Fifteen Interesting Metal Albums From Q1, And One Sheep in Wolves' Clothing
Plus, wrapping up 2025
[4672] - [apex9] (self-released)
From: Poland
Genre: industrial
“In my head, nothing exists without rhythm,” Artur Ostrowski, the founder of [4672], told me last year. That testament to omnipresent cadence is perhaps no clearer than on [apex9], the Polish project’s mostly instrumental album. Where 2024’s excellent [Ołów] had the avant-groove of Kobong and its descendants, [apex9] forcefully trudges along with more unadorned bludgeoning intentions. Sure, [4672]’s trademark bounce isn’t exactly MIA in 2026, but these nine songs belong more to the mechanistic mercilessness of Godflesh — an unstoppable steamroller chugging through a city’s darkest alleys. I mean, compare the guitars on [apex9] to, say, Godflesh’s Purge: are the resulting riffs not piled up like layers of scrap metal? Not to mention, both bands traffic in a keen use of insistent repetition that slowly twists riffs into something else, like how words lose and then regain meaning when repeated out loud. However, what sets [4672] apart from other industrial-leaning acts is its rhythmic ingenuity. Even when it’s not engaged in time signature sorcery, [4672] piles on the patterns, creating something that not only has a heavens-scraping verticality, but a depth that reaches the subatomic. Up and down — nothing in between exists without [apex9]’s animating force. To that end, perhaps there needs to be a new subdiscipline in math: Ostrowski Rhythms.
Truly Unique
A CD version of [Ołów] will be available through [4672]'s Bandcamp on February 21, 2025.
72% - I'm Not Happy And That's On You Three (Other Shoe)
From: United Kingdom
Genre: sludge/noise rock
What a fun fusion. 72%, a UK trio whose history stretches back over 15 years to when it was initially named 72% Morrissey, finds an engaging balance between sludge and noise rock. On the page, that probably doesn’t mean a whole lot: Harvey Milk and KEN Mode, to name two of the multitude, straddled both sides of the aisle to great acclaim. But I’m Not Happy And That’s On You Three, 72%’s fourth full-length, crosses some fringier streams. There’s that thudding sludge chug, lumbering and deliberate in its pursuit of aural annihilation, but there’s also howling guitars, uncomfortable chords, mathy rhythms, and a partiality to prog. And thus, the band sounds like a whole bunch of touchstones without being a dead ringer for any of them: Breadwinner if granted 5ive’s immensity, maybe; the Decoherence Records no-wave sickos instructed to do a Pelican, perhaps; Knut slowly sinking into a k-hole, possibly. 72% achieves its individuality by allaying fears of sameness by ensuring each track has a different angle — a noise rock Rashômon, if you wanted to get all arty. “Killing Is Bad Maybe?” is alright if you like saxophones; “First Time I’ve Felt Anything For A While” herks and jerks like The 1985 deadlifting big weights, and, wouldn’t you know it, features a guest spot by KEN Mode’s Jesse Matthewson; and “Pretty Sure I Should Be Coughing” is shaded with a demented brownness that would make The Boognish proud. Got to say: I’m pretty happy, and that’s on you three.
Agenbite Misery - Remorse of Conscience (self-released)
From: New Hampshire, USA
Genre: black metal/sludge
Within my order of Remorse of Conscience, Agenbite Misery placed an annotated page from James Joyce’s Ulysses. It was page one, to be precise: “Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed.” It was an amusing bonus; way better than the time I was sent a jewel case stuffed with tarot and Pokémon cards, which might’ve been a pointed critique of fans of either now that I think about it. Ah, but Agenbite Misery’s three members — Samuel Graff (guitars, vocals, synths), Adam Richards (drums, vocals), Cameron Netland (bass, vocals) — weren’t returning the favor for me sticking them on a compilation last year. No, the gift was a key to Remorse of Conscience’s genesis. The New Hampshire band’s debut full-length is a longform adaptation of Ulysses — each song a chapter, with lyrics pried right from the page. Ambitious. Joyce would be pretty proud of what the trio has constructed, because Remorse of Conscience does two things that are very Joycean. First, it uses Ulysses’s 18 episodes as scaffolding for its 8, a parallel to how Joyce employed The Odyssey. Second, oh man, is this album all over the place.
Agenbite Misery has an omnicorean, agnostic approach to styles — black metal, death metal, sludge, post-punk, Steve Roach drone, electronic forays, you name it. Its closest sonic cousins are probably Pyrrhon’s Abscess Time, Convulsing’s Grievous, and Ashenspire’s Hostile Architecture — Pyrrhon’s excoriating squall, Convulsing’s guileless BIG FEELINGS, and Ashenspire’s transformative maximalism. But, kind of like how Homer and Shakespeare influenced Ulysses, Agenbite Misery doesn’t really sound like its distant forebears; it forms these sounds into its own thing. And, buddy, the range. Check out the bookmarks: “Telemachean Echoes” opens with brutish war metal, “Mnesterophonia” kicks off with Slint-y post-rock that explodes into psychedelic-tinged black metal. It might take a few return visits to get your bearings, but there’s so much to hear once you do. Remorse of Conscience, of course, begs the question: Which band will take on Finnegans Wake? Hm. Anyone have the number for Encenathrakh?
