There are bad musical moods, and then there’s Mylingar. Over the course of the last decade this group of anonymous Swedes has concocted the type of ill-meaning black/death that makes Diocletian seem like a Care Bear soundtrack. Third album Út is punishing, thoroughly antagonistic, and completely unwelcoming. It also kinda rules.

It helps immensely that Mylingar really knows how to pen a tune, and that, in spite of everything here being absolutely designed to annihilate everything in its path, Út still, well, rocks. The riffs and rhythms frequently churn, but it all churns as if the butter has gone rancid, been poisoned, and then been shat in by the town goblin. The drums blast, sometimes at hyperspeed levels, while providing plenty of ride cymbal flair and little details (the drumming really carry things). The guitars, indistinguishable as they sometimes are, push things into nightmare mode by refusing to provide any moments that are remotely comfortable, while the eased-off, open-picked moments sound positively nauseated, as if the sounds themselves are meant to make you sick. Such passages help to give Út the slightest sense of dynamics, but just the slightest.

That’s not to say things are never catchy, however, as Mylingar sneaks in some moments from the instruments that join the vocals to make Út, the tiniest, teensiest bit infectious. For example, “Blóð” features a fun, syncopated rhythm at one point that would probably get you dancing if everything around it wasn’t so polluted and bleak. “Af,” meanwhile, gets downright riffy in the this-can-be-air-guitared way, but quickly swaps out such moments for those noxious open-picked parts. Basically, Mylingar isn’t going to hit you over the head with hooks, but they’re still going to hook you.

The album also saves some of its strongest stuff for the end, with 11-minute closer “Neðan” perhaps the best track of the bunch. The song actually, almost shockingly begins in non-dissonant mode, but it doesn’t last long. Soon enough the song is doing its unholy churn, but with the sense that there’s some extra big, important, epic going on with these proceedings, as if it’s all a heightened version of everything that came before. Even the open-picked passages feel extra sickly and drunken, and “Neðan” reaches its bottom when it really slows the tempo in favor of ultimate nastiness. After that, all it can do is gradually build back to a fever pitch for the climax, in which the vocals absolutely lose their minds and the listener is left with nothing but a few minutes of unsettling sounds in which to reflect. Even here, at the very end, the band refuses to provide a real resolution.

Mylingar makes music for a very specific corner of mankind. Not only do you need to have a taste for this particular side of black/death metal, you also might need to have a taste for pain. Love Hollow Knight: Silksong but wish the soundtrack was all nasty war metal? Go for Mylingar. Have a habit of trying to match Sean Evans wing-for-wing as he quizzes celebrities on their favorite Blasphemophagher albums? Hit up Mylingar. Still, even with these tendencies, prepare for a little bit of a shock factor. Út will straight mess you up.

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Let’s talk about our love for quirky metal.

Okay, sure, any definable level of ‘quirk’ is obviously subjective, but I’m guessing you know we’re not talking about the guy who loves The Black Album and thinks Suffocation sounds outlandish. So, hone the scopes down to the individuals who’ve been in the game long enough to really plumb the depths into strange realms where quirks attach themselves to any or all facets of a band, rendering a uniqueness that stands out enough to virtually guarantee a reduced cluster of enthusiasts in an already reduced cluster of enthusiasts.

And on the other end of the spectrum, we also don’t need to dive too deep into the peculiar, like the Paul Chains, Varghkoghargasmals or Trichomoniases that swirl in the deepest bits of the underground. Ideally, we’re looking for that true sweet-spot of quirk that: 1) Challenges limits amidst initial spins, 2) Inspires others to say things like “I think I would love this, but…”, and 3) Eventually attaches itself to your DNA as a lovable eccentricity that you’d really rather not live without for the rest of your miserable life.

ÚLTIMAAAAAAA BATALLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA, he howled whilst hurling Gungnir directly at the eye of Jörmungandr.

Oh, shit! That was totally Falkor, not Jörmungandr. That’s my bad. That’s my bad and I take full responsibility. Whew, talk about quirky!

Última Batalla!

The first thing you should probably know about this record is that, while it’s new—released in 2026—it’s not actually new new, in that it came out waaaaaay back in early January. Twas new to me, though, when I first caught wind of it about a week ago, and I haven’t seen much traction from the usual interweb outlets, so why not throw a snazzy little spotlight in its direction as a tribute to its overlooked virtue.

The second thing you should know about this record is that it’s, uh, super quirky! Fucking duh, no? Hell, it might even wander a little further into full-on weird, depending on your perspective. Not quite ‘baby born with a beard’ weird, mind you, but what if you grew up in the underground Bogotá, Colombia punk and metal scene, decided to form a band, and then decided this was your formula for success:

Like… what? Sure, why not blend the epic flare of Crystal Logic with the raw punk-metal energy of Dimension Hatröss, add some NWOBHM bursts, a few pinches of classic Dave Chandler acid doom, and then infuse a touch of egg punk into the entire helter-skelter bouquet to boost the quirk an extra two or five tiers. Wash everything down with a few twelvers of Schlitz and you’ve got an afternoon of horseplay that absolutely ends with someone jumping off the roof into an inflatable Smurf pool while everyone else raises their swords in a salute to the absurd.

