Kostnatění formed as a progressive and extreme
metal outfit, building a reputation for blending technical black metal with
unusual and eclectic influences. The band is led by D.L.,
with drums handled by Joe Goldwater and
additional vocals contributed by Mack. Their
work is known for dense arrangements, alt-tuned guitars, and a willingness to
explore intense thematic content.
“Přílišnost
(Excess)” is a wild ride that doesn’t let up. Kostnatění
has taken the intricate foundations of their previous work and pushed
them into new, unpredictable territory. The album mixes high-speed, technical
passages with moments that feel almost otherworldly, while the synthesizers
create an unsettling, uneasy atmosphere that lingers through the songs. The
riffs are unusual and angular, the drumming precise and relentless, and the
vocals shift between aggression and haunting melodic lines, creating a sense of
tension that is hard to shake.
The
songwriting is concise and packed with ideas, rarely letting a single thought
extend for too long, which makes the album feel intense and relentless. “Přílišnost
(Excess)” also leans into unusual tonal choices and alt-tuned guitar textures
that make every chord and riff sound slightly off-kilter, heightening the sense
of unease. Lyrically, the album explores the destructive pursuit of perfection,
and the music mirrors that obsession with a feeling of constant pressure and
urgency.
Overall,
the album is challenging and uncompromising. It is clear that Kostnatění has invested a lot of thought and
effort into crafting something that demands attention. It may not be easy
listening but for those who enjoy progressive extreme metal with an
experimental edge, it rewards careful listening.
After the disbandment of Gridlink, guitarist Takafumi
Matsubara (also known for Mortalized and
Retortion Terror) wasted no time in
launching his next offensive. Joined once again by drummer Bryan Fajardo (Kill The
Client, Noisear), the pair assembled Barren Path, a grindcore strike unit made up of
seasoned veterans. Mitchell Luna (Maruta, Shock
Withdrawal) takes the microphone, while Mauro
Cordoba and Rory Kobzina return from
previous collaborations to handle bass and guitar duties. With this crew, Matsubara sets a different directive; drop the
hyper-speed futurism of Gridlink and embrace
rawer, stripped-down violence.
“Grieving”
wastes no seconds. Across twelve tracks that barely stretch past the one-minute
mark, Barren Path construct storms of
riffing that switch between flurries of melody and sudden shards of dissonance.
The drumming is executed with precision, not only in tempo but in its tactical
sense of when to overwhelm and when to cut off abruptly. Vocals tear through
each track with guttural force, shifting tone to match the sharp turns in
guitar phrasing. The band captures the chaos of grindcore in its pure form, yet
inserts fleeting glimpses of emotion, making the record harsh and oddly human
at the same time.
The album’s
production is balanced in its aggression. Irving
Lopez handles recording and mixing with a live-wire intensity, capturing
every blastbeat and riff with enough force to strike hard without dulling their
edges. The mastering by Leon Del Muerte pushes
the sound to full combustion without slipping into collapse. The result is an
album sounding unrelenting and merciless.
“Grieving”
clocks in at under fifteen minutes, quick, precise, and devastating. For
listeners familiar to grindcore it is an album that hits directly and without
hesitation. For those less acquainted, its sharp mix of savagery and fleeting,
almost fragile passages reveal why grindcore continues to evolve through
dedicated artists like Matsubara and his
crew. This is a sonic weapon designed for those who want extremity in its most
concentrated form. “Grieving” proves Barren Path as
a band fully formed, ready to carry forward the ferocity of the genre with
their own iron discipline.
Boden, Sweden’s An
Abstract Illusion has steadily carved out a reputation as one of the
most forward-thinking names in progressive and atmospheric death/black metal.
Formed in 2007, the quartet has spent the better part of two decades perfecting
a sound that balances heaviness with grand, cinematic textures. Their last
album, “Woe” (2022), was hailed across the metal world as a masterpiece,
pushing their name far beyond the underground. Now, three years later, they
return with their third full-length, “The Sleeping City”, a work that draws
inspiration not only from metal’s darker corners but also from electronic
pioneers, shoegaze soundscapes, and the neon-lit world of classic sci-fi
cinema.
“The
Sleeping City” is a journey that fuses the band’s signature intensity with an
expanded sense of atmosphere. Long, immersive compositions such as
“Blackmurmur” and “Emmett” stretch past the ten-minute mark, weaving together
thunderous death metal riffing, icy blackened passages, and dreamlike synth
landscapes. The result feels vast and hypnotic, as if one is being pulled into
an endless city skyline at night, equal parts beautiful and decaying.