Codex Crudelitas - Incongruent Vacant (self-released)
From: Québec City, Québec
Genre: brutal death metal
Despite being [Millencolin voice] 22, Alice Simard has already logged a lot of reps in the game. The Canadian shredder’s stint in the word-wrap-ruining Onchocerciasis Esophagogastroduodenoscopy stretches back to 2019, making the prodigy of pummel an Olivia Moultrie to Nikhil Talwalkar’s Max Dowman. And, yes, there are the 26 active bands in Simard’s Encyclopaedia Metallum CV, a menu dégustation of metal names that runs the gamut from Acrodermatitis Chronic Atrophicans Medulla Clandulae Suprarenalis Goulash to Zapomnienie. Personal favorite? Filesharemaiden. Your Soulseek, m’lady.
Anyway, all of that is to say that Codex Crudelitas isn’t coming out of nowhere. Incongruent Vacant Forms, the debut full-length for this Simard solo project, is still surprising, especially in what has been a pretty barren start to the year for brutal death metal. Codex Crudelitas hits its marks, punching up the requisite Disgorge-derived decimation with plenty of the-same-riff-but-slower rest stops for the moshers. The surprise comes from how hard Codex Crudelitas goes. Simard seems to be pushing everything to its breaking point. Check out the nifty drum pattern dancing between the juds on “The Soaring Redundant Corpses.” Simard didn’t have to go that hard, but did indeed go that hard — like turning the sliders all the way up on a create-a-player. And that maximalizing gives Incongruent Vacant Forms an untamed quality. Even when Simard reaches for something more cerebral, such as the atmospheric chugs strung together with a legato lead à la Meshuggah, the output bristles with a sense of lizard-brain fight-or-flight. It’s the same feeling I get in the gym when I want to drop a 100 lbs dumbbell on the face of a teenage broccoli head for setting up a tripod in front of me. If I have one complaint with Incongruent Vacant Forms, it’s to please stop mixing bass hits that sound like four 15” subwoofers in the trunk of a 1994 Tercel. Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Defaced - ENVY (self-released)
From: Kansas City, MO
Genre: death metal
What’s up with Defaced? Last time I checked in on Simon Joseph’s solo project, the band was firmly in the goo zone, slithering out of the septic tank with exceedingly filthy brutal deathgrind. Right, 2024’s Opium Angel is like an Americanized Viscera Infest — ferociously fetid and moving faster than the legs of a squirming roach on its back. ENVY, though, is...kind of smart? Granted, I don’t think Joseph’s watery toilet vocals will earn the BDMer an invitation to Mensa, but this new side of Defaced has a lurching noisiness that is less blast beat id and more in the Pyrrhon part of the psyche. The unsettling build-up on “Valentine,” a supremely strident instrumental, is way cleverer than I would’ve expected from a band that was once responsible for an impressively stupid cover of “Strength Beyond Strength.” I mean, just the way the feedback sounds like a tornado siren is some expert mood-making. And we haven’t gotten to the 16-minute closer, which patiently teases out tension better than most slo-mo sludge bands. Here’s the thing, though: nowadays Defaced is even more unhinged than its prior careening Cro-Magnon compositions. I don’t know, man, is this some Flowers for Algernon stuff? Did Defaced go under the knife held by surgeon Flourishing? I celebrate the entire catalog, but more of this, please.
Ectovoid - In Unreality's Coffin (Everlasting Spew Records)
From: Birmingham, AL
Genre: death metal
In this house, we praise bands like Garoted and Conjureth for their unceasing, all-consuming commitment to ass-kicking. Ectovoid is a fellow booty-booter, ramping up the aggression in a way that revitalizes the death metal idiom. Oh, for sure, I have borked my brain to such a degree that I have a hard time getting down with death metal that doesn’t have a prefix. However, In Unreality’s Coffin, this quartet’s third full-length and first in nearly 11 years, whips with such savagery that it’ll blow the dust off your love for all-caps METAL OF DEATH [optional “blerrrrrrgghhhh” inserted here]. If you’re not dislodging C1 or C2 vertebrae to that opening riff on “Irradiated Self,” you are no friend of mine. What’s neat is that, because Ectovoid does right by the grandparents of the style, these songs have a gratifying dichotomy: nostalgia and novelty. In Unreality’s Coffin will satisfy like returning to Autopsy or Immolation, but it also possesses a newness that refreshes your ears. Also, I must note that the drumming is bonkers. Go off, Chris McDonald. The best pure death metal album this year.
Gorrch - Stillamentum (Avantgarde Music)
From: Cavaso del Tomba, Italy
Genre: black metal
A few of you know why this blurb is mercifully short. For everyone else, Gorrch, pronounced “Gork,” as in the sound you make when an acorn falls into your open mouth while talking with Björk, is an Italian duo destined to be your new night terror. Whew, doggies, can these brothers kick up a sonic dust devil of discomforting riffs. Stillamentum, Gorrch’s second full-length, is like attaching blades to a pottery wheel powered by an LS motor — these slashes of black metal will lop off more limbs than an episode of The Pitt. But, man, Stillamentum runs deeper than still waters. The riffs are almost circular in nature, as if a math rock band were repeating a whispered incantation to summon a malevolent spirit from the great beyond. The vocals range from a raw-throat rasp to monastic moans, the latter being the last thing you hear before a hooded figure in a ceremonial mask swings their sword toward your neck. And there’s just this immense sense of unease permeating every second that’s emanating from deep within Stillamentum’s heart. Trust me, it’s worth digging your way down to find the source. You’ll find out a lot of things about yourself along the way.