“Lejos de casa (Far from Home)” is a perfect touchstone for gauging whether or not (or how fast) you need to leave the hall: It slips from the gate with a lost and unreasonably raw NWOBHM riff that sets the stage for the tussle, quickly followed by a klaxon howl that pushes the charge into second gear. The whole of the record sounds like it was recorded live in the tormented ruins of a burned out gladiator’s arena, and this track confirms that assertion by gradually hustling faster and faster to a point where the chariot, horses and champion nearly flip right off the goddamned track. But it never fully crashes because flailing beserker intensity was actually the plan all along, and Ultima Batalla has that particular strategy down.

The vigorous chorus here is more warbled than a 40 year-old cassette copy of Night on Bröcken, with vocalist Filo Martínez-Aparcio playing the role of Master to the Hellroadie / Manilla Road Blaster. Don’t like nasally vocals? Holy fuck did you ever take the wrong turn at Albuquerque. Filo’s unorthodox voice has a curious way of ultimately settling in, though, and it’s offset properly by an equal amount of attention getting thrown toward the sturdy but fibrous bass and all that matted battery behind the drum kit.

I fucking knew guitarist Carlos X opted for a Gibson SG before I ever glimpsed the proof—the oily riffing and the way he fastens melody to his fretplay is built on the foundation of Iommi colliding with Dave Chandler. That frenzied harmony around the 2-minute mark of “Lejos” is the closest thing you’ll get to a solo on the record, and if you can’t at least appreciate the wonderful tone he conjures as a song like “Una y mil veces (A Thousand Times Over)” opens, then what the hell are you even doing in the realms of heavy metal in the first place.

You still here? Well, bucko, you just might be the ideal target for a band like Última Batalla. I’m guessing perhaps you also dug into equally quirky releases from the likes of Steröid and Demon Bitch last year? EMBRACE THE QUIRK, for it is within these peculiar realms where the volatile propellants necessary for upheaval against the tedium of ordinary life are ignited. Gallop! Scrap! Be weird! And be victorious!

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Stack Overflow In Corpse Pile Interface. Stack Overflow in…Corpse Pile Interface?

“What’s in a name? That which we call a corpse pile, by any other word would smell as putrid” – billy shakes

Forgive my bastardization of that quote, the silly misnomer, the callous abandonment of MLA formatting, but A Forest of Stars have led my mind down a path both dark and curious. I’ve spent the better part of a month trying to distill this record’s idiosyncrasies into a quick n’ quippy 900-word snack and you know what? I’m still not quite there, and because I am a person for whom spite is continual nourishment, I’d like to open with a rough draft that for an embarrassingly long time was the front-runner for final formatting.

A Forest of Stars – Stack Overflow In Corpse Pile Interface (An Exhaustively Researched and Edited Review by I. Hams

• Pure / Depraved
• Delight / Disgust
• Rigid / Slack
• Playful / Stern
• Verbose / Succinct

~fin~

With Stack Overflow In Corpse Pile Interface, you are getting a new A Forest of Stars album. It CAN be simplified to that degree. You lose a few pixels at distance but the bird’s-eye view is enough to grasp the overall topography. In fact, when revisiting The Corpse of Rebirth, it’s remarkable how consistent the group has been in illustrating their own peculiarities. I imagine a bespoke 2007 boardroom, whiteboard festooned with bird bones and other elegant / grotesque talismans, crammed to the outer rim with tiny letters written in great haste and with too much downward pressure. In the center, circled and roughly italicized, a set of rules by which to proceed. The gentlemen (and lady) around the long table smoke and nod appreciatively toward the fruit of their labor – the bylaws of A Forest of Stars council-decided and ratified. “This is unusual?”, you ask. “A band generally adhering to their own established sound throughout an almost 20-year career? Pish posh with your silly corporate analogy. That’s what bands do!” Yet, who does A Forest of Stars but A Forest of Stars? Who can sustain for six full-length albums a sound and structure so seemingly unsustainable at length? In THIS economy?!

“Ay, there’s the FUCKING rub” – Will S.

(An aside of full disclosure – I’ve always felt intimidated by my colleagues preternatural ability to shotgun their own reviews with FFOs and apt comparisons to existing works, both within metal and apart. I tried hard to compete with this one, but there’s only so many times I can think about David Lynch in a single day.)

