Armchair rhetoric on extreme metal
Oh no, a cheap clickbait listacle! Fear not, however, I come with good intentions. Staying abreast of new material in 2026 feels like navigating a tiny dinghy through a great storm of biblical scale. All you can do is cling on and stay the course through the sensory overload. The annual AOTY roundup functioning more... Continue Reading →
Dire Garden of the AgesOut 29th May on Naturmacht Productions The second album from this Irish solo project could be framed as a transfer of styles from one zone to another. Whilst the debut behaved like an epic fable heavily rooted in Viking and Celtic metal stylings, the follow up offers a rather dramatic volte-face... Continue Reading →
The Secret of DeathOut 21st May on Xtreem Music Since the departure of Jarno Nurmi in 2016, Tommi Grรถnqvist has steered the good ship Desecresy in painfully incremental steps from one album to the next, a process that feels like itโs finally bloomed on their latest album โThe Secret of Deathโ. ย Namely a synthesis of... Continue Reading →
Permit me to perform a magic trick. Having not listened to a note of Darkthrone's latest album, behold, as I begin typing a review: โanother fearless, authentic, and infectiously fun tour through classic 70s and 80s metal, track X leans more into the classic doom direction of the last three albums whilst track Y takes... Continue Reading →
Kirjad sรตgedate kรผlastOut 25th April on Antiq Five years since their debut and a very different beast has wriggled free of the Kรตdu moniker. Where โUnusta kรตikโ unfolded a jagged, dissonant array of plodding black metal, at once surreal and haunting despite the cold, mechanistic approach, the long awaited follow up broadens the aesthetic spectrum... Continue Reading →
The dark satanic content mills vs. Angine de Poitrine Never try to go viral. Thereโs a unique embarrassment that comes with trying to go virality. The kind reserved for TV ads that appropriate internet meme culture. An abyssal exercise in the pathetic stemming from the fact that virality, by its very nature, is a freak... Continue Reading →
MorgongloฬdOut 27th March on Vidfare/NoEvDia Mortuus, aka Daniel Rostรฉn, continues his habit of saving his best for well outside the Marduk roadshow. This is the third album released under the DomJord moniker, his own contribution to the long tradition of black metal artists dabbling in various ambient side projects. Being a relatively late comer to... Continue Reading →
Good clickbait draws in an audience even when they know theyโre being baited. Rick Beato recently did this to me with his โIs metal dead?โ thumbnail. As an experienced Youtuber with an audience in the millions, heโs an adept practitioner of this dark art. In this case heโs served up a kind of double baiting.... 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, โhaunted by the spirits of two children who claim he murdered them decades agoโ. In keeping with the artistโs moniker, the... Continue Reading →
Hadopelagyal: HaematophoryktosOut 19th September on Amor Fati If we were to regard this in terms of presentation alone we would come away with the impression that Hadopelagyal are interested in little more than showcasing chaos. The ethos of blackened grind inflicted on dirge ridden black metal riffing to conjure a sense of random, nihilistic violence... Continue Reading →
