CD

CD re-issue of the third full-length by one of the purest Old School Black Metal acts, PEST.

PEST were created with the sole goal to deliver pure Black Metal in the old vein with no females or keyboards. 'Rest In Morbid Darkness' consists of nine hymns bleeding from infernal energies, violent sickness, lurking horror and triumphant bloodshed, all in the spirit of blackened demo metal. The music is spawned in the darkest of depths from the inhuman mind. Deceitful, deranged and depraved music from the true tyrants of Swedish Black Metal.

The band is not newcomers, but they are bringer of new impulses. Challenging the spiritual possibilities of seeing beyond the void and into the nothingness of nothing. Opening your ears and hearts to the underworld of nihilism and despair. Taking their name from the Mesopotamian monster figure Anzû. Described as a divine storm bird who could breathe fire and water or in some descriptions as a lion-headed eagle. Either also as the personification of the southern wind and the thunder clouds.

Their music speaks for itself, however. Fabolous musicianship on every instrument and a great live band, they have managed to create their own sound and image of another world in their own special way.

This new opus plunges into the abyss, where ancient rites and mythic forces collide. From the crumbling remains of mortality to the furious storm of Sumerian fiends, KUR pulses with raw emotion, evoking despair, awe, and a confrontation with the unknown. Amidst these powerful themes, the eternal dance between life and death, pride and submission, unfolds.

Prepare to be cast into the depths of KUR, where you’ll be beckoned to confront the void—and in doing so, transcend it.

Digipak Limited 200

The most prominent and significant American death/funeral doom emissaries EVOKEN succeed their 2018 landmark Hypnagogia album with their seventh full-length opus Mendacium set for release on Oct 17. A work that will reveal itself as one of the darkest and most oppressive EVOKEN albums among their unparalleled repertoire.

Where 2018’s Hypnagogia would see the band capture and focus on a more melancholic, tangible, and even more of an accessible sonic design, Mendacium takes that acute shift back to the monumental dirge-like dread and woeful catacombic and disharmonious heaviness reminiscent of the band’s Quietus and Antitheses of Light masterworks. All while still encapsulating the tectonic-shifting nature of their Caress of the Void and Atra Mors releases while venturing more through classic gothic audial textures and even treading a little down experimental mire as well, reminiscing an aura seeping from such luminary artists as Dead Can Dance, Monumentum, and Disembowelment.

To signal this shift in sound harking back to this previous era, the band would recall the services of producer Ron “Bumblefoot” Thal who worked with EVOKEN on their Antithesis of Light and Quietus albums respectively. The result being Mendacium capturing a sepulchral heaviness saturated in ambience with even more of an emphasis on deathlike dread and anguish; an ambience reflecting the depths and catacombs of an ancient cathedral or monastery, ultimately defining Mendacium as EVOKEN’s most powerful sounding album to date.

Pain Effulgence, the third album from Innumerable Forms sees founder Justin DeTore (Dream Unending, Sumerlands) and crew (who comprise of members from bands such as Iron Lung, Power Trip, Mammoth Grinder, and Genocide Pact) deliver their most powerful tectonic-shifting release yet. Pain Effulgence sees IInnumerable Forms elevate the trajectory, initially brought forth with their Punishment In Flesh debut and 2022’s Philosophical Collapse, to a new plateau of megalithic death/doom artistry. Old-school early ’90s Finnish death metal coalescing with early ’90s UK death / doom (i.e. old Paradise Lost and old Anathema) continues to be the blueprint upon which Innumerable Forms contrive their sound from and with Pain Effulgence, it continues to become that much more towering and imposing. Akin to feeling the weight of an immense ancient stone of granite being lowered upon you, overwhelming suffocating darkness and monumental mournful triumph, Pain Effulgence was produced by Arthur Rizk and features art by Katie Muller.

Manchester’s savage sons Wode return with their fourth album, Uncrossing The Keys, marking a confident expansion of their already formidable sound built upon a shadowy foundation of feral black metal and ironclad heavy metal heft. Having evolved from the more straightforward methodology of the debut album, Wode has continuously added elements from various dark corners of the underground across its discography, with songwriting that has grown leaner yet more intricate, focused and melodic than ever.

Theurgion are a new doom metal entity featuring members involved in bands such as Chaos Moon, Krieg, Häxanu, Azelisassath, Kveldstimer, and Collier d’Ombre (just to name a few of the many projects the three members of this band are involved in). Theurgion play towering and melancholic death-via-traditional doom metal. All Under Heaven is comprised of seven sculptured sonic monuments that hail those that came before (Solitude Aeturnus, mid-era Bathory, old Katatonia, old Anathema, first October Tide LP etc.) while carving its solitary monolith to merge itself in the new age.

A bludgeoning autopsy of death metal, gore and deathgrind, the low-tuned grooves, discordant leads and mid-tempo rumble of Cerebral Rot is evident in tracks like “Spinous Forms Of Mortal Abhorrence” and the title-track while setting the bar for a melted transformation into more ghastly liquified forms. The gargling slime vox of Ian Schwab are dangerously radioactive, summoned straight from the sealed basement of a nuked morgue narrating a splatter-fest of morbid poetry, decomposing flesh, absurd experiments, and gruesome transgression. Each song plays out like a medical examiner’s case file crossed with the fevered ramblings of a psychopath—precise in its anatomical horror and repugnant in its bizarre depravity.

Decrepisy returns with brutally gothic doom-laden death metal on their second full-length album, Deific Mourning. Leaning heavier on the doom side of death than their first output, Emetic Communion, Deific Mourning pulls from goth-industrial influences that seep through the infected wounds that comprise the decomposing body of the album. Each track a stage of grief and unbelief as life abandons form into the mystery of the unknown. Stillborn in anxiety, grief, and sickness, every riff agonizingly culled from terror, despair and disintegration of a dying form. A body desecrated by vaccine damage, an inflamed nervous system and dysautonomia, pumping fear into every heart beat and waking moment. Deific Mourning was recorded by Charles Koryn (Ascended Dead, Chthonic Deity, Thanamagus) at Elektric City Recording with Vocal tracking, Reamping, mixing, and mastering handled by Greg Wilkinson (Autopsy, Necrot, Mortuous) at Earhammer Studio. Additional vocals, synths, and noisescapes performed by Leila Abdul-Rauf (Hammers of Misfortune, Saros, Vastum) and Gabriel Lageson. Cover illustrations by Kyle House (Acephalix, Necrot, Vastum) with an additional inner sculpture by Emil Melmoth.

Icons of goth and doom, PARADISE LOST will release their long-awaited, 17th album Ascensionon September 19th. The band’s first album in 5 years, following 2020’s critically acclaimed Obsidian, was produced by guitarist Gregor Mackintosh and mixed/mastered by Lawrence Mackrory. Ascension is a testament to the band’s longevity and relevance over their 35+ year career, encompassing their signature styles of gothic, death and doom fans have cherished along the way.

Ascension’s album cover fittingly features the painting The Court of Death (1870-1902) by renowned British artistGeorge Frederic Watts, which hangs in the ate Gallery in London. The painting depicts Death as an enthroned angel flanked by allegorical figures of Silence and Mystery guarding sunrise and the star of hope, while a warrior surrenders his sword and a duke his coronet, showing that worldly status offers no protection. The painting’s bleak, prophetic vision embodies Ascension’s dark, tormented soundscapes as mournful verses collide with dire, foreboding riffs