Armchair rhetoric on extreme metal
Fessus: Subcutaneous TombOut 26th November on Darkness Shall Rise Productions Competent if unremarkable OSDM apes the playful bounce of Autopsy alongside the heavier malevolence of Incantation. As a listening experience, ‘Subcutanerous Tomb’ is a “fill in the blanks” album. Moments of creative surrealism – usually expressed through the innovative lead guitar work – populate an... Continue Reading →
Gloombound: Dreaming DelusionOut 21st November on Gruesome Records Scrapes together the more downbeat elements of death/doom as a means of conjuring up a foundation for self-indulgent, achingly tedious balladeering. Much like Ahab before them, the pacing and content of these compositions is a hollow façade, leaning on depressed tempos to contrive tension and drama where... 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 →
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 →
(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 →
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 →
Atavistic Passage: Demonstration TwoOut 9th October on MoH Creations Ritualistic dark ambient collides with raw black metal, creating a sense of occasion through simple melodic refrains reduced to drone form, onto which are added basic harmonic development. This gives the music a feeling of opening out, of creating space from a place of restriction, an... Continue Reading →
Pestilential HymnsOut 20th October on Memento Mori Thaumatrugy upgrade themselves from the competent but commonplace chasmic death/doom of the debut into a more holistic statement of extreme metal. Reinvigorating the increasingly murky territory between black and death metal with a clarity that can only come from a rigorous riff discipline. The demo phase of Swedish... Continue Reading →
Victimarum: Seitsemän soihdun valossaOut 11th October on Signal Rex This brighter iteration of melodic black metal manages to achieve a sense of activism and storytelling in a way that pushes back against the empty anthemism rampant in the genre since its 90s heyday. But despite the album starting strong, Victimarum are unable to sustain their... Continue Reading →
