🗽💀 Pyrrhon – White Flag
💿 Album : The Mother of Virtues
⏱️ Durée : 9:42
🎧 #Pyrrhon #WhiteFlag #NewYork #DeathMetal #BrutalDeathMetal #TechnicalDeathMetal #NowPlaying

Glorious Depravity – Death Never Sleeps Review

By Steel Druhm

Death metal from New York City is usually plenty ugly enough, but in the strange case of Glorious Depravity, things get even more grotesque due to the band members’ connection to acts like Pyrrhon and Woe. Their 2020 debut Ageless Violence was a solid if non-essential homage to the Godz of Floridan Death with plenty of Morbid Angel and Deicide DNA in its unnatural makeup. Five years later, they serve up Death Never Sleeps with a sound profile still wearing Orlando-friendly cargo shorts, and hidden in those oversized pockets are elements of grindcore. This is ugly, slimy death for fugly, unwashed folks who throw empty beer cans at meth heads for cheap thrills. The only thing remotely classy about it is the badass cover art from Dan Seagrave, and that’s just fine by me. I’m not here to attend Finishing School or my court-mandated Anger Management workshop. I’m here to blast death metal and scare the normies, and so is Glorious Depravity. Twinsies!

The Depravity Boys come out hard on opener “Slaughter the Gerontocrats” with feverish riffs ripping skin and pasting bones as Pyrrhon’s Doug Moore vomits a world full of hate and venom on the listener. Some of the leads reek of vintage Mordid Angel, but this is more unhinged and closer to grind and even slam at times. Moore uncorks some truly rancid garbage disposal voKILLS and piercing shrieks, making this like an insane asylum in a hobo wine bottle. Things go a bit wonky on follow-up “Stripmined Flesh Extractor” with an awkward shuffling tempo that doesn’t fully work, thus squandering some of the crucial momentum created by the opener. From there, it’s a back and forth between well-executed death that hammer smashes your face and lesser cuts that have good moments but don’t disembowel you as they should. “Sulfurous Winds (Howling Through Christendom)” is a wild ride through the tombs where Morbid Angel buried their unused (and well-used) riffs, and Moore’s repeated roars about “SCIENCE” are fun in an old school Thomas Dolby way.1 “Scourged by the Wings of the Fell Destroyer” is also fine and dandy, hitting in that 1990 Floridan death way but with overtones of Kataklysm due to the screeching vocals.

My favorite moment arrives with “Necrobiotic Enslavement,” where the Morbid influence is especially notable in the heaving, lurching riffs that reek of overflowing ash Treys. While the good parts of Death Never Sleeps are respectable and entertaining, nothing here will completely blow your mind, and the lesser bits are Debbie Downers. “Freshkills Poltergeist” shoehorns in pinch harmonics that are more annoying than interesting, and “Carnage at the Margins” gets very screamy and ends up grating the nerves instead of power drilling the Medusa Oblongata. You end up with an album of mostly solid death with generic and underwhelming additions tacked on, which is disappointing for a band with the pedigree Glorious Depravity bring to the Geneology Council.

I’ll give Doug Moore props for his batshit crazy vocal performance. The guy is all over the lot with screams, shrieks, sub-basement gurgles, and standard death barks. He can do it all and proves it on every track, whether it’s needed or not. Sometimes he’s a dead ringer for Kataklysm’s Maurizio Iacono, and occasionally he sounds like young Mille of Kreator infamy. George Paul (Gravesend) and Matt Mewton (Woe) resurrect many riffs from the place where the slime live, and though it’s easy to spot their inspirations, I can’t fault much of what they throw down on the slab. There are a goodly number of face-melting leads and some completely insane solo pieces, too. Chris Grigg (Woe) brings a technical yet brutal force to the kit, pounding away like his life depends on it. The band is talented, but the writing sometimes lacks staying power and leans generic. At a tight 34 minutes, a lot of that can be forgiven as the good replaces the okay in short and savage order, but the lesser additions do drag the overall enjoyment factor down a few pegs.

Glorious Depravity gives a bunch of New York low-life bastards a chance to do things outside the lines of what their main gigs allow, and you can tell they’re having fun throwing shit against the subway wall. There’s nothing essential or “must hear” present, but it’s solid ratmeat and scumtaters for the diseased, and that may be enough for those fiends.

Rating: 3.0/5.0
DR: 5 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Transcending Obscurity
Websites: facebook.com/gloriousdepravity | instagram.com/gloriousdepravity
Releases Worldwide: November 7th, 2025

#2025 #30 #AgelessViolence #AmericanMetal #DeathMetal #DeathNeverSleeps #Deicide #GloriousDepravity #Gravesend #MorbidAngel #Nov25 #Pyrrhon #Review #Reviews #TranscendingObscurityRecords #Woe

Feuerengel
19.07.2025 Eisenh?ttenstadt / Freilichtb?hne

Hellbutcher
09.10.2025 Berlin / Lido

New Candys
06.09.2025 Berlin / Neue Zukunft

Pyrrhon
07.08.2025 Berlin / Reset

#Berlin #Eisenhuttenstadt #Feuerengel #Freilichtbuhne #Hellbutcher #Lido #NeueZukunft #NewC #Pyrrhon #Reset #SteelFeed

The Willowtip Files: Kalibas – Product of Hard Living

By Saunders

Pennsylvania-based independent label Willowtip Records was established by Jason Tipton in the late ’90s. From humble beginnings, the label has stood the test of time, becoming one of the most respected and highly regarded record labels in the extreme metal scene. It takes something special to create a label with a consistently unfuckwithable roster of quality, innovative artists while retaining long-term integrity and durability. Willowtip is the self-proclaimed forward-thinking label, releasing a slew of modern classics and top-shelf albums that may have a lower profile but are more than worth your while.

This feature focuses on a pivotal early period in the label’s history that had a huge impact on my own extreme metal tastes. As such, I am highlighting some outstanding albums released by Willowtip between 2001-2006. Some are lesser-known; however, I will argue are must-listen releases from the label’s early golden era. I will skip over a couple of particularly pivotal albums from the period more suited for Yer Metal Is Olde honors; otherwise, it’s open slather. Welcome to the Willowtip Files.

Off the back of an especially gnarly, high-quality year for death metal of experimental, dissonant, and abrasive varieties, what better time to venture back into the vault of The Willowtip Files? The subject of this latest edition is none other than now-defunct New York tech-deathgrind powerhouse Kalibas and their intelligent and violently unhinged debut LP, Product of Hard Living, released way back in 2002. Reflected in the inspirational timeline of this feature’s focus, these were productive early years in the label’s storied history. However, through the passage of time, certain underground gems can be overlooked and fall into obscurity, despite being inspired albums of the time. Particularly suited to listeners who got on board with the latest albums from the likes of Pyrrhon and Replicant, those who enjoy the grindier, techier, and dissonant styles of death metal may find something to dig here. Kalibas stood out as a unique force to be reckoned with.

Featuring a talented cast of metal musicians and ex-members of bands including Lethargy, As the World Burns, and Agiel, Kalibas had a short but potent career as underground anarchists armed with a belligerent, serrated collection of weaponry, where tech, grind, disso-death and hardcore collide in ugly, challenging yet deceptively infectious ways. The choppy, technical, and challenging music within the Kalibas experience retains cohesion through the controlled chaos. Although far from accessible, the raw, yet well-defined and punchy production, coupled with the band’s penchant for unleashing jagged, deceptively catchy riffs and curb-stomping grooves, graft a surprisingly catchy edge to the album’s sneakily addictive streak. Of course, the album is devoid of more conventional songwriting structures and traditional songcraft. However, regular exhibits of deranged, infectiously riffy madness on grind-driven delights like the wickedly unhinged “All of Japa,” or swaggering grooves and drop-on-a-dime time changes and dynamic shifts of closer “Reroute the Foul” to drag you back for more.

Elsewhere, opener “Smells Like Menopause” hits like a sledgehammer upside the skull, leveraging blasty pummels, grindy screams and propulsive rhythms, with knuckle-dragging grooves and sharp technicality. Product of Hard Living is a clever, intricate beast that adroitly interlocks its brainy, dynamic songwriting and harsher escapades with the right amount of down-and-dirty deathgrind nastiness. Careening through filth-riden and tactful shifts, from thrashy deathgrind salvos and brain-scrambling attacks (“Floating in Concrete,” “Take the Plunge”), to noisy, sludge-riden hardcore rumbles (‘Rundown”) and ample terrain covered between, it’s an album chock-full of unpredictable twists. Product of Hard Living just breaks the thirty-minute barrier, and like similar extreme albums of its ilk, forms a near-perfect runtime to digest the abrasive shards of extremity and unconventional songwriting approach. without completely overwhelming the senses.

Product of Hard Living twists, contorts, and hurtles forth in a myriad of strange and artistic directions within the harsh paradigms of the extreme metal lens. Undeniably brutal, Kalibas’ debut album remains an underrated jewel in the early Willowtip canon, skillfully integrating harsh dissonance, abrasive textures, aggro intensity, and bone rattling grooves into intelligently constructed arrangements, featuring a fiercely inventive, oddly infectious songwriting streak. A challenging, though deeply rewarding listen.

#Agiel #AmericanMetal #AsTheWorldBurns #DeathMetal #Deathgrind #Kalibas #Lethargy #ProductOfHardLiving #Pyrrhon #Replicant #Review #Reviews #TechMetal #TheWillowtipFiles #WillowtipRecords

AngryMetalGuy.com’s Aggregated Top 20 Albums o’ 2024

By El Cuervo

Here we are. The culmination of not just two weeks of hardcore listing,1 but twelve months of hardcore metalling. The AngryMetalGuy.com Aggregated Top 20 Albums o’ 2024 represents the cream of the crop, or more accurately, the cream of a small corner of a field containing some crops. Using the unrestrained power of manual data entry and a mighty spreadsheet, our wonderful little website compiles our numerous year-end ranking articles and the dozens of metal albums therein into one final, dreadful ranking.2

What tidings of 2024? The clearest message is one of death. No fewer than nine of the top ten awards, and all of the top seven, constitute death metal or death metal adjacency. Whether tunneling through the trenches (Kanonenfieber), slicing through a human abattoir (Aborted), staggering through disquieted exhaustion (Pyyrhon), or indulging in a spot of deicide (Ulcerate), this article demonstrates the many faces that death metal wore in 2024. So tight was its cadaverous stranglehold that I considered limiting this list to just the top ten to emphasize the power of death metal over the last twelve months. However, I’m unashamed to admit that the presence of a few of my own top ten albums over the #11-20 slots influenced my decision to extend it. A byproduct of this selfish maneuver is that a few other subgenres get a nod in what should be something of a summary of all types of metal from the year.

Interestingly, 2024 saw significantly less consistency across the aggregated favorites, as our writers allocated many fewer voting points across the top ten. Paradoxically, and despite the ubiquity of one subgenre in this aggregation, this indicates a broader spread of taste across the many releases cited in the season’s rankings – at least compared with prior years.3 I prefer this outcome to one of bandwagon-hoppers and hat-tippers, where our staff is compelled to include records popular across our central bloc.

I want to grant one final call-out for those records picked by at least five people but that were suppressed through low rankings such that they failed to reach this aggregation. 2024’s highlights include The Vision Bleak, Spectral Wound, Madder Mortem, and Sleepytime Gorilla Museum.4

–El Cuervo

#20. Nemedian Chronicles // The Savage Sword – “There is also a distinctly epic, cinematic quality that hearkens back to Bal-Sagoth’s overwrought storytelling. Between the propulsive riffs and sweeping melodies, I’m immediately absorbed into the experience with every listen” (Eldritch Elitist).

#19. Opeth // The Last Will and Testament – “From the sophisticated compositions to the entertaining story, and the exemplary instrumentation to the immaculate production, its knotty harmonization of death metal with progressive rock has the aura of perfection” (El Cuervo).

#18. Replicant // Infinite Mortality – “Hardcore-tinged technical death metal for fans of the discordant and the unorthodox, Infinite Mortality is supremely memorable not just for its sound, but for its infallible, hook-laden construction” (Kenstrosity).

#17. Dissimulator // Lower Form Resistance – “The exemplary instrumentation, chaotic energy, and technological feel make Lower Form Resistance sound like Voivod reinvented for the 2020s. In a sub-genre so preoccupied with rehashing old ideas – I do not accept that thrash metal must sound like 1986 – Dissimulator thrives by looking forward” (El Cuervo).

#16. Selbst // Despondency Chord Progressions – “While it’s ‘merely’ black metal, its gorgeous melodies and shrilling tremolos showcase the genre at its finest… The most heart-rending record of 2024, Despondency Chord Progressions showcases the paralyzing power of music” (Maddog).

#15. Hell:on // Shaman – “Hell:on’s mix of death metal, throat-singing, ritualistic rhythms, and Eastern instrumentation makes me feel like I’m trapped within some infernal combination of a death metal concert and a Witcher III boss fight… No other album felt as spiritually dense to me in a year where I’ve fought to find my own personal peace” (Holdeneye).

#14. In Vain // Solemn – “The infinitely versatile vocal performances across the board are my favorite aspect, but Solemn ticks nearly every other box on my metal wishlist too. Catchy yet complex guitar lines, horn sections, a dreamy saxophone solo, string orchestrations… In Vain has perfected their sound” (Killjoy).

#13. Huntsmen // The Dry Land – “Every track is a journey in and of itself, and the diversity is immense. The Dry Land has become one of those albums where I can’t put it on without finishing it entirely; I’ll just keep going ‘Oh yes the next song has these awesome mournful vocals’ or ‘Ah here comes that mindblowing transition.’” (GardensTale).

#12. Hamferð // Men Guðs hond er sterk – “Men Guðs hond er sterk is tight, it’s heavy—though not as heavy as its predecessor—but more importantly it’s complete and brilliant and my Record o’ the Year for 2024’” (Angry Metal Guy).

#11. Meer // Wheels within Wheels – “Wheels within Wheels is my new go-to album when things are bad—it is melancholic and angry, but also optimistic and hopeful, a delicate yet gorgeous balance that speaks to me… It’s like a hand outstretched, a friend with an ear always ready to listen.” (Twelve).

#10. Defeated Sanity // Chronicles of Lunacy – [#3, #6, #6, #8, #9, #HM, #HM] – Only just nudging into the top ten by virtue of its seven list placements, Chronicles of Lunacy by Defeated Sanity is the standard-bearer for the death metal onslaught that follows. Forging a singular path that’s both punishingly technical and punishingly brutal, Ferox comments that “it takes extreme skill to weaponize the base and the stoopid this effectively. Defeated Sanity is more than up for the job.” Not only unique but uniquely consistent, Dolphin Whisperer likens the band to “an apex predator in the brutal death metal world. Defeated Sanity’s appearance arouses not questions of competency but rather calculations of the carnage wrought… Chronicles’ fangs glisten with an aged-imbrued tarnish, tearing at my flesh in every way I would expect.” Not all music can proclaim success through violence but Chronicles of Lunacy makes this its goal.

#9. Brodequin // Harbinger of Woe – [#1, #1, #3, #4, #HM] – 2024 was an exciting time for Knoxville’s Brodequin, just as it was for the latest class of AMG n00bs. No fewer than two of our most promising suckers graduates picked Harbinger of Woe as their album o’ the year.5 Alekhines Gun eloquently describes how it’s a “glorious return for one of the brutal death forerunners… an artistic triumph, a masterclass in riff-craft and song assembly with the sole purpose of flattening the listener into eardrum-flavored toothpaste.” Tyme likewise highlights the guitars, emphasizing that “each brutal riff after riff after riff sated my thirst for emotional release this year and so I hail them, Brodequin, and their riffs.” And though Holdeneye doesn’t focus on the riffs, he nonetheless acknowledges Brodequin’s energizing impact: “Harbinger of Woe’s 30-minute runtime is so bludgeoning that my watch sometimes registers my listening sessions as cardio.” It was never so easy to get fit.

#8. Fellowship // The Skies above Eternity – [#1, #3, #3, #7, #8, #9] – I absolutely love the colorful, cheery presence of Fellowship among the burly death metal otherwise crushing this top ten. I even went to the (low) effort of generating this image to best visualize this association. The Skies above Eternity continues to offer some of the most uplifting and heartfelt power metal ever conceived. Noting its “fantastic songs and endearingly honest positivity,” Sentynel concludes that “there was pretty much no chance The Skies above Eternity wasn’t going to land high up my list.” Clinching his top spot, Eldritch Elitist reckons that the record “excels through consistency and conciseness. The band’s trademark earnestness, vulnerability, and impeccable sense of melodic craft can be felt in every second of the experience. This album may be a 4.0 in my brain, but it’s a 4.5 in my heart and a 5.0 in my soul.” You like joy right?6

#7. Iotunn // Kinship – [#1, #3, #4, #4, #8, #ish, #HM] – Dissatisfied with just one Angry Metal aggregated listing, the stand-out Iotunn return three years after their debut with an offering of progressive, melodic death metal. Kenstrosity takes a wide view over the album’s assets, being “the gorgeous compositions, ascendant guitar work, ridiculous replay value, and stellar vocals.” Despite these qualities, GardensTale recognizes that not all of these tracks were created equal. He opines that the lengthy closer is disappointing, but “the songwriting on the best couple of tracks here is simply unparalleled. ‘Mistland,’ ‘The Coming End’ and especially ‘Earth to Sky’ are just massive in a way few bands ever achieve.” Awarding his album o’ the year, Doom et Al rejects the criticism that Kinship is too long; “the songs are exactly as long as they need to be… The result is ethereal, complex, spiritually satisfying prog-death.”

