When an EP is presented, it’s easy to cast it off as a minor installment added to a band’s overall body of work. But Dirge composed four independent, uniquely structured tracks that makes their self-released, self-titled opus bigger and more complex than what the runtime would suggest.
Gaerea had a 2022 about as good as any Extreme Metal band, with the release of their third full-length album Mirage driving forward their sound and eloquently merging ferocious Black Metal with elements of heavy “post-” music to create a unique style, on a record that was one of the finest of the year. And during this period of creativity vocalist and guitarist Guilherme Henriques would continue to develop his Oak side project with former drummer Pedro Soares, which had begun when the two were writing and recording Gaerea’s debut album Unsettling Whispers in 2018.
What was the first bit of heavy music you ever heard in your life? Did you level up, gaining mana from the ear-peeling riffs and shouts? Lovers of extreme metal surely have had experiences like this in their lives, where their entire world is tossed upside-down a new band, or a clutch of new demos from an emerging scene. This is how my ears felt hearing Grief Symposium, with a new take on the Death / Doom sub-genre with their debut, …In The Absence of Light (Church Road Records). Although mysterious and secretive, they did not set out to reinvent extreme music, but rather invent themselves, and a sound that should echo for a long time.
It is an often overlooked but undeniable fact that up to the present day, Katatonia is on a phenomenal creative run; arguably one of the best in Metal music, in general. Since 2006’s The Great Cold Distance (and arguably even before this), Katatonia have been consistently put out near classics up to 2016’s excellent The Fall Of Hearts, with even 2020’s hiatus ending City Burials (all Peaceville) standing shoulder to shoulder with such works. Firmly returned from a brief absence, 2023 sees the band’s second album since this return, on a new label home for the first time in their career.
The cutting room floor after a Worm brainstorming session must be quite the sight to see!
Through Sheer Will and Black Magic (20 Buck Spin) is the debut full-length release from Philadephia’s Daeva, a perhaps overdue followup to 2017’s Pulsing Dark Absorptions EP. The new record is a “fiery maelstrom of early demonic black metal and jagged edge thrash convulsions”, according to the press release, and the cover art is undeniably of the Hellish persuasion, depicting as it does in quasi-cartoon form a plethora of dragons, devil-beings and other assorted ghoulish creatures against a dramatic backdrop of moody skies and outlandish cliffs. It’s the type of album cover that could have been plucked straight out of the eighties and that could either be viewed as life-affirmingly nostalgic or snigger-inducingly ludicrous.
Richard Benton watches with horror as the wounds knit, the flesh reforms, and the thing pulls itself with a sickening tear from its premature tomb.
In 2010 following the death of his father, Paradise Lost’s founding guitar player and principle songwriter Gregor Mackintosh formed Vallenfyre with Hamish Glencross (ex-My Dying Bride). The aim was to provide an outlet for his grief by recording the heavier black / death metal-influenced music he had been writing, with Gregor also on vocal duties, a role he had never performed in Paradise Lost. In 2018 after three albums Gregor announced the project had come to a close, but from the ashes rose Strigoi, formed with Vallenfyre bassist Chris Casket (Devilment, ex Extreme Noise Terror), which would continue in a similar vein with 2019’s debut album Abandon All Faith.
Without hampering the quality of the record, Tomb Of Finland pile layer upon layer and meticulously interspersed elements of doom, black metal and good ol’ death metal on the quartet’s third full-length, Across The Barren Fields (Uprising! Records). Continue reading
The story of Enchantment is one filled with a whole lot of nothing followed by a blistering reminder that the four-piece U.K.-based death/doom act is still alive and kicking. Formed way back in 1991, the group signed a deal with Century Media for six records, but dissolved four years later after only one, the beloved cult release Dance The Marble Naked.Continue reading