Chuffed are not from England… they’re from “the mountains of Pennsylvania” according to the presser. I’ve never been there, but I’ve heard it’s bleak.

What I do know is that these guys are playing some of the nastiest Anarcho-Crust Punk I’ve heard in years; D-Beat, whatever the kids are calling it these days. Right off the get-go, you’re smacked with a spiked baseball bat to the noggin with “Room Without A Door”. Angry as a hive of pissed-off Murder Hornets, front man Deron “Dc” Christman pummels and bashes in skulls.

“Vertigo” doesn’t let up either. It’s whip-cracking fast, reminiscent of the sounds of broken machinery in its final death throes. It’s all played hell fury fast and furious, raging towards the end of the track.

There’s the Extreme Noise Terror attack with “Woun,d”; hitting fast and hard like a rabid wombat. It chews and rips, shredding till there’s nothing left on your scrawny corpse.

“This Phobia” is claustrophobic and tight, bolstered by riffs reminiscent of the nastiest of the nasty, Pungent Stench’s dirty tone from Been Caught Buttering and Club Mondo Bizzaro. Blood will be shed in the pit for sure.

The production is ugly as fuck, I’m not one to speculate, but I have the feeling this was recorded on one of those old-ass cassette recorders, and it is better for that. This is uncompromising, uncomplicated brutality metered out by a hungry dude (apparently, there’s a complete band now, so hopefully the debut will be a fleshed-out terror fest).

“The Horror” closes out Demo in the most violent whirlwind of aggression imaginable. Demo is an ugly baby, like the creature in It’s Alive! It’s looking for the perfect group of like- minded people to embrace the Crust Punk delirium that Chuffed are going to be throwing down.

So if you like this sort of thing, i.e., Doom, Broken Bones, Extreme Noise Terror, Screaming Holocaust, and Raw Noise, this will be the pub that you want to get smashed as fuck in and maybe fight someone’s old lady. Go fucking get it now!

Though touted as ‘black metal’, they lie in that same realm as Germany’s Downfall of Gaia, Dawn Ray’d, the defunct Young and In the Way, or Celeste, some classic Halo of Flies Records acts, and even the last Henry Kane album, meaning they have a little ‘post’ and ‘atmospheric’ black metal, as well as some crusty, hardcore influence, as well, especially in the feral, pained vocals.

Now, they certainly lean way more into the ‘post’ and crust side of things, rather than the ‘atmospheric’ or moody side, as the 43-minute album pretty well rips from start to finish, forgoing the languid dreamy atmospherics or intros and outros and getting straight to slicing, vicious riffs and never letting up.

From the opener “Each Breath A Flame”, to the 9-minute closer “Discarding All Adornments” (which is the lone track that does more traditional ‘post’ type builds, acoustics, ebbs, and some female spoken words), the album seethes and snarls with effective savagery and eloquence.

In particular, “Raise Them Towards the Sun”, “The All-Consuming Work of the Soul’s Foreclosing”, more controlled “Justice is Not Enough to Leave the House of Modernity”, and the excellent aforementioned closer (which both gives me Deafheaven vibes) have taught, shrill, but razor-sharp, blistering riffs that hit hard. And this makes for a really killer no frills album, that is one of my more left field surprises for 2025.

Denver’s Victim of Fire has been around since 2016, and this is their third album. They describe themselves as ‘Stadium Crust’, whatever that is.

But what I’m hearing is an utterly nostalgic throwback to the early second wave of metalcore, when Maiden, At The Gates, and dual guitar licks were creeping in as a primary influence. I’m talking At War With Shadows, Undying, As Hope Dies (I get a really strong “Legions Bow to a Faceless God” vibe), Tragedy, early, early Light This City, Unearth, and Darkest Hour, Hamartia, and even some 00s melodic hardcore akin to Killing the Dream or Have Heart. This isn’t polished, cleaner Killswith Engage-type metalcore. This is much more raw and ferocious.

And it fucking rules.

The Old Lie is a furious 37 minutes of raw, feral, blackened metalcore/crust. The pace is pretty similar from track to track, with a viciously energetic gait, as the drums keep a steady gallop for the most part, even with a few interludes and intros here and there.

The vocals are black-ish metal shrieks, no singing or croons. And the songs are simple, yet visceral, with a power cord and solo-laden stabs of melodic fury. And while the majority of the material is the same frenetically melodic hack’n’slash as heard on absolute rippers like “The Old Lie”, “Apocalyptic Inclination”, “Soldiers Dream”, “Wayward Light”, “Nightmares of Ceasefire”, and “Discordance”, they do add some cool leads on the likes of “Front Towards Enemy” and even some atmospherics for the seven minute penultimate track “Disharmonist”.

The album ends with a fucking riotous cover of Iron Maiden‘s “Aces High”.  And while the song has been covered to death, this one has to be one of my recent favorites, giving the tune a slight speed up and nastiness, but still recreating the glory and Steve Harris twang of the original, ending a fucking killer album on a fucking killer high note.

The style of hardcore Śmierć plays is of course a political/social style of hardcore rooted in a more melodic form of D-beat , a la country mates Spolegelse, Problems or Ninka’s chosen influence, Polish acts like Schizma, Inkwizycja, Traume, Incident, and such, which admittedly I’m not too versed in.