Press copy for Stack Overflow describes the album as “British Black Metal”. Glean from that what you personally may – I, for one, take away “a fourth of a fifth of” not much. What does it mean for music to be “British” outside of its location of origin? Perhaps someone more anglophilic than I can give a right proper answer to that query. The quieter moments of A Forest of Stars’ music certainly evoke a pastoral quality: simple, open harmony with uncomplicated melody. Never do they stray into Akercocke-ian levels of brutal, though they do share a penchant for histrionics. Neither do they delve into the more folky/atmo vein ala a Wodensthrone or Fen. What remains?

A Forest of Stars as a black metal band also does not compute, though sufficient evidence exists to bolster that claim. Historically their album art has leaned into the dark and mysterious. They dress like Ren Faire aficionados. To date, they have roughly seven hours of recorded material, a significant chunk of which contains blast beats, tremolo-picked leads, raspy vocals. The troupe weave arcane tales, musically and lyrically, but upon cross-examination there is something else at play within their work, an out-of-body experience where the spirit of black metal is looking up at its earthly shell, gnashing its teeth at its decaying carcass.

Let’s pose a hypothetical. It is an alternate timeline and my ears have yet to be corrupted by A Forest of Stars in any capacity. You tap me on the shoulder and hand me an iPod (stay with me please it’s just a hypothetical) upon which is one file, “A Prophet for a Pound of Flesh” from A Shadowplay For Yesterdays. You goad me to sit in the nearest Victorian era-looking chair (we have to drive around a bit), and press play. Ten minutes later, upon the track’s conclusion, you ask me, “Now, sir, tell me about that black metal tune what you just heard, would ya?” My forehead would wrinkle, and you better believe that fucker sharpei wrinkles. “Black metal? You reductive, silly person. That was A Forest of Stars.”

“There is nothing either good or bad, but reviewing makes it so” – Billiam of Shake’s Pier

Stack Overflow In Corpse Pile Interface eschews the compositional maximalism exhibited by A Shadowplay For Yesterdays. It’s downright reserved compared to Grave Mounds and Grave Mistakes. It is, in ferocity, the mid-life lull to The Corpse of Rebirth‘s youthful bile. It is also their magnum opus.

“Ascension of the Clowns” lilts in on e-bowed guitar before the violin of Katheryne, Queen of the Ghosts’ violin establishes the opening theme. The rest of the ensemble enters soon and we are slowly waltzing, the stately theme floating elegantly over the band, patient and threatening like a snake preparing to uncoil. “I AM MY OWN MAGGOT CONSUMING MYSELF,” introduces the familiar mania of Mister Curse. This is the AFoS we know and love – the dichotomy of the uninhibited soapbox madman’s ravings underpinned by an accompaniment, as far as it may be presented within the intensity spectrum of black metal anyway, of a relatively staid group of musicians. Stack Overflow, however, more than any of their previous albums, widens that distance by a considerable degree. If we consider “vocals”‘ and “the rest of the instrumentation” as distinct elements that do NOT combine into the hegemonic whole that is “the music”, and further, if we consider these distinct elements as a dial, numbered 1-11, controlling a level of stability (in terms of the conventionally harmonic, the amount of frenzy in the delivery, etc), I picture the dials as shown below, except instead of boring words they are very cool knobs with numbers and LEDs:

VOCALS – 9 / THE REST OF THE INSTRUMENTATION – 4? 3? 

All that horseshit is to say this – now, more than ever before, do these two facets of A Forest of Stars utilize each other to maximize the band’s impact. The true strength of the output can be assessed in both direction – the halves’ tremendous ability to repel each other is equal to their ability to cleanly snap together. I didn’t understand that until I could step back and see both interactions. Admittedly, for the first number of listens to Stack Overflow I could not get past the rivalry. There are entire portions of songs, verses if you will, that Mister Curse chews the scenery into smaller and smaller pieces until you can’t remember what the backdrop looked like. Conversely, there are moments of sublime melodiousness where the band is laying back on a groove, locked into a melancholy chord progression, and you dread the moment Mister Curse returns. This is the game, though. You can’t have one without the other, and before long you itch for the yin to swallow the yang and the yang to regurgitate the yin.

“Roots Circle Usurpers” is an actualization of this concept. The first two minutes showcase the ability of our string players to awe with the understated. Delicate and deliberate violin melodies sing over a driving, folky clean guitar. Mr. Titus Lungbutter’s bass stays supportive but active, adding in some pleasing counterpoint. At 3:10, the curtain burns away and Mister Curse, though still smouldering, reins it in just a touch rhythmically, so that he and the band can finally dance together, if only for a few minutes. The track builds and builds to an enrapturing climax around 6:30, but like all earthly climaxes it is short-lived. Katheryne, Queen of Ghosts, enters, leading another waltz, her tone cool and calm. These two sections, in particular, are perfect examples of the type of maneuver A Forest of Stars can pull off album after album after album – the long and powerful full-band enchantment where the chord progression hits just in such a way where you never want it to end, and the stage-clearing aria, portentious and beautiful, a respite from what you’ve gone through and yet also a harbinger of future peril. And indeed, future peril arrives. Mister Curse rejoins the fray, howling and gnashing, as the track barrels forward to its rapturous end. The layering of the weeping, descending violin line over the crumbling blast beats and the guitars’ lovesick tremolo gives me goosebumps. To quote a salient lyric from a previous track – “WOW.”