#6. Pyrrhon // Exhaust – [#1, #1, #4, #4, #7, #HM] – The mighty Kronos may be dormant but his legacy remains through reverence for Pyrrhon. Exhaust boasts an “off-the-deep-end brand of experimental death metal” that is “mellifluous and disgusting, rifftastic and immersive” (Maddog). It’s an arcane, impenetrable sort of music, with Dolphin Whisperer articulating this better than I ever could: “Exhaust demands attention from its initial irony-laced lift-off to its closing brutalist clock-out, swinging skronk-enabled splatters and ache-addled vituperation around every faded line and pothole in its death metal architecture.” Both he and Felagund awarded it their album o’ the year, though the latter focused on its potent theme: “on an album that thoroughly explores the universal theme of exhaustion, be it physical, mental, social, or economic, Pyrrhon’s brand of noise-tinged death metal feels like the ideal tool with which to scrawl their livid manifesto.” There are few acts as inspired as this one.

#5. Devenial Verdict // Blessing of Despair – [#3, #4, #4, #4, #4, #6] – Despite failing to win a list placement higher than #3, Devenial Verdict hit our aggregated list with their immense Blessing of Despair. What type of death metal does it brandish? Carcharodon writes “I enjoy the stomping thuggery of Devenial Verdict’s dissonant death well enough [but] it’s the sudden mood swings into what Thus Spoke described as ‘lethally graceful restraint’ that really hooked me.” Accordingly, Cherd admires the “thoughtful transitions and atmospherics… It’s just that Blessing of Despair HAZ THE RIFFS, including my favorite death metal riff of the year.” It’s this blend of heavy and light that best characterizes Blessing of Despair; “the slick mixture of mournful melody and menacing, barked growls; neck-snapping flicks of cymbal, and those resonant, aggressive chord progressions make for—almost—my favorite take on death metal” (Thus Spoke). You’ll struggle to hear more dynamic death metal this year.

#4. Aborted // Vault of Horrors – [#2, #2, #3, #4, #6, #6] – If the last couple of entries in this article experiment with death metal’s musical extremity, then Aborted have always taken a markedly simpler approach. “Blood-drenched, gore-soaked, and happily grindy, Aborted are in a league all their own… The music [builds] a menacing atmosphere that pervades only the stickiest of grindhouse theaters (Felagund). Endorsing the horror, Dear Hollow comments that “Vault of Horrors kicks serious ass. Ripping tempos, bludgeoning riffs, and an unhinged technicality align for an album deserving of the act’s reputation.” Relentless riffs and a hellish host of guest vocalists help each track to stand apart, and even the cantakerous Dr. A.N. Grier agrees that “with tracks like “Dreadbringer,” “The Golgothan,” and “Malevolent Haze,” this new release offers some incredible depth and relentless brutality.” If you like gory, grindy death metal you need look no further than Aborted.

#3. Noxis // Violence Inherent in the System – [#1, #2, #2, #5, #6, #6, #10, #HM] – Perhaps the greatest surprise of the year was the interminably brutal but interminably intriguing Violence Inherent in the System by debutants, Noxis. Maddog characterizes it as a “remarkable blend of old and new. The album’s stomping riffs and popping snare drum root it in 1990s brutal death metal. Conversely, its exuberantly grimy bass tone, its proggy rhythms, and its surprise woodwind extravaganza feel unabashedly modern.” This dichotomy of styles is developed further by Saunders: “raw and unclean, technical and brutal, thrashy and proggy, sharp and refined, Noxis blaze their way craftily through memorable, riff-infested wastelands with unbridled aggression, speed, and finesse.” Capping his list with this album, Ferox concludes that the varied tools result in songs that are all “a wild ride that alternately crushes, challenges, and tickles… and somehow they do with zero pretension and abundant commitment to brutality.”7

#2. Kanonenfieber // Die Urkatastrophe – [#1, #2, #3, #6, #6, #6, #7, #9, #9] – Kanonenfieber enjoys the great honor of being AMG.com’s only 5.0 rating in 2024 on the incomparable Die Urkatastrophe. Despite the fact that He “would not necessarily have chosen to listen to [it], Die Urkatastrophe is a powerful album that walks the line between black and death metal [and like] so many of the best albums is both thematically coherent and full of individual standout moments” (Angry Metal Guy). And while Sentynel is normally averse to particularly brutal metal, “the craft [of an incredible vocal performance, sharp melodic writing and a weighty story] drew me in anyway.” However, no one loved Die Urkatastrophe like Carcharodon, so I’ll let him finish this: “It has everything and is more than I dared hope for as a follow-up to my beloved Menschenmühle… It is brutal, vicious [and] anthemic [but] it is the storytelling that elevates this record to the next level.”

#1. Ulcerate // Cutting the Throat of God – [#1, #2, #2, #3, #4, #4, #5, #7, #8, #HM] — Collecting the most top five list selections, Cutting the Throat of God comfortably out-muscled its competition as AMG.com’s favorite album o’ the year. Both Dear Hollow and Cherd cite Ulcerate’s newfound humanity on this record as one of its key qualities. The former writes that it constitutes “the vicious and the ethereal blended into unspoken horror, with meditations ranging from the frantic to the morbid,” while the latter opines that “there [is] something warmer and more human to what I had previously considered a rather detached style… [it’s’] like dream-walking through a hedge maze.” But it’s our resident Ulcerate fangirl that best loved the record so she will conclude this piece: “Distilling the tension and the turmoil into tidal forces of incredible rhythm, and dark, brilliant melody with Cutting the Throat of God, Ulcerate reach transcendence… This is atmospheric death metal perfected” (Thus Spoke).

#2024 #Aborted #Brodequin #DefeatedSanity #DevenialVerdict #Dissimulator #Fellowship #Hamferð #HellOn #Huntsmen #InVain #Iotunn #Kanonenfieber #Meer #NemedianChronicles #Noxis #Opeth #Pyrrhon #Replicant #Selbst #Ulcerate

GardensTale’s Top Ten(ish) Album Art of 2024

By GardensTale

Man, I am getting later and later with these each year. I’ve already spoken at length about my writing woes lately, so I won’t go into all of that, but I’ve also come to realize that a late delivery on this piece really is not a big issue. Case in point: it allowed me to include a piece from a TYMHM article that otherwise might not have made the cut. It’s not executive dysfunction, it’s functional laziness!

I feel that it’s been an overall good year for album art. There’s still tons of diversity in style and subject and medium, and also tons of big monsters looming over small people. That just seems to be a never-ending thing in metal. The only big name missing this year was Eliran Kantor, who has been in the top 10 every year and usually with multiple nominations (he and Adam Burke are the chief reasons for the ‘one entry per artist’ rule). Can anyone do a wellness check on Kantor? See if he’s doing alright?

If you have kept up with these in the past (and if you wanna catch up, here are the last six editions!) you might notice a new section to this article. Whilst last year I merely decried a rule against AI covers, I now shall battle actively against this most heinous trend, this lazy cheap cop-out that betrays a disregard for art as a whole. View this section as worse than the worst, because the worst at least put some effort into it. Though the AI Hall of Shame entries aren’t the only ones using machines to piss in the pool, they are the most blatant, soulless, and unimaginative AI monstrosities that got vomited from a generator onto a metal album this year.

As for the rules that haven’t been elevated into a full-blown public stoning, they remain by and large the same:

• Only albums we’ve reviewed will be considered
• One entry per artist, to keep diversity high
• No public domain art (Avernus had a very good one this year, though!)

AI HALL OF SHAME

#3. Tyraels Ascension // Hell Walker — It’s a new band and they also released an entire videogame to go with the album, so some leeway can be granted, but not much. The intricate logo is pretty cool, the border is tasteful, but the utterly generic-looking demon thing is just a load of washed-out bleh.

#2. The Nidra // Destination Locked — This one is just baffling to me. Am I to read this as an underwater mutated skeleton dance-off? Most of the bones are disconnected and the longer you look at it, the less sense the skeletons make. The glossy AI filter really makes it feel like a first-pass effort, too. The only thing I use AI image generators for is NPC’s for my Dungeons & Dragons campaign, and I put more care into those than these guys do. And PAPYRUS? Fuck off.

#1. Deicide // Banished By Sin — The other two entries, at least, are debuts. Struggling artists without much cash to speak of, I’ll be disappointed, but I won’t be angry. Deicide, on the other hand, are top of the food chain. Seeing a band of their stature use AI so brazenly makes my blood boil. Overtures of Blasphemy had pretty sweet art: hit whoever made that up, get a new piece from them, and pay your fucking artists! This is low even for Glen Benton. And the result just looks bad even at a glance, a monochrome mess of random shapes and details tacked together without vision because a machine doesn’t have vision, it just has an infinite grab bag of things to stick together. I’d say go to hell, but it’s Deicide, so that was probably already the plan.

THE WORST

#3. Tommy Concrete // Unrelapsed — Enough with the straight-up anger, time for some laughs! I’m not sure whether a grade school kid actually drew this or whether it just looks like it, but the daisy chain of spoon-toothed spines with one wing and one leg, going round to end up on a hysterical were-rat… It’s bad, even awful, but it does make me laugh. Perhaps if there were more of that and fewer random crayon colors for a background, I’d not judge this as harshly.

#2. Oscillotron // Oblivion— This is less than nothing. An entirely black cover with just the words on it would have been better than this. Is there some deeper meaning behind it? I don’t know, and I don’t care, it’s static in a box and it’s bad.

#1. Jeris Johnson // Dragonborn — But not as hilariously awful as this collage of 1999 gaming screenshots, cut from a frumpled magazine with imprecise kitchen shears and stuck together lazily for an arts and crafts project at school. The album is fucking awful and the cover does a great job of warning people to stay away. Good job, Jeris, here’s a gold banana sticker, now fuck off.

THE BEST

#(ish). Sidewinder // Talons (artist: Sophia Dainty) — I had to resort to asking the band directly who created this cover art, and I can’t really find other art from Ms. Dainty, which is a shame, as her talent is undeniable. The illustration uses techniques that evoke woodcutting, befitting the druidic nature of the imagery. An unusual but evocative image.

#10. Sunburst // Manifesto (artist: Vasilis Georgiou) — Mr. Georgiou is both the artist and the artist, as he leads Sunburst on vocals and created this dynamic, colorful cover art. The enigmatic figure dissolving into color as if snapped by a hippie version of Thanos makes for a striking bit of contrast, and I love the way the band logo has been incorporated into this artwork.

#9. Unhallowed Deliverance // Of Spectres and Strife (artist: Kaja Kumor) — Color and contrast are also the strong suits of Kaja Kumor’s burning cathedral that graces Unhallowed Deliverance’s album. The angelic blue overhead clashes beautifully with the fire. It matches the gradient of the subject matter: peace up above, growing into chaos and violence below. The two watching figures and the departing planes really add to the story depicted, too, rounding the piece off on multiple levels.

#8. Iotunn // Kinship (artist: Saprophial) — Saprophial’s art of Kinship is an unusual piece. The focus is off-center, not even in a golden ratio kind of way. The figure’s anatomy is strange and vague, largely hidden in the shadows. There’s something graphic novel-like about its contours, and a kind of roundabout anonymity usually reserved for the late Lewandowski. But zoom in and you see a highly intricate piece of sublime texture, perfecting the art of hatching in different styles to make the picture feel like you can touch it and feel the lines under your fingers.

#7. Vredehammer // God Slayer (artist: Simon Bossert as S. Bossert Art) — Though both seem to be drawn on a dark canvas and leave a fair amount of space beside their subjects, God Slayer is in every other way almost an antithesis to Kinship above, which reflects in the music of both bands. No mystery here: this is colossal, epic and violent, imagery that gets your heart racing immediately. What strikes me the most about this cover is the framing, the fish-eye lensing of the sea that seems to pulls the ship and serpent together, drawing the eye back to the center. One of the better monster pieces of the last few years.

#6. Vitriol // Suffer & Become (artist: Dylan Humphries) — If I had a nickel for every ‘stuff winding through a skeletal ribcage’ cover this year, I’d have two nickels. One of the earliest contenders, Humphries’ art for Vitriol is of the immediate eye-catching variety. The large and detailed skeleton and the vivid coloration of the snakes ensure the image grabs your attention. But a longer look gives a more forlorn feeling. The turned away pose, the approaching storm, the distant castle, the warrior’s items in the skeleton’s lap. All attributed to a sense of failure, a sense that something has gone wrong. I do love an image whose emotional response evolves as you study it.

#5. Feind // Ambulante Hirnamputation (artist: Jasper Swerts as Infested Art) — This year’s best black and white art without a doubt. Infested Art lives up to its name with this grueling piece of body horror, of which the emotional evolution goes from ‘nope’ to ‘NOPE’ to ‘FUCK NO.’ The linework here is sublime, with crisp contours and dotwork shading working together to create a highly precise account of all the horrifying things happening to the central torso. There are as many fresh horrors in this picture as there are details. We can leave it at ‘too many to count.’

#4. Uncomfortable Knowledge // Lifeline (artist: Reuben Bhattacharya as Visual Amnesia) — It’s a shame that Uncomfortable Knowledge doesn’t seem to be getting off the ground musically, because I love the concept they are going for with Visual Amnesia’s excellent art, continuing the tale of the Black Queen from the band’s debut. What would otherwise be a somewhat picturesque scene in the early 1900s is made disquieting with the skull robot masks and impossible day-night reflection, creating a sort of downplayed nightmare scenario. Subtle, elegant, and haunting in hushed tones.

#3. Anciients // Beyond the Reach of the Sun (artist: Adam Burke) — Adam Burke is a mainstay here, and it seems he is branching out of pure space pictures more and more. Though this striking scene is still largely on-brand, unlike the Burke runner-up for Hideous Divinity, it gets points for its sprawling surreal cosmic horror. It can be difficult to depict a figure larger than mountains that actually feels larger than mountains in 2D art, but this piece succeeds, and it wins Burke the coveted ‘big thing looming over small people of the year’ award.

#2. Pyrrhon // Exhaust (artist: Caroline Harrison) — Ms. Harrison and Pyrrhon have become fast friends, as few can depict ugliness as beautifully as either in their respective media. The art for Exhaust is a harsh and tragic depiction of death and the self-inflicted destruction of our environment, yet surrounded by the holographic rainbow of the oil spills that wash away in the rain, there is a strange sense of beauty here as well. The visceral and realistic horror is front and center, however, and it’s confrontational in a way few bands or visual artists dare to be.

#1. Dawn Treader // Bloom & Decay (artist: Francisco Abril and Nuria Velasco as WelderWings) — The duo known as WelderWings make some astounding surreal art that is beginning to be noticed by the metal community. Witnesses used another beautiful piece from their studio, but when I saw Dawn Treader’s, I knew it would be nigh impossible to top. The meadow is rendered in beautiful soft tones. Blur is applied with artistic precision, which makes the details on the focused elements pop better. But the way the skeletal figures contrast with this peaceful scenery is what truly makes this cover. It makes the quietude feel false, a decoy for something terrible. This is all the more effective with the absence of skulls or limbs, suggesting a kind of body horror we can only hope will remain as far in the past as the bones suggest. Endless imagination and pure artistry resulted in a gorgeous yet perfectly unsettling masterpiece, more than deserving of the title of AMG Artwork of the Year.

#2024 #Anciients #Avernus #DawnTreader #Deicide #Feind #GardensTaleSTopTenIshAlbumArtOf2024 #Iotunn #JerisJohnson #Oscillotron #Pyrrhon #Sidewinder #Sunburst #TheNidra #TommyConcrete #TyraelsAscension #UncomfortableKnowledge #UnhallowedDeliverance #Vitriol #Vredehammer

Hierarchies – Hierarchies Review

By Thus Spoke

Ultra-dissonance is so hot right now.1 Yes, dissonance itself has been a thing for a long time in metal, and in music generally for far longer, but ever since artists picked up what Gorguts threw down and ran with it, this adjective has become associated with ever-increasingly twisted and abrasive soundscapes, the dial of ‘extremity’ moving further and further. The last few years in particular have seen an acceleration of this trend as an explosion of acts offer their take. Enter Hierarchies—formed of members from Acausal Intrusion and Dwelling Below2—who on their self-titled debut, serve up some more wonky, ugly, technical death metal fun for your listening pleasure (or pain).

If you’ve heard Acausal Intrusion, or any of the artists’ other death metal projects, then you’re some way towards knowing what Hierarchies sounds like. But aside from this, the other most immediate impression I got was the similarity to two acts not associated with Hierarchies’ members: namely, Ad Nauseam and Pyrrhon. Hierarchies is sophisticated in its technicality, but naïve in its sprawling, ugly execution. Chaotic and abrasive, it is replete with jangling percussion and stomach-turning riffs, with squealing chords spliced in, and narrated by gurgling, inhuman roars. The soundscapes substitute suffocation with that uncomfortable spaciousness that makes the wild and twisting (“Consecrate Phenomenon,” “Complexity Parallels”) or uneven and creeping (“Twilight Tradition,” “Subtraction”) disharmonies stand out more obviously. It is neither grand nor groovy, but grotesque, complex in a way that wards off rather than entices easy enjoyment. That’s not pejorative, because, in this genre, you work for your enjoyment and sometimes you just witness the weirdness and grin.

Hierarchies are not easy to paint with one broad stroke. At times, there are glimpses of a more ‘accessible’3 strain of (blackened) death metal à la Gigan or Immolation (“Entity,” “Vultures”). The fact that this opens the album exemplifies one way in which Hierarchies ambushes its listener. Other ambushes would be the flirtations with the (almost) atmospheric by way of quiet, pensive strums (“Twilight Tradition,” “Abstract,” “Vultures”) and genuine slips into swooping melody, though they are caught just before they become anything resembling a refrain (“Dimension,” “Abstract”). Hierarchies play very fast and loose with structure, shifting nonchalantly between tempos, riff patterns, structure, and vibe. It is more or less impossible to tell where a song is going to go, and as Hierarchies, broadly speaking, gets more chaotic and unhinged as it goes on, the album thus walks on the knife edge between exhilarating and exhausting. A gnarly bit of guitar might come skittering down out of nowhere (“Dimension,” “Complexity Parallels,” “Subtraction”), and it might even be sort of beautiful. There might even be the thrill of a repeated pattern, before things get weird again (“Abstract”). The very turmoil and technicality of the music on display is quite arresting, often making up for any lack of structure or harmony (“Twilight Tradition,” “Complexity Parallels,” “Vultures”). Yet, as an entity formed of such compositions, flitting wildly between its elements, Hierarchies overall feels a little fickle and a little too restless, as though someone had their finger on the fast-forward button in a whirlwind tour of disso-death.