Frontwoman Ninka delivers her impassioned wails, croons, sneers and shouts in English, Polish, and Swedish with the expected array of anti-government, anti-establishment, and the riffs, of course, delivering rousing power cords and canters galore (“Uffe”, “Kto”, “Krewe”, “Kuren”), with some moodiness (“Prawda”, “Das Umheimliche”, “The Song”- with a cool little largely all-female hymnal to close to the album) and lots of song intro scattered among all of them. All with a nice DIY, garage band fuzz, but still nice and clear.

Certainly not my usual listening cup of tea, but there is a real authenticity and passion here that comes through on every note and every lyric (whichever language it is in ) and I like the overall vibe the band is delivering.

If you’re unfamiliar with the Massachusetts-based hardcore/death metal/crust hybrid, do yourself a favor and give this one a listen. Then do yourself another and grab their debut and 2021 EP. After that, why not knock out a quick tug? You’ve earned it and don’t let anyone tell you different!

I’ll mention a few tracks of course, but let me assure you, there are so many bangers, the boss is going to try to eat the album along with his mash (whatever that means). I’ll start with “Out of Time,” which is the opener. It’s difficult not to relate the title to frontman Mark Whelan’s struggles. The 6-plus-minute track, despite its length, is brimming with urgency. Along with the HM-2 guitar tone and the bass to match, the band has a d-beat, crusty, almost metalcore bounce. The chorus is heavy, the drums are pounding, and they sound nearly perfect in the mix. The last minute is also the heaviest part.

“Silence Beyond Life” is a track worth mentioning because of some surprises. Sure, it’s still super heavy with a crusty, d-beat plod, but then clean vocals come in. They’re of the throaty, metalcore variety, but fit quite well. In the first section of them, you only get a tease, like that friend you have who sends you dirty pics, but you know isn’t going to fuck you. Except Fuming Mouth does fuck you… with more clean vocals. Look, I didn’t think this through, much like most of my life. The music does briefly stop completely, which makes sense for a song with “silence” in the title. This is when the solo creeps in, and then a final chorus.

Moving slightly forward into the album, my next favorite is “I’ll Find You.” It begins with a quick solo, then the verse. The chorus comes quickly, and it’s the title being repeated with great force. It’s a short track, at less than 3 minutes, but it’s as impactful and heavy as your mother.

I’ll mention the title track next, which of course is “Last Day of Sun.” It’s a bruiser. I can’t wait to see that verse live. The chorus is relatable on many levels. I can’t decide if it’s chants or synths in the background since they’re buried. The breakdown near the end is brutal and well worthy of being the title track.

I’m so happy for these guys. The weight of expectations and a “comeback” album (although it’s only been 4 years) are heavy burdens. Many bands fail at the prospect, and could you blame them? However, if it wasn’t already clear, Fuming Mouth has met and exceeded them. The difficulty now lies in whether they can keep the momentum going into a brighter future. After what they’ve already endured, my money’s on these guys being perfectly capable. I’m ecstatic for them and the metal world to see what they do next.

Look, I know that these Norwegian Grind/D-Beat/Punk Rockers ain’t exactly new to the block – in fact they’ve been menacing their way around the world of extreme music for over a decade at this point, but that moniker – I don’t care how many times I see it. Every time I picture The Godfather, right? But instead of Jack Woltz waking up to a surprise lesson in equine cranial anatomy, he’s strapped to that ornate mahogany headboard of his while a couple Corleone goons serve him up a million dollar horsey carpaccio. That’s a spicy meat-a-ball!

So yeah, some grotesque imagery here! But Forcefed Horsehead aren’t exactly here to hold your hand through a meadow of wildflowers and daffodils, are they? VIBE CHECK – a ride with these fellas, and you’re in for a chaotic mix of Grind, Hardcore and Punk, with an ooey, gooey underbelly of Sludge and dirty, dirty Death Metal permeating the entire thing, like someone threw a blanket over Mr. Ed’s rotting, decaying corpse and left it in the sun for a month. The end result is in equal measures shocking, revolting and utterly fascinating – the kind of scene you can’t help but stare at even though you know it’s going to be the fuel to every nightmare you have for the rest of your life.

Along with all the different influences at play in FFHH‘s sound, there’s also an undeniably Norwegian quality to it. When they aren’t obliterating your senseless with the relentless grind attack of tracks like opener “Every Death You Take” and the superb “Ruins,” or dragging you through guano-flooded caverns of Sludge and Doom like on “The Black Sun” or “And Then There Were None,”  that familiar rock-out, fun-loving sound perfected by the likes of Kvelertak and Turbonegro seems to shine through, giving the likes of “Futile” and “Iri” an unnervingly upbeat, punky sort of attitude that makes you reach for that extra beer or four well past the point when adding to the night’s tally is necessary or wise – which is of course, when the really ugly, chaotic shit starts going down. The driving beats and riffs of “Novgorod” are positively dripping with malcontent, featuring a dizzying mix of furious blast beats and Every Time I Die-inspired groove that will bring the walls down in whatever venue unfortunate enough to have to try and contain them. Similar story on the tongue-in-cheek titled “Übernecro,” which lays thick into more hardcore sensibilities, attacking with an avalanche of perky, muscular riffing that couldn’t get a frenzied pit moving faster if it released a live, starving tiger onto the general admission floor.

