If you’re reading this, there’s a very good chance that you are a music obsessive. More than likely, that means you consume other forms of media with a similar vigor and passion. For those of us wired this way, it’s impossible not to spend time lusting after the opportunity to experience our favorite records, movies, games, etc., for the first time all over again. More importantly, we think through what the ideal experience would be for that. How different would our favorite old movie be if we had our first experience with it on the big screen with a modern sound system? Would we be as blown away by our favorite band if our first experience with them had been live, with zero context from their recorded materials? Would we even like our favorite childhood video game if we experienced it as an adult first?

So, what’s the ideal first listening experience for Anticholinergic Derangement? Why, being higher than RFK Jr. snorting heroine and the dust of bear bones off of a raccoon penis, of course! I picked a day when I knew my wife would have to work and I had zero other obligations on the calendar. I imbibed in a hearty dose of a substance that is very legal in my state…and waited. I sipped some coffee while listening to Enslaved’s Vikingligr Veldi followed by Swans’ Filth. I could only barely make it through the first half of the latter before I knew I was on another planet and it was time to get the Effluence train moving.

I set up shop at the kitchen table, grabbed my best headphones, opened my laptop, hit play and started typing out every thought that came through my stupid brain. What you have below is my unfiltered, immediate reaction to Effluence’s most insane work. I didn’t edit anything after the fact, so get ready for nonsense and typos.

I would encourage you to hit play and follow along. May your first journey be as unnerving, hilarious and incredible as mine was.

Molluscan Hemolymph Extraction (3:34)

• Starting off in a space horror movie – nice
• Phantom of the Opera and The Toxic Avenger are banging
• There’s more of a Gigan weirdness to this album that I’m really digging
• Haunted circus has landed
• These transitions back into brutality have been excellent
• How has it only been 2:30 seconds in and THIS MUCH has already happened?
• My VCR in hyper rewind
• Lololol that bass wobble into blasting outro was awesome

Dissected Infantile Hypothalami (3:02)

• Killer Devourment-style riff going into the super slow beatdown
• Wasn’t expecting to hear synths doing a dance around hyperblasts today
• Jeeeeeesus that meathead chug in the middle is glorious
• Someone taped over my brutal metal with free jazz here

Cyclical Triform Aiolomorph (5:08)

• Club meet skull
• Creepy crawlies coming out of walls and ceilings in a horror movie trailer
• Pennywise the DANCing clown
• I think someone’s trying to play the X-Files thing on theramin and getting pissed about being interrupted by blast beats
• Bass scrambling my brains like that you’re brains on drugs commercial
• Pennywise is back! But is there weird moaning in the back?
• A violin of knives
• That moment around 3:45 startled the shit out of me
• Is there an ASPCA for musical instruments? I think we have to call them on this guy

Demophoön (4:13)

• What a horrifically violent start to the song
• Hahahaha the fucking tamborine
• This is so wild in good headphones. So many tiny little things happening all over the place with quick notes jumping ear to ear or up and down. Makes it feel like the different instruments are fighting across your head in a war for attention
• This wobbly bit near the end into that sample was uncomfortable

The Medusae And The Class Of Drugs Known As Death Inducers (4:32)

• AHH, got me again
• The proggy bits are almost like someone having a bad trip while trying to cover Pink Floyd from memory
• That nature soundscape in the middle is creeping me out
• Now we’re in a submarine…but is it yellow?
  • How could I know? I said we’re IN it
• I’m getting the sense this may be more of a submersible looking for the Titanic situation
• Oh, what up Pocahontas 
• Back to the sewer!

Eγχριστον (The Enchristation) (5:32)

• This is the worst 80s porn soundtrack ever
• Listen to those eerie ghosts back there
• Ooo we’re dancing at a lovely ball with a slight sprinkle of blood in the air
• Jazz getting another colonoscopy
• This is the part in the old sci-fi when we’re discovering the final truth through some metaphorical vagina that gives us rebirth
• I’m too high for this talking bit. That was creepy as fuck
• Oh good, now there’s laughs. 
• Wait, was that just flutes and not laughs?
• The ancient community makes their last stand agains a volcano sized Hypnotoad

Milking The Paidiska (3:36)

• Weird to think that this sort of brutality right off the bat almost feels like a palette cleanser at the moment
• Nice dummy beat down parts in this one
• This would the song you use to trick some no/bullshit brutal death metal fan into listening to this definite bullshit brutal death
• Ok, maybe not, there was a drum circle
• That lead was an excellent little change-up to throw in

Antibody Conjugated Substance (2:19)

• Did this get cowritten with Mr. Bungle in their heyday? 
• That little picking-up-pennies chug into weird melty riffs to speed up was sick
• The keys and sustained notes are overwhelming in a great way here

Endogenous Polypharmaceutical Communion Rite Of The Oracular Virgin Priestess (35:27)