Main Era - IV of Wands (Disposable America)
From: Boston, MA
Genre: indie rock
So, what’s an indie rock band with a handful of stoner-heavy riffs doing in the metal roundup? I have ulterior motives. If you weren’t aware, I have a second blog that updates slightly more often than this one — like, a whopping four times a year, even. You’ll get some metal stuff there, too, but it’s focused more on my frustrating-to-explain omnivorous musical diet. For instance, the last dispatch had embeds of The Crusaders and Moiscus. I am a very damaged individual. Yes, I go to therapy. Yes, I tried to make my therapist listen to Sulfuric Cautery.
Onto what we are meant to be discussing: Main Era’s IV of Wands. The songs, they are long, but you ain’t gonna be bored with this Beantown four-piece. Maybe something has gotten into the Northeast’s water supply, but Main Era does to the Epitonic-friendly indie styles what Agenbite Misery does to metal. This band is all over the map, racking up more miles and stops than a flight attendant trying to pay off a gambling debt. “Erasure,” the song with one of the stoner doom stopovers, eventually matures into the post-rock Slint pioneered before that genre became a haven for in-their-feelings nerds and high school football game crescendos. It has an edge, in other words. Once it’s through with the pensive whispers and uneasy arpeggios, it turns into something closer to Rodan, complete with that band’s rough and tumble riffing. Indeed, Main Era has a firm handle on how the classics cut through the chaff, utilizing the angularity of early ‘90s indie as a mode of conveyance, not a destination. There’s also a sense that you’re listening to this band jamming it out in the same studio, staring into each other’s eyes as they swing open the door to another substyle. There’s just this live energy zapping through the music that only comes when members share such a deep connection. In turn, in a world full of nostalgia-biting Deftones cosplayers, Main Era makes a strong case that these are the ‘90s bands worth mining, using those rich veins of gold to help shape their voice instead of defining it. “Show me how to love again,” the band sings in the pretty “To Love Again,” “learn to love myself in the end.” Yep. Main Era then pumps out a Hum riff to kick off the next song.
Miserere Luminis - Sidera (Debemur Morti Productions)
From: Montreal, Québec
Genre: black metal
Miserere Luminis, the collaboration between the dude from Sombres Forêts and the two dudes from Gris, isn’t my normal. In fact, I don’t even know if I like it. There are probably more deserving black metal albums that could battle for this spot that I haven’t listened to yet: Nahtrunar, Osgraef, and I’m going to trust JT Extreme on this one, Iron Firmament. Plus, good god, check the tape: Sidera, Miserere Luminis’s third full-length, is atmo black. What am I even doing here? Whither Wyatt? Come home, buddy. You must; it is written in Metal Law. YEAOW. (Cannon fires.)
But I am intrigued by Miserere Luminis’s grandly sad darkness. Passages of Sidera are more dramatic than the time I had a panic attack in a theater arts class. And, strictly from a production standpoint, the album sounds great — full, well-balanced, bassy. If there is a new black metal album to pitch to people who don’t like black metal, it is probably this one. And the music makes the possibility even clearer. This is going to be such a left-field comparison, but I swear this is sensical: Think if Nasheim had a sleepover with Amenra and they listened to Envy all night. That might not be a musical one-to-one — if anything, Miserere Luminis is like Gris draped in velvet — but it’ll at least ballpark the general vibe. Again, Sidera would make more sense to me if it had slams, but I’ve got to give credit where it’s due. It is the album that will be on the most year-end lists that won’t be on mine. And, if you see him, tell Wyatt I said yeaow.
Neural Indent - Thalassaeglean Unguents (Putrefactive Recordings)
From: Los Angeles, CA/Canada
Genre: the lamentations of tortured synths
The arrangement these days is M.S. releases it, I buy it — seems to be working out OK for both of us. We last saw Neural Indent on a split with the delightfully named free goregrind band Gorenette Coleman. At that point, the M.S. solo project’s guitarless stance produced something absolutely alien, as if Demilich was locked inside a Tangerine Dream museum, with its only link to the outside world being the Crazy Ass Moments in Nu Metal History Instagram account. Thalassaeglean Unguents, M.S.’s fifth release under this solo project’s heading, is [Vince McMahon voice] BEEFED the hell up and blown the hell out. (Obligatory “unbelievable!” for the OSW fans.) On the Putrefactive Recordings IG, it was sold as a spiritual sequel to Effluence’s Pianistic Dismemberment, which famously didn’t feature guitars “’CAUSE PIANO ATE EM :[.” To thoroughly compare and contrast the projects, M.S. also posted a dialogue between Effluence and Neural Indent that was like Socrates talking with Plato about goo music, and I love you dude, but I ain’t reading that shit.
To an extent, I get why Pianistic Dismemberment and Thalassaeglean Unguents should sit side-by-side on a CD rack: there is nary a guitar on either album. But, the odd tinkling of ivories aside, Thalassaeglean Unguents feels like something different. Pianistic Dismemberment was a super sproingy boy that sounded like Franz Liszt was possessed by a demon and kept barfing into the piano belly. Thalassaeglean Unguents is less purposefully avant-garde — as far as anything in the M.S. sphere can be called “less avant-garde” — and is closer to the grind idiom, with distorted riffs that wouldn’t sound that weird on, like, a Psudoku or ATKA record. It’s also undeniably bouncy, which could be a nod to the 2000s Czech grind scene, or M.S. putting all of djent in a chokehold, or, I don’t know, Dry Kill Logic? Really, pick your own adventure with that one; I’m sure whatever path you choose is wrong.
