It’s the middle of the year, so we’re taking a few days to round up some of our favorites we failed to cover in the past six months. As you can read above, this is Volume 2 of our annual Missing Pieces feature, and if you (ironically) missed the first part, you can find it here.
BUBBA ‒ COGWHEELS OF THE PIOUS FORGE
released January 10; Independent
What must happen in life to result in your naming a brutal death metal band Bubba? Maybe… just be from Florida? Are these Florida men? Yes, as a matter of fact, Bubba is comprised of Florida men, and similar to the Florida man, I wouldn’t be terribly surprised to discover they bong a mixture of bath salts and embalming fluid just to get the day started. Wait, no, Cogwheels of the Pious Forge sounds way too ‘together’ to be the product of extreme bodily harm just to get a pulverizing buzz. Mind you, the album is still totally bananas, so maybe they’re casually smoking banana peels, but it’s mostly weird in the way the band finds ways to drag brutal death metal into a few unexpected twists and turns along its tidy 20-plus minutes.
M-A wants us to believe Bubba is “Blackened Brutal Death Metal,” but despite very much kicking off that way with opener “An Echo of Inaudible Hymns,” I’d say the black metal ends after the first 50 seconds. But yes, you will quickly realize these fellers aren’t your typical bdm band when they throw delightfully melodic curveballs at your face: the beautiful little solo toward the close of “Procedural Liminality,” the somber midpoint of “Codex of the Unseeded” that alllllmost goes flamenco before remembering to go back to braincell slaughter, and the absolutely lovely acoustic interlude that is “Deliverance.” It all makes for a… unique bdm experience that’s intermittently pretty, but still brutal enough to bloody the gnarliest of knuckles. [CAPTAIN]
CHEPANG ‒ JHYAPPA
released May 23; Relapse Records
Over their nine-year career, Chepang has established that they aren’t interested in making the same album twice, nor are they afraid to throw all sorts of twists and turns into their grind. While the band has jumped into fully electronic remixes of tracks or blasted ears with brass in the past, Jhyappa sees the Nepali crew strip their sound back to some of its simplest foundations. Not only is album number four simpler in the sense of having more straightforward songs, but it also relies on much simpler chugging and groove-tinged guitar parts. The first riff on the intro, which reappears to dominate the outro, borders on, dare I say, nu territory without quite tipping over the edge. At first, this feels like a feint when “Shakti (Force)” blasts everything to smithereens immediately after, but that focus on hardcore and getting the pit started remains throughout.
“Gatichad” has a hardcore shout and grimacing pummel, “Drivya Shakti” has a slooow breakdown with hideous vocalizations over top and several other songs take a break from their pure rage to remind you why a dummy riff can inspire crowd killing. Of course, tracks like “Spastata Ko Khoji Ma” will certainly confirm for you that barnburner remains in Chepang’s vocabulary. There may be fewer bells and whistles, but the quintet continues to ensure their roots are integrated into everything they do with Nepali lyrics and samples such as the one from a speech by Prime Minister KP Oli that opens the first 45 seconds of “Khel.” Jhyappa is a good reminder to English-speaking audiences that other languages have plenty to say, and their meanings are worth your time to investigate.
While this particular dose of Chepang is not quite as volatile or experimental as their past releases, it’s no less vicious or worthy of their name. [SPENCER HOTZ]
IRON LUNG ‒ ADAPTING // CRAWLING
released April 18; Iron Lung Records
Adapting // Crawling is the first Iron Lung record since 2013, but just from listening, you’d never really know it, since this powerviolence duo hasn’t lost one iota of the raw-nerve noise-indebted energy that defines White Test Glove and prior. Born of a love for bleak and crushing hardcore and “arcane medical barbarism,” they’ve long traded in the musical embodiment of many of modern society’s ugliest attributes, and here, as before, their brand of metallized noise is harsh, uncompromising, and intensely cathartic, building some minimal comfort through shared disgust, pounding blastbeats, trudging sludge, dissonant riffs, and throat-rending roars.