• Fuck, here we go. If you want to be the best, you gotta beat the best. Lock in
• I genuinely burst out laughing when that first brutal part kicked in. This is absolutely insane
• It is very upsetting how often these instruments sound like people screaming (yes, I know there are actual screams, too)
• Giant spiders sprinting across pianos
• Christopher Walken playing flute
• Jesus christ, I’m only three minutes in
• That sounded like a woman falling into a pit of vermin but with the Looney Tunes sound fade
• This is giving me Classic arcade game vibes with some unintelligible villain bellowing threats
• This guy listened to the creepy samples of kids on the nearby playground that Chris Barnes worked into Tomb of the Mutilated and said, “I can make that worse”
• What are these bird noises?
• These instruments are layered and blended together so well at times that I can’t tell what is what
• The song has a real sense of improv chaos to it
• Like this is what some guy’s off-off-off-off Broadway one-man shows taking place under an old pier would sound like
• Now we’re having an episode of Buffy where we flashback to her communicating with the first slayer
• This is so far removed from brutal death metal right now and somehow makes perfect sense on this album
• I’m only at the 11-minute mark, but this song is incredible so far
• There’s a phenomenal layering of uncomfortable notes and noises blended into upbeat birds or notes and the tension is really striking
• This is Indiana Jones appearing over the horizon in the desert coming toward his destination pyramid
• OH MY GOD WHAT THE FUCK?!?! That transition with the tortured murdered struggling woman is horrifying 
• FUCK the slowed down last scream was even worse
• That was circus bubbles music in a toilet
• These riffs have been numerous and absolutely killer during this stretch
• Bass said “bitch, what am I chopped liver?” and popped some bops in the fight
• Sparring with the piano again. It following the kick rolls was a killer touch
• Wany’s World tiddly-dee thing after it got punched in the nose twice
• We’re halfway folks!
• Nope. Nope. Nope. Don’t like this screaming. Not one bit
• Holy fuck, that layered keys, flute, whatever the fuck is creepy and oppressive as hell
• Oh good, an evil gospel
• Yet, again the transitions back to “standard” violence are pulled off perfectly and right when you need them
• This is the music during the most violent kill in some old Giallo movie 
• This drum solo during an avalanche is pretty awesome
• Back to communicating through lights and keyboards with aliens
• Hahahahah that transition back to the brutality made it sound like a punch of birds simultaneously got kicked by the drums
• Whoa this is more like a Swallow The Sun riff there for a sec
• Back to rattling tin cans, warning of an impending tornado, with Satan playing the role of Paul Revere
• Korean Jesus, I know you’re busy with Korean shit (this isn’t racist, it’s a 22 Jump Street reference), but please guide me through these final 10 minutes
• We are going on one whacky journey right now
• Alfred Hitchcock sharpening knives floating on a wooden platform in a river
• Are we doing a tango? Or samba or something? I’m picturing perfect posture and spinning red skrits/dresses
• Now we’re kinda getting into an 80’s action build up montage
• Haha the vocals
• This is crowd pleasing headbanger…with flute?! Did I turn on Korpiklaani?
• You could genuinely dance to this whole stretch
• This kind of reminds me of The Faceless a bit and then they added seem keyboards by The Doors (fuck you, Danhammer)
• As I’m approaching the end of this song, I’m almost tempted to start it over and listen to it again. This has been very compelling
• PURE CINEMA! MASTERPIECE! BRAVO! BRAVO!

Inoculation With Aντίχριστος (4:55)

• How could there possibly be more?
• Hey, don’t forget we can clobber you to death with pure ignorance too
• Fuck up that whammy bar, big bro
• Phasers set to KILL
• Slowly melting in sewer rot
• I think this was added to the album to test your endurance and take any last glimmer of hope you may have had after the previous 35 minutes and kicked its teeth in
• The snare is doing a river dance on your will to live
• Sure, might as well have one more final creepy outro
• I wanna go again, I wanna go again!!!

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If you, like many of us here at Last Rites, are an ancient, or at least ancient-adjacent, then perhaps you’ve been listening to death metal for quite some time. For my part, I happen to be falling apart enough to have been there since its inception, which equates to four decades of having my head bashed in by metal’s most brutal off-shoot. I have indeed ingested some rather questionable and / or damaging fare in that span, and at this point my only hope for being startled by a release in the same way I was for, say, the Deicide debut or the way Symphonies of Sickness dragged grind into the game is for a modern record to very literally spew lethal refuse into my face the moment the music escapes from the speakers.

Does that mean the death metal needle only moves around these parts when the death metal itself is so buried in the underground that it literally needs to crawl from a toilet to catch our attention? Not necessarily. Check out our collective No. 1 album from 2025, Unbirth’s excellent Asomatous Besmirchment. Sure, it’s not exactly as… basic as, say, Frozen Soul, but it’s also not exactly Sulfuric Cautery’s Killing Spree, which also made our list.

Bottom line: At this point on the timeline, there are as many death metal bands swimming in the public pool as there are bacteria, so if you’re stepping up to the plate playing “good old fashioned death metal,” it better cross all the i’s and dot all the t’s if you hope to catch the attention of those who’ve been toiling in the death metal mines for decades.

Have you yet had the pleasure of New Jersey flatteners Funebrarum? Being “active” over the course of the last three decades and releasing only two full-lengths leading up to Beckoning the Void of Eternal Silence isn’t exactly the most ideal route to renown, but what Funebrarum lacks in quantity is outweighed by quality, so we’re still very much operating in the black. And if you’ve still managed to avoid dipping thy blessed piggies into the pool, know that, as much as I triple heart their punishing debut Beneath the Columns of Abandoned Gods, I think at this point I’d recommend working backwards from Beckoning because this record marks a terrific place to start for anyone interested in what it might feel like to be brought to your end at the behest of straight-up DEATH METAL that both hits like a sloooowly rumbling tank AND transforms into a Mecha that uses a fusion-powered hammer to pound your pulp until full evaporation.

