In truth though, when you get to that level of pepper-induced pain, real flavor kind of takes a back seat. The term “straight gas, no brakes” could appropriately be applied, not only for the all-out dedication to oral punishment, but because one of the few flavor profiles attached to little bastards like these is often “ethanol-like.” So… gas. On the other hand, if you still want the surface-level capsaicin rush, but want more depth of flavor, there’s no shortage of options available. There’s the beautiful, rich earth tones of a poblano or hatch chili, or in the case of the humble (if misunderstood) habanero, a bright, fruity backbone that pairs delightfully with white wine, fruit or white meats, but with plenty of kick to still reach down your pants and give you a little thrill. Consensually.

The point is, whatever flavor profile you’re looking to fit, whatever personal tastes you may have or experience you want to partake in, peppers have no shortage of options available to get you where you wanna go.

Portugal’s Gaerea, for their part, are certainly no stranger to the art of delivering a highly impactful experience. Their emotionally-driven, cathartic blend of extreme music has certainly never lacked in the way of “spice,” but through the course of their career, the band has steadily worked their way down from billion-scoville levels of blistering attack, to more modest, palatable levels of aggression, coming fully to a head in he form of 2024’s Coma, an album that saw the band at their relatively-most-accessible, while still providing no shortage of furious, blast-beaten and blackened fury.

It also marked the first album with founding member and longtime lead guitarist Alpha (Guilherme Henriques) taking over vocal duties from original vocalist, Ruben Freitas. While Freitas’ tortured, impassioned bellows were certainly chills-inducing and every bit fitting of the band’s sound, Alpha proved he not only could match Freitas’ intensity, but also expand the band’s range by incorporating the occasional stretch of clean vocals and whispered accents that only made the band’s penchant for atmosphere all the more potent. The increased emphasis on space and melody only heightened the drama of their work, effectively making the highs and lows of the album all the more devastating in its delivery, and perhaps more importantly, did so in a way that never betrayed what has always made Gaerea such a unique and recognizable entity.

With Loss (the band’s first effort with Century Media), Gaerea continues to push its own boundaries to create a more complex and, at least to these ears, a more impressive product. While never ones to shy away from emotional themes and overtones, tracks like “Submerged,” “Phoenix” and “Cyclone” showcase the band leaning even further into what’s possible with the use of more intricate and sophisticated vocal techniques (including a not unwelcome increase in really pretty and heartfelt cleans, particularly on the excellent “Cyclone”), and the addition of even more varied and interesting musical influences – the snapping break of “Submerged” and lofi intermission “LBRNTH” are equal parts unexpected and exceptionally appropriate, providing the sort of sudden-turn palate cleansers amongst the chaos that both shock the system and lend even further to the overall experience of listening to this album.

And that’s all before we get the album’s breathtaking closer “Stardust,” which takes the album’s overall theme of loss and grieving to its crushing conclusion. Imagine if Lorna Shore decided to re-record their landmark “Pain Remains” trilogy, but with a guest collaboration from Sleep Token both vocally and musically – that should give you at least an idea of the kind of soul, intensity, and devastation poured into this track, making for one of this band’s true crowning achievements in their already impressive career.

Before anyone gets put off by the mention of the (confusingly) divisive Sleep Token, or merely pointing out the uptick in clean vocals on this album, make no mistake that the band is still just as capable of delivering violence at a level many bands can only aspire to. “Hellbound” and “Uncontrolled” each unleash the band’s blasting fury in spades, putting aggression at the forefront while still providing balance with moments of calm and stillness. Hell, it’s not even as if the previously mentioned tracks that do flirt more with the lighter, more experimental side of their sound hardly go without the devastating outbursts that make up such a signature part of the band’s identity; they just have a little more under the hood to offer than previous iterations of the band fully provided. If a song like “Phoenix” can’t get your juices flowing, particularly with its defiant message of self-reliance and perseverance through trial and tribulation, then like… I don’t really know what to tell you, man? Shit makes me want to run through a wall, brick or otherwise.