Famous American actor of screen and primary lyrical muse of Stack Overflow In Corpse Pile Interface, Owen Wilson

“You speak an infinite deal of nothing” – William Shakespeare

He’s right, you know? Sometimes it’s difficult to convey the magnitude of one’s appreciation without flitting off into loving, unfortunately tangential directions. A track by track breakdown of Stack Overflow In Corpse Pile Interface would give you the black and white play by play, sure, but does not that approach lose the “why” of it all? Guitars riff, drums pound, vocals howl, songs end and others begin. We’d get just as far reading copy descriptions of “Musical Black Metal”. The “why” is the “what” made human, and A Forest of Stars create deeply human music, despite their every effort to shock and disgust. They tap into suppressed and/or hidden feelings through the sheer force of the totality of the presentation. Final track, “Not Drinking Water”, epitomizes my point.

They don’t bring out every weapon in their arsenal to close the album. Mister Curse, for example, is so comparatively sedate as to possibly have been medicated (not out of the question considering his output over the previous 5 tracks). The song is composed extremely similarly to the other tracks on the album – long form, patient, ebbing and flowing from violent peaks to solemn valleys, a description that can apply equally to a majority of songs in their catalog. Did you forget the whiteboard? I digress. In fact, compared to some of the wilder moments of the album this far, “Not Drinking Water” is for the most part serene, pedestrian. Then, you arrive at the 37th second of the 8th minute.

I refuse to over-describe the last portion of the song, but suffice it to say it is so bludgeoning, so complete in its A Forest of Starsitude that if the band called it quits tomorrow, I couldn’t think of a more fitting conclusion. I’m giddy for you to get there and to absorb / be absorbed.

All these words and we didn’t even sniff the lyrics! Good luck with those. My American education learnt me some square dancing but this ain’t Kansas anymore. Endless, dithering descriptions of mood and we didn’t even discuss the immaculate production work! Interminable attempts to scrutinize the inscrutable and we didn’t unpack Stack Overflow In Corpse Pile Interface?! By god, that was my opener! Could someone crank “God Save The King”, please?

A Forest of Stars – Stack Overflow In Corpse Pile Interface (A Heavily Condensed and Lovingly Blunt Review by I. Hams

Indifference / Fascination

Repulsion / Connection

The End / The End

A Forest of Stars – 2026

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Cognizance’s In Light, No Shape serves as a useful reminder that when it comes to our musical preferences, our whats are subservient to our whys. If, for example, you are a fan of the early ‘90s wave of technical death metal forefronted by bands like Death, Atheist and Cynic because you favored the guitar-forward production, catchy riffs and refined melodic sensibility, then the Leeds, U.K.’s fourth full-length might be right up your alley. However, if that particular clutch of bands caught your ear simply because they were offering some of the most innovative and technically accomplished metal on the market at the time–because they were something new– then I’m not sure Cognizance’s latest will scratch your itchy parts.

At 1:52 of closing track “The Zone,” twin guitars harmonize legato riffs over a splashy but not overly flashy odd-meter rhythm laid down by polymelian skins-man David Diepold. Once you meet In Light, No Shape where it’s at, it’s hard to stop noticing all the exceptionally neat and well-executed musical moments it has to offer.

Photo by Nadine Geuter

But, what of the latter group? Those who, yes, have made knowing and loving music the very essence of their existence, but are also in search of something novel. Perhaps they heard it on Unquestionable Presence, and so simply won’t hear it here. In 2026, their pleasure center can only be accessed by the sound of flash-frozen rotisserie chickens being fed into a high-efficiency toilet with a flusher that activates a rusty garbage disposal attachment. It’s up for debate as to whether this particular album of complex but easily discernible riffs, drum patterns, and vocal lines is too complex or not complex enough for that crowd, but in the final estimation, it is probably not enough for that kind of mind. And, full disclosure, I can feel where they’re coming from. Despite its many merits, In Light, No Shape’s narrow dynamic range and predictable pacing do have a tendency to fade into background noise. This may be because, while no doubt a challenging album to compose and perform for the band, this style of moderately tempered technical death metal doesn’t really pose any serious challenges to the listener.

I ultimately stand somewhere between these two groups. As much as I seek to have my breath taken away by metal’s unique capacity to repulse, terrify and scandalize, I’m also a bit of a dork who likes when bass, drums and guitars do cool stuff. Cool stuff indeed abounds here. Up top, we discussed what we like and why we like what we like. So I think now it’s appropriate to mention our hows – if yours revolve around seeking the initial rush of exhilaration that attends setting foot on uncharted territory, then you’ll find little respite here, weary traveler. But if you’re the type to set aside some attentive time for new dogs doing some old tricks well, then this might be a place to stop and rest a while.

