Staff Infections – October 2025

Howdy pals. It’s time once again for Staff infections, your monthly glimpse into what the last Rites staff has been listening to. Although it’s a new month, there has been some consistency in the staff listening habits, as last month’s album of the month, Paradise Lost’s latest, Ascension, is also the big winner this month. As predicted last edition, Zach has a review for you right here.

Since Paradise Lost already got the spotlight last month, let us take some time to remember a true metal legend who recently past: Tomas “Tompa”, “Goat Spell” Lindberg. Tompa was, of course, most well known as the vocalist of At the Gates, but he was a prolific artist, performing in numerous bands throughout his nearly forty-year career, including Grotesque, Disfear, The Crown, Nightrage, and Lock Up, to name but a few. Furthermore, Lindberg was very active in the underground tape trading scene in the eighties and early nineties that helped to spread the word of death and black metal around the globe. In addition to being an elite screamer, Thomas had some talent in the graphic arts, having designed Darkthrone’s logo. Tomas was a warrior not just for metal, but music in general for almost his entire life, and although that life was tragically cut short, to say the least, the man left a mark. Rest in peace, Tompa, and fuck cancer.

Before we wrap it up, be sure to listen to the staff-curated Spotify playlist below, and share your own playlist in the comments. Finally for our group discussion, share with us your favorite Tomas Lindberg related moments, stories, songs or albums. Like many, Slaughter of the Soul was my first exposure to Thomas Lindberg, and I still hold it close to my heart, but I also have quite a soft spot for Tompa’s early black/death/thrash band Grotesque. I’m fifty years old and an atheist, but there’s a still a little catholic boy inside my that gets a thrill from over-the-top Satanism, and both that little boy and the somewhat bigger boy he became dig sick riffs. Until next month, you all take care of yourselves.

• Zach Duvall
  Paradise Lost – Ascension
  Beherit – Live in Praha CZ
  Scimitar – Scimitarium I
  Palsied – Legendary Hatreds
  At the Gates – Everything
  Testament – Everything
• Andrew Edmunds
  Paradise Lost – Ascension
  Tangerine Dream – Green Desert
  Regurgitate – Deviant
  Knifed – Management Platitudes
  Stimulant – Sub-Normal
  Trettioråriga Kriget – Trettioråriga
• Captain
  Archaic Thorn – Malicious Spears
  Umulamahri – Learning the Secrets of Acid
  Lost Goat – Dirty Ones
  Menace Ruine – The Color of the Grave is Green
  The Necks – Disquiet
  An insane pile of power metal albums
• Danhammer Obstkrieg
  Yosi Horikawa – Impulse
  Wolfgang Muthspiel – Tokyo
  Edena Gardens – Dispossessed
  Kakothanasy – Metagonism
  Morgion – The Relapse Collection
  Esoteric – The Pernicious Enigma
• Spencer Hotz
  Abraded – Ethereal Emanations from Cthonic Caries
  An Abstract Illusion – The Sleeping City
  Atomic Time – Subsounds
  Cryptopsy – None So Vile
  Nile – In Their Darkened Shrines
  Abhorrent Expanse – Enter The Misanthropocene
• Isaac Hams
  Glorious Depravity – Death Never Sleeps
  Species – Changelings
  Mother of Graves – The Periapt of Absence
  Tove Lo – Dirt Femme
  Symphony X – V: The New Mythology Suite
  ISIS – In the Absence of Truth
• Jeremy Morse
  At the Gates – Slaughter of the Soul
  The Crown – Crowned in Terror
  Bathory – Under the Sign of the Black Mark
  Crumbsuckers – Life of Dreams
  Sick of it All – Scratch the Surface
  Diskord – Dystopics
• Lone Watie
  Paradise Lost – Ascension
  Clouds – Desprins
  Structure – Heritage
  Cannibal Corpse – The Wretched Spawn
  Mulatu Astatke – Mulatu Plays Mulatu
  Andrew Hill – Judgment!

Posted by Jeremy Morse

Riffs or GTFO.

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