Caveat numero uno: You gotta love it slow, baby.

Slow, yes, but not exactly funereal slow—the kind of slow that makes you think of giants on a crucial trek, not sap running down a 300 year-old oak. And those sluggish stretches are often spiced with atmospheric keys and / or a penchant for crushing with the sort of serious weight that might leave you wondering if the planet’s just been tea-bagged by Galactus. Point of fact: As much as I’d agree that Funebrarum is a band largely rooted in a… less swift form of death metal, calling them death / doom isn’t terribly accurate because, despite a foundation clearly built on rotted death metal, there’s also a ferocity built into each song that conjures a parallel dimension where the early interpretation of Carcass might’ve ended up on Peaceville rather than Earache. That is to say, there’s a distinct doomed grind element here whenever the record decides to hustle, and it hustles nearly as often as it slogs.

“Anhela Odor Mortuorum (The Adepts)”: A rotted death metal grinding wheel that catches you in its cogs and pulverizes your bones into a grouting paste—hey, that’s just the sort of reduce, reuse, recycling we need in our world today. That crumbling decay that chews the corners here (and up and down the entirety of the record) is certainly magnified by sole founding member / chief architect Daryl Kahan’s approach to some of the most decrepit, rumblingest vocals you’ll hear from a living creature that’s not an irascible grizzly bear with a festering thorn in its paw. And what’s this we hear? Why, it’s extreme metal’s busiest gadabout Phil Tougas, the newest recruit to the ever-shifting gaggle packed in behind Kahan. Tougas is actually… a little restrained on this record? Is that even possible? Did Kahan chain one of Phil’s arms to a radiator? Whatever happened, Tougas gives the whole of Beckoning the Void of Eternal Silence a perfect little pinch of noodling melody, but it’s never used to a degree that might make trick the listener into believing this is anything but a vehicle bent on flattening with relentless brutality.

If you need another taste of what’s in store, cram “From Rotting Burial Shrouds” into your worried ears, a song that emphasizes the more hostile face of the band for the bulk of its run, but still manages to sliiiide into that absolutely crushing groove that guides the overall vibe of Beckoning’s 50-ish minutes. That’s not Tougas on the pretty little splash of melody this time around, but rather GOREMENT legend Patrik Fernlund. Squeeee! Squeeeee, I say!

Caveat numero two-o: Don’t come to this party looking for innovation.

Does that come across as a slight? If so, it’s fully unintentional. Again, this is all caps DEATH METAL that doesn’t bother with infusing Tubular Bells, “Us and Them” or some farkakte Dream Theater potpourri into the mix. Instead, heed the following directions: Pound, grind, rumble, grumble, repeat as necessary, just as Funebrarum has done basically since day one. In the hands of a lesser band, that might result in something far less convincing, but here the outcome is an absolute triumph. GET SQUASHED.

The post Funebrarum – Beckoning The Void Of Eternal Silence Review appeared first on Last Rites.

Listening to the new album from Brazil’s Deafkids, Cicatrizes Do Futuro, I’ve been thinking about rivers.

[indignant voice from the back]: WHAT?

Mea culpa, friend. I’m here today to preach the gospel of

Under the banner of Deafkids, the duo of Douglas Leal and Marian Sarine makes music that is unabashedly polyglot, with roots in punk, noise, industrial, and electronic music, in addition to the wealth of Afro-Caribbean percussion and rhythms so pervasive in Brazilian music. My first encounter with the band was Metaprogramação, their excellent 2019 full-length for Neurot. Since then, the band has released a slew of live albums and collaborations (including 2020’s also-excellent Deafbrick with Iggor Cavalera’s noise/electronic project Petbrick), but Cicatrizes Do Futuro (Scars of the Future) is their first unaccompanied album in seven years.

“Reflexo” pulses with dizzying polyrhythms, cutting out midway through for scrambled vocal cuts and diced up synth, and while “Profecia” heats up after its sly dub feint of an opening, it tumbles down the line as one of the (relatively) more restrained pieces on the album. Cicatrizes Do Futuro is an album that feels like it would be equally appropriate as soundtrack for an old-school skateboard video as for a David Attenborough documentary on the despoilment of communal waterways. Your own personal constellation of reference points is sure to differ, but here’s a partial map of how the album hits for me:

l-r, top: Miles Davis/Dark Magus; Atoms for Peace/Amok; Sepultura/Roots; Neurosis/The Word as Law \\ l-r, middle: Ratos de Porão/Crucificados pelo Sistema; Skinny Puppy/Too Dark Park; Boredoms/Super Ae; The Prodigy/The Fat of the Land \\ l-r, bottom: Matias Aguayo/Support Alien Invasion; Einstürzende Neubauten/Halber Mensch

The good news about this is that the band sounds like so many different things that they end up sounding like no one thing except Deafkids. Nevertheless, I think the connection to Miles Davis’s 1974 live album Dark Magus is both unintuitive and instructive. Like Deafkids, at this point in his career, Miles was focused on long, dense, trance-like groove and rich textural interplay rather than the individual and collective displays of virtuosity of the hard bop scene. In fact, Miles’s trumpet is one of the least-heard instruments throughout many of his recordings from this time – he spent just as much time needling the band with short phrases and licks on his Yamaha organ as he did torquing his trumpet through effects pedals.