Hierarchies is helped and hindered by that spacious production hinted at above. Every jarring, smooth, quiet, and furious note, roar, and beat has a clear voice in the fracas. It makes the impressive technicality and scope of these pieces easier to appreciate than if things were denser, but it also amplifies their intensity, as one can’t help but absorb every tiny detail that encompasses every sudden and swooping switch. This is a multi-layered album that unveils progressively more of its intricacies with each listen, and this in itself is a feat. Yet Hierarchies design things neither for mind-boggling scope, nor for intoxicating frenzy, and the result is a behemoth of undeniable prowess whose vacillation makes it hard to keep in step with.

For all its trials and triumphs, Hierarchies remains a very solid slab of ‘ultra-dissonant’ death metal. Given its members’ experience, it’s no real surprise it’s as strong as it is. But in this era, where smart, mind-bending, and savage interpretations of this extreme genre abound, Hierarchies have not done quite enough to elevate theirs above the norm. If you can’t get enough of this stuff, Hierarchies will serve you well; I’m not about to pretend I didn’t have fun with it. Its stamp on the scene, however, will likely be fairly short-lived for all but the most ardent of fans.

Rating: Good
DR: 8 | Format Reviewed: 320kbps mp3
Label: Transcending Obscurity
Websites: Bandcamp | Facebook
Releases Worldwide: January 17th, 2025

#2025 #30 #AcausalIntrusion #AdNauseam #AmericanMetal #DeathMetal #DissonantDeathMetal #DwellingBelow #Hierarchies #Jan25 #Pyrrhon #Review #Reviews #TechnicalDeathMetal #TranscendingObscurityRecords

Saunders and Felagund’s Top Ten(ish) of 2024

By Dr. A.N. Grier

Saunders

Rather than delve into the not-so-good parts of a rollercoaster 2024, which had its share of rough circumstances, I’m using this rare soapbox moment to focus on the positives of another action-packed year of metal. Celebrating ten years of writing at Angry Metal Guy was an achievement that crept up. All these years later I remain beyond stoked and privileged to still be contributing in a small way as the blog has snowballed into the juggernaut it is today.

Unfortunately, I haven’t quite fulfilled my writing productivity goals in 2024. However, even when motivation slips, it still gives me great satisfaction to have a platform to share my thoughts and opinions on the music I love. I cannot match the writing chops or word smithery of our most esteemed scribes. However, honing my craft within my own abilities and drawing inspiration from the excellence of my fellow writers continues to motivate me and hopefully steer listeners toward some great music.

While it may not compete with some of the top-shelf individual years over the past decade, 2024 featured a lot of top-shelf stuff across a multitude of genres sprawled over the heavy spectrum. As per usual, the plethora of releases was overwhelming and again I stumble into the end-of-year chaos with a hefty list of stuff I need to check out or spend more time with. Nevertheless, from the numerous albums, I spent quality time with throughout the year, I eventually arrived at the releases that mattered the most to me, with many gems to no doubt uncover in the end-of-year wash-up. This is probably one of the more eclectic lists I’ve cultivated during my time here. Not sure exactly why that was the case, but a year of fluctuating, uneasy shifts on personal and professional fronts perhaps contributed to the more diverse listening rotation.

To wrap up, a heartfelt thank you to our beloved readership for making this all worthwhile and to all my colleagues/writing buddies and general crew of awesome people comprising the ever-expanding blog. Also shout-out to my list buddy Felagund, here’s hoping our combined powers partially align or otherwise complement and provide some listening inspiration. Lastly, a special heads-up to Angry Metal Guy, Steel Druhm, and the rest of the AMG editors and brains trust for whipping us all into order and doing the behind-the-scenes heavy lifting to keep this great thing chugging along. Cheers.

#ish: Anciients // Beyond the Reach of the Sun – Personal dramas, line-up shuffles, and an extended stint away from the studio failed to hamper the triumphant return of Canada’s progressive-stoner-sludge heavyweights Anciients. Beyond the Reach of the Sun marks a strong return that expands the band’s songwriting vision through a standout collection of ambitious, heavily prog-leaning cuts. Loaded with dazzling guitar work and gripping songwriting, Beyond the Reach of the Sun finds the band recalibrating and hitting their songwriting straps without compromising the genre-splicing traits and character they formed across their first couple of albums. It is not a perfect album by any means, with some niggling elements rearing their head, mostly via the way of some bloat, sequencing issues, and a flat production job. But with songs of the outstanding quality of “Despoiled,” “Is it Your God,” and “The Torch” leading the way, the album’s issues fail to extinguish my overall enthusiasm.

#10. Madder Mortem // Old Eyes New Heart – I came to veteran Norwegian progressive metal outfit Madder Mortem late in the game, just as they appeared to be hitting modern-era career peaks via Red in Tooth and Claw, and most recent album, 2018’s Marrow. Six long years in the wilderness and Madder Mortem return without missing a beat, continuing to pump out expressive, powerfully composed jams of their trademark mix of Goth-tinged progressive/alt metal. Although I enjoyed the album from the outset, if anything it has grown in stature since its early year release. The album’s subtleties and bevy of emotion-charged hooks bury deeper into the brain upon repeat doses. The tough period the band endured prior to the unleashing of Old Eyes New Heart is reflected in the album’s raw, potent swell of emotions and overall depth. This is further reflected in the diverse nature of the colorful songwriting, swinging from bluesy, melancholic restraint (“Cold Hard Rain”), pop-infected prog (‘Here and Now”) to urgent, dramatic, and infectious rock powerhouses (“The Head That Wears the Crown,” “Towers”).

#9. Opeth // The Last Will and Testament – As a longtime Opeth fanboy, it is a cool feeling to be genuinely enthused about a new LP, nearly three decades since their underrated Orchid debut. All the pre-release buzz centered on the return of Åkerfeldt’s famed death growls. While certainly a cool and unexpected touch, the fourteenth album The Last Will and Testament is not merely a nostalgic throwback to the band’s glory days. Instead, Opeth fuses those quirky, vintage prog tools from their modern-era material and fuses them into an intricate concept album that is a significant step up from the past couple of uneven efforts and easily their best work since at least 2014’s Pale Communion. Dazzling musicianship, jazzy licks, and inventively crafted, yet notably more focused and concise writing marked an album that features better production and tighter, punchier songs than the band has written in a while. It is also Opeth’s heaviest, most riff-centric release in many moons. Despite the trademark melancholic moods and darker shades, it also sounds as if the band is having real fun, reinforced by the abundance of bouncy, infectious riffs, shreddy solos, and boisterous grooves littering the album. Likely would have earned higher honors with time, as I still feel there is much more to discover.

#8. Oceans of Slumber // Where Gods Fear to Speak – Previously enjoyed the idea of Texan progressive metal powerhouse Oceans of Slumber, more than the execution and finished product. In particular, 2016’s Winter has grown in stature over the years. Yet for much of their career, it has felt like a case of incredible talent and potential not fully realized. That changed on Where Gods Fear to Speak, arguably the band’s most complete, consistent, and hook-laden release. When I felt the prog itch throughout 2024, Where Gods Fear to Speak was often the go-to. An album of lush, moody, drama-filled compositions, deftly contrasting soaring melodies, and skyscraping hooks with muscular riffage and heftier bouts of aggression, the writing is tighter and more compelling than previous efforts. Cammie Beverly’s scene-stealing vocals may take center stage, but this is very much a complete effort, where the rich soundscapes, brooding atmospheres, and technical musicianship shine brightly. Loaded with killer jams, including stirring highlights, “Don’t Come Back from Hell Empty Handed,” “Wish,” and “Poem of Ecstasy,” Where Gods Fear to Speak finally finds Oceans of Slumber firing on all cylinders.

#7. Pyrrhon // Exhaust – In theory, Pyrrhon should be one of my favorite bands. I used to eat up all manner of skronky, dissonant, and abrasive extreme metal. Perhaps my thirst for the weirder, experimental forms of death metal and dissonance has softened over the years. However, while largely enjoying Pyrrhon’s career up to this point, Exhaust feels like the album I have been waiting for the band to deliver. Exhaust dropped unexpectedly and that element of surprise flowed through another oddball, deranged platter of wildly inventive, chaotic, yet oddly accessible (in Pyrrhon terms) extreme metal. From cautious, challenging early listens, I found myself increasingly compelled to revisit Exhaust on a regular basis, marveling at its flexible, fractured songwriting, nimble musicianship, and raw hardcore punk edge infiltrating the dissonant, experimental death metal at the core of the Pyrrhon experience. Gritty production, perfectly unhinged vocal performance from Doug Moore, and occasional burst of groove and shred of accessibility punctuating the chaos (“First as Tragedy, Then as Farce,” “Strange Pains,” “Stress Fractures”) lend the album a refreshingly addictive edge to counterbalance its abrasive, challenging angles.

#6. Replicant // Infinite Mortality – New Jersey’s Replicant previously exhibited their brawny, yet brainy mix of gnarled dissonance, technicality, and knuckle-dragging street grooves to powerful effect. However, third album Infinite Mortality levelled the playing field as the band upped their game to elite levels of controlled chaos, while the writing remained challenging yet strangely accessible and memorable. In spirit, the ugly mix of harshness, discordance, and headbangable blockbuster grooves reminds me of the great Ion Dissonance. Meanwhile, the contrasting blend of unorthodox melody, jagged dissonance, and stuttering, complex song structures come together with cohesion and blunt force, punctuated by the occasional warped solo. Like a harsh, harrowing soundtrack to a bleak dystopian future, Infinite Mortality is a mean, chunky, technical, and deliciously primal slab of advanced disso-tech-death excellence.

#5. Noxis // Violence Inherent in the System – Notably death metal in 2024 was dominated by brutal, dissonant varieties, designed to scramble brains and challenge minds while battering the listener into submission. Refreshingly, unheralded surprise packet Noxis unloaded a killer debut LP to savor. Drawing from an array of old-school influences and ’90s touchstones without ever aping one particular band or style, Noxis unleashed a nostalgic yet unique death metal platter. Managing to at once sound raw and unclean, technical and brutal, thrashy and proggy, sharp and refined, Noxis blaze their way craftily through memorable, riff-infested wastelands with unbridled aggression, speed, and finesse, rubber-stamped by some exceptional bass work. Remnants of the classic Floridian scene mingle with powerful influences, including early Cryptopsy, later-era Death, Atheist, and Cannibal Corpse, resulting in a finished product that sounds fresh and vital, while containing an endearing, workmanlike old-school charm. It works a treat, and the top-notch and frequently inventive writing reveals impressive depth and character that rewards repeat listens.

#4. Dissimulator // Lower Form Resistance – There are some serviceable, enjoyable thrash-aligned albums in 2024, but one stood head and shoulders above the competition. Comprised of a grizzled bunch of underground Canadian musicians hellbent on fusing advanced technical thrash assaults with sick old-school death-thrash, a fuckton of killer riffs, quirky vocoder action, and razor-sharp hooks, Lower Form Resistance has consistently provided an adrenaline-filled shot of thrash when needing that specific fix. Dissimulator rewires thrash in intricate and intriguing ways, giving me the same giddy rush as past experiences with the likes of Capharnaum, Vhol, and Revocation. Excited to hear what these dudes conjure up next. In the meantime, Lower Form Resistance will continue to keep my thrash cogs oiled through potent bangers like “Warped,” “Automoil & Robotoil,” and “Hyperline Underflow.”

#3. Huntsmen // The Dry Land – After somehow sleeping on 2018 debut American Scrap and subsequently their apparent sophomore slumping second album, I finally righted my wrongs by delving into the strange and wildly unique woodlands of Chicago metal troupe Huntsmen and their phenomenal third LP, The Dry Land. A raw, rustic, and emotionally striking explosion of genre-bending excellence, where blackened sludge, doom, post, prog, folk, and Americana influences coalesce into an intoxicating and frequently thrilling musical formula, rich in detail and emotion. The skilled genre mashing is cohesive and genuine, loaded with surprises, structural twists, dramatic ebbs and flows, deep burrowing hooks, and contrasting vocal trade-offs to seal the deal on a remarkable album. Despite only a small handful of songs comprising the album (six in total), Huntsmen make every moment count, from blazing longer numbers with stunning contrasts and peaks (“This, Our Gospel,” “In Time, All things”) to plaintive folk dusted rock (“Lean Times”), through to the stunningly moving, compact power of “Rain.” Huntsmen occupy a unique space in the metalverse.

#2. Borknagar // Fall – I have a slightly odd history with Norwegian legends Borknagar. I recall being taken by their excellent 2012 album Urd, yet oddly enough I didn’t extend my listening beyond that isolated release. Things changed with 2019’s True North, a typically solid offering that inspired my explorations of portions of their vast and consistently engaging catalog. The twelfth album Fall marks their first album since True North and again features an outstanding line-up of talents, including founding mastermind Øystein Brun, multi-talented keyboardist/clean vocalist Lars Nedland, and ace up their sleeve bass/vocal powerhouse ICS Vortex. Fall smacks of a veteran band not merely content to coast on their laurels but rather carve freshly creative trajectories for their now signature blend of epic prog, triumphant Viking, and icy black metal to thrive. An extra shot of old-school blackened aggression and fuller production boosted an album of consistently high quality. Fall became a true all-occasions album in 2024; often uplifting me when I felt down or giving me a punchy charge when the need arose. Wall-to-wall prime cuts feature, headlined by the storming “Summits,” moody earworm, “The Wild Lingers”, and the striking, epic shimmer of “Moon.” Stalwarts still operating at the top of their game.

#1. Counting Hours // The Wishing Tomb – Not since Fvneral Fvkk’s remarkable Carnal Confessions debut has a doom album struck as hard as the second platter of sadboi misery perpetrated by Finland’s excellent Counting Hours. While doom and its death-doom companion may not always dominate my listening habits, when an album does hit that sweet spot, it usually leaves a profound impact. Few forms of metal generate the emotional resonance of quality doom and Counting Hours tears at the heartstrings through a riveting collection of gorgeously played and executed death-doom ditties, spearheaded by former members of the hugely underrated Rapture. Ilpo Paasela backs up the stellar musicianship, superb guitar work, and tight, addictive songwriting with a stunning mix of emotively raw, stately cleans and rugged death growls. The whole package packs an emotional wallop, yet its soulful edge and hopelessly addictive hooks and sing-along moments prevent a drop too deeply into depressive waters, as such earwormy gems as “Timeless Ones,” “All That Blooms (Needs to Die),” and “Starlit / Lifeless” attest. The Wishing Tomb is an epic album to lose yourself in.

Honorable Mentions:

• Blood Incantation // Absolute Elsewhere – Did I overrate Absolute Elsewhere? Possibly. Is it overhyped? Absolutely. Yet Blood Incantation remains a brave, adventurous band and Absolute Elsewhere represents a welcome return to form from these gifted, star-gazing space cadets. A flawed but effective fusing of their death metal roots with an increased focus on ’70s-inspired progressive rock and trippy psych flourishes.
• 200 Stab Wounds // Manual Manic Procedures – I barely took notice of Cleveland’s 200 Stab Wounds debut LP, but sophomore album Manual Manic Procedures provided one of the real surprise packets in 2024. It very nearly cracked the main list sheerly through heavy rotation. A meaty, adrenaline-charged shot of muscular death into the veins.
• Ripped to Shreds // Sanshi – Another reliably awesome slab of old-school death from Andrew Lee and co. Increasingly shreddy, extravagant solo work and a grindier edge powered one of their best albums yet.
• Nails // Every Bridge Burning – Nails is back and that is a great thing. New line-up, the same mode of short, sharp, blast-your-skin-off aggression, head-caving grooves, and hate-filled energy.
• Unhallowed Deliverance // Of Spectre and Strife – A pleasant surprise and one of the best debut albums in 2024. German tech-slam-brutal death juggernaut Unhallowed Deliverance knocked it out of the park with limited subtlety but a heap of talent, creativity, and songwriting smarts.
• Wormed // Omegon – With Ulcerate’s latest release not quite hitting me on the intense level of others, and having run out of time to properly digest and rank the obvious high-quality new Defeated Sanity, Wormed’s long-awaited return gave me my fix of calculated brutality via futuristic, slammy, technical brutal death executed in typically warped, mind-blowing fashion.
• Khirki // Κυκεώνας – Following up an impressive, well-received debut LP is no easy feat. Kenstrosity steered many of us from the AMG community onto Greek band Khirki’s Κτηνωδία debut in 2021, so I eagerly anticipated Khirki’s return for the second go around. The resulting album met expectations through a fiery, passionate, and eclectic mix of metal, rock, and traditional Greek folk.
• Sergeant Thunderhoof // The Ghost of Badon Hill – A late-year list shaker, underappreciated UK psych-prog-stoner outfit Sergeant Thunderhoof unleased a more restrained, psych-enhanced, and introspective album, showing signs of being a genuine grower since its November release, despite not quite hitting the irresistible highs of 2022’s This Sceptred Veil.

Disappointments o’ the Year:

• Several highly anticipated albums did not quite land the killer blows I was hoping for. Respectable to very good albums, but I expected better from Vola (admittedly a grower), Caligula’s Horse, Ihsahn, and especially Zeal and Ardor.