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Prog, of course, is known for technical musicianship and songwriting complexity above all else, a reputation well-earned by the early giants of the genre and happily maintained by their progeny ever since. It’s also true that those things have come together too often in gratuitous grandstanding, leading to Prog’s reputation for soulless wankery, also well-earned and happily maintained.

One reaction to Prog’s chronic masturbation problem has been a focus by many more modern bands on atmosphere, texture, and cinematic scope over technical musicianship, still frequently intricate and complex, just not in the spotlight hungry kind of way. The common problem with that style of Prog is that it’s boring as shit.

Montreal’s Karcius navigates the space in between. Founded in 2001 as an instrumental jazz fusion band by four pals, Karcius spent the better part of two decades melding jazz with whatever complementary style best suited a musical idea. Their eclectic prog fusion echoed the sounds of luminaries across the musical spectrum like Return to Forever and Weather Report, Pink FLoyd and Electric Light Orchestra, Ozric Tentacles and Liquid Tension Experiment.

For 2009’s The First Day, Karcius introduced new lead singer and bassist, Sylvain Auclair, and in 2018 they released The Fold, the first of a planned trilogy of albums exploring the complexities of relationships and their underlying emotion and psychology. The Fold and 2022’s follow-up, Grey White Silver Yellow & Gold, are excellent albums that showcase the band’s ability to make complex songs that hold the listener’s attention with creative musical storytelling and without relying on technical flash. Black Soul Sickness is the band’s seventh album overall and the final chapter of the trilogy.

Looking at the cover art, the shift in tone from Grey White Silver Yellow & Gold’s bright and variegated palette to the stark black and white of Black Soul Sickness hints at the musical development within. Each album in the trilogy has been heavier and darker than what came before and Black Soul Sickness continues that trend. Similarly, the lyrics are cryptic and sharp, acknowledging the complexity of human experience in both our vulnerabilities and our tendency to exploit those of others.

Though the turn from instrumental jazz to dark, heavy prog was completed long ago, the structures now more closely modeled after prog rock and metal, the essence of jazz remains, particularly in the drumming, rhythmic interplay, and in the way each player fills the spaces between crafted pieces. The influences now tend toward well known quantities: Genesis by way of Dream Theater, Opeth, Porcupine Tree, and Riverside, Pink Floyd, Marillion and Pain Of Salvation.

But the new listener, however schooled in that class of influences, will surely be ill-prepared for the breadth of pop and R&B inspiration driving Auclair’s vocal melodies, coarse and stout as they can be. It’s not obvious whether he or the band made the conscious decision to pull from the FM radio melody makers of the 80s and 90s, or if he just has that soul, but the end result is supremely inspired vocals that add passionate fire to each song, especially in the choruses.

As if top notch vocals weren’t enough, Auclair is an extraordinary bass player, which is on display from the get-go on “Wallow.” The 13+ minute opener burns a low, slow crescendo from anxious, searching piano and guitar interplay to big riff prog metal of the modern style. It takes a few minutes to get there but the payoff is so sweet. Auclair’s prechorus and chorus are the kind that have you reaching for a lighter you (probably) don’t even carry anymore and he’ll have you headbanging in the bridges. The midsection breaks it all down for a bit of fanfare from Sébastien Cloutier on keyboards, but it’s Auclair stealing the show again as he matches Cloutier’s keys with the bass all the way up front in the mix. It’s very neat.

“Out Of Nothing” is a supreme combination of tension and release within a fairly standard prog metal structure and alt rock melody. The build to the first chorus is amazing, chirping riffs and propulsive beats driving the melody from underneath to such an effective pre-chorus that you might find yourself punching through the ceiling when the chorus hits. Like so many of Karcius’ songs, “Out Of Nothing” does not feature a solo. There is a bridge with a bit of melodic lead but the job of rousing the listener is left entirely to the song proper.

Like all good prog, there’s plenty of extras at work here around and between those killer riffs and powerful vocals. “Darkest Heir” uses keyboards tuned to sound like modulated vocals to emphasize the duality of human desires. “Rise” features guitar that makes it feel a little like the blues, especially in the clean picked bridge, which is a clever way of highlighting the song’s theme of struggle and resilience. “Slow Down Son” is bare bones piano, lo-fi scratchy rhythm, and gentle riffs that, together with a warm and poignant melody, answers the burning question of what it might sound like if Marillion covered a Seal song written by Peter Gabriel in 2026.