Opening with the reverbed, post-punkish beat of “Adapting,” Adapting // Crawling is through to track three in the blink of an eye, “Lifeless Life” resolving in a repeated chant of “we want out!” and then the painful truth, “powerless, there’s no way out.” “Shift Work” utilizes staccato, stabbing diminished chords like knife blades, while “A Loving Act” slides easily between frantic blasting, chaotic but never uncontrolled, and a feedback-laden trudging coda, by far the longest track on the album at three-and-a-half minutes. Adapting // Crawling’s centerpiece – both literally and figuratively – is the trio of “Purgatory Dust / Virus / Purgatory Dust (Finale),” which doesn’t introduce any new sounds into the mix but merely utilizes all the existing parts in as fine a fashion as any trio of powerviolence tracks ever could. “I am virus / I am slow death,” either Jensen Ward or Jon Kortland shouts over a funereal tempo, jagged chords poking out between bursts of blistering blasting.
And so it continues, eighteen tracks of beautiful brutal fury in twenty-one minutes, another fine entry into a catalog of some of the noisiest, ugliest, most kick-ass powerviolence around, twelve years in the making. Greg Wilkinson’s production is a little shinier, a little more professional than previous Iron Lung efforts, but it’s certainly not a detriment, allowing the ugliness a little more room to breathe amongst the noise.
Here, as ever and always before, Iron Lung will simply crush you. [ANDREW EDMUNDS]
ZEICRYDEUS ‒ LA GRANDE HÉRÉSIE
released April 17; Productions TSO
If you’re an avid follower of the underground metal scene, you’ve probably heard the name Phil Tougas. If not, you’ve probably heard at least one of his many projects—Atramentus, Chthe’ilist, Worm, etc. Earlier this year, he added another band to that list: Zeicrydeus.
The project was founded way back in 2018 on the back of black, thrash, doom, and power metal influences. Of course, the debut LP, La grande hérésie, didn’t see the light of day until earlier this year. Advertised as a band for fans of Rotting Christ, Varathron, Mortuary Drape, Running Wild, and Manowar, how could this not be a staple in the 2025 Last Rites camp?
Unique in that it’s a very lead bass-heavy approach to black metal-adjacent music, Tougas makes it work—and then some. There’s a level of heaviness the bass tone adds, particularly on songs like the opener “Dragonships on the Juurn (Open Wide the Gate of the Zeicryde),” that helps capture the dark yet triumphant atmosphere of Hellenic black metal. Obviously, here, you’ll find much of that Varathron/Rotting Christ influence. Vocally, you’ll find it cut from the Italian Mortuary Drape cloth—same with the synthesizers. I’m sure you’re picking up on the strong European flavor here. If you’re looking for Running Wild or Manowar, you’ll find it within the galloping rhythm sections on songs like “Sous L’Ombre Éternelle Des Vestiges D’Heghemnon” or the powering sweeps on “Ten Thousand Spears Atop the Bleeding Mountains.”
There are various corners of the metal buffet to feast upon here. I encourage you to indulge sooner rather than later. Despite not giving this one a proper cover, I can assure you at least a few of us will be talking about this one for the remainder of the year. Superb album. [BLIZZARD OF JOZZSH]
CYTOTOXIN ‒ BIOGRAPHYTE
released April 11; Blood Blast Distribution
Listening to the Chernobyl-obsessed German band Cytotoxin is a lot like wandering through a video game arcade or a Las Vegas casino floor: it’s a wall-to-wall assault of flashing lights, twitchy, restless movement, and a cacophonous overlay of dozens of electronic and mechanical sounds. As you can imagine, if you’re not in the right headspace for that, those are the worst goddamned places in the entire world. But if you catch it in the right mood? If you’re willing to surrender yourself to that ambient tumult of ceaseless noise and light, and to approach, with curious equanimity, a state of suspension within max-level stimulation of every sense at once? Well, sister, if you can do that, Biographyte might just be the ASMR recording of a star going supernova you never knew you wanted.
Cytotoxin plays death metal at such a precise juncture between technical and brutal that if you’re not paying attention you might think you’ve wandered into a factory where computer chips are being hand-soldered by a team of rabid gorillas. Can gorillas contract rabies? Is soldering even involved a little bit in the process of microchip manufacture? Friend, if you care about those questions, please press play on Biographyte to get all the thinking bits promptly knocked out your ears. Cytotoxin is cuddly cozy music for friends of Origin, Gorod, Spawn of Possession, Obscura, Fallujah, and the like. And, truly I mean this as no disrespect to the extreme technical accomplishment of each player, but when the sounds buffet you this persistently, it gets harder and harder to imagine that these are real people, or that this is even real music. Each song is a little bit like stepping on an IED filled with rubber-coated shrapnel. I think that’s just great, don’t you? [DAN OBSTKRIEG]