As mentioned earlier, when the band does decide to get real heavy, they are not holding back. “The Black Sun” brings the proceedings to a crushing, oppressive halt, pummeling the listener with slow, plodding riffs and monstrous beats that smash into you with the kind of devastation only a runaway locomotive could dish out. It’s a song that takes the Marshawn Lynch “run through a mothafucka face” guide to life truly to heart – we’re talking ten-ton hammerblows to the dome again and again and again for 6+ minutes straight until you’re a veneer of red liquid in the dirt. Closer “… And Then There Were…” follows a similar destructive path, though playing a bit more on the morose, dreary end of the spectrum, rather than outright hateful pummeling. The effect however, is just as devastating, not only doling out a physical sort of punishment, but mental and emotional as well (which any good Catholic knows is how you cause REAL lasting damage).

By the time I’m through with “Monoceros,” I’ve found myself with a bit ol’ grin on my face, because what this album really does is transport me back to a lot of really fond, nostalgic periods of my journey through the world of metal. More than once I found myself thinking back to the likes of Premonition of War and Burnt by the Sun – others, I’m dragged a bit more down in the mud – fondly reminiscing days spent discovering the likes of Bloodlet or Soilent Green, and just when you think you’ve got a general beat on what’s going on with Forcefed Horsehead, things get a little weird and you find yourself tangled in the chaos the likes of Today is the Day and Agoraphobic Nosebleed. It’s an absolute whirlwind of aggression and ill-intent, and damned if it’s not a goddamn blast of a listen. So even though I risk having the thought of a Bojack Horseman snuff film permanently imprinted on my brain with every spin of this record, the risk is well worth it. Check it out for yourself.

To these ears, the band has gone back a little more to the hardcore/D-beat/crust of their earlier efforts Aporia and Interminable Night, with more cantering, galloping D-beat-paced songs amid the murky, mid-paced death metal lumberings, even with Butler’s pure death metal bellow. And all of it is rendered by Greg Wilkinson (Autopsy, Static Abyss, Vastum, Undergang), so it comes with a nice low-end and viscous, dense guitar tone, and is a little less Stockholm inspired than the prior two efforts.

But the thing is, for all its burly bluster there’s something missing here. There are very few dynamics going on in Theothanatology. It rumbles and trundles with aplomb, but it’s super simplistic from start to finish and never delivers anything that really gets me going or I recall when the album is over.  Now I understand the style isn’t about vast progressive moments or sweeping arpeggios, but from opener “Theothanatologist” to closer “Atheonomist”, I really don’t feel like there was a go-to song or riff that I can hang my hat on and each song essentially does some small variation of the same thing. There’s a D-beat canter, there might be a blast beat, there’s a rumble, there’s a slower part, there’s more rumbling…and so on. Which is certainly fine if you want a simple beat down.

“Abyssal” is OK, and so is “Innards of Divinity” which does add a little subtle melody to the formula I guess. and closer “Atheonomis” has a nice little grooving main riff. But for the most part, while I’m listening to Theothanatology I’m actually kinda……bored? Which pains me to say as I rather enjoyed Decreation and Deathless Master.

In short, yes. Firstly, it’s shorter, at a little over 30 minutes, and that includes a cover. Secondly, the production is a little dirtier, giving it almost a Skeletonwitch vibe, and being from the same hometown as those boys, I’m here for it.

“What about the songs,” you say… Well, we’ll get there. We’ll get there right now, in fact. The first official track is called “Canadian Denim Mountain Attack” and I have questions, but let’s save those for later. Let’s not save the fact that this is a banger. With its stomping riff, filthy, yet still glorious production, feral vocals, and stellar lead sections, Wormwitch have started this sumbitch off right.

They continue the momentum with track 3, “The Wolves of Ossory,” which doesn’t sound a lot different than the previous, but the guitars definitely have a more forward presence on this one. The plodding feel of the next track, “Hammer of the Underworld,” distinguishes it a bit from the previously mentioned ones, but it’s definitely not a curve ball. That “Oooh” right before the punky ending section is a nice touch, though.

Despite an interlude in the form of track 5, called “The Crimson Proof,” there’s not a lot of letting off the throttle here. I do really enjoy the “ALL RIGHT” at the beginning of “Abracadabra,” though. Not a cover, by the way. The latter half of the track is definitely more of the black side of black thrash, but with all the emotive expressions, you can definitely get the idea these guys love what they’re doing, and you can feel it.

The longest track on the album, which is track 7, called “Leering Crystal Effigies,” sounds like it’s about to go off the rails until it settles into a groove a little over a minute and a half in. Then, I must admit it sounds a little like Wolvhammer, another excellent band of Skeletonwitch frontman Adam Clemans. Not for long, though, as it goes into an almost Enslaved section. Of course, that doesn’t last long, either before going back into the black thrash. If you’re looking for your standout track, this is it!