Loss, at its essence, feels like a band truly letting their guard down and allowing their most authentic form to fully bloom. The pressure to be as visceral, to be as brutal and overwhelming as a Trinidad Scorpion chile, no longer seems to be holding this band hostage. The result is a far more enjoyable and complex flavor profile that you’ll remember for more pleasant reasons than just obliterating your taste buds. There’s a range of emotion and depth of influence on display that encourages you to come back again and again to find new, subtle notes and details. It’s an experience that can still bring you to tears, but also fill you with pure joy and self-assured strength. This is Gaerea, so far anyway, at its most impactful, and I commend the band for bringing all these elements together in such a cohesive, intoxicating blend. Loss is a monumental achievement for this band, one that we should all experience.

Luckily, the first released video/song, “Labyrinth of Stone” alleviated those concerns. Not only is the song a tech death banger with an excellent clean chorus, but the video itself has enough ironic self-awareness that it made me giggle the first time. The production is also clean and punchy, so crisis averted. I’m confident these dudes had a blast making it, and it’s one of the best tracks the band has ever released.

The very next track, “The Crystalline Veil,” hits just as hard, though. Making great, memorable tech death songs is difficult. It’s easy to draw some comparisons to Cynic, especially in the vocals. Kyle Schaeffer took over that role on their last album, Empyrean, and the signs of the band finally clicking were eminent. This isn’t to say that the heavy tech death parts are gone because that certainly isn’t the case. The songs, such as this one, just seem more complete.

Do these catchy hooks take away from some of the brutality? Yes, they do. Let’s be fair about it. The production, while excellent, highlights the guitars, but sacrifices heft in many places. “Kaleidoscopic Waves,” one of the earlier tracks, still provides guitar heroics, but Kyle’s silky croons would make Paul Masvidal perk up. Two minutes into the track, Scott and Sam have some excellent solos and harmonies with a chugging riff. That riff is one of those sections where some more heft to the production would be beneficial, but it’s a minor complaint.

Of course, I can’t leave out the title track at the end with its seven-plus minute runtime. Once everything takes off at around a minute, the harsh vocals are on display with some deeper growls. The furious guitars spin everything into a frenzy, and then a solo that reminds me of Within the Ruins takes over. Slightly over the halfway mark, it gets heavier, making the listener think that’s going to be the direction for the rest of the song, but there’s a slowdown into atmospheric territory with a slow-picked riff. That doesn’t last long because it does switch back into more brutal territory. While that section fades out, ethereal vocals take over and end the album.

I never thought I’d be really into a new Fallujah album again, but here we are. I haven’t enjoyed anything they’ve recorded since their first album, but I have listened to all of it. Some were marred by mixing and mastering issues. Some just didn’t have the songs to grab me. Xenotaph is different as there’s not even a middling, lower-quality track among them. In other words, this is a home run and I’m glad they could put it together. If you’re like me and haven’t felt the last few, this is likely to change your mind. I can’t recommend it enough.

Arizona’s Kardashev (named after a Russian astrophysicist who developed a theory for measuring a civilization’s level of technological advancement) is one on the most engaging and entralling new acts Ive heard in the last few years and Alunea is absolutely fucking stunning.

Now the press releases for the band’s third album (first for me) uses the term ‘Deathgaze’ to sum up the band’s progressive, ambitious take on post black/death metal. That’s somewhat fair, but basically if you enjoy genre spanning bands like, Black Crown Initiate, Ne Obliviscaris, Junius, Between the Buried and Me, Rivers of Nihil, and maybe even Fallujah’s dreamy moments, but crossed with more ‘post’ black metal moods like  Deafheaven, Ghost Bath or Harakari for the Sky, you are in the right wheelhouse.

But if I’m being honest, Kardashev and certainly Alunea are hard to categorize. It’s a dreamy, progressive, warm, emotive, but extreme journey that covers a range of musical styles brilliantly.