In that way, to listen to Dark Magus as primarily a trumpet album sets one up for a similar disappointment as if you listen to Cicatrizes Do Futuro as a guitar album. Instead, both albums feel like inherently recombinant experiments, with the magic being how engrossing and self-contained they feel. The A-side highlight “Advertencia” has a wonderfully gnarled drone riff that snakes and curls through the underbrush, driving the song into a lingering, noise-fracked drone conclusion. “Possessão Coletiva” is the longest song on the album, and it makes use of that extra runway to slink a little slower and really burrow into the subconscious. The guitar that gradually pokes its way into the song’s final third might as well be a didgeridoo, and I swear there’s the faintest bit of flute off in the distance, all of which speaks to the hallucinatory effect of Deafkids’ unwavering commitment to the heady psychedelia of deep groove.

Although very few sounds on the album are not tweaked, chopped, distorted, and manipulated in some way, neither the effect nor the intent of the album seems particularly aggressive. Instead, like a canoe in a swift-moving river, it feels like an invitation to move one’s body in harmony with the flow. That doesn’t guarantee a smooth ride, but it may still be the right attitude to cultivate. The album closer “Em Transe” maximizes the effectiveness of the overlay of electronic kick drums, hand percussion, and bass synth to drive the listener into a state of feverish dancefloor hypnosis while a snarling guitar crush threatens to tip into total chaos. It doesn’t, though, because unlike an ocean’s cresting, crashing waves, Deafkids’s music follows the river’s model of crescendo without climax.

Cicatrizes Do Futuro is an album that sounds like a river, like that paradox of endless movement by which it is always and never the same thing. Deafkids’ origin in the southeastern Brazilian city of Volta Redonda is a few thousand kilometers from the Amazon River basin, but their music feels marked by the water’s current. The press materials for the album quote the band as saying, “Our music comes from the perception of the environmental, political, and moral toxicity that permeates our realities…” This is reflected through in their lyrics, as on album opener “Parasita”:

“E se houver um amanhã / A nos observar / É pintado de sangue!”
(“And if there’s a tomorrow / To bear witness to us / It’s a blood-soaked one”)

The writer Robin Wall Kimmerer, in her book Braiding Sweetgrass, writes about how she had to shift her mindset when trying to learn Potawatomi, a language in which many phenomena we know in English as nouns are instead treated as verbs: “A bay is a noun only if water is dead. When bay is a noun, it is defined by humans, trapped between its shores and contained by the word. But the verb wiikwegamaa – to be a bay – releases the water from bondage and lets it live. ‘To be a bay’ holds the wonder that, for this moment, the living water has decided to shelter itself between these shores… Because it could do otherwise – become a stream or an ocean or a waterfall, and there are verbs for that, too” (Kimmerer 2013, p. 55).

Through this lens, through this failure to learn what Kimmerer calls the “grammar of animacy,” the environmental degradation that Deafkids are (at least in part) lamenting on Cicatrizes stems from humans seeking mastery over the thingness of nature instead of learning to hear and live alongside the personness of nature. On “Reflexo,” the lyrics are pointed:

“Beba das águas / Do rio que seca / A sua sede / É o meu reflexo”
(“Drink the waters / Of the drying river / Your thirst / Is my reflection”)

I doubt that Deafkids intended to evoke the feeling of a river with Cicatrizes Do Futuro, but now I can’t shake the feeling. One way to think about your relationship with a place is to reflect on the waters that feed and flow through it. “Feitiço” opens with chanted vocals and distorted tin-sounding drums, but when the electronic beats come in, the synth pads sound like thick raindrops radiating concentric circles that swiftly merge with the sleepless flow. This way of hearing is also a way of seeing, and it reminds me of Robert Macfarlane’s recent book, Is a River Alive?:

“Hold the map of your country in your mind. Imagine it now entirely blacked out except for the rivers and streams: these alone are present. Let them glow in vivid colours… A new topography leaps to the eye. The land is suddenly intricately veined… The pattern repeats, then repeats again with each scale-shift: a fractal branching of tributaries and channels, fronds and stems. It resembles the vascular system. It resembles a neural network” (Macfarlane 2025, p. 23).

Curiously enough, it wasn’t until I nearly finished writing about this riverine album that I remembered a piece of art that hangs on my office wall:

Growing up in the Twin Cities, the Mississippi River was ever-present. In college, I traversed it several times every day on a massive pedestrian bridge. I have visited Lake Itasca and waded in the headwaters where the Mississippi begins, and I have been to New Orleans to watch the river on its final turnings before it sloughs into its delta and merges with the Gulf of Mexico. I don’t live near the river now, but I can feel how it has shaped me. Art can be like that, too–it can put you in your place. And if you listen intently to the wild, pulsating flux of Cicatrizes Do Futuro, maybe it can put you in someone else’s place.