The last track is a Metallica cover, specifically “Hit the Lights,” which is my favorite song ever written about energy conservation. Since it’s Metallica, it would be impossible to say “if you didn’t know this was a cover, you wouldn’t know…” Everybody’s heard it, and everybody knows. However, Wormwitch do certainly make it their own, throwing a layer of dirt and muck over it while paying homage to the original.

With that in mind, it’s probably pretty clear that I dig this. In fact, a significant portion more than their previous offering. If you’re even moderately into black thrash ala Skeletonwitch, All Hell, etc., give this a go. Now, onto those questions about the first track. Soooo, is there literally a mountain of denim in Canada? If so, does it attack people, or is it frequently subject to attacks? Or, are people attacking mountains in Canada with denim. It would take some large jeans to fit over those asses.

Nearly a year later, things on the surface at least seem like we’re edging closer to some sense of “normal.” But how much of that is purely an illusion? This isn’t the first time the world has been dealt a pandemic, or gone through racial tensions that have reached a boiling point, or have had to try and bridge a seemingly endless gap of social, philosophical and moral differences, and certainly – this world is no stranger to acts of random, senseless violence carried out in the name of God or Allah, country or belief, or often for no reason at all. But perhaps we’ve never dealt with all of these things so directly, all at once – and certainly never in a digital world of social media and access to countless platforms where EVERYONE’S opinion, however unhinged or lacking in anything resembling “fact,” is able to be spread throughout the world to billions of people desperate to make any amount of sense out of everything going on around them.

My point is – while it’s easy to get excited about a return to “normal” (of course I can’t wait to go back to concerts and breweries and everything else) – there’s still PLENTY about this world that is fuuuuuuuuuuuuuucked, and the ripple effects of the last 13 months of our lives is bound to leave its mark in ways both profound, and subtle. With their new album “Mortal Coil,” Dödsrit is here to make sure none of that is forgotten.

Time pretends to heal my wounds.

So I can wither from within and never heal.

A couple changes since we’ve last heard from this one-man project from the woods of Sweden – the biggest of which being, well, it’s not a one-man project anymore. Original mastermind Christoffer Öster  has enlisted the Dutch trio of bassist Jelle Soolsma and guitarist/vocalist Georgios Maxouris (both of Destructo and Nuclear Devastation), along with drummer Brendan Duffy (ghUSa, Morvigor) full-time into the new lineup. The other change you’ll find as Mortal Coil goes on, is that Dödsrit have shifted slightly to a more pure Black Metal-leaning sound than on either of the past two efforts. They certainly haven’t abandoned the D-Beats and punkier Crust elements that have always been a big part of the band’s sound, they’re just not quite as pronounced – giving way to more blast beats and slightly cleaner guitar tones, as evidence on opener “The Third Door,” which gets right to business with layered tremolo-picked riffs and furious blasts before Christoffer surges in with his signature tortured screams. It’s a fast start out the gate, but the band really starts to cook at the 3 minute mark, when Dödsrit break things down, starting first with very simple, dissonant guitars, and piece-by-piece add elements on top with pounding, rhythmic drums, and soaring, building guitars layered one on another, until the band explodes and reintroduces itself properly with a blistering D-Beat attack that’s like injecting adrenaline directly into your eardrums. The band repeats this process once more before the end of the 11+ minute track, finishing with another epic, cathartic burst capped off by a great, melodic lead.

Drenched in blood | Shed my skin.

Throw your bones | Into my tomb.

Mend its guilt | To its cave.

Leave this body | For it is frail.

That little extra emphasis on the side of Black Metal shows itself even more on the beginning of follow-up “Shallow Graves,” with another furious tremolo-picked and blast beaten intro, that gives way into a nice little melodic, almost Viking Metal-inspired stretch. The track also features the first of Georgios’s lower, more bellowing vocal additions, serving as an effective change of pace and tone. The track also shows off some really pretty, Opeth-esque harmonized leads that seem to point to the real effect the addition of another guitarist has had on Dödsrit’s sound. I don’t remember ever hearing a lead quite like it on any previous tracks, and it sounds REALLY good here, especially through the last couple minutes of the song, where the band ramps up the intensity and the lead takes on a very traditional heavy metal vibe. These great leads and harmonies bring themselves to the forefront again on closer “Apathetic Tongues,” with another super-catchy, yet melancholic stretch that seems to carry the weight of heavy burden on it. Mighty – but with an overlaying sense of sadness and grief.

There is no way back towards all that we left in the past.

When marching forward on this cold and lonesome path.

Leading us towards our shallow tomb.

Leading us towards the hell we call our home.

“Mortal Coil” busts out yet another new development for the band – a guitar solo! It can be really easy for a band to suddenly introduce something like guitar solos to their repertoire and have it seem audacious and over-the-top, or simply just not fit in at all with the band’s sound, but in this case is done very well and flows naturally from the song. It’s almost like the band took an opportunity to really show off what they’re made of now with a full compliment of musicians behind the wheel, and I for one am totally here for it. That being said, at the end of the day, Mortal Coil mostly sticks to the formula that has been successful for the project since it’s inception: long, powerful and cathartic songs that take you to peaks of fury and rage, down to valleys of introspection and remorse, and everywhere in between. They haven’t rushed into making any drastic changes with their new roster, but instead have made some minor tweaks, little flourishes and additions that don’t necessarily change the big picture, but make noticeable impact in the moment.