“Awakening The Spirit,” opens with a jazzy intro and a vocal performance that highlights the range and agility of Auclair as he moves effortlessly from light, smooth, cleans to gravelly roar and back. It’s a beautiful song that maximizes the power of slow crescendo to its ascendant chorus. And it’s here that Karcius finally offer up some fireworks, beginning with an understated guitar solo, a keyboard solo, brief and low-key, building together from simple to complex and then finally interweaving in a bit of dual soloing, albeit for a relatively short run.

At 45 minutes for 7 songs, Black Soul Sickness is an efficient album, especially after the long opener. That’s important because it seems to be consistent with the band’s aim of prioritizing the feel of the songs and their lyrics. There are virtually no instrumental acrobatic tête-à-têtes in the way of the old school. At the same time, these songs are made up of so much more than just emotive sounds and layered textures. Rather, the intricacies at work are crafted in service of the themes. While that means opportunities for showing off are dismissed in favor of musical devices that support the themes, the flashiness isn’t likely to be missed except when one is actively looking for those things. Deep listening, on the other hand, with lyrics and mindful attention, will surely be rewarded deeply by an album that speaks to the heart, because it comes from the heart.

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In the interest of full disclosure, I will admit that I’ve always found the concept of the split to be flawed. It works best when there’s a shared theme or the band’s involved cover each other’s songs, but when it’s just one band on side A and a label-mate on side B for the purpose of… well, apparently just sort of holding hands together, the inevitability of a clear winner in some sort of imaginary scrum gets pulled front and center. Making matters even trickier, those victories often seem to be landslides. I don’t know why, I’m just here as a casual listener. The solution? Show up to the fight with your A-game ratcheted up to the Nth degree, or, you know, just stick to the always reliable EP.

Thankfully, in this case we don’t quite have an avalanche victory, but it’s pretty close. And once the dust begins to settle, I would definitely confirm that one side rambles from the veil as the ultimate conqueror: Mystic Storm.

Am I a shitty human for treating these sorts of releases like a Thunderdome tournament? Potentially! But at this point I can no longer avoid it, and the Mystic Storm side of the coin just so happens to hold a more intriguing story arc and delivers more impactful songs.

Were you there for Mystic Storm’s debut, 2021’s ear-shattering Из хаоса древних времён (From the Ancient Chaos)? It was a fairly big hit around these parts, thanks to the sheer force of its melodic thrashing glory. Here’s how I described it in one of our Missing Pieces write-ups from that year:

“…an aggressive and aggressively melodic style of thrash reminiscent of the Teutonic scene in the late 80s—Vendetta, Grinder and the raw fury of Protector—with enough galloping Sword & Sorcery trad metal that one could make just as strong a case for tagging them #fuckingepicheavymetal as they might #conanthrash.”

And adding to that windfall, there was this in regards to the band’s kick-ass vocalist:

“Anya conjures the ancient spirits of Debbie Gunn (Sentinel Beast), Tam Simpson (from the mighty Sacrilege) and especially Dawn Crosby (Detente—whose song “Vultures in the Sky” gets covered as a closer for the record), and that’s honestly something we could use a lot more of in thrash and thrash-infused metal in general.”

Fast forward one year later and we finally have our first evidence of where Mystic Storm is headed, and it is… rather different compared to what was being pushing five years ago. I’ve lost count how many times a thrash band has gone light(er), but working in Mystic Storm’s favor is the fact that they’ve always had a strong Sword & Sorcery tilt, so the shift from their debut LP to Wandering Time isn’t exactly shocking in a thrash-to-doom “Sacrilege from Within the Prophecy to Turn Back Trilobite” sort of way. It’s definitely in a nearby neighborhood, though.

The good news is that the music still packs plenty of power, but that energy is a little more magickal than it is outright RAGING in 2026. So, instead of Detente fueling the thrash, think of any number of 80s’ bands that brushed thrash but mostly just heavy metalled: Heretic, Metal Church, etc. And in lieu of Eternal Champion for the trad influence, now look toward any modern throwback band that pushes an atmospheric form of trad metal built on the foundation of Queensrÿche’s The Warning or Sacred Blade’s Of the Sun + Moon. So… FFO Vulture’s Vengeance, essentially.

The title track from the Mystic Storm side of the coin is a great example of most everything mentioned above. It’s the shortest of the three new cuts and takes about a minute and a half to finally kick into a steady gallop, but once it’s there you will eventually hear that sort of ‘nocturnal atmosphere’ tattooed up and down the melody provided by the guitar. Svetlana wails and has a bit more range compared to Anya, which matches the new face of the band that explores a more diverse assemblage of moods, and the rhythm occasionally flashes these deep, cavernous booms to help increase the overall weight. That dip into a much mellower face about 3:20 in is done much more elegantly compared to the way they managed similarly on the previous LP, and it gives the overall mood a bit of a King Diamond flare—the only thing missing is King’s penchant for layering a wide range of sinister laughter to augment the dark atmosphere. Sweet burnin’ lead in the closing 30 seconds, too.