Non-Metal Picks:

• St Vincent, SIR, Michael Kiwanuka, Allie X, MGMT

Song ‘o the Year:

• Counting Hours – “Timeless Ones”

There were any number of standouts and potential Song o’ the Year candidates that could have nabbed top honors, including several counterparts from Counting Hours’ spectacular sophomore album. In the end, I settled on the (proper) album opener of my album of the year, as the tune that really hooked me initially from an album that captivated my soul. A rich, emotive piece of dark, melodic death-doom with superlative guitar melodies and a chorus for the ages. Honorable mention to Huntsmen’s “Rain.”

Felgund

I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of living in interesting times. But as that wizened sage, Gandalf so wisely reminds us: “So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”

So what have I been doing with the time that has been given? A fair amount, as it turns out. 2024 has certainly been a tumultuous year for our small family. On the one hand, the business that I launched in 2023 has been chugging along for well over a year and a half now, and I think I’m far enough along in the process that I feel (at least somewhat) comfortable calling it a success. The baby that we brought home from the hospital is now, inexplicably, a whip-smart 7-year-old. My wife’s career continues to blossom as she continues to moonlight as my business manager. Things are good.

And yet 2024 also proved to be harder than I’d ever imagined. My dad died back in April, an experience that remains both devastating and surreal. He’d had multiple sclerosis for well over a decade, and as I’m sure many of you know, MS is a grasping, grinding petty little disease. But for as much as it stole, it proved incapable of taking away who my father was; it couldn’t quite make off with what made him him. He was my best friend before his diagnosis, and he remained my best friend up until that impossible evening in a hospital room in early April. Truth be told, he’s still my best friend, only now he’s free to walk wherever I see fit to imagine him.

Despite my best efforts, I realized pretty quickly you can’t capture a life in a few paragraphs. I couldn’t do it in his eulogy, and I certainly won’t attempt to do so on a heavy metal blog. But I will share this:

My dad was a carpenter by trade and an artist by choice; he was a fisherman and a cook; he was a handyman, a builder, a designer, and a writer; he taught himself how to play guitar, and he’s perhaps the singular reason why I’m writing for this website today. Because while he wasn’t a fan of metal himself, he instilled in me not only a love for music, but an interest in the process; in the people who create it, the minds that shape it, and the passion that births it.

He played in countless bands in his youth, and I can think of no better way to honor his memory than by sharing some of his music with you all. With Steel’s blessing, I’m embedding a two-song demo (“A Place in Time” and “Street Legal”) ripped from a cassette my old man recorded in the late 80s, so apologies in advance for the questionable quality. He composed both the music and lyrics, played guitar and bass, and sang on both tracks, which were devised when he was perhaps at his Rush fanboy peak. It’s been a delight and a balm hearing his voice again, captured as it was in a moment when he was young, vibrant, and doing what he loved.

So here we are. Despite (or perhaps because of) this, I managed to consume a fair amount of metal this year. And while I was far less productive as a writer than I’d hoped and I wasn’t able to listen to as much as I originally planned, I discovered a plethora of new music here on AMG that soothed what Neil Peart once referred to as his “baby soul.” And surprisingly, I found much of that solace in the discordant, the dissonant, and the off-kilter, as the list below probably reflects. But more importantly, I found compassion, support, and understanding amongst the writing staff here. And while they may not know it, I will be forever thankful for the folks who showed me such boundless kindness during a year that felt decidedly unkind. Thank you, my friends.

Now let’s get to to it. Here are my top ten(ish) albums of 2024.

#(ish). Beaten to Death // Sunrise Over Rigor Mortis – It almost feels like cheating to place an 18-minute album in my Top 10(ish), but here we are. 2024 proved to be a year where my interest in grind and grind-adjacent acts expanded, and this “ish” is the result. While I wasn’t aware of Beaten to Death prior to this release, I was quickly swept away by Sunrise Over Rigor Mortis’ ability to bludgeon its idiosyncratic way into my brain and coil there like the most glorious of infections. Beaten to Death has delivered a concise helping of grinding goodness, with crispy prog edges and a schmear of off-kilter humor. Back catalog, here I come!

#10. Sleepytime Gorilla Museum // Of the Last Human Being – Gardenstale’s gushing review of Sleepytime Gorilla Museum’s fourth album Of the Last Human Being was a tough endorsement to ignore, as was an invocation of Diablo Swing Orchestra. So I threw caution to the wind and leaped headlong into this experimental maelstrom. And I’m so happy I did. Don’t let the runtime dissuade you; Of the Last Human Being doesn’t feel nearly as long as it is, and over that relatively brief timespan, you’re provided with a front-row seat to the aural equivalent of perhaps the most fun kind of performance art. Hard-edged riffs, off-kilter instrumentation, ominous theatrics interlaced with beautiful, sparse melodies, and all capped off by the deranged croons of chief carnival barker Nils Frykdahl. If I’d spent more time with this record it may have placed higher, but as it is, I’m happy it’s making an appearance at the number 10 spot.

#9. Sur Austru // Datura Strǎhiarelor – Despite Twelve underrating this album, I suppose I should commend him for introducing me to Sur Austru in the first place. This Romanian outfit’s third full-length Datura Strǎhiarelor is a potent blend of rumbling, blackened fury, and melodic folk metal, with plenty of flute work, orchestration, choral elements, and plaintive keys thrown in. And, while the gruff, chanting growls might rub some listeners the wrong way, it was this aspect more than any other that first grabbed my attention, and proceeded to keep it. And while I haven’t a clue what the vocalists are shouting at me, the tone and placement in the mix feels just right, especially for this brand of folk-infused black metal. Such is the strength of Sur Austru that this album began as my “ish” before eventually working its way to ninth. Mightly bold of them.

#8. Necrowretch // Swords of Dajjal – Some of the entries on this list were either late discoveries or took some time before they got their dirty little hooks in me. Necrowretch’s Swords of Dajjal was not one of them. As soon as I spun it back in February, it was love at first listen. Swords of Dajjal focuses on the greater deceiver in Islamic mythology, and explores that tradition through the use of ferocious blackened death metal (with perhaps a dollop or two of thrash thrown in). Although, as Carcharodon rightly pointed out in his review, the “blackened” part is doing most of the heavy lifting here. And that’s not a bad thing, as Necrowretch is more than adept at crafting memorable hooks and an engaging atmosphere without sacrificing heft or freneticism. Swords of Dajjal is an unmitigated success, and my only real gripe is that Necrowretch dropped a new platter so early in the year that it may go overlooked on too many end-of-year lists.

#7. The Vision Bleak // Weird Tales – Grier and I may not see eye to eye on music, but what can I say? The man knows his way around gothic metal. So when he awarded a 4.0 to Weird Tales back in April, what was I to do? If you said wait several months before bothering to press play, you’re correct. But folks, I may have been late to the party, but it’s a rager nonetheless. The Vision Bleak has produced an emotive, memorable, downright heart-wrenching concept album; one that is both lush and harsh, both achingly melodic and morosely heavy. Weird Tales isn’t my usual cup of tea, but The Vision Bleak has rejected my assertion by doing what many similar acts appear incapable of doing: cohesively balancing “gothic” and “metal” without lessening the impact of either. A well-earned addition, indeed.

#6. Stenched // Purulence Gushing from the Coffin – While Rots-giving may have been tarnished by a less-than-stellar release from Rotpit back in November, I’ve moved on since then, and am now proudly celebrating Stenched-mas. The Manly n’ Mighty Steel reviewed this one-man grimy death outfit last month, and even though I was still smarting from my failed attempt to poach Purulence Gushing from the Coffin for myself, I can’t in good conscience deny how hard this globular mass of funerary muck rips. From the first track to the last, you’ll be rocking a near-permanent stank face, and you can’t blame that solely on the fungal miasma wafting from your speakers. The truth is, Stenched has delivered a masterclass in riff-heavy, moss-encrusted death metal; the kind that’s perfect to drag your knuckles to. Purulence Gushing from the Coffin is the exact kind of no-frills, all-guts death metal I needed in 2024, and that’s why it’s sitting pretty at 6.

#5. Aklash // Reincarnation – How are we already at the Top Five? And what better way to kick off this most treasured of positions than with the melodic black metal stylings of Aklash on their fourth album Reincarnation? Aklash received a solid write-up in June’s Stuck in the Filter by our very own Kenstrosity, and their most recent outing has continued to climb higher and higher on my list the more I’ve spun it. Part black metal, part progressive metal, part trad metal (epic choruses included), Reincarnation packs a wallop in just a short 37 minutes. overflowing with varied instrumentation and keen lyrical chops, grandiose in scope and medieval in tone, yet more personal than it has any right to be, Aklash is firing on all cylinders here, and, as such, is perfectly suited for anyone’s top 5.

#4. Devenial Verdict // Blessing of Despair – And, just like that, more death metal rears its ugly head. I’m still surprised at how high up Devenial Verdict’s sophomore album landed on my list, primarily because their 2022 debut Ash Blind failed to connect. But Blessing of Despair seems to have arrived just in time for my increasing flirtation with the cruel mistress that is dissodeath. As such, I found myself utterly taken with Devenial Verdict’s latest, overflowing as it is with equally heavy doses of discordant ferocity and mournful melodicism. And while Blessing of Despair is an undeniably heavy record, it makes sure to leave plenty of room for quieter moments, where slower sections and sparse instrumentation have room to bloom and breathe. This approach not only results in a wonderfully balanced album but ensures the bludgeoning that’s sure to follow is all the more impactful. Consider me reformed.

#3. Aborted // Vault of Horrors – I’m fairly certain that any death metal fan worth their salt is legally required to include the latest Aborted release on their end-of-year list. Over 25 years and 12 albums into their carnal career, these death metal titans need no introduction. Blood-drenched, gore-soaked, and happily grindy, Aborted are in a league all their own, and it shows on Vault of Horrors. The music remains tight and explosive, building a menacing atmosphere that pervades only the stickiest of grindhouse theaters. Besides, with songs dedicated to classics like Return of the Living Dead, Hellraiser, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, how could I do anything other than include this gem of an album in my top 3? I for one welcome our horror-themed overlords.

#2. Noxis // Violence Inherent in the System – What began as a random pick from the promo sump by one Kenstrosity quickly rose to become a favorite of the death metal maniacs (those with good taste, anyway) on the AMG staff. Now, more importantly, it’s nabbed the second-highest honor on my year-end list. Noxis’ first full-length album Violence Inherent in the System sounds like the product of a much more experienced band. The songwriting is top-notch, the performances are big and bold without being overwrought, and the sticky riffs stay wedged in your mind long after the album ends. And yet for all of its bombast, Noxis is still able to infuse their debut with oodles of atmosphere, not to mention a level of balance between death metal orthodoxy and fresh bells and whistles (and horns) that would make even Thanos grimace in jealousy. Special attention must also be paid to Joe Lowrie’s snare tone and Dave Kirsch’s godlike bass performance.

#1. Pyrrhon // Exhaust – I suppose I was always destined to end up here, I just didn’t know it right away. Pyrrhon’s fifth full-length Exhaust didn’t initially grab me the way some of my other entries did. However, on repeat spins, I found myself falling deeper and deeper into its frenetic, dissonant embrace, discovering both nuances and subtleties amidst the proggy cacophony. On an album that thoroughly explores the universal theme of exhaustion, be it physical, mental, social, or economic, Pyrrhon’s brand of noise-tinged death metal feels like the ideal tool with which to scrawl their livid manifesto. But what truly sets Exhaust apart is its unrelenting groove, stoked by Pyrrhon’s inventive capacity to not only feature but to uplift its unique brand of melodicism amidst the unrelenting maelstrom. It’s hard to overstate just how critical this aspect is to Exhaust’s success, especially since it would have been so easy to excise. But Exhaust’s manic ferocity, which swerves jerks, hops, and heaves, is all the better for it. And while its charms were initially lost on me, I found it easier and easier to finally succumb to its tremulous tendrils. Any record with that kind of staying power (not to mention a theme so applicable to my own experiences this past year) has more than earned my top spot for 2024.

Honorable Mentions:

• Defeated Sanity // Chronicles of Lunacy – Defeated Sanity is a brutal tech death stalwart at this point, and now seven albums in, Chronicles of Lunacy only further cements that status. Chronicles of Lunacy provides the listener with track after aggressively intricate track exploring lunacy in its many forms, but the real treat here is Lille Gruber’s masterful performance on the drums.
• Full of Hell // Coagulated Bliss – while I don’t think I’ve become a complete grind convert, albums like Full of Hell’s Coagulated Bliss and Beaten to Death’s Sunrise Over Rigor Mortis certainly set me on the path to one day become a proud proselytizer. You can’t deny Coagulated Bliss’ infectious groove and whirlwind pace, although I agree with the Dolphin’s rating adjustment.
• Undeath // More Insane – no, it’s not as good as It’s Time…to Rise from the Grave, and there’s no reason to pretend that it is. Nor does it need to be. While More Insane may not reach the lofty heights of its predecessor, it still showcases an Undeath doing what it does best, while also hinting at an undeniable ability to evolve into an even sharper, more fetid OSDM beast.
• 200 Stab Wounds // Manual Manic Procedures – while I wasn’t entirely kind in my review of 200 Stab Wounds’ debut, Mark Z suggested I take their follow-up Manual Manic Procedures for a spin, and I’m glad I did. It’s clear they’ve grown as artists, and their sophomore effort reflects that heightened maturity. Keep stabbing on, your crazy diamonds!
• Mamaleek // Vida Blue – I’m confident this album captures what it would sound like if Tom Waits listened to too much Ashenspire before leaving for the recording studio. Long, difficult, and bold, I found myself returning again and again to Vida Blue no matter how challenging I found the experience. While this album didn’t make my top 10, I’m convinced a future Mamaleek release will.

Song o’ the Year:

• Noxis – ”Skullcrushing Defilement”

This song goes hard. Exceptionally hard. In truth, there are any number of tunes from Violence Inherent in the System that fit the “Song o’ the Year” bill, but I had to give the edge to “Skullcrushing Defilement.” Not only does it begin with an absolutely searing bass solo, but it sets the stage for the four-string onslaught that’s to come. There’s a noticeable Cannibal Corpse influence that I can’t help but love here, alongside heaping doses of maniacal melodicism, turbocharged technicality, and an earworm chorus to boot. Abandon all cervical spines, ye who enter here.

#200StabWounds #2024 #Aborted #Aklash #AllieX #Anciients #Archspire #Atheist #BeatenToDeath #BlogPosts #BloodIncantation #Borknagar #CaligulaSHorse #CannibalCorpse #Capharnaum #CountingHours #Crytopsy #Death #DefeatedSanity #DevenialVerdict #DiabloSwingOrchestra #Dissimulator #Dissonance #FullOfHell #FvneralFvkk #Huntsmen #Ihsahn #Khirki #Lists #MadderMortem #Mamaleek #MGMT #MichaelKiwanuka #Nails #Necrowretch #Noxis #OceansOfSlumber #Opeth #Pyrrhon #Rapture #Replicant #Revocation #RippedToShreds #Rotpit #SaundersAndFelagundSTopTenIshOf2024 #SergeantThunderfoot #SIR #SleepytimeGorillaMuseum #StVincent #Stenched #SurAustru #TheVisionBleak #TomWaits #Ulcerate #Undeath #UnhallowedDeliverance #Vhöl #Wormed #ZealAndArdor

Dolphin Whisperer’s and Ferox’s Top Ten(ish) of 2024

By Dolphin Whisperer

Dolphin Whisperer

Every year, its end becomes more shocking and swift. Once, some guy told me, simply, “it only gets worse.” Not life though—attributing a better or worse or any sort of constant determination of our passage leaves a lot of room for falling into a void of enjoyment—life is, after all, a constant until its not. But time, or our sense of being in its too ever-present stream, flows at a rate that changes in ways to which we never quite catch up.

As such, there’s a comfort in knowing how much time an album, particularly one you enjoy will take. For the ten-to-twenty minutes it takes for grindcore proper to slap me silly or the forty-to-eighty minutes that it takes for my deepest progressive loves to wring out a moaning confession, I know where my attention lies, even if it’s only half there and half on a task at hand. Time and tasks, day to night, play to stop, music makes my world a better place. And entering my now third year at Angry Metal Guy, an institution that has been a fixture of my musical journey for even longer, I continue to hold a profound gratitude and excitement for another year of discovery.

2024 has had its challenges professionally and personally. 2025 will be no doubt the same, even if some trials we can see forming in the distance. But you want to know about the music, right? On that end, 2024 has yielded a heaping trove of great albums. Heck, even a Rodeö pick scratched at the rungs of an honorable mention. The below list barely scratches the surface of the breadth that the year has offered. Further down you will see Ferox‘s list, which captures a different collection equally rooted in joy. He might be more right than I am. But that matters little. Celebrate with us, your favorite collective of writers on the world wide web! Come hang with some of us on Discord too if you’d like. Most of the people there are certified flea-free. And don’t be too upset if 2025 doesn’t hit you the same at first. It’s just another year, and it’ll be over before you know it.

#ish. Kalandra // A Frame of Mind – At my core, I consider myself a Norwegian sad girl. Usually, this manifests in some sort of weepy, melancholy prog, the likes of Age of Silence or Madder Mortem.1 But Kalandra’s enfolkened an impassioned take on an artsy, progressive collection of empowering tunes hit me square in my aching heart from the moment I heard it. Most importantly, though, Kalandra knows that suffering is just a step on the path of growth and happiness, which is a message that inspires me every day.

#10. Dawnwalker // The Unknowing – The power to dream and envision a world driven by mysticism has an allure that’s hard to ignore. And while we know that more determinable laws guide the happenings of our daily lives, a glimpse of the unknown will always find its way into sequence. Dawnwalker putting this esoteric but ever-present concept into an atmospheric, genre-warped, playfully progressive package hardly surprises me, though. The British troupe has had my number since their unsung classic In Rooms,2 so I’m doing my last in continuing to love them despite Twelve‘s best efforts to underrate them.3

#9. Lizzard // Mesh – Lizzard’s 2021 opus Eroded is my favorite album of this decade so far. The French trio’s ability to warp deep, rhythm-tricky layers into driving and emotional rock songs his me at the core of my musical desire for cathartic hope expressed in an unassuming and lush framework. Mesh doesn’t present any differently in that regard. But its wrinkles on Lizzard’s timeless yet ’90s alternative-rooted oeuvre fuel Mesh’s inherent melancholy with a hope that’s jubilant, like a cracked smile on an overcast day.