The post Deafkids – Cicatrizes Do Futuro Review appeared first on Last Rites.

Though Yoth Iria’s sophomore effort, Blazing Inferno, felt initially like a more melodic and purposeful version of the debut, As the Flame Withers, it didn’t quite have as much staying power. Dust settled, it felt less urgent. It channeled less of the anxiety and moments of panic inherent in mid-period Rotting Christ. The pace was a little too stunted. Less varied. Granted, Blazing Inferno is still a fantastic record. That it ranked on my year-end list, and quite high, is no coincidence. But with distance it feels like the lesser record.

So having now wasted two paragraphs with context, I won’t beat around the bush—Yoth Iria’s Gone with the Devil is a potent amalgamation of the prior two records’ strengths and proof of the band’s continued inspiration moving forward.

One of Blazing Inferno’s few weak points was its flow. It felt too single tone. There’s nothing wrong with a well-crafted, uber-melodic mid-pace song, of course. But the strongest Hellenic black metal albums are those that balance brooding melodicism and a more sinister intensity. Blazing Inferno parked its chair a little too long in the former, at the expense of the latter. And Gone with the Devil is the slight course correction Yoth Iria needed. Granted, the marker distinguishing Gone with the Devil from Blazing Inferno isn’t as obvious upon first listen. But it is there. And it becomes more apparent with time.

The shift from Blazing Inferno to Gone with the Devil is not so much mid to fast pace but single to multi-tone. Gone is simply more expressive in the ways that matter. “Woven Spells of a Demon,” for instance, is as mid-paced as anything on Blazing Inferno, but there are layers here that aren’t present on at least some of Blazing. The rhythm and the chorus stick, no doubt. But there’s an underlying intensity in the drums and the vocals that give “Woven” its backbone.

At the risk of committing to a needless comparison, what Yoth Iria do for or with Hellenic black metal is not too unlike what Kreator have done with Teutonic thrash on Enemies of God, Phantom Antichrist, and, to a lesser extent, Krushers of the World. The band seizes on a few key elements and through its collective experience projects a more melodic and accessible but still quite deep vision of a well-established genre’s sound. Though it goes down easy, it’s also quite substantive. Simple, in some respects. Rewarding all the same.

Some of Yoth Iria’s riskier takes—the ones that only vaguely sound like Hellenic black metal—are its strongest. “3 am,” for example, has an almost industrial-like, pounding rhythm. It’s moody. Somber. Maybe even a little poppy. And if you’re looking for something that resembles Medieval Demon or Varathron, you’ll be disappointed. It’s not an outlier, either. “Harut, Government, Fallen” and “Blessed Be Who Enters” are at least spiritually similar.

Less a seismic shift than a tonal recalibration, Gone with the Devil is Yoth Iria in peak confidence. A cheap (pulp) and romantic reimagining of Hellenic black metal, its best songs stick to the darkest corners of your gut. Almost celebratory in its gloominess. Cathartic.

Photo by Alex Haritakis

The post Yoth Iria – Gone With The Devil Review appeared first on Last Rites.

After releasing a trifecta of second-wave royalty in A Blaze in the Northern Sky, Under a Funeral Moon, and Transilvanian Hunger — hell, I’ll even throw in the coup de grace, Panzerfaust — what exactly would have been left for them to achieve? I love Total Death and Plaguewielder, but they never quite did live up to their greatest works. I think the guys knew that, too.

Look, three and a half decades is more than enough time to send metal fans into a frenzy. If you’ve followed the Darkthrone trajectory over the last five or six albums, that anecdote proves true as fans seemingly line up with pitchforks every time they drop something in the vein of trad/doom/speed metal.

So it goes.

That fact of the matter is that there’s beautiful heavy metal history in contemporary Darkthrone. Via the mighty riff, Arctic Thunder, Old Star, Eternal Hails, Astral Fortress, It Beckons Us All, and now Pre-Historic Metal, are museums of ‘80s — and even some ‘70s — lore. Album title aside, the influences are right there front and center. Big fan of Mercyful Fate? Well, you should love “They Found One of My Graves” and its not-so-subtle nod to Don’t Break the Oath’s “A Dangerous Meeting.” Or maybe you’re a fan of Celtic Frost’s To Mega Therion? Yeah, you’ll find that here, too, specifically on the title track, “Pre-Historic Metal.” Fenriz’ drum patterns were made for a Tom G. Warrior OOUGH. And while I might understand being turned away — vocals-wise — by Fenriz’ John Cryiis impression, you’re still thumped by a Nocturno Culto shoutout and subsequent necro-vocals in the final two minutes.

Then, there’s the Manilla Road Crystal Logic riffage. In fact, there’s a plethora of Mark Shelton influence throughout — see “Siberian Thaw.” Speaking of which, after a few listens, “Siberian Thaw” is their best track since 2019’s “The Hardship of the Scots.” That “SIBERIAN THAW. SIBERIAN THAW. SIBERIAN THAW…” chant is absolutely GOAT’d and would absolutely crush in the live setting we’ll never have the privilege of seeing.