I don’t know, man; my brain has been so thoroughly rotted by outsider music that harsh noise and Laura Nyro have the same impact on me now, so take any of my talk of normalcy with a grain of salt the size of Gibraltar. Anyway, it matters not, because Neural Indent burns away the normalcy with time-signature-incinerating blasts pretty quickly. Here’s the thing, though: Neural Indent earns back the normalcy. That’s what consistently impresses me about M.S.: the sequencing is always on point. Thalassaeglean Unguents eases you in, and then, by the time you reach “Total Depersonalized Realization,” which is like if Mudvayne was forced to go to a brutal death summer camp and got turned into a fractal after accidentally waking an ancient wizard, it sounds downright logical. (That setup happened in Meatballs 6, right?) It goes from “Oh, this isn’t as weird as Effluence,” to “Man, this is pretty weird, though,” to “Oh, a crystalline ambient passage in the middle of synth-led blargh fest — makes sense to me!” Total depersonalized realization achieved. As always, I am only equipped to leave you with one word: lol.
Neurosis - An Undying Love for a Burning World (Neurot Recordings)
From: Oakland, CA
Genre: sludge
By the time you read this, An Undying Love for a Burning World will have been listened to more times than the default iPhone alarm, defined more times than “run” in the dictionary, and dissected more times than an immortal frog in a biology class that wants to do nothing more than die. That is to say, Neurosis’s surprise album will just become an album. It will become a citizen of the past. It will be known.
But for me right now? It’s still fresh. It’s a newly formed volcanic island that hasn’t yet felt the soles of human feet. It’s an uncharted wilderness in a GPS dead zone. It is a blank page. And you know what? I don’t think I’m ready to fill that blank page in.
The blog economy that suckles on the dry teat of views doesn’t allow writers the grace of thinking. You either strike while the iron is hot to dominate SEO, or you’re doomed to languish in the shadows. “You want time to collect your thoughts? Cool it, Marcel Proust, are you writing a book? It’s just music.” But...like...it’s not just music, is it? It never is. An album is not only the sum of its creators’ experiences, but the experiences of its listeners, too. And how can you produce an authentic feeling when you don’t yet know how to feel?
So, yeah. At the moment, I can say that An Undying Love for a Burning World is not only a return but a return to form. This is the most interested I’ve been in a Neurosis album since 2007’s Given to the Rising. It feels right. And while there are some yuks to be had that Aaron Turner is like a kid at space camp tapped to pilot the space shuttle, his presence feels right, too. Why does it feel right? Well, that’s what I need to explore.
In an interview with Apple Music, Steve Von Till said, “We felt a deep internal need to reclaim not only our life’s work, but also our way of dealing with living in a world of meaningless distraction and insanity.” It is bleakly ironic that I read that on my phone. Still, I think I’m going to heed Von Till’s advice and sit with An Undying Love for a Burning World for a few months. Until then, you literally know more than I do.
Petrale - Goat at Sunset (self-released)
From: Mlini, Croatia
Genre: black metal
OK, don’t bury the lede, Wolf. Goat at Sunset ends with a...Sven Väth cover? You wild for this one, Petrale. Nonetheless, holy funeral moons, it actually works as a black metal song, which has thrown my conception of reality into disarray. Alright, fine, Roman Yampolskiy: we’re in the simulation. If everything means nothing, then I encourage any enterprising tremolo enthusiast to use their illusion of free will to bash out 808 State’s “Pacific State.” Whatever. Onward.
Don’t take Petrale for granted. The Croatian solo black metaller has been in the game for over a decade and has released nothing but solid albums. And he’s been on a quiet tear since 2023’s Salvation Precipitates, one of many albums in his series that tracks, and I’m reading from the Encyclopaedia Metallum themes field here, “Manifestations of the Devil in a rural Mediterranean Catholic area.” May we all be so specific with our intentions.
Goat at Sunset, Petrale’s 10th album of new material, expands upon the excellent The World Down There by getting a little stranger around the edges. It’s his best-produced work, which highlights how good he’s gotten at making the rhythm section even more interesting than the riffs. Indeed, if you need to demonstrate that black metal can have good bass lines, Goat at Sunset has got you. But what has impressed me is the growth in the songwriting. A Virus or Yurei post-punk peculiarity continues to leak into Petrale’s compositions like the juice from a pierced package of meat in the refrigerator drawer above. That adds another dimension to black metal, which already has plenty. Similar to The World Down There, Goat at Sunset sounds like a second-wave band that traveled into the future, heard a bunch of squirrelly riffs from the more experimentally minded, and then took that intel back to diversify its devilishness. And that is how you get...a Sven Väth cover? Still can’t get over that one.
Anyway, at the bottom of Petrale’s Bandcamp page, there’s this: “If you happen to sympathize with right wing ideologies be informed that Petrale is convinced that the devil doesn’t give a shit about anybody’s nationality or wealth.” Cool. Can we put the devil on the 2028 ticket?