#8. Dissimulator // Lower Form Resistance – [INCOMING TRANSMISSION.] “My name is Clyde, and I arrive from beyond with wonderful news. My good friend Ferox has survived this timeline after all, having learned to navigate the Lower Form Resistance assault of fast-twitch rhythms and slow-twitch death metal punctuation. His head, fully intact, sways wildly in its hairless glory—big dives for big skanking breaks, snappy rolls for whiplash accelerations. He may not be as rhythmically gifted in pit-galloping cadence as the virtuoso drum and bass duo that provides life to Dissimulator’s effortless strides, but Ferox is my everything nonetheless.” [END TRANSMISSION.]

#7. Mamaleek // Vida Blue – I couldn’t begin to tell you what has never landed about Mamaleek’s works before with a weird precision. As an act dedicated to sounding only like Mamaleek, their singular expression of tortured black(ish) metal warped by jazzy and slogging attitudes has manifested quite the take-it-or-leave-it musical experience. And while you, dear reader, may assume this is firmly up my alley, it has not been. At least not until Vida Blue served a bottom of the ninth heart-shaker as an ode to a departed friend.4 With a soulful swing, a tortured connection, and an exit velocity powered by equal parts loss and love, Mamaleek has clinched a campaign for my attention.

#6. Defeated Sanity // Chronicles of Lunacy – As an apex predator in the brutal death metal world, Defeated Sanity’s appearance arouses not questions of competency but rather calculations of the carnage wrought. Chronicles of Lunacy does not mark a turning point or novel twist in the Defeated Sanity timeline—its finely tuned lashings hit as inescapable all the same. When neither a beast’s reach, nor mass, nor attack speed goes contested, an exhibition of its might will flash with morbid glee. As such, Defeated Sanity need not surprise to strike mortal wound. Chronicles’ fangs glisten with an aged-imbrued tarnish, tearing at my flesh in every way I would expect. And I want more.

#5. Orgone // Pleroma – Meticulous and constructed as a master-work, Pleroma’s opening notes signal a trance. Acoustic twang and chamber instrument-fueled swoon build an atmosphere of wonder against a fervent and languished march of post-genre swells and death-fueled crescendos. Cycling through its many shades feels less like a fever dream and more of a trial-filled journey. Wielding a demure grandeur, Pleroma’s effortless realization of Orgone’s peerless vision never feels like the epic journey its runtime suggests. Were my time truly infinite, Pleroma would be even harder to rip away from the queue.

#4. Julie Christmas // Ridiculous and Full of Blood – A lady screaming bloody murder shouldn’t go down this smooth, but that’s always been the promise and success of Julie Christmas. Few vocalists leave me slack-jawed and ear-shaken in the wake of piercing cries, raw-throated shrieks, and impassioned lyrical slather. Yet, Ridiculous and Full of Blood cuts track after track out of sonic patterns that do exactly that, all while empowering a full band expression of alternative-laced grooves, post-informed climbs, and punk-tied sneer. The Christmas season sums a flurry of inspired performances under the banner of a madwoman. And I stand at the ready to fray my vocal cords in attempt to crack with the same battle-tested precision that Ms. Christmas has earned from a life hard-worn.

#3. Ingurgitating Oblivion // Ontology of Nought – Though born of minds unrelated, Ontology of Nought exists as an esoteric companion to the Pleroma embodiment. Orgone is the twin that went to conservatory, graduated with honors, and holds an honorable performing chair, all while remembering its young love for death metal. Ingurgitating Oblivion, on the other hand, dropped out, spiraled into entheogenic dissociation, earns a living gigging at jazz clubs—also maintains its youthful lust for the clamoring riff and hammering blast. Maximalism oozes a frothing wonder in the hiss of distorted chatter and rhythmic mastery. An imperfect and breathing construction rises and falls in ethereal inhales and vision-spinning mantras. Ontology of Nought deserves each of its over-budget minutes. Invest time in the freedom that it promises… “and cease to be.”

#2. OU // 蘇醒 II: Frailty – The casualness of OU’s inception belies its profound leap into my necessary rotation. No incumbent love ever has a defined position in the halls of end-of-year accolades,5 and even more so when the act’s very presence rang suspicious in its finely-tuned invasion to my critical wiles. But, as I noted when I first blew my love for 蘇醒 II: Frailty over the pages of Angry Metal Guy, it’s OU’s “idiosyncratic atmosphere” that pulls from a “polyrhythmic hypnosis” and masterful “energetic flow” that continues to chart them deservedly high in the annals of ’20s progressive music. And while this collision of classically-minded, synth-addicted madness slowly expands its universe one OU release at a time, I’m content to sit here and yell their praises at anyone who will listen.

#1. Pyrrhon // Exhaust – You know you’re getting old when an album about modern burnout and the pains of traffic resonates with you all the way from frozen shoulder to radiating lower back to cold-groaning knee. But when Pyrrhon stealth-bombed my aging metalhead mind with a tech-dial riff barrage of noisy and shouting proportions, I had no choice but to surrender. Exhaust demands attention from its initial irony-laced lift-off to its closing brutalist clock-out, swinging skronk-enabled splatters and ache-addled vituperation around every faded line and pothole in its death metal architecture. Though Pyrrhon uses simpler blocks, their construction here defies convention at every step. One fine commenter summed up Exhaust in the most succinct manner in that regard: “Death Metal, Hardcore, Noise Rock, Technical Death Metal. It’s just mathcore.” Except they took away the wrong message from that distillation. The verdict, in fact, is fuck you.

Honorable Mentions:

• • Inner Strength // Daydreaming in Moonlight – Another way you know you’re getting old is that you love an album that sounds like it should have released in 1995. Alas, here we are.
  • Dysrhythmia // Coffin of Conviction – Instrumental progressive music should be as exciting as Dysrhythmia. Comes for the Martyr riffs. Stay for the Metheny floating.
  • Beaten to Death // Sunrise Over Rigor Mortis – Beaten to Death is still the best grindcore band on the planet. They probably won’t ever release a better album than D​ø​dsfest!, but that’s OK. Their discography is now about two hours total. Go listen to it if you haven’t.
  • Stygian Crown // Funeral for a King – Doom should always have a guitar tone that feels equally powered by swords and beer alongside vocals that feel soft like bar-stained leather stools.
  • Kollapse // AR – I didn’t know KEN mode had a Danish doppelgänger with a frightening, large pink face. But they do, and boy does Kollapse know how to yell and riff.
  • Sleepytime Gorilla Museum // of the Last Human Being – Had I infinitely more listening time, I may have been able to parse better this deeply cinematic and wacky slab of no wave emboldened prog. Most don’t actually earn the avant-garde tag the way SGT does.
  • Defying // Wadera – Hour-long albums based on old Polish werewolf stories and horror movies shouldn’t be this easy to repeat, but I find myself often falling into Wadera’s unbreakable spell.
  • Arthouse Fatso // Sycophantic Seizures: A Double Feature – I didn’t have radically-minded industrial deathgrind about the frustrated escapades of a fictional Orson Welles life on my 2024 bingo, but here I am telling you to listen to it anyway.
  • Concrete Winds // Concrete Winds – Just this. And shitloads of riffs.

Disappointments o’ the Year:

• Myrath // Karma – I love Shehili so much. My love for power metal isn’t what it used to be, but Myrath’s exuberance while staying rooted in both the trickier waters of prog and the anthemic cries of power metal gave me hope both that I’d continue to latch on to the kind of playful love it can offer. But the arrangements on Karma, despite Myrath’s still life-affirming messages, do absolutely nothing to bolster that same joy for me. Karma sinks my listening brain. And that hurts.
• Pallbearer // Mind Burns Alive – The continued non-success of Pallbearer and their sleepy-toned take on creaky prog rock hurts the Dolph who fell in love with their weepy doom classic (and still controversial to true doomsters) Heartless. And yet the general blogging population seems to praise them for trying to reinvent sadboi roots rock with worse lyrics. And, for my money, Pallbearer is sounding increasingly thin live. If a return to glory is in store for Pallbearer, it will begin with them finally playing a riff again.
• Polterguts // Nobody Likes You – Okay, this EP actually rips because Polterguts rips. Hard. But, Polterguts, if you’re reading this, please put it on Bandcamp so I can link the shit out of it and give you money. I am disappointed that I have no way to contribute currency to your cause. “Ricky Has a Knife2” is worth the price of admission alone.

Songs o’ the Year:

Why give you one when I can give you twenty-seven? Why twenty-seven? That’s my secret. Now, I’ve talked enough, go out there and enjoy some music, friends. And enjoy this photo of my dogs.

Coconut (left), Kiwi (right) in a stylish Adidog sweater.

Ferox

I worked way too much in 2024. I can’t complain; it was meaningful work that I chose to take on, and it got me that much closer to not having to work at all if I don’t want to. Still, that’s what I’ll think of when I think of 2024: lots and lots of work. That had a knock-on effect, especially when it comes to hobbies like lifting, getting out to national parks, and writing here. I did very little of any of that. I kept up with metal as best I could, and embarked on a big end-of-year listening push to have an accurate picture of what came out in 2024. I’m grateful that I got to do a list at all this year, so I took the responsibility seriously… but I’d be lying if I said I was buried in the scene all year.

One of the highlights of my 2024 was meeting a whole slew of staffers in person. I traveled a bunch this year, both for work and for my daughter’s ballet pursuits, and with that came the chance to hang with some of the people who make this place go. My body count of staffers met this year: Steel Druhm, Madam X, Cherd, Twelve, Dr. Wyrm, Thus Spoke, El Cuervo, Doom et al, and Holdeneye. It was a veritable orgy of almost entirely chaste fellowship, and only one (1) bad hang among the lot!6

I’m grateful to Steel Druhm and Angry Metal Guy for indulging my schedule, and for the real leadership they provide at my fake job. I found this unique community because it had the best music writing on the internet, and that remains true today thanks to the talented people who contribute their time and enthusiasm to keeping the machinery humming. I’m lucky to be a small part of it, and hopeful that 2025 will give me more time to spend in the Hall.

#ish. Mother of Graves // The Periapt of Absence – My “-ish” spot typically goes to an album that might have listed if I just had more time with it. That holds true of the sophomore effort from Indianapolis’s Mother of Graves, which landed on my radar by way of Carcharadon‘s excellent TYHMHM piece. This slab of classic sadboi death doom transcends any tribcore concerns through sheer quality of execution. From opener “Gallows” through final track “Like Darkness to a Dying Flame,” The Periapt of Absence guides the listener through the stages of grief with varied compositions that maintain a consistent mood throughout. Classic death doom is alive and well.

#10. Wormed // Omegon – Maddog‘s compelling rave for Omegon is my personal Review o’ the Year; fortunately, the prose was well spent on this efficient and brutal riff delivery system. Wormed has been creating slam-adjacent otherworldly death metal for a good while now, and Omegon is a distillation of everything the band has learned over the past two decades. 2024 is the year I realized I’ve been a brutal death metal guy all along. With songs like “Pareidolia Robotica” and “Virtual Teratogenesis,” Wormed took me by the hand and guided me through this journey of self-discovery… all while the people in the offices around me called in noise complaints.

#9. Ripped to Shreds // Sanshi – The already impressive Ripped to Shreds leveled up with Sanshi, a blast of aggressive but technically adept death metal that never left my rotation after its release. The guitar hero shredding plays like a release valve to the vicious and punky energy that Andrew Lee injects into his compositions. This cycle of tension and release makes for an addictive listen that feels like it ends mere moments after you hit play. The thrash elements of the R2S sounds are more prevalent on Sanshi, meaning the band now scratches the same itch for me that Horrendous did with their last killer slab.

#8. Scumbag // Homicide Cult – Scumbag! SCUUUMMMMBAGGGG. This nasty bit of business, with its deathgrind touches and morbid sense of humor (“Pure Adrenaline Hard-On,” “The Meating”), was tailor-made for the Ferox sensibility. Herein lie twenty-eight minutes of death metal that never slams but still walks the same line that Wormhole managed to last year: brutal but somehow cheerful, and stoopid without being remotely dumb. Dylan Cruz, of this band and Noxis, came out of nowhere to occupy a huge chunk of my limited listening time this year.

#7. Black Curse // Burning in Celestial Poison – With Burning in Celestial Poison, Black Curse stages a forty-five-minute takeover of your central nervous system. Eldritch Elitist captured the elemental power of these five compositions better than I ever could, but this album gave me exactly what I needed in a 2024 that was characterized by an extreme lack of work-life balance. Metal can provide a safe outlet for less-than-savory feelings, and Black Curse expressed a lot of things for me that I couldn’t express myself and stay employed. Lose yourself in these five tracks and emerge scoured but smarter.

#6. Spectral Wound // Songs of Blood and Mire – The hot streak continues; Songs of Blood and Mire, Spectral Wound’s fourth album, is their best effort yet. Carcharadon capably cataloged crisp new cross-currents in the band’s sound, but the song quality remains the same. Tracks like “At Wine-Dark Midnight in the Mouldering Halls” and Song o’ the Year “Aristocratic Suicidal Black Metal” showcase the band’s gift for coupling aggression with sweeping melody. In this way, Spectral Wound recalls Watain without so much distracting ooga-booga. Songs of Blood and Mire finds them continuing to refine their sound and grow in confidence.

#5. Endonomos // Endonomos II – Enlightenment – Endonomos carried the torch for doom in 2024. Enlightenment is a stately procession, its six long tracks blending influences from all across the doom spectrum. This is music that soars as it plods. Steel Druhm noted similarities to both Khemmis and Fvneral Fvkk. Those comps are perfect; not since Carnal Confessions has a doom album so effectively cut through the clutter of genre tropes to evoke genuine emotion.

#4. Pyrrhon // Exhaust – I hate it when the promotional push for an album ties a record too strongly to the narrative of its creation. It’s like the record company is trying to force a reaction that the album itself might or might not evoke. So when Exhaust arrived with heavy-handed descriptions of process and what Pyrrhon went through trying to make the album happen, I bristled and stopped reading. Fortunately, the music on Exhaust speaks for itself. This is a bitter and blistering record that finds the band raging against their rage’s inability to change even a single thing. I’ve always appreciated Pyrrhon, but I’ve never connected with their music as immediately as I did on Exhaust.

#3. Defeated Sanity // Chronicles of Lunacy – Defeated Sanity has had quite the AMG journey. They’ve gone from being brushed aside by a n00b named Potato Jim to being on the receiving end of a double-4.0 fellating from the tenured likes of Dolphin Whisperer and Maddog. Chronicles of Lunacy finds Defeated Sanity extending the Colin Marston-enabled peak that they hit on 2020’s The Sanguinary Impetus. It takes extreme skill to weaponize the base and the stoopid this effectively. Defeated Sanity is more than up for the job.

#2. Inter Arma // New Heaven – Here’s another band that could be wrestling with The Law of Diminishing Recordings by now, but instead persists with quality release after quality release. Inter Arma never repeats themselves, but each of their albums could only come from them. Hot take: Sky Funeral has remained my favorite Inter Arma album even as they’ve racked up an epic run of excellence. New Heaven makes a run at unseating it. This is a slab that rewards the many repeated listens I gave it in 2024; it sat in my top slot for much of the year until a late-breaking favorite pushed it aside.

#1. Noxis // Violence Inherent in the System – This is my third time publishing a list at AMG; each previous year, I had clear Album o’the Year winners in Immolation’s Acts of God and Afterbirth’s In But Not Of. 2024 marked the first Listurnalia that began with an opening for my top slot. But as I weeded through my favorite music of the year, I realized: Noxis drew me in with the bass flourish at the beginning of album opener “Skullcrushing Defilement,” and they still haven’t let go. The Pittsburgher in me hates to credit anything from Cleveland, but Noxis weeded out that deeply rooted prejudice with their inventive and fresh take on death metal. Every track on Violence Inherent in the System is a wild ride that alternately crushes, challenges, and tickles. The only break from the madcap pace comes on mid-album interlude “Excursion,” but that just prepares you for the utter barking lunacy of “Horns Echo Over Chorazim.” That song incorporates strange arrangements that include various woodwind instruments, and somehow they do it with zero pretension and abundant commitment to brutality. Listurnalia may have begun with a blank space atop my list, but it ended with Noxis firmly entrenched as the winner of 2024.

Honorable Mentions:

• • • Stenched // Purulence Gushing from the Coffin – This one-man outfit captured that elusive filthy magic and spewed out the annum’s premiere filthy wallow.
    • Aborted // Vault of Horrors – These Belgian veterans, long under-appreciated in the Hall, finally found their champion in Grier. They hooked themselves up to the juvenation machine by leaning into the melodeath that has been creeping into their sound, and cranked out their best set in years.
    • Vitriol // Suffer and Become – Here’s a mean and heavy slab that seemed to fade from the general consciousness as the year wore on, but remains worthy of note.

Disappointment o’the Year:

Ferox! I just didn’t have time to make a meaningful contribution here this year. It has been a pleasure to watch other members of my n00b class like Dolph and Maddog and Thus become AMG institutions, even as I mostly watch from the sidelines and come out to play when I can.