At the front and center of Kardashev is vocalist Mark Garrett, who has a stunning array of screams, gruff bellows, and smooth, epic, clean croons, as well as developing his own language for the band’s lyrics and themes. His clean vocals are up there with William Southworth of Lunar Mercia. But certainly every member of the band is at the top of their game.

For those familiar with the band’s back catalog, Alunea picks up directly where the band’s 2017 The Almanac EP finished. It’s 8 songs in 42 minutes (the band is surprisingly succinct with their songs – no 15-minute meanderings here) of absolute perfection that has no skips, no fast forwards, as every single note hits perfectly from start to finish.

Every song has a little of everything artfully baked in, but get everything here from vicious but atmospheric modern black /death metal like opener “A Precipice. A Door”, to almost the tech death of “Reunion”,  proggy, melodic bliss (“Speak Silence”) and shimmering, atmospheric ‘post’ metal like standout “Seed of the Night” to massive, lurching almost early Opeth-ian death metal (start of “Edge of Forever”, “We Could Fold The Stars”), and everything in between.

All gilded with Barrett’s stunning soft croons (I mean, listen to the start of “Seed of the Night” or “We Fold the Stars”) and massive growls, that keep things well in the realms of progressive death metal and ultimately comes together perfectly with all the other elements to make a surefire album of the year contender.

Now, the knee jerk reaction to “Ultraviolet” and new vocalist Andrew Palmero (who like guitarist Rob morey, comes over from black metal act Underling), while a bit of an overreaction has merit. While, at heart Fallujah are delivering the same well executed, dreamy, atmosphere filled take on modern djent tech death metal, there is something missing. Whether it was Hoffman’s more imposing bellows (Palmero has a strictly black metal/ screamo howl that gets a bit grating and a few ‘meh’ clean croons), or lack of female vocals that flocked the last two efforts, or a slight reigning in of the ambient elements (which some might welcome), it’s just a bit lacking and certainly not quite up to par with Dreamless or The Flesh Prevails. And astute listeners may even  sense a sort of The Deftones vibe here and there (“Eyes Like the Sun”, “Distant and Cold”), which will affect you depending on how you view the The Deftones. 

Still, occasionally the band remind me of what they can do, regardless of who is signing as the likes of “Last Light” or “The Ocean Above” , with its steady, dreamy lurch or “Dopamine” with some injection of ambient prose, but still, it’s not quite as excessive as before, and just isn’t quite as effective, and again I’ll come back to Palmero, who just makes even the dreamy moments more abrasive, rather than ethereal, and when he is left out of the mix, the band can still be evocative and brutal.

And the band occasionally hit on a chord or riff that recalls the last two albums perfectly such as the start of “Hollow”, (until Palmero start screeching), and dramatic atmospherics in the more urgent “Sanctuary” so its not a total shift in sound, but it will be divisive among fans. When Closer “Departure” ends the album and I’m kind of ambivalent, where as the last two efforts moved me (both positively and negatively), they at least had some impact on me, but with Undying Light, I really just reviewed it and I’m ready to move on and I’m more apt to reach for Aenimus and their debut for this style of metal.

As with most progressive bands, Mindpatrol’s Vulture City has a deep concept with this effort being about the story of two orphaned siblings in a dystopian future, and ties in with a German language novel written by vocalist Luc Francois. Also of note, the band has three separate guitarists, though casual listens don’t make it immediately apparent.

What is apparent is these guys are pretty good musicians and song writers as the 10 song, 50 minute album full of well produced keyboards, black metal, melodic death metal, clean vocals, thrash metal and such, though if I were to break in down by percentage, melodic death metal would have a pretty big chunk.

Opener “Mother” get the album off to a rip roaring start and is a pretty good indicator of most of the album, and its ends with a really nice melodic black metal tremolo blast. But then a couple of tracks like “Whoreheart” and”He, Summoned by the Needle”  and later on, the title track, are bit more bland and forgetful, even if they play a part in the album’s theme, they bring things down a bit. The band are far more effective and alluring when more uptempo and elegant tracks like “Her Dire Sacrifice” and “I, Observer with Crimson Hands”.