All of that said, in many ways, this album’s closest relative would probably be Old Star. I started picking up on that when flipping to the B-side. “Deeply Rooted” has some of Nocturno Culto’s coolest vocal moments that bring a similar raspiness. Then, on songs like “The Dry Wells of Hell,” there are nods to Judas Priest’s Stained Class — see JP’s “Saints in Hell.” Very melodic, catchy, and sprinkled with Fenriz’ singing, you’ll hear an homage or continuation of the band’s 2019 track “The Key Is Inside the Wall.” Of course, it’d only make sense if some moments sounded like a progression from what they were building on 2024’s It Beckons Us All. “Eat Eat Eat Your Pride” conjures up similar riff ideas found on “Howling Primitive Colonies” and “Black Dawn Affiliation.” The back-and-forth between chunky power chord riffs and tremolo picking fits Nocturno Culto’s guitar tone perfectly. “Eon 4” bestows that to a T as well.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I understand if this era of the band isn’t for you. Seriously, I do. It’s easy to hold a band to an impossible standard — I do it, too. But A Blaze in the Northern Sky came out more than three decades ago. At some point, you have to let it go.

As for Darkthrone, I genuinely enjoy their recent material — and, maybe more importantly, I appreciate what they’re doing. No trends. No bullshit. Just two guys making the music they want, completely on their own terms.

Sure, Pre-Historic Metal isn’t perfect. The drums could pop a tad more, sometimes finding themselves buried beneath the guitars. At times, the vocal back-and-forth between Nocturno Culto and Fenriz may seem disorganized, but, to be fair, it lends the album character and sets it apart from the last few albums. They continue stacking little nuances here and there, and that’s cool with me. I think that’s way more important than catering to a bunch of folks on the internet.

I’ll stand on this: Too many people seek perfection to fall in love with an album.

I’ve rambled on here, so I’ll conclude with the same words I left regarding It Beckons Us All: For the old-school metal faithful, Pre-Historic Metal is for you. It’s another Darkthrone album full of memorable riffs, vocal performances, and throwbacks to the icons that shaped heavy music as we know it today. It’s pretty damn good.

Instead of holding the guys to the standards of yesteryear, cherish the fact that we still have them around. Too many legends have moved on to another plane of existence as of late.

Oh, and one last thing.

The first dinosaur to be scientifically described and named was Megalosaurus in 1824 by British naturalist William Buckland.

America’s first president, George Washington, died in 1799. He never knew dinosaurs existed. Crazy, right?

Even more depressing, Darkthrone formed in 1986. So, George Washington never knew Darkthrone existed.

But you, my friends, you know.

How lucky…

At the very least, luckier than the dinos…

Asteroids, am I right?

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You’re familiar with the term, “unc,” right? If not, it generally refers to a washed up older feller whose personality in large part revolves around extravagantly performing confusion and/or displeasure at the mere notion of people being between the ages of 12-28 in the wrong way. Wherever the youths are enjoying a new musical sub-genre with a weird name, confidently sporting asymmetrical hairstyles or lauding the merits of professional athletes born after 1978, uncs are there to provide the necessary correctives. Apocalypse, the latest full length from prog rockers Crown Lands, is the kind of release that crawls directly up the collective backsides of uncs … like me. 

The members of Crown Lands pose for a photo with Rush’s Alex Lifeson after a jam session.

To my ear, the dissonance between what Crown Lands promise and what they deliver is loud and jarring. While so much of Rush’s appeal rested in their ability to produce dynamic recordings of exceptionally complex compositions as a power trio, Crown Lands, which operate as a duo, often sound canned, comped and snapped-to-the grid in post production. You’d be wrong to deny the technical prowess of drummer/vocalist Cody Bowles and guitarist/bassist/keyboardist Kevin Comeau, but that puts your under no obligation to feel their performance. 

As for their compositional approach, I could simply tap the sign in the Last Rites break room that reads “at this point prog is a sound associated with an amalgam of well worn “progressive” tropes rather than a truly experimental genre.” But, truth be told? Crown Lands doesn’t even really employ too many of those tropes. You won’t hear much in the way of unconventional harmonic movement or non-perfunctory deployment of odd time signatures. Instead, Crown Lands reach for prog through the album’s concept – a centuries spanning prequel to their 2023 full length, Fearless, dealing with AI and interplanetary colonization – and the eye-watering length of the album’s title track. Closing the album and clocking in at 19 minutes, the standout features of “Apocalypse” are its length and inability to justify it. Here’s a song that moves with the cadence of a five-year-old telling you about a dream they had the night before. We get a thumping, mid-paced bassline that invokes “Bullet the Blue Sky,” we get a nod to “YYZ,” we get a balladic nod to The Mars Volta’s “The Widow”  … And then this happens, and then this happens, and then this happens …

As an unc, I’m duty bound to advise the uninitiated to simply seek out a copy of 2112 or Hemispheres. And if you’ve already spent your hours with Rush’s classic run, then get more familiar with an unheralded banger like Grace Under Pressure. Still looking for modern prog to scratch a purely musical itch? Check out the review archives of our very own sherpa Lone Watie. 