Song o’the Year:

Imagine being asked to name your favorite song of the year, and responding with a twenty-seven song playlist!7

#2024 #AFrameOfMind #Aborted #AR #ArthouseFatso #BeatenToDeath #BlackCurse #BurningInCelestialPoison #ChroniclesOfLunacy #CoffinOfConviction #ConcreteWinds #Dawnwalker #DaydreamingInMoonlight #DefeatedSanity #Defying #Dissimulator #Dysrhythmia #Endonomos #EndonomosIIEnlightenment #Exhaust #FuneralForAKing #GodsOverBrokenPeople #HomicideCult #Horrendous #IngurgitatingOblivion #InnerStrength #InterArma #JulieChristmas #Kalandra #Khemmis #Kollapse #Lists #Listurnalia #Listurnalia2024 #Lizzard #LowerFormResistance #Mamaleek #Mesh #MotherOfGraves #Myrath #NewHeaven #NobodyLikesYou #Noxis #OfTheLastHumanBeing #Omegon #OntologyOfNought #Orgone #OU #Pallbearer #Pleroma #Polterguts #PurulenceGushingFromTheCoffin #Pyrrhon #RidiculousAndFullOfBlood #RippedToShreds #Sanshi #SaveThisUtility #Scumbag #SleepytimeGorillaMuseum #SongsOfBloodAndMire #SpectralWound #Stenched #StygianCrown #SufferAndBecome #SunriseOverRigorMortis #SycophanticSeizuresADoubleFeature #ThePeriaptOfAbsence #TheUnknowing #VaultOfHorrors #VidaBlue #ViolenceInherentInTheSystem #Vitriol #Wadera #Watain #Wormed #蘇醒IIFrailty

Thus Spoke and Maddog’s Top Ten(ish) of 2024

By Steel Druhm

Thus Spoke

My second AMG End-of-Year piece?! Didn’t I just get here? This is my typical reaction to life’s happenings. I’m blindsided by everything. You’ll probably notice that many of the below list entries ‘snuck up on me’ in how much I liked them, compared to everything else. The fact that we’re now halfway through the 2020s makes me feel a bit nauseous. I keep telling people I ‘just moved’ into the home I bought this year, but I’ve been in it since April. And that huge milestone—for which I feel immensely grateful and privileged to have achieved this side of 30—would have solely dominated my year were it not for two other facts: 1) I was finally diagnosed with and very recently started medication for ADHD; 2) 2024 has got to have been the strongest year of the decade so far for metal. So, time to talk about the music rather than myself.

My overoptimistic prediction that Ulcerate would release new music came true,1 and there was, in general, a particular influx of excellent material from the darker, more dissonant, and extreme sides of death and black metal. This was also the year I finally reconnected with my love of doom after a long period of lukewarm engagement. But I wouldn’t have known about half of it were it not for this gig, and the amazing people I share it with. Whether it was Dear Hollow, Kenstrosity, or Mystikus Hugebeard pinging across something they thought I might like, or a particularly potent review penned by a colleague, a commenter chipping in with some gem, or the group buzz around an album I might otherwise never have considered, there’s no better place to find and discuss metal. And speaking of community, if I ever needed a confirmation that this right here is the loveliest place on the internet, the rallying response to Ken‘s plight earlier this year from staff and readers was it.2 I couldn’t ask for better company.

I said as much last year, but I’ll probably say it every year: having this opportunity is wild and I feel so blessed. To be able to send my thoughts about music into the world where people read and consider them, that’s mad. Bumping into an AMG fan in the wild was also an affirming and heartwarming experience reminding me that there are actually real people out there who know who we are; and let me say, however enthusiastic and grateful you might be for us, the feeling is mutual. So to everyone reading this, to all the folks at AMG who make it possible for me to continually wax lyrical about stuff I love (and stuff I don’t love so much) and put up with all my overrating, to all of you: thank you. Shout out also to my list buddy Maddog, whose EOY write-up is bound to be more br00tal and much less flowery than mine, and whose in-person company I continue to have the pleasure of enjoying whenever he deigns to visit our little island up here. Oh, and thank you to the original creator and to Kenstrosity for my new avatar! I asked and you delivered. And if you actually read this far down, thank you for indulging me. But now, finally, it’s list time.

#ish. Pillar of Light // Caldera – I unintentionally ended my reviewing year on a high with Pillar of Light. Or perhaps a low, if we consider mood. When a record evokes a genuine emotional response in me,3 as Caldera does, it deserves more than an Honorable Mention. So here it is. It’s one of those albums you experience that forever afterward remains tied to your particular life situation when you were first immersed, and for that reason, its longevity is increased and its impact amplified. Given how “Leaving” and “Infernal Gaze” leave me in pieces, it’s probably a good thing the misery comes down from 11 at other times. But on the next album, who knows? I’ll be ready at least.

#10. Replicant // Infinite Mortality – Much like Kenstrosity, author of the review, I have not historically been Replicant’s hugest fan. For some reason their music never stuck with me; I just didn’t get it. Infinite Mortality has been the enlightenment I needed. It’s undeniably fantastic. Brilliantly technical and ruthlessly efficient in execution, it manages to also be ridiculously groovy in a way that you wouldn’t expect from this flavor of extreme death metal. Suited, evidently, to desk sessions and gym sessions alike, given the range of play it got from me since its release, its balance of skronk and style proved why I should, long ago, have been paying attention to Replicant. Ken himself struggled to find a negative and so do I. Even interlude “SCN9A” is great, especially as it leads into monster “Pain Enduring.” Only the superlative strength of other contenders causes this to fall so low on the list.

#9. ColdCell // Age of Unreason – In a rare case of me underrating something, my review of Age of Unreason did not quite do justice to its strength. Not only have I revisited it often, but I have of late been struck ever deeper by its profundity. The honest, vulnerable lamentations on inequality (“Solidarity or Solitude”), hatred (“Discord”), and human selfishness (“Dead to the World”) go far beyond a jaded misanthropy and strike a real chord. In wrapping this up in an insidiously simple package of compelling, devastating black metal with a distinctive voice, ColdCell have made, I now recognize, a true masterpiece. Brutal in its own way, and beautiful in many more, this is a record I hardly realized had made such a strong impact on me until I saw just how many times I’d spun it. This year may have seen black metal that goes harder, or with more powerful atmospheres, but none that are as memorable as Age of Unreason.

#8. Spectral Voice // Sparagmos – What a behemoth. It’s hard to believe that—just for a little while—Sparagmos slipped my mind many months after its February release. Relistening brought it all back into horrifying clarity. This record throws a veil over the sun, stares at you with unseeing, ecstatic eyes of Dionysian worship, and forces you into terrified awe. I’m still blown away by how crushingly heavy and immersive it is; how it still manages to blindside me with sudden turns from ominous crawling into chaotic, chthonic tremolos and clustered, hideous vocals. A masterclass in patient, predatory ambush. Nothing else this year was like it, which is partially why I’ve had to return so often to its dark embrace. Every nightmarish track was at some point in the runnings for the Song of the Year playlist. In the end, only one could make it, and it is, as I said in my review, “as inexorable as death.”

#7. Hamferð // Men Guðs hond er sterk – I’m surprised as well. Before Men Guðs hond er sterk, I had never laid ears on Hamferð and I was quite stunned to find how instantly I loved them. It’s not often an album by a band you’d previously never spent time with claims a spot on your year-end list after one listen, but this was one of those rare occasions. Something about the sorrowful, yet also soaring, melodies delivered through the interplays of resonant chords and gentle plucks, and between caustic growls and clear, ardent cleans just transports me. I feel the solemnity, the fear, and the grief in alternately forceful and graceful heaviness thanks to these intricately woven compositions and ardent performances that make the fact the lyrics are all in Faroese completely irrelevant. And Hamferð cover breadth with such ease, the slowly rolling wave of doom rising with tremolos into new intensity; and yet still controlled, still patient. The closer and it’s sample used to bother me, but I’m long past that now. In short, as the Angry Metal Guy himself said, “the record’s flow is impeccable,” and “the writing is subtle but addictive”. He’s not kidding about that last part, I really can’t stop listening to it.

#6. Föhn // Condescending – I was not prepared for what Condescending would do to me. Like any funeral doom worth its salt, it’s massive, but its presence is not smothering, it does not suffocate. Instead, it dampens the sound of anything else, so that the lugubrious chords, vocals, and fraught, lamenting refrains reverberate inside your mind, alone. This presence is redoubled by the heart-rending devastation of the compositions it centers—lyrically and musically. Bleakly beautiful, crushing doom in all its low, slow, cavernous hell leads you into an almost blissful moroseness, just in time for the veil to tear and your spirit to crumble as haunting melodies spill in from impossibly delicate sources of saxophone, synth, or ringing strings. Condescending will not leave my mind, and as broken and misty-eyed as these songs make me—”A Day After” and “Persona” especially—I’ll keep returning to experience it again and again. Maybe I can only speak for myself; maybe you’re sensing a theme wherein I like albums that make me feel sad. Whatever the case, Föhn took my breath away, and I don’t want it back.

#5. Cave Sermon // Divine Laughter – It’s pretty irresponsible of me to put this in the list at all, let alone in this position, considering how late in the day I discovered it. But I’m not really known for being ‘responsible’ around these parts, so, what the hell. What some might pigeonhole as just wonky death metal, or blackened post-hardcore—or even post-metal, as Metal Archives confusingly stamp it—is really much more complex, deep, and unique. Gripping and strange, in a way that struck me on my very first listen, Divine Laughter is responsible for me going from never having heard of Cave Sermon to being an ardent fan in one afternoon. Every listen gives me my new favorite part and uncovers more and more of its treasures. Savage and beautiful and with unnervingly easy flow, large parts of it are total perfection (“Liquid Gol, “The Paint of An Invader”). I cannot get enough. It’s so good, actually, that it’s made me feel a bit anxious about how much I’ve still missed this year, though I am very glad that this made it to my ears, even at the 11th hour. Divine Laughter is simply one of the greatest things I’ve heard in 2024, and it’s a crime that more people aren’t talking about it.

#4. Devenial Verdict // Blessing of Despair – I was waiting for Blessing of Despair since January, and as it always is with things we have high expectations for, part of me was preparing for disappointment. That preparation proved unnecessary once I finally got my hands on this in the Autumn. Devenial Verdict delivered. This time, they amped up all their unique little idiosyncrasies that made me fall in love with Ash Blind, and added a criminally heavy helping of groove. This thing is atmospheric and punchy, providing soundscapes that are just as haunting and mysterious(TM) as they are stomping and cutthroat. Either way, these riffs will make you shiver. “Garden of Eyes”! “Solus”! Ahhhh! Even “Counting Silence” and “A Curse Made Flesh,” which I initially dismissed as a little understated, have this delicious melancholic presence I just want to be immersed in 24/7. Devenial Verdict’s slick mixture of mournful melody and menacing, barked growls; neck-snapping flicks of cymbal, and those resonant, aggressive chord progressions make for—almost—my favorite take on death metal that exists. The sole reason Blessing of Despair wasn’t my most-played album of 2024 is that I only started in September.4

#3. Selbst // Despondency Chord Progressions – Back in 2017 or so, I was struck by what at the time I considered the most gorgeous opening guitar on any song ever. It was “…Of Solitary Ramblings,” the first track on Selbst’s self-titled debut.5 From that day forward I was enamoured. The undercurrents of lamenting melodrama and a black metal interwoven with a distinctive style of flowing, weeping strums continue to make Selbst very special. But if I had thought that their depths of emotional poignancy and stirring, multi-layered compositions had been reached, Despondency Chord Progressions showed they had not. Cleans that some wrote off as unsavory, rather bring—in my opinion—a new vulnerability, and their rawness compounds the pathos of already intensely cathartic compositions. The album’s title is, as I noted, an apt descriptor for the musical themes, but really undersells the cry of grief and despair that erupts from the music with every shuddering, tremolo-shaken, surge and every plaintive, somber quietude. I stand by what I said back in April, that “[t]his is black metal at its most stirring, entrancingly beautiful, and existentially affecting.” The sheer magnitude of its impassioned peaks (“Third World Wretchedness,” “Between Seclusion and Obsession”) and the sting of its humanity (“When true Loneliness is Experienced,” “Chant of Self Confrontation”) are like nothing else in the genre.

#2. Amiensus // Reclamation [Parts 1 & 2] – Take it up in the comments if you think this is cheating; Reclamation is one work in my eyes. And what a masterpiece. Each part a gorgeous, immersive side of one breathtaking journey that is best experienced together. I remain stunned by Amiensus’ mastery of musical storytelling through a flowing, intricate soundscape—at turns triumphant (“Vermillion Fog of War,” “Sólfarið”), sorrowful (“Reverie,” “Leprosarium”), and always stirring. Everything about Reclamation is graceful, which is another part of its magic because it’s not as though Amiensus left the black metal behind. Rather they seem to have found the deepest essence of the genre’s unique propensity for raw emotional expression, and moulded its elements into what is hands-down the most beautiful thing I’ve heard at least this year. It is, as I noted in my write-up of Part 1, a distillation of pure joy, and uplifting no matter how wistful (“Sun and Moon”), or suffused with bittersweet longing (“A Consciousness Throughout Time,” “Acquiescence”). And with so much of it—albeit, a time that flashes by with thrilling speed—it’s impossible not to get lost in. “Sun and Moon” was so close to being my favorite song of 2024, and in another year, it would have been. For that matter, in another year Reclamation itself would have claimed the top spot on this list.

#1. Ulcerate // Cutting the Throat of God – What else could it have been? I worry that by this point I may have used up all of the words that are possible to describe this pinnacle of excellence. In reality, though, I’m not sure I even have the words to express it in the first place, not for lack of trying. Ulcerate have long been a behemoth in their realm within the larger world of death metal, but while distinctive, they have never settled, continually carving up the template of dissonance with varyingly-sized blades of atmosphere and melody, moving between their most barbed and chaotic (Everything is Fire) to their most somber and moody (The Destroyers of All) in just one album. Later Shrines of Paralysis—my former favorite—saw a turn back towards the urgency and aggression, but with this new harmonic undercurrent in place. With hindsight, I can see now that the deeply atmospheric, disquieting Stare into Death and Be Still marked a turning point, paving the ground for what could be their magnum opus. Distilling the tension and the turmoil, into tidal forces of incredible rhythm, and dark, brilliant melody, with Cutting the Throat of God, Ulcerate reach transcendence. Dire (“The Dawn is Hollow”), deadly (“Transfiguration in and Out of Worlds”), devastating (“To See Death Just Once,” “Cutting the Throat of God”). Its intricacies only continue to reveal themselves to me; helped, no doubt, by a phenomenal live performance that bewitched me anew this October. I had to upgrade this album’s score to Iconic, because it is. This is atmospheric death metal perfected, and if genre-mates weren’t already looking in Ulcerate’s direction, there’s hardly any choice now. Cutting the Throat of God represents, in the greatest form, “the savagery, authenticity, and more recently, beauty that makes this icon of the dissonant death metal world who they are.”

Honorable Mentions:

Gaerea // Coma – Despite having calmed down considerably from my previous Gaerea overhype, there’s no denying that they’ve really got something. With a new vocalist, they retain their distinctively melodramatic and intense style, while incorporating a little more vulnerability via some genuinely really lovely cleans. A great record that just wasn’t great enough for the ridiculously high standard set by this year’s fare.

Eye Eater // Alienate – I am immensely grateful for Dolphin Whisperer for bringing this to my attention. Much of this album feels like it was written specifically for me, because it uses pretty much all of my favorite things in metal. It’s atmospheric and dissonant, like Ulcerate and others in that vein; it’s kind of post-death-y, and replete with minor melodies, and a particular kind of urgency my brain associates with specific kinds of ‘-core’. I just didn’t get quite enough time with it.

Songs of the Year

“To See Death Just Once” – Ulcerate

“Sun and Moon” – Amiensus

“Solus” – Devenial Verdict

“Terminal” – Vorga

“Third World Wretchedness” – Selbst

“The Paint of an Invader” – Cave Sermon

“A Day After” – Föhn

“Ábær” – Hamferð

“Inversion” – Endonomos

“Death’s Knell Rings in Eternity” – Spectral Voice

“Leaving” – Pillar of Light

Maddog

It’s been a weird year, and this is a weird list. Last December, I lamented the emotional hollowness of 2023’s metal output. If anything, 2024 fell even flatter. My most anticipated heavyweights were competent but inconsistent (Alcest, Julie Christmas), and few albums moved me. Unfazed, death metal picked up the slack and made this year a pleasure. Led by a flurry of excellent releases from genre titans, 2024 helped rekindle my love for cantankerous death metal.

Even so, the brutality of 2024’s output shocked me. Despite my worship of Suffocation and Dying Fetus, most brutal death metal releases of the last decade haven’t gripped me. But 2024 pulled me onto the brutal train with creativity and pizzazz. Both the techy and the knuckle-dragging corners of that subgenre thrived, including several artists that didn’t make my list (like Gigan, Iniquitous Savagery, and Nile). After tending toward more emotive music and other poseur nonsense in recent years, I took a long jump back in 2024.

As if that wasn’t enough, this was a banner year for dissonance. That’s a sentence I never expected to type; even dissonant death metal’s classics tend to be hit-or-miss with me. In 2024, the skronk finally broke through, aided by many avant-garde bands drifting toward a more accessible sound. This year’s screechy screeds were cogent enough to grab my arm and unhinged enough to rip it out of its socket. It’s been a jarring but eye-opening year.

This comment from the Brodequin review doubles as a summary of my 2024 music picks:

I wonder if I, we, they or all of us have a screw loose.

Heading into 2024, I craved immersive soundscapes and misty eyes. Instead, I was met with discordant gurgling. I didn’t expect it, but I don’t regret it.

#ish. Hypoxia // Defiance – Defiance never gets old. This old-school death metal behemoth has been around for ten months and hails from a subgenre that’s infamous for monotony. And yet, like Monstrosity’s best work, it blossoms on every spin. Defiance sports 2024’s fiercest harsh vocal performance, and riffwork so potent that it could revive the Selbst baby. I don’t have anything fancy to add, so I won’t try. Defiance is a rare death metal record that’s simple, thrilling, and well-written.

