-lb wild animal whose sole intent is to get your ass out of its fucking territory. It’s a brutal, unrelenting way to say goodbye, hasta la vista motherfucker!

This re-release probably sounds better than the original, that’s usually the goal in these situations, and so if you liked it back then, chances are you will again. For those who like Incantation and knuckle dragging, Neolithic heaviness. Go on, then!