The band can bear their teeth once in a while as heard on the more menacing, death metal sounding “Calamity (The Cleansing)”, and even an almost doom like lumber as heard on the 7 minute closer ‘The Voyager”, but the heart and soul of the album is the progressive melodic death metal that has some interesting moments and certainly worth a listen.

Ihsahn explains it best: “My focus for this album was to write within more traditional song structures and still give each song a strong individual identity, be that through a re-occurring melody, a chorus, sound design or a good old guitar riff. I also wanted to explore this on the production side, blending organic rock sounds with more modern expressions.” If that was his goal, then he’s succeeded brilliantly – this is an exceptionally rich and textured album, and its varied compositions and palette shows just how much his vision and creative confidence have expanded over the years.

Longtime fans will be pleased with the more metallic tracks, like the muscular blackened-prog of “Disassembled,” and “Until I Too Dissolve,” which rips with big, swaggering ’80s riffs like something off of Ozzy Osbourne’s No More Tears. Other tracks like “Mass Darkness” (featuring guitar from Matt Heafy of Trivium) and “Pressure” are constructed from busy progressive death or discordant sludge, but are then shot through with flourishes of neoclassical heavy metal. (In fact, the only thing I don’t hear much of at all on Arktis is traditional black metal.)

One of the most noticeable new additions to Ihsahn’s palette is a much heavier use of electronics and textural studio wizardry. “South Winds” exemplifies this with its Skinny Puppy whispers and industrial lurch, which are then followed by a swoony clean chorus. It’s the same juxtaposing approach as has been heard in previous work, but now Ihsahn is working with a palette that’s unlike anything he’s employed before. It’s inspired and wonderful, and reminds me of when Trent Reznor started playing with a brighter sonic palette and unexpected melody on The Fragile (still my favorite nine inch nails release). “Frail” is another strange industrial/electronic stomp, built from loops of rumbling piano and UFO death-ray sound effects. It’s the type of song that seems less composed than it was assembled, through experimentation and layering and bursts of inspiration.

It’s the increased use of clean vocals throughout the rest of the album – with increasing degrees of warmth and vulnerability – that really wow. “Disassembled” crests to a chorus that’s reminiscent of the sunny sweetness of The Beatles, and then in the bridge, guest vocalist Einar Solberg (of Leprous) croons like David Gilmour atop a Pink Floyd daydream of tremulous strings and bass. That breezy British psychedelia makes a return again on “My Heart is of the North” – this time with Ihsahn affecting a David Bowie-like croon. The passage stands out in stark contrast to the rest of the song, which is undulating and bluesy and punctured by stabs of jazzy organ.

“In the Vaults” is meditative and intense, with a minimalist palette that lets his clean vocals take center stage. The highlight on this track is the duet he performs with his own rasps – harsh and scraping pitted against impassioned and soulful. Noir ballad “Crooked Red Line” offers yet another battle of vocal personas: one sultry and low, another roaring and vengeful. This is also the first time I’ve truly enjoyed the appearance of Jørgen Munkeby’s sax – perhaps it’s the genre, where this sort of instrument is typically heard.

In the crushingly emotional closer, “Celestial Violence,” Ihsahn rasps and roars against a monstrous, tragic melody in the choruses, while Einar Solberg returns to handle the clean vocals in the verses. Given how polished and beautiful Ihsahn’s vocals have become, it’s a bit surprising that he gave Solberg the album’s climax – though maybe it’s ‘cause the guy absolutely kills it. If this were on a Broadway stage, it would bring the house down.

Arktis is Ihsahn’s most listenable and richest album to date, and certainly will be one of the year’s finest. While the songs are, on the whole, more conventional than the ugliest and most amorphous experiments on Das Seelenbrechen and Emerita, this is still not something you’ll just throw on in the background. Arktis is an album to savor and marvel at. Each song invites you to lean closer and consider each choice he made, even as you just want to let its power sweep you away. Bravo.