Armchair rhetoric on extreme metal
Přílišnost (Excess)Out 7th November on Willowtip Records Coming off the back of the adventurous ‘Úpal’ in 2023, the latest offering from Kostnatění is a case study in growing pains. Today’s release incontinence epidemic has rendered the difficult second album a thing of the past. There is no build up of digestive materials before the ultimate... Continue Reading →
Death Summer 2025 was not kind to metal. The death of Ozzy was every bit as a dramatic and stage managed as expected. Somehow surprising us all despite the very literal realisation of the inevitable. The suicide of Nisse Karlen prompted me to undergo a detailed re-appraisal of Sacremantum’s discography. Their set at September’s Cosmic... Continue Reading →
Seven Bloodied RampartsOut 14th November on Caligari Records (originally released in 2010) This reissue of British crust oddity Bretwaldas of Heathen Doom gives us the opportunity to scrutinise what is essentially Amebix reimagined through the lens of Time Team (a twee as fuck 90s TV programme about archaeological digs, for any non British readers), and... Continue Reading →
Depths of SufferingOut 31st October on Lavadome Productions The rough presentation of this album cloaks a well oiled machine of dramatic, borderline orchestral death metal. The music’s darkness emerges not from a drab, introspective melancholia, but from a pervasive, ambient gloom, as if we were in the presence of some unknowably vast presence, be it... Continue Reading →
SAD: Fullmoon’s Bestial AwakeningOut 31st October on Purity Through Fire SAD continue their quest to appropriate generic second wave black metal sweet-nothings into what is essential punky rock ‘n’ roll. Despite the length of this album, and indeed the considerable girth of the tracks within, there is little to suggest they have expanded into a... Continue Reading →
Ialdabaoth: G.O.A.T. / S.C.O.P.E.Out 13th March on All Is Threat Lo-fi, frantic black metal pulling from the futurist undercurrent of the genre, here reimagined as a random, feral entity, defined by illogical fits of violence, laboured interludes of despair, and uncanny structuralism. Despite the demo quality production – something utterly incapable of containing the flamboyant... Continue Reading →
Christus VenariOut 12th September on Personal Records Choppy, frantic death metal channels the frenetic energy of early Deicide into an explicitly gothic darkness. Borrowing the aesthetic material accrued from more populist extreme metal strains in the form of early 2000s Behemoth, refocusing what was previously empty fanfare into an efficient, tight, yet no less diverse... Continue Reading →
(There are only four) Metal subgenres don’t exist. I think we’ve imagined them all. I’ve run the numbers, and by my count there’s only ever been four. “How could we have been so wrong about this?” you ask. I don’t know, but I’m going to expend considerable effort wildly speculating regardless. I curse my spare... Continue Reading →
UnwellOut 31st October, self-released Somewhere between jazz, industrial, progressive doom, and ambient comes this concept EP preoccupied with the theme of mental degradation. The narrative follows an elderly dementia patient in a nursing home, “haunted by the spirits of two children who claim he murdered them decades ago”. In keeping with the artist’s moniker, the... Continue Reading →
Poems of SpellcraftOut 24th October on Chaos Records The debut album from this German entity draws on a thread of UK black metal (such as it is) most infamously expressed by Cradle of Filth and Hecate Enthroned, later by Old Corpse Road and A Forest of Stars. Histrionic, gothic, and unconcerned with what the listener... Continue Reading →
Hate Meditations 