So look, if you’re (justifiably) in search of something more upbeat to spring forward into a new day – this, very obviously, is not it. But a world without darkness can’t fully enjoy the light, and sometimes the best way to reach solace and joy is to persevere through the acceptance of grief and anguish. If that’s what you need in your life, I think that’s what Mortal Coil is here for, and much like Scam’s Sounds of Disease did a year ago, Mortal Coil seems a perfect fit for the world we live in. Whether you’re already a fan or just coming into Dödsrit’s radar, I can’t recommend this album enough.

This is not the fault of Wolf King. In fact, I quite enjoyed their performance, already owned their lone full length at the time Loyal to the Soil, bought a shirt and a copy of their ep. Forgive me, guys?

Anyway, this brings us to their new album, The Path of Wrath, which is one of my most anticipated of the year. Will it live up to the hype? Will I make my intro another paragraph longer? Most importantly, where the hell do babies come from?

So, how long does it take your head to get moving? About 1 minute into the first proper track, which is track 2, “Messenger of Death.” Before that riff, it’s fast-paced riffing with a punk backbeat, then that riff takes over, we have some guitar squeals, then some deep vocals trading off with the highs. It’s always a good thing when one can point out that the vocals, guitars, and drums stand out on a track. They do here. That very first riff returns with about a minute left, too. It’s already clear this band has evolved.

It becomes even clearer with their next track, which is a touch over 6 minutes, called “Wandering Soul.” This is a well written track as it goes from a punk beat, to death metal, to black metal all within the first couple of minutes. A little over 3 minutes in, you can hear the bass for a few moments before the guitars take it back over. It’s a little long with the fade out, but still one fine performance.

Moving forward, the title track, “The Path of Wrath” is #7. A short track at well under 3 minutes, I don’t feel it represents the album as a whole since there’s no experimenting here, just a quick shot to the chops and on its way to the best track on the album in my opinion (which is absolutely always right).

Perfectly lead into by the previous, the next song “Incantation” could possibly be mistaken for an ode to the band of the same name at first with the fuzzy intro. When the vocals and the main riff kick in, though, it’s clear that it isn’t. A quick lead around 2 minutes in leads back into what could be called the chorus, as it’s definitely the main vocal hook. That hooks hits one more time with about a minute left, then the track fades out for the rest of that time. Stellar!

The final track is the longest one (I might have mentioned before that I am not a big fan of when bands do this). “Eternal Hunger” is its name. It has the feelings of a long intro, but that’s not really the case as the vocals start at 30 seconds in. For the most part, this track is a bit slower of a tempo, but uses the guitars to build an atmosphere, whether with the riffing or in isolation, as they do with over 2 minutes left. The rest of the instruments join the guitars and keep with the same riff until the track fades out. Unfortunately, from my view, it ends the album on a bit of a downer.

That just adds to the one issue I have with the album: It’s over 50 minutes long, BUT… It is sometimes death metal, sometimes hardcore, sometimes punk, sometimes d-beat, sometimes black metal. It’s heavy, frequently breathtaking, and almost always enthralling. I adore it. You need to get off your ass (or just go to the Bandcamp page while still on said ass) and purchase it now.

The first 6 songs account for a mere 6 minutes of the ep, with “Starved” getting things rolling with a monster growl, steamrolling into a punishing groove, then right into a fast paced death metal speed with the Swedish buzzsaw guitars carving demonic, toilet-paper infused faces across your body and then flushing your torso down the toilet.

During the Pandemic one of the things that started popping up were liquor stores delivering – OMG….found a place a ways from me that had my favorite Bourbon (Cask & Crew) therefore “Sick of Being Sober” is a righteous song, as it starts with a punishing late 80’s/early 90’s beat and Chase Mason letting out a vintage Celtic Frost Tom Warrior stylized ugghh – destructive and heavy song.

“Rusted Gold” is next with a monstrous opening double bass section ready to erupt chest cavities everywhere.  At 57 seconds it lops your head off before you know what swiped it off in the first place.  “Amputation” has a stop and start fast section and the groove part is excellent.  Then a nice little growl to end the 31 second beast.  “Superspreader” is the perfect song title and is relevant in today’s news.  Having more of a late 80’s/early 90’s speed and the guitars are so dense and heavy – perfection.

Once the short songs are over the 11 minute epic “Emptiness” rears its ugly doom/death head.  This has the essence of vintage Asphyx and some funeral-hopeless dirge style doom.  I cannot believe how damn heavy the guitars are and I really appreciate this song.  The double bass towards the end and epic buildup really show what Gatecreeper are capable of and I welcome more of these future songs.

An Unexpected Reality is an excellently produced, written, played and punch you in the face over and over and over again ep.  The cover is magnificent and each time I look at it I discover new and evil shit.  In case you’re wondering, yes I did this review in 18 sentences to keep pace with the 18 minute ep and I think this ep absolutely, violently destroys!

Oh, you clever sons of bitches. THAT’S how you get my attention when it comes to promo emails. Heck, why not just throw in Tragedy to boot as well as, BJs, steaks, guns and the New Orleans Saints to top it off????