The Recreant - The Code Is V… Outlive the Code (Fiadh Productions)
From: USA
Genre: thrash
To get me into thrash in the 2020s, you either have to be a Chilean maniac, Norwegian psychopath, or the furious Alicia Cordisco. The queen of Artillery riffs rides again with The Recreant, a tear-it-down ripper that flexes a crossover toughness. If Transgressive is the rallying cry of the persecuted, The Recreant is a haymaker that lands flush on the face of the system. The Code is V… Outlive the Code is mean. That’s fitting for an album whose title echoes Napalm Death’s The Code is Red… Long Live the Code. But I don’t think I was prepared for how mean this album is. Cordisco and vocalist Ruby Rockatansky launch plenty of nuclear-tipped RPGs that could recreate the cover of Cro-Mags’ Age of Quarrel. I mean, hell, there’s a meaty breakdown on “Hard Drive” — someone get This is Hardcore’s booking agent on the horn. But, of course, riff meister Cordisco is at the helm, so plenty of fleet Sacred Reich chugs abound. When it comes to soundtracks for pushing against the way the world is currently turning, The Code is V… Outlive the Code is a great one. Get angry, stay angry, and do something. The Recreant got your back.
破地獄 (Scattered Purgatory) - 波地獄 — Post Purgatory (Guruguru Brain)
From: Taipei, Taiwan
Genre: [Kuato voice] open your mind
Until 夢遊病者 (Sleepwalker) releases something, 破地獄 (Scattered Purgatory) is the front-runner for this year’s MMMMA, the most meditatively mind-expanding metal album award. Man, we gotta figure out a better name. Anyway, on 波地獄 — Post Purgatory, the Taiwanese two-piece plays a heady melange of styles that unify into the kind of record that the coolest person in the world would pitch to you if they were in a good mood. (Hi, Lev!) It feels like you’re being granted access to a secret club, where metalized krautrock, trip-hop, experimental dub, and the most futuristic pop meet to hash out the shape of music to come. It’s funny, then, that you’re receiving this recommendation from me, the uncoolest person alive. After you’re done with this blog, come down to the mall with me, and we can buy solid-color polos and Panda Dunks together. Maybe we can even get a slice from Sbarro if you’re lucky.
This is such a stupid comparison, but you knew what you were in for when you signed up for this newsletter: Scattered Purgatory kind of reminds me of Gong if it heard The Knife and got lost in a haze of hookah smoke. Of course, I am approaching this sound from a Western mindset; in the Bandcamp notes, Scattered Purgatory references “Hokkien and Mando pop.” Requesting a primer on Hokkien and Mando pop, please. For a comparison closer to my wheelhouse, I guess a band like White+ isn’t out of the question, either. Still, it’s worth hammering this home: Post Purgatory has such an otherworldly brooding atmosphere to it. I wouldn’t exactly call it dark — the highlight, “Above the Clouds,” sounds like Flux blissed out on ecstasy — but it feels detached in a way that isn’t exactly jovial. The band said this album is something of a reaction to the pandemic: “The feeling of loss and uncertainty has later become the inspiration of this record, and ‘time’ is the main theme – it can heal or it can destroy.” And that’s exactly it, isn’t it? It’s that weird liminal space between getting walloped by loss and regaining a semblance of self, when everything feels too real, and the overabundance of stimuli numbs you to the bone.
What’s funny is that Post Purgatory is probably the most challenging album on the list, despite being, at least sonically, pretty accessible. “Moonquake,” which is like Can updated by Uh or PC Music, is something you could hear on intergalactic MTV. Similarly, “Ocean City, Mirage Tower” won’t give REZN fans the ick. However, the headiness of how Scattered Purgatory presents its vibes is genuinely imaginative in a way that will take a few spins to lock into. Once you’ve recalibrated, you’re off to the races. Until then, stick with it, and remind yourself that it’s cool as hell.
Finally, for the old heads in the crowd, I think Scattered Purgatory could’ve dominated the Aquarius Records list for months. On the off-chance Andee Connors reads this, thanks for putting P.E.E. on Bandcamp. Lemme shoot my shot: repress A Minor Forest?
Urthshroud - Silence Pressure (Colin Marston Omnisound)
From: Queens, NY
Genre: black metal
Technically, Silence Pressure came out last Christmas Eve. That said, if you started spinning Urthshroud’s sophomore full-length while awaiting the arrival of Saint Nick, it probably just finished this week. This album is long. If you thought Urthshroud’s preceeding panorama, Eternal Forecast of Sorrow, was girthy, get ready to take in not one but two 30-minute tracks, and those Stretch Armstrong songs only account for half of Silence Pressure. If you thought you were making epic-length black metal, this is the runtime they told you not to worry about. It’s OK, honey; the long ones scare me.
Over the past few years, Colin Marston, the big brain behind Urthshroud, has been pushing past the limitations of time, as if it were one of the last areas of music in which one can be truly extreme. Extruded Nonlocality Immersion, the 2024 album from Marston’s ambient project Indricothere, ran over 14 hours, which is 13 hours longer than the session I had inside the Vintage Synthesizer Museum. That album’s challenge was, naturally, how many times could you listen to it as an album, or did its running time shatter the normal album calculus? As a DSBM band, Urthshroud’s challenge is a little different: can you pay attention to it, or does it eventually wash over you as background music?
