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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