But unlike about 50% of promotional ‘FFO’ claims, this one hits it out of the park with this Finnish five piece, and this short but furious 3 song , 22 minute or so EP, that really does imbue all of the bands mentioned above rather well. And as s a nice topper the EP is mixed and mastered by Topon Das of Fuck the Fucts, so there’s that too..

Killer opener, “The Great Famine” sets the tone with a perfect melodic, d-beat crusty canter, a mix of deep bellows and pain-filled shrieks, and blackened crescendoes filled with bleak melodies. The second track, the EPs longest, “From Man of God to Voracious Beast” builds with post-rock patience and mood but explodes at the 3:38 mark with a nifty atmospheric blackened riff, where the Downfall of Gaia reference comes in, then it settles down into a more restrained post-metal ebb and throb. 

The last track, “A Glimpse Beyond” continues the more somber post-metal vibes, until it reaches its inevitable more black/crust peak about 6 and a half minutes in and delivers a nice Ep ending, but never quite fully delivers a truly special climax or ending to the song. Still, a band I think I will be watching as they edge towards a full-length album after a handful of splits and Eps. 

Exulansis;  The tendency to give up trying to talk about an experience because people are unable to relate to it.

Sequestered: To keep a person or a group of people away from other people.

Sympathy ; feelings of pity and sorrow for someone else’s misfortune.

And what a perfect album for those longing to hear Fall of Efrafa or Light Bearer (still 2 of my favorite bands ever)

Oregon’s Exulansis released Sequestered Sympathy last year independently, but Germany’s Alerta Antifascista/Doomrock label, the label with ties to the likes of Vestiges, Archivist, Morne, Downfall of Gaia, Momentum, Anopheli, Morrow ;  other Fall of Efrafa/Light Bearer  sounding/associated projects, picked up this amazing debut album, and it’s a perfect match.

Plying a similar emotive, organic and epic crust/black/doom combination as the above bands,  but where Exulansis differ is the use of a full time acoustic/and five string electric violin, in every song, courtesy of Andrea Morgan (who also provides some somber female croons)  and it adds a despondent air of melancholy to the proceedings not unlike My Dying Bride‘s early work. And the end result is at times,  simultaneously vitriolic and miserably wondrous.

Littered with moments of violin laced or acoustic despondent clarity and furious moments of tumbling, blackened crust, Sequestered Sympathy, is an emotional roller coaster that immediately recalls moments of Light Bearer ,Fall of Efrafa and Vestiges. The album’s centerpieces are three rangy (9-12 minutes) numbers;  the opening title track,  standout “Despondent”, and lengthy “Dead Can’t Die”. All three deliver taught build ups and peak with crusty blackened explosions, glossed with Morgan’s somber violins (and vocals), and it’s often utterly brilliant (i.e the mid section peak of “Dead Cant Die”).

The rest of the material (“Barren”, “John Bradley” and closer “A Helpless Witness, to Such Pain”) deliver moody violin laden filler that bridges the material with emotional gravitas, spoken words etc, but add to the album’s overall mood and effectiveness. And when it’s all combined, Sequestered Sympathy LP will certainly be on my year end list, and hopefully, a CD version will be released at some point.

Mixing death metal, doom and crust with a bit of black metal spookiness, Strigoi (Romanian spirits of lore), the 12 tracks here delivers the same nasty  mid range guitar tone as Vallenfyre, and with Mackintosh’s innate presence, you can hear some subtle Paradise Lost-ish riffs , but if they were zombiefied and amped up on bath salts.

There’s an ample mix of shorter crusty feverish blasts such as “Phantoms”, “Seven Crowns” and “Plague Nation” but as with Vallenfyre, where the material shines is the sickly, Autopsy-ish crawling, doom laden numbers that shamble and ooze with menace such as “Carved Into The Skin” (which really imbues Paradise Lost‘s first, seminal doomy effort) and the creepy closing title track,  and of course a couple of tracks that mix both like “Nocturnal Vermin” and “Throne of Disgrace” bringing both elements together successfully in a nasty little stew.

A couple of tracks like the industrialized clamor and stomp/blast of “Parasite” or Swedish Death metal romps of “Iniquitous Rage” and “Scorn of the Father” show Mackintosh trying to add a little something new to the mix, but it’s the album weakest moments sometimes sounding like Napalm Death’s weaker years.

Mackintosh has said he wants Strigoi to stand on its own as an entity after Vallenfyre, but if he really wanted Strigoi to stand out or be different than his other side project, then he might have changed things up just a little more. As it stands, if you were to play both band’s albums on shuffle play, you’d have a hard time telling them apart, but that’s OK as both a pretty darn good.