Shorter tracks
like “Silverfields” provide a moment of instrumental reflection, highlighting the band’s
talent for subtle and haunting arrangements. Meanwhile, tracks such as “No
Dreams Beyond Empty Horizons” and “Like A Geyser Ever Erupting” balance
aggression with soaring melody, driven by Christian
Berglönn’s dynamic vocal delivery and anchored by Isak Nilsson’s powerful drumming. The mix of
acoustic textures, electronic layers, and crushing guitars creates an
ever-shifting soundscape that remains cohesive throughout the album’s 60-minute
runtime.
There’s
also a strong sense of cinematic storytelling running through the music.
Inspired by films like “Blade Runner” and “Terminator”, the album feels like a
soundtrack to a lost dystopian epic, complete with glimmers of hope hidden
beneath bleak urban ruin. The production, handled by Karl
Westerlund and Robin Leijon, gives
each instrument space to breathe, while the artwork by Alex Eckman-Lawn adds to
the album’s towering sense of grandeur.
“The
Sleeping City” is an album that asks for patience and rewards full immersion.
It’s heavy and ethereal, brutal yet beautiful, and confirms why An Abstract Illusion has become one of the most
talked-about bands in modern extreme metal.
Krigsgrav (Swedish for “War Grave”) is a
long-standing band from Dallas, Texas, active since the mid-2000s. Over time,
they have developed a style that merges atmospheric black metal and doom,
drawing from both melodic and desolate sounds. With seven albums behind them,
the band has built a dedicated underground following. “Stormcaller” marks their
eighth full-length and first release on Willowtip
Records, one of the most respected labels in extreme metal. The current
line-up features Justin Coleman on guitar
and harsh vocals, David Sikora on drums and
clean vocals, Wes Radvansky on bass, and Cody Daniels on lead guitar.
“Stormcaller” runs just over 51 minutes and
contains eight tracks, including a guest appearance from Jens Rydén on the opening track “Huntress Of The Fire
Moon.” The album is steeped in dark, storm-battered atmospheres.
The guitar work balances tremolo-driven black metal passages with slower,
dirge-like sections with solos and melodic lines rising above the dense instrumentation, often providing moments of tragic beauty amid the storm. The rhythm section anchors the songs with a sense of gravity. The drums, natural in tone, shift seamlessly from driving blasts to slower, more deliberate pacing, giving the music its dynamic breath.
Vocals are split between harsh growls and some clean singing (in two songs actually), adding dimension and variation across the album. The harsh vocals carry a raw edge suited to the heavier moments, while the clean sections bring a mournful, almost ritualistic tone. Both styles are delivered with conviction and avoid feeling overused. The production balances
rawness with detail, allowing both extreme and melodic elements to coexist.
The atmosphere remains consistent
throughout—windswept, mournful, and charged with a sense of impending violence.
The songwriting favors long-form structures, allowing themes to build and
evolve gradually. Tracks like "Bay Of The Barghest", “None Shall Remember Your Name” and “Womb-Death-Dawn”
unfold over extended runtimes, offering shifts between intensity and quiet
reflection without breaking the album’s cohesive flow.
Formed in Italy
in the early 2000s, Putridityhas long maintained a low-profile but persistent
presence in the brutal death metal underground. Drawing from the raw violence
of the early 2000s European and American scenes, the band gained notoriety with
albums like "Degenerating Anthropophagical Euphoria" and "Ignominious
Atonement," combining overwhelming speed with technical chaos and dense
songwriting. Known for their obsessive precision, gore-soaked lyricism, and
walls of distortion, Putridityremain entrenched in a niche scene that values
extremity above all else. With "Morbid Ataraxia," their fourth
full-length and first since 2015, the band returns after a decade-long absence,
continuing their punishing trajectory under the banner of Willowtip Records.
"Morbid
Ataraxia" is a dense and punishing album, clocking in at just under thirty
minutes. The pacing remains fast and relentless from the first second, with
minimal space allowed for atmosphere or build-up. The production, handled
across multiple studios, is heavy and extremely saturated, pushing the mix
toward compression while retaining audible clarity across the chaotic
instrumentation. Drums are at the forefront, with Cedric
Malebolgia’s performance maintaining a blast-centric assault that
rarely relents. Guitars from Andrea Putridciccioand Manuel
Lucchinioperate in dissonant
layers, frequently alternating between tremolo picking and abrupt stop-start
sections. The tone remains thick, unrelenting, and industrially cold.