But, you know… in addition to being an unc, due to the family planning quirks of Mediterranean immigrants to the United States, I became an uncle at the ripe old age of four. And did you know that in addition to “the brother of one’s father or mother,” the word uncle has a fascinating tertiary definition? “One who advises.” That’s neat. And it feels different than what an unc does, which is to essentially lecture young people about how they can be more like him. An uncle, making a good faith effort to advise a younger person, might at least attempt to understand where they’re coming from in order to provide some guidance as to where they are going. To that end, I quizzed one of my nieces, who happens to be squarely in Crown Lands’ target demo, about why she wouldn’t simply listen to older, better music as opposed to the pale imitations on offer today? I’ll quote the conversation here:

If we discontinued all these sub-genres solely because they produced bands considered to be some of the best of rock history we get into the ‘is music finite’ conversation. It’s really also that nostalgic aspect of ‘oh hey my dad listened to this kind of music with me while I was growing up.’ It’s familiar and to have that new music having the same feel … it’s comforting. 

Despite Crown Lands shortcomings – and I stand by my assertion that they are many – I don’t think their effort to generate a contemporary moment for kids who like expansive but accessible guitar-based music is one of them. And when I listen as an uncle instead of an unc, I can hear the moments where they do it well. The album’s first proper riff, which comes at the beginning of “Foot Soldiers of the Syndicate” after a brief instrumental interlude, simply rocks. Compact, memorable and built around a bluesy lick so intuitive I’m surprised I hadn’t heard it approximately 8,700 times on 104.7 THE ROCKET, The Only Station That Really Rocks between spins of “Money” and “Sharp Dressed Man.” Track 4, “Blackstar,” might be the best Crown Lands has to offer. Here the band moves beyond classic prog-rock conventions and reminds me of the army of U.S. heavy metal bands that got down to business in response to “Operation Mindcrime,” but still had to do their version of a song that might get hips shaking on Sunset Strip.

“The Fall’s” main riff struts credibly before the fellers roll up the sleeves on their sensible blazers and max out every channel on the mixing board for a big, booming chorus. For those who do not wish to see the sub-genres of their parent’s youth discontinued, the moments where Crown Lands step into their own sound while keeping one foot planted in the past might just be the point of the whole deal. 

Apocalypse is not an album for the uncs. The music does not substantially fulfill the promise of the presentation, and if you’ve spent even a little bit of your lifetime exploring the prog-rock map you’ll simply be too familiar with artists who’ve done everything on display here earlier and, often, quite a bit better. But, as an uncle, you may find some utility in it as a marker of time simply movin’ on. Maybe you’ve heard it all before, but not everybody has. And because the future cannot be canceled, we can only stand back and hope an album like this serves as a sturdy bridge back to the past for those who wish to explore it.

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“Nonsense” opens with a slow fade-in of distorted guitars and seismic drums — the chaos before the swarm. It’s a trick of the trade, the extreme metal equivalent of a camera operator calling out “speed” before the tail slate clacks down. But for Gadget, it might as well be the sound of a band being roused from a deep slumber. “Nonsense” kicks off the EP Coerced, which is the Swedish grind band’s first new release in nearly five years. So, naturally, during those 30-odd seconds of build-up, you think, OK, does Gadget still have it? And then the quintet literally blasts off, sounding like SpaceX’s Starship trying to take off from inside a garden shed. Guitarists Rikard Olsson and Kristofer Jankarls furiously slash with that classically corroded Swedish guitar tone; bassist Fredrik Nygren and drummer William Blackmon feverishly shovel rhythmic coal into the engines to keep the tempo at full steam; and singer Emilia Henriksson fiercely screams with a caustic roar that would greatly concern an otolaryngologist. Oh yeah, Gadget still has it. You’re just left wondering where it put it for the last half-decade.

The story on Coerced is more immediate. Nowadays, Gadget is punkier than its younger self, which favored a near-death/grind sharpness. It’s not that things are looser, necessarily: the band still plays with controlled frenzy. But Coerced accentuates more of the core of grindcore, particularly the sonic bulldozer quality of a band like Breach. A couple of factors might be responsible. First, Olsson, who alongside Gadget plays in the hardcore bands Diskonto and the severely underappreciated Parasit, handles the music writing this go-around. Second, Henriksson, who is making her studio debut as a full-fledged member of Gadget after guesting on the 2021 Retaliation split and handling live vocals for a few years, hails from the raging Radium Grrrls, which is no stranger to punk pugnacity. (Johan Lundmark, who sang on the 2020 version of Gadget’s “Funerary Rites,” pops up again on the update.) Perhaps that’s why Coerced more readily embraces a more direct approach. Heck, some songs even flirt with the d-beatish direction of fellow Swedish Assault partakers, Disfear.

I think this punk path could be misinterpreted as a spin in the Wayback Machine, a regression, helping Gadget to choose a livelier sound befitting the flesh-and-blood warmth of vinyl over the fastidiousness of past albums that found a good home on CD. However, I think Coerced‘s punkiness is a natural evolution that has followed Gadget’s staff to where they are in their lives. How do you maintain grind fury beyond your forties, when “rage, rage against the dying of the light” turns into “rage, rage we have a parent-teacher conference on Thursday”? There’s still plenty to be pissed about — lord knows this modern world supplies enough ammo. But clearly, the calculus is different because other aspects of life, and aging generally, become part of the equation. On a personal level, I find Coerced moving because it mirrors where I am as an old, decrepit powerlifter, staring down the inevitability of having to pursue a simpler routine to preserve my longevity. My drive hasn’t changed, but I am forced to reckon with the degradation of my body — I can’t escape time, and I can’t live in the past when there’s a present that needs me. In that light, it’s admirable, then, that five people have found a way to come together and make new music, stoking the same fires of aggression while saying, “You know, maybe we can be a little less technical so these songs can be released in this lifetime?” The act of doing becomes more resonant when so much of life pulls you toward something else; you feel that you’re not totally and completely hopeless keeping things in motion.