Coming on like a freight train leaving the tracks and knocking a 747 out of the sky, “No Moral High Ground” brings on the feral dementia riffing like a cross-pollination of Dystopia, Bongzilla and Damad.  Helter skelter grease guitar dives into a putrid set of downer grooves with surprisingly fluid and walking bass lines that dare to step above the dual guitar trod of guitarists Joe Lipa and Alex DiMartina.  Vocalist Kristina Rose has a harrowing lower range scream that slips into death metal informed growls later on in the track and though she’s placed audibly in the mix, it feels like her roars are buried beneath a 1,000 feet of tarmac, mud and paint chips.  Bassist Paul Mietlick and drummer Bub lock onto their parts with reckless abandon and keep the material even more forceful and tightly welded to the cement when examined in tandem with the guitars.  There are enough speed-ups to render things quite interesting throughout and they never seem to keep one exact tempo across the entire EP, although their main dealings are sludgy, mountain fucker sludge/doom diatribes.  The racing punk concussion drumming on “Fake Reality is Fidelity” ignites a series of lean yet no less dirty quick riffs that dip into monstrous bouts of Sabbath blues, heavily reminding me of much missed scuzz sludge crusties Facedowninshit.  Yanari’s every single juxtaposition of ratty sound between slow crumbling grooves and fast fuck you punk hits harder than the next as Rose spatters burning words about the decay of society.  A closing spliff of a riff smokes up on some gargantuan St. Vitus style Chandler worship to excellent effect.

“Abuse” is a toe curdling, spoiled milk orgy of gutterball guitars and rolling toms that kicks into violent up-tempo shoves of more tangible heavy rock traits.  The push/pull aesthetic that is highlighted on the entire demo comes off especially strong yet again.  If Grief had more get-up and go tempo wise (like they did on …And Man will Become the Hunted) would be a great way to describe the quintet on this jam.  Viciously riffed and awesomely titled, “The Walls of our Brood” lets a bit of blues light the room of a completely pitchblack sludge mangler number.  Each riff twists in a pool of its own waste but finds enough swing to make its serpentine dance tough, memorable and sometimes quite infectiously catchy.  Don’t get me wrong, this tune culminates with a disgusting power chord puke finale that’s as heavy and slow as the genre gets and the song’s hardly describable as “nice” throughout 3:43 running time.  Good fuckin’ stuff till the last drop…

Marine Leg is a killer debut and a sonic blueprint that I can’t wait to see expanded and added onto over time.  Yanari have my favorite traits from sludge and punk nailed down pat and there’s not a wasted minute here with songs that get their point across in 4 minutes or less.  I’d fucking love to hear a whole album of this stuff but in the meantime this surely wet my whistle.

Though with a solid record deal with a solid label, little has changed. The HM2 buzzsaw us used to wield a more feral black metal style, though things have been fined tuned and there is a little more melody and death metal contrail contained within the torrid storm of HM2 riffs.

The release is brief, being barely 30 minutes, and the songs all hovering around the 3 minute mark , but this sort of salvo is meant for short sharp assaults, not lengthy drawn out affairs. after a short intro,the tile track delivers a surprisingly restrained and sober mood before “Revenge” explodes with far nastier intentions. “Looking into the Void” feature with a more expected Stockholm death metal canter before “Deathlike Silence” unleashes a Dismember on crack blackened death assault and “Dawn of  New Day” brings back the mood from the opener albeit a but faster.

The tracks never really stray too far from the path of the above 5 numbers, either thicker blacked stomping or blasting blackened furor; there little in between, but the face peeling satisfaction is consistent and Thirion  knows his way around both. However Id really like to hear him expand a little more on the full on grooving Swedish death metal as heard on parts of “At the Edge of the World” on future releases. I think he’d kill it.

Formed from members of As We Bleed, Nuisible takes the above described sound, adds some tasty Wolverine Blues -ish death n roll and voila, Slave & Snakes, a thunderously  impressive, noisy, raucous debut from start to finish with ample amounts of blasting grinding bluster and lots of very hefty, nasty grooves.

The guitar tone is rooted in the HM2 boss sound of Swedish death metal, but grimier, beefier and dirtier with a deadly punk/grindcore sneer. From the more Tragedy on steroids canter of ” … And Snakes”, “Death Legacy”, “Two Sided Integrity”, and “Burning Embers” (with a simply devastating Crowbar ish song ending lope) through Entombed’s death n roll era rumble of “Evil Still” and “Vengeful Blood” to flat out slow burning destruction of closer “Blur the Line”, the album is an impressive display of heft energy and aggression that somehow passed under my radar in 2018, so I’m glad the PR firm decided to finally shoot it my way.