DSBM isn’t the most technical style in metal — relistening to something like Wigrid recently reminded me how sloppy stuff in that vein can be. Makes sense: I imagine it’s strenuous to shred when you’re super duper sad. And there’s a hint that Urthshroud is playing into the style’s romanticized misanthropic ennui: “Urthshroud plays untuned,” the Bandcamp liner notes note, which is a funny thing for one of the best guitarists on the planet to write. But, believe it or not, despite its predicted bagginess, Silence Pressure is pretty structured. There’s a real flow to the material — guitars wax and wane, synths occasionally shoot to the fore and act like commas, and there are actual lyrical themes. As for the latter, perhaps “Cold Grief Grows” is a little too on the nose: “Soundless inevitable/ Mysteries inconsequential/ Horrible drastic consequence/ Available for all directions.”
Anyway, given that there’s legitimate careful craft involved, Silence Pressure reminds me of an afternoon baseball game, particularly how there’s obvious talent and tense moments occuring during every pitch that don’t really override the generally pleasurable somnolent vibe. The game can be background noise if you want it to be. Urthshroud can be background music if you want it to be. But if you pay attention, you’ll find something that sounds like a symphonic Xazraug working through its Nortt collection rather than asking a doctor for SSRIs. With “pervert time” crossed off the list, I don’t know what boundaries Marston has left to push. Scratch and sniff album covers? Wait, no, don’t tell him that.
Weedpecker - V (Heavy Psych Sounds Records)
From: Warsaw, Poland
Genre: stoner rock
Let’s get the obvious stuff out of the way. Look, the band name sucks. The Polish quintet has been wearing that moniker (bongiker?) since 2012, so I’m sure every member has been punished endlessly about it at every show. And, I mean, who am I to talk? My real name sounds like a drunk struggling to read an eye chart.
The other ‘yeah, no kidding’ aspect of V, Weedpecker’s cryptically titled fifth album, is that it superficially sounds like Elder. Both are guitar-forward psychedelic stoner rock bands that love to take the journey, pushing songs to great lengths by riffily exploring every inch of whatever path they’re blazing. Be that as it may, the bands have different ends. Elder is more introspective, using its progginess to investigate within. Weedpecker wants to transcend consciousness. Also, Weedpecker’s Wyro is a much better singer, but I only bring that up because I am a massive hater.
Now, here’s something you didn’t expect: Making his Weedpecker debut on drums is...Inferno...of Behemoth and Azarath? Huh. And perhaps another thing you didn’t see coming: I think this is my favorite album of the year so far? Huh.
V is like that first spring day when everything wakes up, the sun thaws your bones, and yet your heart hurts because your seasonal affective disorder self is so overwhelmed by the onrush of beauty. I know one of you is nodding your head furiously right now. Weedpecker makes me indescribably happy, and that makes me melancholy because I know I can’t feel this way all the time.
So, what’s so pretty about V? Friends, the layers. This stuff swoons. Weedpecker finds the right balance between gauzy synth textures and rumbling guitar riffs, creating a deep sonic profile that swirls around you and eventually enrobes you within a soft gown of hard rockin’ majesty. And, buddy, the band is about to take you places. Each song feels like a poetic epic, one that luxuriates in all of the ways one can experience the middle of point A and point B. That said, there’s a logic to the rise and fall, the build-ups and breakdowns, that protects those diversions from feeling aimless. Yeah, Weedpecker flourishes within contradictions: its sweet heaviness, its coherent expansiveness, its terribly-named awesomeness. And V makes my heart hurt so good.
Paying the Late Dues: 2025 Three Months Later
I am aware I spit the bit on year-end coverage. I swear, there was a plan! Keyword “was.” And then, shocker, things got busy, and I wasn’t exactly enjoying sailing on the USS Existence as 2025 foundered to a close. You bet, there were many afternoons that were deep-sixed by elongated naps. But for record-keeping reasons, I feel obligated to drop the list, even though it’s hilariously late. Here it is, then, without the chatter. If you’re interested in any of the albums below, give me a holler, and I’ll write it up for the next blog. I think I also owe you a screamo blog? I don’t know what I’m doing with my life, man.