Vocally, Andrea Pirodelivers
gutturals that rarely vary in pitch but are consistent and deep, blending into
the low end without being buried. Lyrically, the album aligns with themes of
decomposition, existential disfigurement, and bodily horror, all expressed
through abstract and grim phrases. The track titles—such as "Adipocere
Retribution", "Overflowing Mortal Smell", and "Immersed In
The Spell Of Death"—suggest the album’s focus is less narrative and more
atmospheric in its evocation of death and decay.
"Morbid
Ataraxia" is strictly structured, refusing to deviate from its core
stylistic framework. The songs are short, most between two to three minutes,
and function as self-contained bursts of extremity. Technicality is present but
is not emphasized in a flashy or performative way. Instead, the chaos feels
controlled, every tempo shift and break programmed into a greater mechanism of
suffocating rhythm and tonality. The track "Molten Mirrors Of The
Subjugated" reflects this balance well—dissonant riffs bounce off tempo
changes without ever collapsing the structure.
The album’s
sequencing is fluid, with no sharp contrasts between songs. It plays as a
continuous slab of sonic punishment, with small moments of dissonant slowdown
or breakdown acting as the only moments of relative space. The mid-album title
track "Morbid Ataraxia" offers perhaps the most comprehensible
structure but still resists accessibility. There is no pivot point or dramatic
shift—just endurance.
"Morbid
Ataraxia" is an album that does not reach outward. It is built on
repetition, density, and discipline. The music is harsh, compressed, and often
overwhelming. Listeners familiar with the band or the genre will likely
appreciate the consistency and intensity. Newcomers may find the album
impenetrable or fatiguing, but for a band like Putridity,
that’s arguably the point.
Formed in
2001 in Topeka, Kansas, Unmerciful emerged from the ashes of death metal
trailblazers Origin with a mission to push brutality to its outermost
edge. The band’s lineup has shifted over the years, but its core ethos of
speed, intensity, and uncompromising aggression has remained constant. Known
for their technical precision and blistering speed, Unmerciful have
released a string of albums that uphold the brutal death metal tradition while
escalating it with relentless energy and structural extremity. The group now
returns with its fourth full-length release, “Devouring Darkness”, and
introduces a new chapter with Josh Riley on vocals and the return of
guitarist Jeremy Turner, a founding member.
“Devouring
Darkness” maintains Unmerciful’s well-established path of unrelenting
brutality and mechanical precision. Across ten tracks, the band focuses on
sheer sonic punishment, making use of a refined yet punishing mix of
tremolo-laden riffing, heavily triggered and tightly controlled drumming, and
guttural vocal dominance. The tone is consistently harsh, refusing any respite
or atmospheric deviation, drawing directly from the classic brutal death metal
framework forged in the early 2000s.
The
production, handled by Clinton Appelhanz and mastered by Alan Douches,
is clinical and punishing. Each instrument is sharply separated yet locked into
a controlled onslaught. The drums are a dominant feature, especially in the way
the kick drums lock in with the rapid riffing. Josh Riley’s vocal
presence adds a deeper and more cavernous tone to the delivery, which
complements the rhythmic clarity of the guitars.
Riffs
rotate frequently, shifting from mid-paced punishment to hyperspeed assaults,
often in quick succession. Tracks like "Unnatural Ferocity" and
"Infernal Conquering" showcase the band's fixation with structure
built on escalation and repetition rather than progression. The songwriting
approach remains consistent throughout—tight, rhythmic patterns stacked in
layers of intensity. “Devouring Darkness” places emphasis on rhythmic precision
over atmospheric variation or melodic framing.
The lyrical
approach retains the genre’s violent and apocalyptic themes, largely concerned
with annihilation, torment, and chaos. There are no conceptual breaks or
thematic diversions—the band’s intent is strictly execution and saturation.
The visual
design by Santiago Francisco Jaramillo aligns well with the album’s
sound, portraying a mythological hellscape with demonic figures engulfed in
flame. The artwork directly reflects the album’s aggressive content and serves
as a visual extension of the band’s aesthetic.
“Devouring
Darkness” does not shift its aim or adjust for accessibility. It is
purpose-built for listeners already embedded within the brutal death metal
style. There are no unexpected turns, only a persistent forward march into
rhythmic savagery.
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