I’ve followed False Flag since their demo and they’ve been operating at a high level ever since.  Each passing release seems to exponentially raise the ante on the intensity of the instrumental/vocal performances as well as the songwriting urgency.  Their side kicks off with piercing Cavity/Melvins’-esque feedback that rips eardrums apart during the intro of “Docile Body.”  It doesn’t take long for the quintet to place the listener in a storm of pure aural corrosion; stop/start blasts swing into off-kilter 8-armed beats as cast iron vocal decay chops its way to the forefront of vastly ambitious and creatively immaculate twin guitar venom (complete with high-end melodies, clean licks and toxic shred), Kamran Raza’s gristle throb bass lines and a generally slaughtering attack that constantly shades and layers the atmosphere with malice that’s alternately catchy and fucking mental.  “Flesh (Burns Flesh)” tears your head off with a climax placed at the beginning of the song in the form of a hornet’s nest of shrill, thousand sting grind riffs, brute force blasts and dual vocals so harried in their mind-numbing shouts, screeches and hollers you can imagine a couple of larynxes lying on the studio floor by the time the song was completed.  This is totally classic stuff but the tuning of the guitars adds harmony/melody where you’d think it couldn’t possibly exist yet it does.  The tri-headed voices of lead singer Pushkar Nalawade and guitarists Shaunak Phadnis and  Rohit Chaoji lend the tune the frantic, “with all abandon” landmine explosions that the music itself specifically asks for.  Easily one of their best tracks to date there are forays into clean n’ haunting post-punk atmospheres that feature heavily on the trippy, intricately picked guitar notes, limber walking bass lines and drummer Aryaman Chatterji taking serious time to build a skyscraping power trip out of his boiling tom drums and militant snare marches.  The boys collide post-punk’s scratchy ambience with some doomed-out, blown to shit crust for a fearsome finale.  EP standout “Counterfeit” has even more brutish grind ballast to dish out as sludgy shoves interject the speed-freak madness with molten heaves and gorgeous acoustical melodies appear only to be swiftly eviscerated by minor-key, blackened scathes.  False Flag rounds out their contributions with “Mann Ki Baat,” less than 19 seconds of possible political samples and short-tempered fury grind.

Neck Deep in Filth is an excellent pairing for False Flag’s lunacy.  They’re a little more straightforward but they’ve got some unusual touches to their sound as well and enough anger inside their collective to stuff a nuclear warhead full to bustin’.  “Bastion of Bigotry” has an ominous creep for an opening; slicin’ and dicin’ its way through waves of feedback, squalidly psyched-out early Electric Wizard bass frequencies and slowly rising sleaze chords.  A murderous shout/scream has some touches of Mike D. Williams but soon the pacing kicks into a hurtling d-beat with crust/grind fury given some tense, slowed-down Slayer riffing and even a little rotten death metal vibes popping up.  Those mountain toppling kick drums and the dirtbag guitar break at 1:30 give me that mindset of wartorn city battlegrounds as the band sets things up for a noxiously sludge-bombed ending.  They remind me of bands like Siege, Seized, His Hero is Gone, Gloomy Sunday, Catheter and Lifetime Shitlist.  Their second jam and the EP’s final stand “A Gift from the State (A Bullet for your Head)” is on overdrive from the first note and it has some hogfat guitar riffs straddling the line between punk and unbridled death/thrash with no apologies given.  I love the fact that these guys like their brethren in False Flag really value the bass’ presence (which is sometimes rare in this kind of material) as every pulsation is guaranteed to loosen molars and release bowels.  A divebombing swoop of hopelessly doomed Sabbath-y riff-shifting and neck in the rope feedback brings this split to an appropriate close.

Though it’s a fairly brief release, False Flag and Neck Deep in Filth pack plenty of meat onto every bone with a high standard set on the musical arrangements and overall heaviness.  Genres blur, instruments cripple, riffs weld to the brain and the vocal atrocities put a knife right up to your scruff.  Anyone that’s into crust, hardcore, grind, thrash and doom should find plenty to love here.

The four-piece from Tempe, Arizona describe themselves as, “playing heavy, brooding hardcore punk inspired by the likes of Discharge and His Hero Is Gone.” Simple enough; specifically because the aforementioned bands, and style in general, don’t necessarily need much elaborating. However, we’ll give credit to nuance and also point out that the album does follow the general rubric of dark, d-beat hardcore: it’s heavy, metallic and galloping all throughout the 12 tracks of the debut album Disease Is Our Refrain. The pace does slow down and dig in its heels for more of an atmospheric heaviness (particularly on the song “Razed” and the title track) towards the end of the album. Nevertheless, the formula is fairly consistent throughout the record; it’s deviations providing just enough variation in speed, structure and atmosphere to distinguish between songs.

The production takes a little getting use to, however I only have one main gripe about it. Recorded at Arcane Digital Recording by Landmine Marathon guitarist Ryan Butler (side note: guitarist of Seas Will Rise, Eric Saylor, was the original founder of Landmine Marathon), Disease Is Our Refrain sounds quite large, especially when played next to the recent Landmine Marathon album, yet, like the recent LM record, it still sounds somewhat flat; it lacks a little bit of body and density. One reason I bring this point up is because it is noted that the album was mastered by Brad Boatright of From Ashes Rise (obviously another musical inspiration), yet Seas Will Rise lack that punch From Ashes Rise possess and apparently have influenced the band with. But, I’m kind of a stickler for production, so take that all with a grain of salt.

Fortunately, the band has written some absolutely vicious material that is immediate enough to put your attention on the songs and music first and foremost. Songs like lead-off track “A Sleeper’s Cell”, “In Dust And Blood” are very reminiscent of Tragedy while “This Teardown Town” and “Population Zero” inject blastbeats and thrashy riffage to earn them points from headbangers. With this style usually being left to veterans releasing new material sporadically, it’s nice to see new acts like Seas Will Rise (and Relapse’s Unkind – definitely another point of reference with a similar sound) tackle the heavy d-beat sound. And much like Hemingway’s “Iceberg Theory”, when you know you’re dealing with heavy, brooding hardcore punk, you already know what you’re getting into and no review can really enlighten or provide wholly new revelations for such a unique and powerful sound.