By contrast, the Savage Master side of the split really does nothing new, so expect more of the same straightforward, hard rockin’ classic metal that’s basically tailor-made for fist-pumping exercises at the very front of the venue as your back takes a beating from the occasional moshing tubbster in a freshly stitched battle vest. As a studio band, Savage Master has always been consistent enough to draw interest, but they don’t exactly emphasize a ton of exploration, which is something that feels even more stressed here because the three songs just aren’t as catchy as works in the past. They’re short—just shy of 9 minutes total, compared to the Mystic Storm flip-side that serves up 18—and they mostly chase past with only a splashy lead to give them anything truly notable to grab hold of. It’s nothing I’d dismiss outright, and I’m sure Stacey Savage would bring them more life from the stage (they are, at their core, a live band), but compared to all that’s new with Mystic Storm and Wandering Time, The Power side of this split just can’t help but fall short.

Bottom line: the split has once again done what splits always manage to do, which is pit combatants in a battle of the bands to the death.

TWO BANDS ENTER, ONE BAND LEAVES. TWO BANDS ENTER, ONE BAND LEAVES. TWO BANDS ENTER, ONE BAND LEAVES!

And in this clash, Mystic Storm wins the day.

Left: Savage Master // Right: Mystic Storm

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Petrichor, the sixth full length album from Greece’s epic metal stalwarts Battleroar, commences with the sound of rain and an invitation to reflect. That word, “petrichor,” is a relatively new one (coined by scientists in 1964) but it marks a sensation as old as our ability to perceive it.

pe·​tri·​chor 

: a distinctive, earthy, usually pleasant odor that is associated with rainfall especially when following a warm, dry period

The smell of fresh rain on dry ground; it’s a pleasant but portentous thing. We don’t always know what comes with rain, especially if it’s an infrequent guest. Anyone with four walls to call their own knows how much of our mental forces are marshaled toward finding ways to divert it from our doorstep. But we nevertheless bask in the smell of petrichor, appreciate it for what it is, and stiffen our backs to face what is to come.

To my ears, this is Battleroar’s most stout offering to date—a disposition you may be inclined to associate with American practitioners of this style—yet Petrichor also finds them sounding more European than ever. The compositions march with a heavy footfall, but I don’t hear swagger on the track, I hear something like resoluteness. Take for example “Atē, Hybris, Nemesis,” a mid-paced wanderer that really only embraces its inner berserker once a bit of chaos strikes at the 4-minute mark in the form of a storm-calling violin solo performed by newcomer Alex Papadiamantis. Here the song shakes itself awake with something like the urgency of a prizefighter tasting his own blood for the first time. Here we get that full-spectrum feeling of thunderous drums and galloping guitars. Here we get that subtle barometric shift from “something is coming” to “something is here.” Petrichor.

Longtime fans of Battleroar oughta know that Petrichor features the debut of vocalist Michalis Karasoulis. I don’t think I’m being too hyperbolic by describing Karasoulis’ performance as a significant departure from those logged by former vocalist Gerrit Mutz on Codex Epicus (2018) and Blood of Legends (2014). Mutz was game and gritty, but Karasoulis is, frankly, a fuckin’ killer. While not a paint scraper, he’s soulful, sturdy and emotive despite never sounding taxed by his vocal lines. You hear his full bag of tricks on mid-album highlight, “The Earth Remembers, The Rain Forgives.” The rich, weathered timbre of Karasoulis’ voice is one thing, his expansive range is another and yet another still is the cheek-piercing hook of the chorus’ vocal melody. It’s easily my most replayed moment on an album that offers more than a few. You’ll want to hear it, feel it, again and again.

If any fans are harboring suspicions that Karasoulis’ refinement might rob Battleroar of its rugged charm, I’d like to collegially suggest you just drop that. Because, here’s the thing, the instrumentalists in Battleroar have sharpened their game as well. On a song-by-song basis, this is some of the heaviest and most melodic work the band has put to wax. Memorable riffs abound (“What is Best in Life?” might have more “damn, I wanna learn how to play that” moments than any track I’ve heard this year).

The guitar leads throughout Petrichor are melodic but rarely ornate, and while Papadiamantis’ violin adds a dash of flash, his focus seems to be coloring in some emotional shades not present on the band’s earlier work. It’s not the time to definitively argue that this is the best Battleroar album, but they’ve put their noses to the grindstone to create an album that’s both technically accomplished and emotionally resonant. I think it’s something the band oughta be proud of and fans oughta embrace. 