And, you know, Gadget, a really good grind band, is really good as a punk band if that’s the shift it wants to make. After an extended expedition into noise, which we’ll get into in a second, the requisite slomo grind closer kicks in, and it’s the best song of the eight-song set. “Violently Silent” is sludgy hardcore with a mid-pace pummel that gives a band like Norna a run for its money. It’s additionally powered by a killer groove that, forgive the deep cut, might remind the right listener of Swarm of the Lotus. Conceptually, it’s kind of like taking a beat to slow down, examine the things in front of you while chaos swirls around you in your continually expanding worldview, and thinking, Man, I’m even more pissed off about this than I thought. To drive that home, it sure doesn’t hurt that Henriksson lets loose the vocal hit to beat of 2026: “UHHHHHGH.” I feel that in the very depths of my frustrated soul. And I feel Gadget’s life force in general — where it is, where it wants to be. That’s Coerced‘s story, then, and, as always, Gadget does a great job telling it.

***

OK, two observations before we go. First, the noise track, “False Pulse”: What are we doing here? The five-and-a-half-minute excursion eats up a third of Coerced‘s running time, and doesn’t have the courtesy to close the record, leaving you to ponder your life decisions before finally giving way to “Violently Silent.” Like the dork I am, I listen to a lot of stuff falling under the noise umbrella, so that’s my Reddit-ass “longtime [profession] here” bona fides. Accordingly, I can tell you that, in a vacuum, “False Pulse” isn’t bad as far as those things go. Heck, it would even fit in OK on a death industrial album. But that’s the point: Coerced is not a death industrial album. For a noise or ambient passage to work on a metal album, it has to be great because it needs to justify its existence to people who don’t care about noise, and five minutes is a lot to justify. In a related realm, the power electronics that the powerviolence band No Faith employ excel because they’re short — palette cleansers by blowtorch. “False Pulse,” by comparison, is dead wax.

Second, we have an early frontrunner for album art of the year. Caroline Harrison once again threads the needle between the gorgeous and the grotesque. Many reads are possible: A bevy of open sores weep while vines sprout from others; the decomposition of the body, and a reminder that there’s life after death, it’s just not ours — we will return to the loam. Perhaps it’s also the wounds we suffer over the course of a life, where some stay fresh, and we can make them far worse by digging into them, but experience can grow from others. Fits Coerced well. Anyway, it’s as phantasmagorically evocative as ever. It’ll look great on a wall if you never want to have normal people over again.

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Not that the band had ever given cause for concern, but Dark Waters certainly delivers on the promise of Konquest’s two prior records. Same whimsical breeziness. Same near perfect balance of those disparate elements that make Konquest’s take on traditionalism compelling. Deceptively simple—the kind of “simple” borne from either a whole lot of thought and preplanning about feel, impression, and songcraft, or just the natural collision of ideas that, as fate would have it, sticks the landing. I suspect a combination of the two.

As tradition would demand, Dark Waters continues Konquest’s history of eight-song albums. Here, as with Time and Tyranny, and The Night Goes On before it, you’re treated to seven relatively shorter tracks and an epic closer (“Kubla Khan (A Vision in a Dream)”). Opener “Turn the Lights Off” is a vibe setter if there ever was one, establishing the aforementioned breezy tone early. Of the other six shorter tracks, it delivers the most immediate punch, which is why it’s as effective as it is as an opener—I don’t know that it would have made as much sense elsewhere on the album. Consistent with a few other songs here, the rhythm or pace isn’t too far removed from punk, toying with early NWOBHM aesthetics.

The second track, “Mindwanderer,” is as emblematic of the general impression Dark Waters leaves as any song on the album. Mostly midpaced with a sing-a-long chorus and a killer riff in the driver’s seat. “Mindwanderer” is in keeping with Konquest’s breezy ethos and keeps the listener’s interest with a particularly strong lead toward its end.

Of the remaining four shorter tracks, the title track and “Man with a Stone” resonate strongest. The anthemic feel of the former is appropriately distinctive and the latter is the riffiest song on an album rooted in the riff—easily one of my favorite Konquest tunes.

The epic “Kubla Khan (A Vision in a Dream)” is Konquest’s crowning achievement. Though it changes pace about two minutes in, its longer, more atmospheric introduction would sound more at home on Iron Maiden’s Brave New World or The Final Frontier. And there are enough similarly progressive touches throughout that the song itself feels notably different from the other seven shorter tracks. The sheer scale of a tune like “Kubla Khan” towers above the rest of Dark Waters; you can’t but want more songs in this vein.

Summarily, Dark Waters is another clear winner for Konquest. In times of uncertainty, there’s something to be said for a world which appreciates both consistency in quality and welcoming familiarity. With their third full length, Konquest may not have created that world, but they have certainly expanded on it.

Photo by Valeria Calossi

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