This is part 2 of our annual Missing Pieces series, when we cover stuff we dig that we missed upon initial release. Part 1 can be viewed here, and part 3 is coming Friday. Enjoy!
THE RUINS OF BEVERAST – TEMPELSCHLAF
released January 9; Ván Records
Over the past couple decades, Alexander von Meilenwald has pulled off a neat little trick with The Ruins of Beverast: each album provides just enough of a twist on what came before, making each both transitional and a stylistic destination of sorts. This growth means that 2026’s Tempelschlaf sounds quite a bit different from debut Unlock the Shrine, despite both records being identifiable as The Ruins of Beverast through the heavy use of atmospherics and the doom/black metal foundation.
But where the atmosphere on earlier albums was oppressive and terrifying, on Tempelschlaf it’s warmer and almost welcoming, if still quite mysterious and dark. Never before has Meilenwald indulged his gothic and darkwave influences to this extent, and when combined with some of the tightest songwriting of his career, the result is an album that is almost accessible by the band’s standards. From the increased use of clean singing and several notable hooky moments to the fact that most of these songs are under eight minutes in length, it’s clear that Tempelschlaf was constructed with a live setting in mind.
It’s a risky move that pays massive dividends. Tempelschlaf is absolutely loaded with killer tracks – for my money, “Babel, You Scarlet Queen!” is the coolest song of 2026 so far – and proves that once again, a little twist goes a long way. Stunning, addictive stuff. [ZACH DUVALL]
ECCHYMOSIS – THANATOCORPOREAL SCULPTURES OF CRYOGENIC EXCRUCIATION
released March 31; New Standard Elite
Ecchymosis is one of those -osis bands I referenced in my Sallow Moth review. And just like I’d throw the latter on my mid-year-year-end list, the Thai brutal death metal five piece’s newest LP Thanatocorporeal Sculptures of Cryogenic Excruciation — aside from being a great use of the thesaurus — is another great album I’d shove into one of those top spots.
For those of you sick enough to endure its 27-minute duration, you’re first met with an emergency services butt dial before an inhuman gurgle opens the album. And before I go any further, let me say…I mean, I have no idea what in the blue hell is going on half the time on this record…truly…but I know I like it. So bear with me as I try to explain a few points. This isn’t an easy listen by any means. It’s one of those albums your narc friend who doesn’t listen to metal envisions all metal sounds like. The snare is a literal trash can, the vocals are a garbage disposal, the guitars are a World War Z zombie wall of sound, and each song is kinda inseparable from the next.
In other words, hell yeah.
These poets are scholarly, though. From songs like “Pneumoexplosive Regurgitation of Congealed Blood” to “Craniomutilation Through Liquid Nitrogen Compression,” there are some catchy moments, the majority of which are found in the breakdowns and pinch harmonic-filled riffs. I’d be remiss if i didn’t mention the gallops on “Craniomutilation…” The slam parts on “Frigidly Immobilized…” are pretty sick, too. They even throw what I think are leads in there(?), though just briefly.
Overall, while it’s utterly insane, it’s incredibly enjoyable. Although you might lose a few IQ points along the way, you’ll quickly regain them by attempting to decipher the tracklist. Good luck! [BLIZZARD OF JOZZSH]
KAATAYRA – CAMINHOS DE ÁGUA
released April 24; independent
Are you aware of the concept of “cargo cults”? Don’t let me, an idiot, muddy the details for you, as the subject is more nuanced than my reference will allow. “Generally Impressed With Details of the Western Colonisation of Melanesia”, our tagline is not.
Anyway, what if a European black metal distro airmailed a crate of records and the pallet slid out the back but thankfully the crate had a parachute and it landed in the thick of the Brazilian highlands and some fortunate youngster raised on traditional music found the crate and pried it open and everything he ever knew about music was shattered and reformed in the image of the crate’s contents? (loooooooong breath) Ta da – Caminhos de Água.
Kaatayra’s music is an unexpected and satisfying blend of, superficially at least, two disparate genres: acoustic folk with a South American flare and a handful of core components of traditional European black metal. The drum kit blasts and rages with hellish abandon yet meanwhile a flute-like instrument dances over dulcet strings. It should not work, yet here I, an idiot, am writing about it.