#10. Dawn Treader // Bloom & Decay – The thought sometimes crosses my mind: Why does atmospheric black metal even exist? The musical possibilities abound; who would pay $8 for tremolo scales recorded in a rest stop bathroom? Records like Bloom & Decay jolt me out of my pretension. Dawn Treader’s underground gem is both a product and a peddler of overpowering emotion. Ross Connell unleashes a tirade against violence and oppression using grief-stricken guitar melodies. On the flip side, Bloom & Decay’s heavy use of major keys—my second biggest fear—blurs the line between despair and tentative hope. Most impressive is the album’s flow, which Itchymenace described better than I ever could: “The majority of Bloom & Decay is instrumental, but you hardly notice because the music has such a storytelling quality.” Bloom & Decay’s 53-minute chokehold on my heart is ineffable but unyielding.

#9. Kanonenfieber // Die Urkatastrophe – Germany’s nameless Noise has built up a remarkable CV – 7 years, 3 bands, 8 albums. While I’ve often enjoyed his music, I never fell under his spell. Die Urkatastrophe was the last straw. A pacifist tirade told through first-person WWI vignettes, Die Urkatastrophe depicts nationalist violence and its aftermath. Armed with a sharp-edged blackened death foundation and surging chorus melodies, Kanonenfieber provides rewarding fodder even for unfeeling riff addicts. However, its excellence lies in its raw emotion. Both Noise’s lyrics and his songwriting embrace a “show, don’t tell” approach that brings the album to life. As the narrator’s cavalry offensive meets with a hilltop ambush in “Gott mit der Kavallerie,” Kanonenfieber’s upbeat riffs transform into a sudden dirge followed by frantic black metal. The epic “Waffenbrüder” evokes the wide-eyed optimism of childhood friends, the pride of enlisting, the tragedy of losing a companion, and the regrets of a life wasted. Die Urkatastrophe is both a transformative album and exemplary storytelling.

#8. Defeated Sanity // Chronicles of Lunacy – Chronicles of Lunacy is essential listening for any fans of extreme metal. Its greatest triumph is its fine mix of Defeated Sanity’s signature ingredients. Chronicles excels as pure brutal death metal through punishing caveman riffs and a tasteful dose of slam. Vaughn Stoffey’s guitars elevate this to an art form using wily fretboard acrobatics and seamless jazzy breaks. Led by kit-meister Lille Gruber, Defeated Sanity’s off-kilter rhythms and heavy syncopation miraculously aid the album’s staying power rather than hindering it. Put simply, Chronicles of Lunacy is 2024’s most vivid reminder of why I love death metal. I love its unforgiving brutality; I love its dazzling technicality; I love its groove; I love its genre-bending creative expression; I love its rhythmic feats of strength; I love its intellect; I love its idiocy. In other words, I love Defeated Sanity.

#7. Ulcerate // Cutting the Throat of God – It’s a match made in heaven: Cutting the Throat of God is Ulcerate for dummies, and I’m a dummy. Ulcerate continues to march toward more accessible ground, leaving behind the merciless dissonance of Everything is Fire. Powerful melodic themes peek through the chaos and take time to shine, offering both souvenirs and footholds. Despite Cutting’s lowbrow appeal, Ulcerate’s inimitable signature remains. Unease pervades the record, and Ulcerate’s cohesive songwriting transforms it from a concept to an emotion. In Thus Spoke’s words, Jamie Saint Merat’s drums are “more body than skeleton,” using their distinctive start-stop style to guide the mood. The album’s climaxes alone justify a purchase, as hypnotic melodies and frenzied dissonance coalesce into a tsunami. In short, Cutting the Throat of God captured both my brain and my heart.

#6. Hippotraktor // Stasis – I first heard about Belgium’s Hippotraktor from an insistent coworker, long before I discovered GardensTale’s well-worded underrating. Psychonaut meets Karnivool meets The Ocean meets Meshuggah in this pounding, beautiful prog/post adventure. Stasis’ hard-won achievement is that it navigates through disparate ideas with fluidity and flair. Psychonaut-drenched sludge forms a jagged backbone that sways between meditative and explosive. Meanwhile, Hippotraktor’s mastery of melody catapults them into genre royalty. “Stasis” uses this superpower for peaceful guitar jams, “Echoes” uses it for soaring As I Lay Dying vocal lines, and “The Reckoning” uses it for haunting continuity across its eight minutes. The djenty interdjections are well-written and screwed in tight, packing a punch even for listeners with severe djent allerdjies. Stasis is a bold statement from a new band, and it’s jostled up my list posthaste.

#5. Hell:on // Shaman – Hell:on’s folk-infused take on death metal stands apart. Shaman’s diverse influences complement each other and flourish in isolation. Phrygian themes, throat singing, and driving sitars steer the album. But despite Shaman’s folk roots, it’s an excellent slab of death metal. Hell:on’s riffs recall the threatening leviathans of Nile’s Annihilation of the Wicked, while the narrative song structures feel like a roided-out Aeternam. Even among such storied company, Shaman’s melodies stand out. Over the record’s runtime, Hell:on’s guitars shred, soar, flail, and wallop, evolving smoothly and dragging the listener along. As icing on the cake, Holdeneye’s review of Shaman features the most sobering and most badass introductory story of 2024. Hell:on demanded my attention and earned it.

#4. Pyrrhon // Exhaust – I started warming up to Exhaust on my first listen, but it took a while to diagnose why. Pyrrhon’s earlier releases didn’t click with me, but Exhaust is a trailblazer and a paradox. Pyrrhon rewrites the textbook on riffs, displaying a mastery of groove even in their wildest moments. And the noisier cuts, which remind me most of Pink Floyd’s The Piper at the Gates of Dawn and The Velvet Underground, are evocative narratives rather than lifeless technical exercises. The longer pieces intersperse hypnotic buildups with furious cacophony (“Out of Gas”), while the shorter tracks are simultaneously caustic and infectious. With a thick leading bass performance and a master that highlights every detail of the drums, Exhaust grows on me with every spin. Pyrrhon’s off-the-deep-end brand of experimental death metal isn’t my usual fare, but I can’t avert my ears this time. Both mellifluous and disgusting, both rifftastic and immersive, Exhaust is singular.

#3. Selbst // Despondency Chord Progressions – My first toe dip into Selbst made a lasting impression. Shortly after Despondency Chord Progressions came out, I spun it at the office. In the final minute of the opener “La Encarnación de Todos los Miedos,” I felt the involuntary tears start to flow, and I had to nuke the music and run to the bathroom to avoid worrying my desk neighbor. This embarrassing first encounter perfectly encapsulates the album. While it’s “merely” black metal, its gorgeous melodies and shrilling tremolos showcase the genre at its finest. Alternating between meditative dirges and howling chords, Selbst conveys both muffled sobs and hysterical bawling. Selbst’s fluid compositions captivated me at once and dug their claws even deeper over the ensuing months. The most heart-rending record of 2024, Despondency Chord Progressions showcases the paralyzing power of music.

#2. Noxis // Violence Inherent in the System – Noxis’ debut is a remarkable blend of old and new. The album’s stomping riffs and popping snare drum root it in 1990s brutal death metal. Conversely, its exuberantly grimy bass tone, its proggy rhythms, and its surprise woodwind extravaganza feel unabashedly modern. Much like last year’s Ohio death metal highlight, Violence Inherent in the System succeeds by ripping throughout, whether with a vile Dying Fetus riff or with an adventurous bass melody. Although this is the longest record in my top five, its 46 minutes fly by. Boasting momentum that would make Newton blush, Noxis keeps the energy high from the barnburner “Skullcrushing Defilement” to the proggy old-school “Emanations of the Sick.” After six months of scrutinizing and adoring Violence, I still can’t fathom that this is a debut album.

#1. Wormed // Omegon – I’ve already said my piece on this, and nothing has changed. Omegon feels as thrilling, as alien, as robotic, and as human as it did in July. In a year where brutality and dissonance thrived, Wormed maxed out both dimensions. Omegon is at once a painstakingly crafted work of art, an all-consuming atmosphere, and 2024’s punchiest death metal record.

Honorable Mentions:

• Oxygen Destroyer // Guardian of the Universe – Redefining Darkness strikes again. Oxygen Destroyer’s latest death-thrash opus is a concise half hour of exhilarating riffs. The album sounds one track, but I don’t care; it gains steam as it progresses, and it lodges deeper on every listen. There’s no excuse for missing this.
• Brodequin // Harbinger of Woe – Despite its morose title, Harbinger of Woe is straightforward and riotous. Brodequin has honed a sleek archetype of brutal death metal, far from the likes of Wormed. It doesn’t aim to innovate; it just aims for high impact. It succeeds.
• Kryptos // Decimator – India’s heavy metal kings dealt me an irreplaceable shot of adrenaline. Decimator is Kryptos’ most melodically inspired work to date, an absolute scorcher, and the most viscerally satisfying production job of 2024.
• Necrowretch // Swords of Dajjal – Somehow, despite competition from In Aphelion and Necrophobic themselves, Necrowretch churned out the best Necrophobic album of 2024.

Songs o’ the Year:

1. Julie Christmas – “The Lighthouse”
2. Hippotraktor – “The Reckoning”
3. Kanonenfieber – “Waffenbrüder”
4. Hypoxia – “Scorched and Skinned”
5. Kryptos – “Fall to the Spectre’s Gaze”
6. Wormed – “Protogod”
7. Alcest – “Améthyste”
8. Defeated Sanity – “Heredity Violated”
9. Andy Gillion – “Acceptance”
10. Selbst – “La Encarnación de Todos los Miedos”
11. Pyrrhon – “Out of Gas”
12. Ulcerate – “Cutting the Throat of God”
13. Noxis – “Abstemious, Pious Writ of Life”
14. Keygen Church – “La Chiave del mio Amor”

#2024 #Amiensus #BlogPost #Brodequin #CaveSermon #ColdCell #DawnTreader #DefeatedSanity #DevenialVerdict #EyeEater #Föhn #Gaerea #Hamferð #HellOn #Hippotraktor #Hypoxia #Kanonenfeiber #Kryptos #Necrowretch #Noxis #OxygenDestroyer #PillarOfLight #Pyrrhon #Replicant #Selbst #SpectralVoice #ThusSpokeAndMaddogSTopTenIshOf2024 #Ulcerate #Wormed

Gigan – Anomalous Abstractigate Infinitessimus [Things You Might Have Missed 2024]

By Maddog

Back in the early 2010s, Gigan wooed me with their lovably absurd album titles, like 2013’s Multi-Dimensional Fractal-Sorcery and Super Science. Luckily, Gigan had the musical chops to back it up. Their distinctive blend of brutal death metal, skronky technicality, and alien atmospheres made me a cult megafan. Anomalous Abstractigate Infinitessimus interrupts a seven-year silence, and the only staffers thrilled about its arrival were myself and Alekhines Gun. In retrospect, this is understandable; AAI is a weird album by a weird band, and it’s unlikely to win over anyone who isn’t already so inclined. While Gigan’s newest is a lot to chew on, it offers a great glimpse into why I’ve stood gaping for over a decade.

If Mithras is Morbid Angel in space, then Gigan is Wormed in space. Eric Hersemann’s guitars lay the foundation, playing Defeated Sanity riffs at an Archspire pace. However, in its melodies, its composition, and its production, the album is foremost an atmospheric journey, not a riff-fest. Hersemann’s guitar and bass lines sound otherworldly through their dissonance and sudden transformations (“Erratic Pulsitivity and Horror”). Eschewing simple song structures, Gigan’s uneasy odysseys take several focused listens to make any sense. Straying from the genre’s typical clinical production, AAI opts for a reverb-laden wall of noise that resembles a muddled Mithras. This remains my biggest gripe, as the album’s cloudy guitar sound untooths its impressive melodies. Conversely, AAI’s highlight might be its drumming. Nathan Cotton’s world-class performance excels in its raw technicality, its frenzied evolution, and its cockpit role in the album’s ebb and flow. But most of all, it wows through its raw humanity. On highlights like “Trans-Dimensional Crossing of the Alta-Tenuis,” the attention to detail in Cotton’s performance shines through every beat and can only be described as beautiful. While that word isn’t common in brutal death metal reviews, it’s a testament to Gigan’s singular sound.

Anomalous Abstractigate Infinitessimus is a wild journey. Gigan steamrolls the listener with brutal riffs, appealing to idiots like me without devolving into idiocy themselves (“Square Wave Subversion”). On the other end, Gigan’s skronky adventures are grand slams. The latter half of “Trans-Dimensional Crossing…” blends light-speed brutality with Morse Code guitars that remain the album’s highlight, while “Emerging Sects of Dagonic Acolytes” captivates me with The Velvet Underground-style chaos. Armed with bulletproof melodies in their right hand and chaos in their left, Gigan’s compositions feel like Lovecraftian narratives. Most strikingly, the shrieking melodies and distorted drum-led chorus of “The Strange Harvest of the Baganoids” evoke visceral terror for the plight of those poor Baganoids.1 Gigan fares less well when they sacrifice riffs for amorphous meanderings, especially on longer tracks (“Emerging Sects…”). But when AAI wields riffcraft and atmosphere in unison, it stands unmatched. For instance, the closer “Ominous Silhouettes…” wows with what sounds like a Deeds of Flesh riff being played by a depressed Martian, leading into dual-guitar screeches à la Pyrrhon. Engrossing and ever-evolving, Anomalous Abstractigate Infinitessimus immerses the listener in its saga.

While snippets of Gigan bear the signatures of other bands, no one else has ever made music like this. Although its bloat and its muddy sound hold it back, Gigan’s comeback is a rewarding specimen of their unconventional brand of brutal death metal. Dissonant, brutal, grimy, and alien, Anomalous Abstractigate Infinitessimus is tough to digest even for the Gigan-initiated. Ears shall be split, brows shall be furrowed, and poseurs shall be (strangely) harvested. Few will survive. But those that do will have quite a story to tell.

Tracks to Check Out: “Trans-Dimensional Crossing of the Alta-Tenuis,” “The Strange Harvest of the Baganoids”

#2024 #AmericanMetal #AnomalousAbstractigateInfinitessimus #AtmosphericDeathMetal #BrutalDeathMetal #DeathMetal #DeedsOfFlesh #DefeatedSanity #DissonantDeathMetal #Gigan #Mithras #Pyrrhon #TechnicalBrutalDeathMetal #TechnicalDeathMetal #TheVelvetUnderground #ThingsYouMightHaveMissed #ThingsYouMightHaveMissed2024 #TYMHM #Wormed

Record(s) o’ the Month – September 2024

By Angry Metal Guy

I have a theory about the music industry. My theory is that, like the hotel industry in ski country, everyone crosses from the red into the black because of one season.1 Because of that, Autumnal releases have become more prominent over time. While summer brings festival season and blockbusters at the movie theater, and the winter holidays make it unlikely that anything of consequence will receive a December release, September, October, and November—and particularly September and October—are when the biggest bands will release the biggest albums of the year. That a big band releases an album doesn’t mean it will be the Record o’ the Month, but the tendency for lists to be Fall Heavy during #Listurnalia is right in line with this. That said, when looking at my lists throughout the years, the only #1 spot from September was Aeternam’s mighty Heir of the Rising Sun in 2022. In the top 5, we’ve had Haken’s Magnum Opus The Mountain (2013) and Archspire’s Relentless Mutation (2017). This result surprised me.

September of 2024, however, reminds me of another crazy September that we’ve had here. Right before our impending doom—in September of 2019—there were two Record(s) o’ the Month that went on to be staff favorites, while several seriously high-profile releases didn’t even make the list. Fvneral Fvkk and Disillusion’s The Liberation were both released in September of 2019, along with Opeth’s In Cauda Venenum [8 on RotY list], Borknagar’s True North, in addition to bangers from Cult of Luna and White Ward.

With a bumper crop of excellent records released in September—though, maybe not on September 2019 levels—this has been one of the most difficult R(s)otM posts for me to write. And yet, such is my fate. Alas, that these evil days should be mine.

Die Urkatastrophe (released on the 20th of September, 2024 [Bandcamp] by Century Media)—translated as “the original catastrophe”2—is used by German scholars to refer to the monumental impact of World War I as the foundational disaster that set the stage for many of the 20th century’s subsequent conflicts and upheavals, including WWII. For many. this record will be their first exposure to the German black metal phenom known as Kanonenfieber and as far as first impressions go—shall we say, Der Ureindruck—Die Urkatastrophe does a bang-up job of showcasing a band firing on all cylinders. For those of us already familiar with the Kanonenfieber’s work, Die Urkatastrophe features Noise doing what he does best: crafting brilliant riffs, matching them with the intense emotions of war, and sprinkling that combination with the best use of samples since Velvet Darkness They Fear. For Carcharodon, Die Urkatastrophe was “more than [we] dared hope for. The textures Kanonenfieber weaves into its sound, coupled with the subtle tempo and stylistic shifts, give this album an almost languid fluidity and make it a heart-wrenching joy to listen to. What makes this record truly iconic, however, is the storytelling.” Sometimes an album can be iconic.

Runner(s) Up

Pyrrhon // Exhaust [September 6th, 2024 | Willowtip Records | Bandcamp] — Pyrrhon has garnered fawning praise from writers at AMG before. With an abstract, aggressive, dissonant sound and the best cover art in the biz, it was unsurprising that when Exhaust got a secret release, there was an ecstatic response in the AMG Slack. While I urged care and caution, a busy Metal Cognoscenti went into overdrive to explain why Exhaust was going to be the Record o’ the Year. I could not have anticipated that despite my inclinations, I also enjoyed this album. There’s a ferocity and cathartic air covered in the exhaustion and everyday tragedy featured on its gorgeous cover. Doing his best Kronos impression, our own Dolphin Whisperer gushed unapologetically: “For an album dedicated to burnout, a theme all too appreciable to those on the wrong side of twenty-five, Pyrrhon charges forth with an experimental vigor and practiced ambition untarnished by time. Hunger steers Pyrrhon. Struggle defines Exhaust. Though far from the most avant, unpredictable set in the Pyrrhon registry, Exhaust billows with the fury of defeat and determination—damn fine music for a downfall.”