1. Weeping Sores - The Convalescence Agonies (I, Voidhanger)
2. 夢遊病者 - РЛБ30011922 (self-released)
3. Kakothanasy - Metagonism (Amputated Vein Records)
4. Unbirth - Asomatous Besmirchment (New Standard Elite)
5. Sulfuric Cautery - Killing Spree/Consummate Extirpation (Blast Addict/625 Thrashcore/P2)
6. Umulamahri - Learning the Secrets of Acid (Ordovician Records)
7. Dissona - Receptor (self-released)
8. Psudoku - Psudoktrination (Nerve Altar/Selfmadegod)
9. Kostnatění - Přílišnost (Excess) (Willowtip Records)
10. Hypomanic Daydream - The Yearning (Fiadh Productions)
***
11. Glorious Depravity - Death Never Sleeps (Transcending Obscurity Records)
12. Deliquesce - Saviour / Enslaver (BTK Recordings/Lacerated Enemy Records)
13. Trauma Bond - Summer Ends. Some Are Long Gone (self-released)
14. Scimitar - Scimitarium I (Crypt of the Wizard)
15. Putridity - Morbid Ataraxia (Willowtip Records)
16. Hateful Abandon - Threat (Sentient Ruin Laboratories)
17. Vörnir - Av Hädanfärd Krönt (Mystikaos)
18. Christian Necromancy - The Pederast (Putrefactive Recordings)
19. Effluence - Pianistic Dismemberment (Putrefactive Recordings)
20. Chaos Inception - Vengeance Evangel (Lavadome Productions)
21. Necromaniac - Sciomancy, Malediction & Rites Abominable (Invictus Productions)
22. Type: Armor Unit - Revolutions In Saecula (self-released)
23. [this band doesn’t want press, but I still need to recognize its superb contribution to metal] - [a very good trad doom album] (a label)
24. Nite - Cult of the Serpent Sun (Season of Mist)
25. Palsied - Legendary Hatreds (self-released)
26. Raw Addict - Swarm Decomposition (Blast Addict/Calvos 73 Records/Blastbeat Worship Records)
27. Hell - Submersus (Sentient Ruin Laboratories/Lower Your Head)
28. Sallow Moth - Mossbane Lantern (I, Voidhanger)
29. Cave Sermon - Fragile Wings (self-released)
30. Iron Lung - Adapating // Crawling (Iron Lung Records)
31. Fed Ash - Rotting Exuberance (Astralands)
32. Mean Mistreater - Do or Die (Dying Victims Productions)
33. Anal Stabwound - Enshrining the Many-Fingered Grasp (New Standard Elite)
34. Barren Path - Grieving (Willowtip Records)
35. Gawthrop - Kuboa (Sentient Ruin Laboratories)
36. Exorbitant Prices Must Diminish/Shitbrains - Split (Wise Grinds Records)
37. Nimbifer - Vom Gipfel (Vendetta Records)
38. Transgressive - Bury Me in Rainbow Flags/Remember Us to Death/Never Go Quiet/Not like This (Fiadh Productions)
39. The Lord Weird Slough Feg - Traveller Supplement 1: The Ephemeral Glades (Cruz del Sur Music)
40. Uranium - Corrosion of Existence (Sentient Ruin Laboratories)
41. Guilt Dispenser - Detonation (self-released)
42. Vórtize - Vórtize (Nube Negra Prods)
43. Hexerei - Realms..... (Sentient Ruin Laboratories)
44. Vitrectomy - Valediction Universe (Pathologically Explicit Recordings)
45. Alicia Cordisco - The Burden of I (Fiadh Productions)
46. Humiliate - Earthly Bounds (self-released)
47. Martröð - Draumsýnir eldsins (Debemur Morti Productions)
48. Estuarine - Corporeal Furnace (self-released)
49. Compulsed - Amalgamated Anguish (P2)
50. Forced Starvation - Forced Starvation (RSR Records)
2025 AWARDS
DID I GET IT RIGHT?
Reappraising last year’s top 10.
10. New Money - Dinero Nuevo (self-released)
9. Kraanerg - Heart of a Cherry Pit Sun (self-released)
8. Oxygen Destroyer - Guardian of the Universe (Redefining Darkness Records)
7. Convulsing - Perdurance (self-released)
6. Concrete Winds - Concrete Winds (Sepulchral Voice Records)
5. 夢遊病者 - Delirium Pathomutageno Adductum (self-released)
4. Couch Slut - You Could Do It Tonight (Brutal Panda)
3. Scarcity - The Promise of Rain (The Flenser)
2. Defeated Sanity - Chronicles of Lunacy (Season of Mist)
1. Pyrrhon - Exhaust (Willowtip)
Like I wrote last year: I’ve done way worse. Behold, my not awfulness: Exhaust is one of my favorite albums of the 2020s; I just dropped Couch Slut’s “The Donkey” on a playlist for someone, which I have to admit, was a Javy Baez-ass swing from my end; and I saw three of these bands live (when it’s safe again, please bless us in America, New Money). That’s to say all of that top 10 is still in the rotation. Actually, most of the top 20 that year is still in the rotation. Four hundred and sixty-one days later, I can say with full confidence that 2024 was a good year for music.
OUT OF STEP
Awarded to my favorite punk record that I couldn’t shoehorn into a list.
Citric Dummies - Split with Turnstile (Feel It Records)
Past winners:
2024: Yambag - Mindfuck Ultra (11pm Records, Convulse Records)
2023: Citric Dummies - Zen and the Arcade of Beating Your Ass (Feel It Records)
2022: Bitter Branches - Your Neighbors Are Failures (Equal Vision Records) / Bombardement - Le Futur Est Là (Destructure / Symphony Of Destruction) / Hylda - Juniper Pyre (self-released) / Triac - Pure Joy - Numb Grief-Stricken Animals (RSRecords)
2021: Tenue - Territorios (Alerta Antifascista / The Plague of Man Records / Pifia Records / Long Legs Long Arms / Crust Or Die / Zegema Beach Records)
2020: Subdued - Over the Hills and Far Away (La Vida Es Un Mus Discos / Roachleg Records)
2019: Protocol - Bloodsport (Dynastic Yellow Star Label / 11 PM Records)
2018: Great Falls - A Sense of Rest (Corpse Flower Records / Throatruiner Records)
THE FALSE
Awarded to my favorite non-metal album that could conceivably be enjoyed by metalheads.