Rhythmically dazzling with a beautiful, immersive mix, listening to Kaatayra is like wading through the misty jungle, full of wonder, beauty, danger and the persistent heartbeat of life itself. [ISAAC HAMS]
GROWTH – UNDER THE UNDER
released March 27; Wild Thing Records
Friend, you know and I know that there is simply too much music out there. Clearly, one of the main reasons we do this Missing Pieces exercise each year is to spotlight some of the greatest goods that slipped through our greedy hands. But with Growth’s Under the Under, I feel almost physically pained not to have done anything to shine a light on it when it came out this spring. The second album from this Australian quintet is, not to put too fine a point on it, fucking incredible. The underlying style is cleanly precise technical death metal, but they bolster the sounds of clockwork-crisp engineering with generous helpings of dissonant lurch and sumptuously dark melodic veins. If you need an easier shorthand, the best I can suggest is latter-era Gorod with the progressive churn of Burst and the melodic death-groove of Gojira. Even if the signposts are familiar, however, Growth steers their vehicle on roads purely of their own making. And for the time-strapped listener, it’s handy to note that you’ll likely know by the first minute-thirty or so of the crushing opener “Remember Me As Fire” whether Under the Under is painting in your preferred palette. Each of the six songs here is a certified neck-snapper, but perhaps best of all is the earnest emotion with which the band imbues even the most intricate pieces. “Forward, Further, Spirit Killer” is possibly the best of the bunch, but only insofar as it exemplifies the band’s great strength throughout, which is to twist metronomically-exact geometry into deftly engrossing abstract calculus. This is a band to watch, to envy, to savor. [DAN OBSTKRIEG]
IMPURE WILHELMINA – LE SANGLOT
released May 22; independent
I’m happy to be proven wrong, but based on my totally subjective analysis I’d peg Impure Wilhelmina as one of the very best metal-adjacent acts that nobody talks about. There’s no time like the present to turn that around. Thirty years deep into a productive recording career, the Swiss quartet has produced yet another album rich in melodic guitar interplay and harmonic ingenuity. On Le Sanglot, Impure Wilhelmina continues to reside in the verdant but sparsely populated bordertown between Opeth’s early work and guitar oriented indie-rock. Sophisticated as the presentation may appear, this band really is primarily in the business of spitting out really cool guitar stuff. Where Le Sanglot shines is in the unglamorous work the band does cohering cool guitar stuff into the stuff of songs. Check the falling action of the chord change during the chorus of lead single “Electricite noire” or the subtle layering that takes place throughout “Larmed de joie” and you’ll get a sense of how the band not only writes fantastic parts, but stacks them in such way that the listener will remember them after the song is over. One significant change here? Le Sanglot is the first Impure Wilhelmina album sung entirely in French in decades. It’s a testament to the strength of the entire operation that the work remains as resonant as ever despite the language barrier. [DAVID FONSECA]
BLACK SWAN – PARALYZED
released February 27; Frontiers Music s.r.l.
Another of Frontiers Records’ seemingly inexhaustible supply of hard rock “supergroups,” Black Swan landed gracefully in 2020 with a strong debut in Shake The World, buoyed by the fretboard pyrotechnics of Reb Beach (Winger, Whitesnake), catchy and muscular songcraft from Jeff Pilson (Dokken, Foreigner), and the ageless roar of Robin McAuley (McAuley Schenker Group). Too many of these types of factory-stamped supergroups fall by the wayside quickly, but Black Swan held its head above the pack through the time-honored tradition of good hard rock players just plain rocking hard.
Follow up Generation Mind landed in 2022, and… didn’t quite hit the mark. Revisiting it now, it’s certainly not a bad album, just a bit forgettable and somehow inchoate even as it featured all the same players doing mostly all the same things as its better older brother.
Now we’ve got album #3, and thankfully, Paralyzed finds Black Swan back on track, with a stronger set of songs to hold up all those same characteristics above. Opening track “When The Cold Wind Blows” sets the tone, and uber-melodic rockers like the title track, the grammar-nerd-baiting “If I Was King,” and “The Fire And The Flame” all uphold their parts of the bargain. Beach can certainly shred, so there’s no shortage of guitar mastery, and the rhythm section of Pilson and drummer Matt Starr drives everything with a deft but hard-hitting touch, adding a spark that many similar supergroup outfits simply never capture. Still, as good as all that is, the day belongs to McAuley, now a septuagenarian, and yet showing no signs of age as he soars over it all.