It’s notable to me that this is the first Battleroar album to be released since the passing of longtime mentor / collaborator Mark Shelton. Shelton’s Manilla Road is tops among Battleroar’s similar artists list on Metal-Archives.com, despite the fact that the two bands don’t really sound all that similar. Of course, Battleroar plays epic heavy metal, a style Shelton pioneered–but the connection is deeper than just that. Shelton means so much to so, so many because he told stories in his own voice. It’s why Manilla Road’s style could dramatically shift from one album to the next (stop to consider that Crystal Logic precedes Out of the Abyss by just five years) and fans would embrace the progression as nothing less than totally natural. Because it was Shark being Shark. Is Battleroar on that level? I have a feeling even founder and mastermind Kostas Tzortzis would slap me if I suggested such a thing. But they’re telling their own story, and they’re only getting better. The something that’s coming might already be here. Petrichor. 

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A revision is necessary: you and I don’t really know each other, but I do know you are already tired of this. Friend, same. Shall we invite Ignobleth to join the conversation? If you just cried aloud, “No! I want to talk more about Ferdinand de Saussure!” kindly leave the hall (but gimme a sly high-five on the way out). So… Ignobleth! They are three people from Italy and on this their debut album, they make a whole lot of fucking good noise! To further tarnish my already-suspect writerly credibility, I don’t even particularly think Ignobleth is playing in the war metal sandbox on Manor of Primitive Anticreation! So, what the fuck, right? Well, try this on for size, toots: whatever style they might be playing, Ignobleth’s excellent album has got me thinking a lot about… visual art.

Just like music, visual art is a big tent, and it’s also just as rife with asininely arcane microdistinctions in lineage, technique, influence, intent, and style. But just to wrap our arms around a more manageable comparison, let’s think about drawing as death metal. Think of a kid fat-fisting a set of crayons in brownish reds and sickly yellow-greens, tongue poking out the side of the mouth while a waxy sheen gathers on the side-heel of the hand. Imagine an evocative, abstract monochrome of charcoal shadings, and then picture a sharp, stark geometry of ballpoint lines and scaffolded angles. All of these are death metal, so of course war metal can be, too, but… it’s mostly scribbles, right? Like, if I listen to war metal while thinking about drawing, I can easily conjure the smell of pencil shavings, the pile of broken graphite tips, the garish and glossy furrows delved into fibrous paper. The point is, all these expressions belong to the same basic artistic idiom, but often the only true way to parse them is to point your perceiving apparatus at them and… see if it moves.

Manor of Primitive Anticreation is satisfying and magnificently destructive across its 44-minute runtime, but of course it is hardly sui generis. When I listen to Ignobleth’s persistent racket, my busted ears mostly hear a kinship with bands like Embrace of Thorns, Blasphemophagher, Demoncy’s Joined in Darkness, Ascended Dead, Archgoat, and Ectovoid. Where some listeners likely find the rough stylistic ballpark that we’re mapping out with that constellation to be relentlessly frantic, in truth the best acts in this milieu are the ones that balance fast, frantic intensity with a relative economy of songwriting. So yes, Ignobleth spends plenty of time mashing their strings and bashing the drumkit with the fervor of an industrial meat grinder on PCP, but within each song, they are moving between a relatively small number of distinct sections with a clear, internal logic.

“Obelisk of Deformity” starts things off with a massive death-doom heft and a patient lead-in before things whip into a full-on frenzy at 1:30 in. “And the Lunar Mass Shatters” is one of the least forgiving tunes on the album, but even here it pulls back for a (heavy) breather midway through and adds some extra layered octave guitar. Elsewhere, at around the 2:30 mark in “Warped Abyssal Architectures,” the band drops into a surprising, nearly funky half-time bridge with some slight guitar bends, and then again just before the 4-minute mark of the album’s closer, I could swear they’re having some fun (especially in the drumming). 

The two-part “Proselyte Pig” might be the album’s finest section, though. Part I is a six-minute marathon of various hypnotically rhythmic sections of slipstream-quick drumming and head-nodding low tones, but as it burns out into Part II, the band pivots to an incredibly sparse drum and distorted bass opening, which patiently re-amps up to a core menacing tone. They string you along as if the whole piece will sit in an almost Blut Aus Nord-queasy churn, but then kick the chair out from under you. Listen carefully at about 2:27 for the album’s snakiest, most sneakily melodic riff, but then after that quit worrying about being careful about anything, because you know where you are? You’re in the [manor], baby. And you’re gonna [be anticreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeated].

Bryan Maita’s excellent artwork for Manor of Primitive Anticreation is instructive. At first glance, you might almost mistake it for something in the style of Gustave Doré’s famous wood engravings, especially with the winged figures in the sky. But then the eye settles into the squish factor, with mouths and tentacles and pustulated tree roots, and you consider how the composition could almost lean towards Seagrave-ish architecture. There’s dotting, curling, sideways slashing marks, and if the top leans mystical and ominous, the foreground seethes with playful malevolence. Doesn’t that tell you more than enough about the sounds behind the scenes? Be better than me: shut your trap and listen to Ignobleth. Grind your teeth, bang your head, coat the earth in the penstrokes of your intent.

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