Oceans of Slumber // Where Gods Fear to Speak [September 13th, 2024 | Season of Mist | Bandcamp] — Oceans of Slumber has become a strangely divisive band in the scene, a fact with which I struggle. The Texas-based five-piece has a unique and progressive voice in metal, and they have consistently shown growth, experimentation, and maybe most importantly, fearlessness in their adventurous compositions. With a truly transcendent Voice in Cammie and a consistently ’90s-tinged gothy vibe that underpins venturesome—yet introspective—composition, Where Gods Fear to Speak is a triumphant album and potentially their very best album to date. Kenstrosity was thoughtful and effusive as he heaped praise upon Where Gods Fear to Speak. “With a core sound that cannot be replicated, any new record by these Texans is a celebration of artistry and the unique artist’s voice. While every Oceans of Slumber album has showcased aspects of that artistic voice, Where Gods Fear to Speak refines everything that came before into something epic and new. Where Gods Fear to Speak is the culmination of everything Oceans of Slumber is, everything they have been, and hopefully just the beginning of what they’ll become.”

Endonomos // II – Enlightenment [September 27th, 2024 | Argonauta | Bandcamp] — Heavy, slow, unbearable. These are descriptions of both Endonomos’ II and life. And that’s what makes II special, what Steel Druhm called a “shockingly mature and intoxicating blend of classic doom, post-metal, and death that’s powerful, emotional, and captivating,” the ability to represent the slow march of suffering and the realization that all that’s waiting is more suffering. This is also known as Enlightenment. Druhm pulled no punches when he gushed: “Endonomos find that elusive sweet spot between heavy and melodic and craft a collection of songs that allows them to punch far above their weight. II – Enlightenment is easily one of the best doom albums of 2024 and one of the best of the last few years. If 2024 has yet to deliver the doom your masochistic heart longs for, this is it.” And then after saying it was one of the best doom metal records in years, he gave it a 4, because praise is for n00bs and poseurs.

#2024 #AngryMetalGuy #AngryMetalGuySRecordSOTheMonth #BlogPost #DieUrkatastrophe #Endonomos #EndonomosIIEnlightenment #Exhaust #Kanonenfeiber #OceansOfSlumber #Pyrrhon #RecordSOTheMonth #Sep24 #TheatreOfTragedy #VelvetDarknessTheyFear #WhereGodsFearToSpeak

Kaivs – After the Flesh Review

By Saunders

No matter your choice of deathly poison, 2024 has delivered a broad array of platters to satiate the death metal urges across the genre’s impressively diverse spectrum. Whether your tastes lean towards the suffocating dissonance of Ulcerate, the bone-jarring crunch of Coffin Rot, the forward-thinking tech slam of Wormed, spaced-out psych-prog explosions of Blood Incantation, spastic aural assault of Pyrrhon, or thrash and grind infected old school flavor of Ripped to Shreds, 2024 has delivered. Following a few lavishly praised higher-profile releases, a dip into the promo sump’s more obscure, underground depths is a refreshing way to uncork a surprise packet. Enter Rome, Italy’s Kaivs, dropping their full-length debut, After the Flesh, upon the masses. This unheralded act skews towards the traditional; eschewing advanced technicality, dissonant chaos, or songwriting trickery to instead bludgeon and heave through eight tracks, taking cues from the classic Swedeath scene, including legends such as Grave and Dismember. Can this relatively new band juggle contemporary smarts and individual flair with timeless influences?

After the Flesh hits hard from the outset, pulling no punches as it settles into a raw, dank and rumbling groove, maintaining a no-frills ethos and rank, dirgey attitude, absorbing the dying moisture from the fetid soil of the past, aiming to weld past glories of their spiritual ancestors with a sound they can call their own. Kaivs don’t have a great deal of weapons at their disposal, following the old Bloodbath motto of brutality through simplicity. Musically there are no sharp turns or surprises, however Kaivs’ no-nonsense, brawny delivery and raw guttural edge manages to get the basics right for a formula that’s easy to ape, but difficult to do well. Opener ‘Koshercannibal” sets the platform and blueprint for its counterparts to follow, cleaving through with gruff vocals and heaving riffs, featuring a mix of doomy plods, mid-paced rumbles, and quicker lashings of speed.

Kaivs go hard for the album’s tight 35-minute duration, wearing its tremolo melodies, graveyard atmospheres, and Swedeath love on their tattered sleeves. An extra dose of heaviness and rawer aesthetics lend the album a meaner edge, emphasized on frantic cuts such as the bruising lurch of “SEpulchrist” and livelier crunch of ‘Blasphemer After the Flesh.” The majority of material lingers in mid-paced territory, looking to bludgeon and steamroll rather than finesse or blaze away with speedier tempos. This proves a hindrance, as repetition and monotony weaken the album, detracting from its more appealing elements. After the Flesh feels longer than its efficient runtime would suggest, and several songs stretch beyond their limits. For instance, the rumbling death-doom core of “Beyond the Autopsy” hits the spot, showcasing Kaivs potential to expand on the doomy aspects of their sound. However, solid qualities are dragged down by its six-minute plus length, losing momentum gained. Elsewhere, “For Satan Your Flesh for God Your Soul” benefits from its rugged, dynamic approach and rhythmic variations.

After the Flesh’s construction is suitably rough and pummeling in design, unfortunately, the songwriting cannot match the band’s good intentions and solid musicianship. After the Flesh is lacking in a few key areas. While they avoid slipping into derivation and pure Swedeath worship, the material comes across as little too one note. Chunks of the album tend to slip into a stew of interchangeable ideas and patterns, hamstrung by a lack of variation and an array of repetitive rhythms, riffs, and tempos. Extra shots of d-beaten violence, leaning into their doomier side, or more fully embracing the hints of caverncore-esque heaviness would enliven the material and provide a more interesting formula to fully grip the listener. As it stands, the majority of material fails to leave a lasting impression, while the production, especially the drums, and squashed mastering leaves a bit to be desired.

I’m a sucker for old school death and the classic Swedeath scene, yet the oversaturation of the style has made it increasingly difficult to stand out amongst the pack. Kaivs differ from the usual devotees by injecting rawer underground heaviness into the equation, and their willingness to dabble in chunkier death-doom realms serves them well, though is not utilized to full effectiveness. Although there is nothing inherently wrong or offensively bad about what Kaivs do on their debut album, nor is there anything particularly gripping to garner deeper appreciation and hold interest. Hopefully the band can tune up their songwriting for greater reward in the future.

Rating: 2.5/5.0
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Brutal Records
Websites: kaivs.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/kaivsofficial
Releases Worldwide: October 18th, 2024

#25 #2024 #AfterTheFlesh #BloodIncantation #Bloodbath #BrutalRecords #CoffinRot #DeathMetal #Dismember #Grave #Kaivs #OldSchoolDeathMetal #Pyrrhon #Review #Reviews #RippedToShreds #Ulcerate #Wormed

"Le scepticisme est la faculté de mettre face à face les choses qui apparaissent aussi bien que celles qui sont pensées, de quelque manière que ce soit, capacité par laquelle, du fait de la force égale qu’il y a dans les objets et les raisonnements opposés, nous arrivons d’abord à la suspension de l’assentiment, et après cela à la tranquillité."
Sextus Empiricus.
Retrouvez la Note contemplative :
https://sites.google.com/view/mardiphilo/bo%C3%AEte-%C3%A0-outils-philosophiques/notes-contemplatives-de-lecture/nc-sextus-empiricus-esquisses-pyrrhoniennes
#Philosophie #SextusEmpiricus #Pyrrhon #Sceptiques #Scepticisme

Pyrrhon – Exhaust Review

By Dolphin Whisperer

Stretched, stuck, snapped—Pyrrhon has spent much of the past few years living, trudging the way many do in their 30s. It’s not that life becomes untenable in the twists and turns about which time inevitably navigates, but that reality grows a face, a scent, a terror that swells as its layers develop and crust and encapsulate. Uncertainty and anxiety weigh heavy in the heart, and, no doubt, after releasing 2020’s Abscess Time, which they couldn’t support on the road, the ever-reaching cast of Pyrrhon hit a wall. Time passed, and pressure grew. So to escape the grind with grind, to combat the noise with noise, to face life with death metal, Pyrrhon holed up in the woods to create (lightly ‘shroomed) again—not to Exhaust, but to explore and explode.

A dry skronk persists through Exhaust in a manner that both befits Pyrrhon’s past and eschews elements of the established Pyrrhon sound. Modern classic What Passes for Survival and noise rock breakaway Abscess Time both found a bounce in guitarist Dylan DiLella’s manic string flips and vocalist Doug Moore’s echoing, encompassing howls. Exhaust, stripped by the intensity of its frustration, instead sees simpler, chunkier riffs dissolve and digest more easily into incessant snare guidance, with Pyrrhon finding a grooving, hardcore shuffle that owes its tangible hooks to the world of ancient Prong or Deadguy (“The Greatest City on Earth,” “Strange Pains,” “Luck of the Draw”). Pyrrhon hasn’t become accessible though—consonance incompatible whammy excursions (“The Greatest…”), psychedelic narratives (“Out of Gas”), and escalating, shrill recursions (“Strange Pains,” “Stress Fractures”) ensure otherwise. But they all build a feel relatable against the sense of mid-life dread that Exhaust embodies.

The lyrics that have always been Pyrrhon’s gravity come to focus in a manner that rings in the ear without the constant need for subtitles. Though Moore still possesses a demonic bleating, its power remains reserved for impactful moments like the grinding acceleration of “First as Tragedy, Then as Farce” and the closing quasi-slam of “Hell Medicine.” Spitting and sneering, Moore delivers higher clarity barked beats of plain-faced, pain-laced poetry detailing with little opacity existential musings of the current state of the world (“First as…,” “The Greatest…,” “Stress Fractures”), addiction trappings (“Luck…,” “Hell Medicine”), and exhaustion (“Out of Gas”).1 Pyrrhon teeters on the brink of collapse throughout each racing number, with Moore’s interjections finding psychedelic delay and rapid-fire tremolo modulation as layers beyond dense prose (“The Greatest…,” “Strange Pains,” “Out of Gas”). And as Exhaust’s back half unfolds, these same glottal expulsions find a distance and excruciated fizzle against Pyrrhon’s chaotic crescendos (“Stress Fractures,” “Last Gasp”). No matter the manner of narrative distribution, Moore’s words resonate with barbed intention.

Exhaust’s scathed landscape does come at a cost, though. Pyrrhon has steadily traded away complex song structure for riff-based impact and whiplash rhythms as a catalyst. Yet each lashing on this svelte journey maintains and thrives in a driving guitar chunk-and-twang that grip kitmaster Schwegler’s hopping ostinatos in an Obscura-by-way-of-Big-Apple-noise freakout,2 true to Pyrrhon’s trademark amplified scrawl. Phrase by phrase it becomes ever clearer that this more exacting songwriting approach means to snag your neck and groove as much as any long-form switch blast or paint-stripping sermon would. And with riffs that deliver the experimental grind of Brutal Truth as much as they do DiLella’s signature punk-frenzied whinny, even the simplest of pit-starters land with the bombast that Pyrrhon crafts (“First as…,” “Luck…,” “Concrete Charlie”). Marston3 has again taken the board for Exhaust, letting its rehearsal-room-on-fire-attitude muscle into DiLella’s tight, thrashing tone—a touch compressed on the ear at first, but a choice that lets darting chord squeals and tuning-challenging bends pierce through at will.

For an album dedicated to burnout, a theme all too appreciable to those on the wrong side of twenty-five, Pyrrhon charges forth with an experimental vigor and practiced ambition untarnished by time. Informed by age—by critique, applause, setback, adventure, waiting, watching, breathing, bleeding—Exhaust emerges as the product of a band that knows that lightning can’t strike twice: it must find a lead. Hunger steers Pyrrhon. Struggle defines Exhaust. Though far from the most avant, unpredictable set in the Pyrrhon registry, Exhaust billows with the fury of defeat and determination—damn fine music for a downfall.

Rating: 4.5/5.0
DR: 9 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Willowtip Records | Bandcamp
Websites: pyrrhon.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/pyrrhon
Releases Worldwide: September 6th, 2024

#2024 #45 #AmericanMetal #BrutalTruth #Deadguy #DeathMetal #Deathgrind #Exhaust #Gorguts #Hardcore #NoiseRock #Prong #Pyrrhon #Review #Reviews #Sep24 #TechnicalDeathMetal #WillowtipRecords

For @DXMacGuffin's #ProgTuesday:

#Ubiquity: Red Moon

https://song.link/njt36v0b8snwp

#ProgressiveDeathMetal #Oldpeth

FFO #EccentricPendulum #ParasiticEntity #Pyrrhon

Always a good time with Pyrrhon, was a nice surprise to see this one pop up on Bandcamp this morning.

#nowplaying #pyrrhon #bandcamp

Couch Slut – You Could Do It Tonight Review

By Dear Hollow

Couch Slut does not concern itself with the prettier things in life. While the noise rock tag may be a dead giveaway, the unconvinced need only to look at the cover of the Brooklyn five-piece’s 2014 debut My Life as a Woman (not at work) to understand. The monotone theme is a spirit likewise captured in fourth full-length You Could Do It Tonight, displaying a humanity succumbing to vice, filth, and weed – as the style’s stalwarts in Cherubs, Oxbow and Brainbombs have long done. But there’s something distinctly unhinged about Couch Slut, whether it be the jerky hardcore rhythms, dissonant squeals, and deceptively placid passages of simmering menace, the blasts of straight-up noise that feels as furious as its content, or frontwoman Megan Osztrosits’ manic shrieks, banshee howls, and ominous mutterings. Like its predecessors, You Could Do It Tonight dives headlong into darker things through the lens of urban alienation.

Unlike its predecessors, however, You Could Do It Tonight flies off the rails at nearly every turn. Compromising solidarity through its thirty-eight-minute runtime through a variety of vicious tricks, no two tracks retaining the same technique, Couch Slut dives into surreal storytelling dedicated to self-harm and suicide. Using a thick haze of noise, combined with skronky guitar work and dark bass and helmed by the manically captivating spoken stories and Osztrosits’ manic shrieks, You Could Do It Tonight is an otherworldly and absolutely menacing trip to drug-fueled insanity.

The two faces of You Could Do It Tonight, in spite of different stylistic decisions throughout, can be pictured as simmering and unhinged. “Couch Slut Lewis,” “Laughing and Crying,” and “Wilkinson’s Sword” plod carefully and deliberately with an Oxbow-esque lounging pace through a noisy backdrop with memorable guitar licks throughout erupting into dissonant squawks, while Osztrosits’ shrieks describe rape and self-harm with raw and unflinching detail. The heart on their sleeves were traded for weed on 4/20, so any compassion is left in a haze of shock and smoke. Explosions of noise envelope tracks like “Ode to Jimbo” and “Energy Crystals for Healing” in a wave somehow larger than the already mammoth riffs dominating, while devastating roars of guests Zach Ezrin of Imperial Triumphant and Doug Moore of Pyrrhon add a distinct edge to “Couch Slut Lewis” and “Downhill Racer.” Like any good noise rock, there is a constant curtain of sound draped across Couch Slut’s sound, weaponized to a vicious and unhinged degree.

While the album at large maintains that trademark insanity, there are three instances in particular that challenge the listener. “Presidential Welcome” is a grimy jazz interlude straight outta Vile Luxury, starkly decadent after the climactic and filthy predecessor. This predecessor, “The Donkey,” features Osztrosits’ spoken word with dissonant squawks and a tapestry of feedback, lyrics describing a particular nightmare in which a couple make a stop-motion horror film, and the guy nearly saws off his arm to get enough blood for their film – the antics are described with unnerving conversational casualness. Meanwhile, closer “The Weaversville School for Boys” utilizes spoken word atop pulsing beats and warbling squeals, describing an urban legend of three boys massacring the entire population of their school and vanishing, as our drugged narrator stumbles upon them laughing at the sky. It’s all unnerving.

In its themes and mood, You Could Do it Tonight can summed up by the lyrics in “Downhill Racer:” “My walls build moisture, enough to drown. I watch the water where he went down. My leg’s infected from all these scratches.” Couch Slut has no clear motive aside from absolute grime and maximum discomfort. While horror and mutilation are common themes throughout metal- and noise rock-adjacent lyrics, there’s an obscene absurdity that collides with jarring normality through these stories: as if rape, self-harm, and murder were all just everyday facets of urban life. You can trust no one. Interpreting Couch Slut and You Could Do It Tonight is a complex feat – it’s not an easy album, hardly an enjoyable one. But it is an impressively uncomfortable drug-induced listen full of captivating storytelling through effective spoken word and a vocal performance from hell, stinging instrumentals, and oily grime – like all good noise rock steeped in misery and sarcasm.

Rating: 3.5/5.0
DR: 41 Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Brutal Panda Records
Websites: couchslut.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/couchslut | instagram.com/couch.slut
Releases Worldwide: April 19th, 2024

#2024 #35 #AmericanMetal #Apr24 #Brainbombs #BrutalPandaRecords #Cherubs #CouchSlut #ImperialTriumphant #NoiseMetal #NoiseRock #Oxbow #Pyrrhon #Review #Reviews #SludgeMetal #YouCouldDoItTonight

For #ThursDeath, by can't remember who is hosting it, soz:

Ulcerate: The Dawn is Hollow

https://song.link/srrn98c9b433h

FFO #Gorguts #Immolation #Pyrrhon

Out July 12 - Scarcity "The Promise Of Rain" from The Flenser. Experimental black metal from Brooklyn featuring members of Pyrrhon, Krallice, Sigur Rós, The Glen Branca Ensemble, among others. Transformative, compelling and urgent.
https://midheaven.com/item/scarcity/the-promise-of-rain
#scarcity
#thepromiseofrain
#theflenser
#blackmetal
#krallice
#pyrrhon
#glennbranca