The golden age of melodic hard rock is long behind us now, but there’s still some fire left in the ol’ rock ‘n’ roll spirit. Black Swan isn’t rewriting any rulebooks, for its members or for anyone else, but they hit hard enough and often enough to keep them in flight, and in Paralyzed, they’ve made another album worthy of a shot for anyone looking to recapture the days when riffs were big, choruses were bigger, and hair was biggest of all. [ANDREW EDMUNDS]
INSCRIBED – UPON THE TWISTED THRONE
released June 19; Awakening Records
On official Inscribed letterhead, vocalist/drummer Lucas Moore wrote in a thanks-for-the-buy note that, “The reason we can continue making our weird music is because of twisted people like yourself! Urghhhh!!” Perhaps you do have to be of a twisted sort to get down with Upon the Twisted Throne, this Miami trio’s full-length debut. The tech-tangle riffs and rhythms do have a twist-tie quality, wrapping around you until they squeeze the air out. But really, if you’re down with the death/thrash of Hellwitch or Sadus, I think Upon the Twisted Throne will be plenty comfy. The impressive part is that Inscribed nails the inchoate qualities of those bands’ landmarks, delighting in the spaciousness of pre-codified death metal, when the genre could go anywhere instead of having to go there. Some bands suitably playact that period, and lord knows there are enough Deathpressionists out in the world now. However, Inscribed really does sound like it was dumped off into 2026 by a Bill and Ted’s phone booth after opening for Atheist and trading tapes with Revenant. There’s a giddiness to the onslaught, as if the members have seen the world beyond the map and are now burning with the zeal of the trailblazer. Put more simply, it sounds like Inscribed really likes the music it’s making. That might have something to do with the members’ ages: Everyone under the age of 40 looks like a child to me, but I’d bet that these fresh-faced assassins have an awful lot of life ahead of them. They’re not jaded, forcing themselves into a box to feel something that middle age has robbed from them. Am I projecting? Probably. Still, it says something that Inscribed makes me think of my misspent youth; I really should’ve been making death metal. A hearty urghhhh to you, Lucas. Living the dream. [SETH BUTTNAM]
DEFACED – ENVY
released January 15; independent
Report From The Sewer: Part 2
I have awoken in a new portion of this planetary sewer system. The overwhelming wall of sound in the initial chamber short-circuited my brain and rendered me unconscious. I appear to have been swept away by a wall of filth that pushed me into a new maze of tunnels that somehow have what can only be described as mechanical components, implying some ghastly subhuman species akin to the creatures in the Descent may have existed rather than this being fully natural. This new region provides an explorer much more space, but in many ways that makes it more upsetting. An open tunnel ratchets up the fear of what will be found through the next archway.
The tunnels and open rooms in this area continually fold in on themselves, carrying similar elements that are at once familiar yet different in a way that’s extremely discomforting. It would be fair to guess that whoever designed this could be a long-lost relative of Hidetaka Miyazaki. Every step carries an uneasy creaking and cry of pain from the ground, akin to hideous feedback. There are longer tunnels that carry a sense of foreboding, slow doom as I stumble my way through them, while a constant bubbling cries of sickness everywhere I turn. I’ve come across several absolutely horrific short connecting tunnels filled with slicing, moving branches, like trying to fight your way through a blender made of bramble. While this sewer isn’t technically alive, it’s teeming with meanness and hostility.
I am certain Gaia is working to collapse this entire thing around me. I keep getting lost and once again experiencing a wooziness induced by my surroundings. After nearly half an hour, I’ve come across a whirlpool of sloshing disease that is a swirling racket of hideous noise, choking air and suffocating odors. The all-consuming waves of chunky grey water appear to be my only choice for an attempt to move forward. This journey is exhausting; these sewers do nothing but abuse the mind and body. I hear coughing and garbled voices seeming to speak backward within. What is before me may very well be some sort of black hole, but I must reach in and see what’s next.
Hopefully, I will be able to scribe one final entry on Friday. [SPENCER HOTZ]