Guck - Gucked Up (Three One G)
Past winners:
2024: Blind Girls - An Exit Exists (Persistent Vision, Secret Voice and Life Lair Regret)
2023: Flooding - Silhouette Machine (The Ghost Is Clear Records) / Sunny Kim, Vardan Ovsepian, Ben Monder - Liminal Silence (Earshift Music) / Mindvac - Mindvac (self-released)
2022: Officine - Officine (self-released) / Tantric Bile - Baka (self-released)
2021: Dorotheo - Como Es (Halfshell Records)
2020: Kairon; IRSE! - Polysomn (Svart Records)
2019: Helium Horse Fly - Hollowed (Dipole Experiment Records)
2018: Madder Mortem - Marrow (Dark Essence Records)
GAINZZZ
Awarded to the best album for the gym.
Mephitic Corpse - Sickness Attracts Sickness (Extremely Rotten Productions/Headsplit Records/625 Thrashcore)
Past winners:
2024: Regurgitated Entrails - Sickening Indulgence of Flesh (New Standard Elite)
2023: Darkall Slaves - Mephitic Redolence of the Decomposed (New Standard Elite) / Chamber - A Love to Kill For (Pure Noise Records)
2022: Bite - Sounds of Agony (self-released) / Gargling - Depraved Ingestion of Cranial Discharge (Lifeless Chasm Records)
2021: Last Light - We Were Never Here (self-released)
2020: Focal Dystonia - Descending (In)human Flesh (Comatose Records)
2019: Pool – Pool (Skeletal Lightning)
2018: Internal Bleeding - Corrupting Influence (Unique Leader)
SON OF A
Awarded to the best album that I found in this year that wasn’t released this year.
Lifeless Dark - Forces of Nature’s Transformation (Side Two)
Past winners:
2024: Odious Sanction - Psychotically Enraged (Unique Leader Records)
2023: Decrepit Cadaver - Revelations (Unmatched Brutality Records)
2022: Ophanim - Delphic Moorage (Desidarius Recordings)
2021: Evilyn - Inside Shells (self-released)
2020: Self Deconstruction - Wounds (Break the Records / F.O.A.D.)
2019: Voice Coils - Heaven’s Sense (Shatter Your Leaves)
2018: Butcher ABC - North of Hell (Selfmadegod)
I’LL HOLD YOUR BEER
Awarded to the biggest swing for the fences.
Freak Puke - Grape Escape (self-released)
Past winners:
2024: Stagnant Waters - Rifts (Neuropa Records)
2023: PoiL Ueda - PoiL Ueda / Yoshitsune (Dur Et Doux)
2022: Álvaro Domene - Not Arbitrary (Iluso Records) / Garry Brents’s Discography (various)
2021: Tantric Bile - Seminal Baptism (self-released)
2020: Potion - Cemetary (self-released)
2019: !T.O.O.H.! - Komouš (self-released)
2018: Entropia - Vacuum (Arachnophobia Records)
SHOWER BEER
Awarded to the best album to throw on during the weekend.
STERÖID - Chainmail Commandos (Crypt Of The Wizard)
Past winners:
2024: Asphalt - E.P. IV / V (self-released)
2023: Pyöveli - Mega-Thrash Revolution (Witches Brew) / Cruel Force - Dawn of the Axe (Shadow Kingdom Records)
2022: Griefstoker - Soulseller (self-released) / Maceration - It Never Ends... (Emanzipation Productions) / Sölicitör - All Debts on Death (Gates of Hell Records)
2021: Blood Sport - Hot Blood and Cold Steel (Gates of Hell Records) / Witch Cross - Angel of Death (High Roller Records)
2020: Hecatomb - Horrid Invocations (self-released)
2019: Smoulder - Times of Obscene Evil (Cruz del Sur Music)
2018: Deathhammer - Chained to Hell (Hells Headbangers Records)
SWING AND A MISS
Band I doomed to obscurity by predicting it would be huge and it’s not going to be huge, obviously.
Urakka - Drain the Sky (self-released)
Past winners:
2024: DUHKHA - A Place You Can’t Come Back From (Good Fight)
2023: Forgotten Silence - Vemork Konstrukt (Doomentia Records) / Hollow Senses - Taurobolium (self-released)
2022: Blightcaster - Of Blood-Cursed Night (self-released) / Mulk / Hydrocele - Split (self-released) / Vihameditaatio - Metafyysinen Käsitys Itsestä (Esfinge de la Calavera) / Wombscape - Forced Labour Songs (Landscape Records)
2021: Plain Cheese Pizza - Plain Cheese Pizza (self-released)
2020: Relic Point - Self Punishment (self-released)
IN THE FLESH
Awarded to the best metal set I saw live this year.
Blind Guardian at The Wiltern, 12/13/2025
Past winners:
2024: Fórn at Jerry’s Pizza, 6/21/2024 - Midstate Metal Fest
2023: Chrome Ghost at Transplants, 10/22/2023
THE PIERCED FROM WITHIN AWARD
Awarded to the album that is Suffocation’s Pierced From Within.
Suffocation - Pierced From Within (Roadrunner Records)
Past winners:
2024: Suffocation - Pierced From Within (Roadrunner Records)
2023: Suffocation - Pierced From Within (Roadrunner Records)
2022: Suffocation - Pierced From Within (Roadrunner Records)
2021: Suffocation - Pierced From Within (Roadrunner Records)
2020: Suffocation - Pierced From Within (Roadrunner Records)
2019: Suffocation - Pierced From Within (Roadrunner Records)
2018: Suffocation - Pierced From Within (Roadrunner Records)
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