CD

Slithering for over 45 minutes, this is a behemoth of death metal that will either destroy you or have you fully enveloped in its meaty mass for the duration. Plentiful clever grooves switch things up between the charnel atmospherics, so even the dullest mind will have its attention held. As each asphyxiating song creeps forth to swallow you, the void-like atmosphere continues swirling into itself and spitting out only the rotten remains of that which has crossed its path. From the whiplashing assaults to the slower moments of eerie decay, each moment has its own gruelling intensity to offer. There is no denying the sheer brute force in terms of the heaviness delivered here. Equally impressive is the totally harrowing ambience they conjure with these songs. Do not miss out on this ruthless slab of death, enter the festering realm of spewing atrocities…

2CD hardcover artbook (18x18 cm, 36 pages), incl. lyrics and extended artwork (400 copies available)

FEN are climbing to a new artistic height by coming down to earth with their eighth full-length "Elemental Part One: Mourning Earth". The East Anglian trio has turned to their 'roots' in every sense, by distilling the true essence of what constitutes their sound through everything that they have learned and added in the last two decades. While the previous album, "Monuments to Absence" (2023), was deliberately arranged dense, fast and intense, FEN decided to leave breathing space on this album to allow more time for themes and ideas to exhale and unfurl. Of course, there is still much sonic aggression but channelled differently as large parts of "Mourning Earth" were recorded live to allow an organic nature to flow, and to permit the natural rhythms of the pieces to develop. Lyrically, FEN sum up their basic idea behind "Elemental Part One: Mourning Earth" in their own poetic words: "The morning mists clearing over the boggy expanses of the fens to reveal another grey, gloom-laden day of sorrow and regret. And at twilight, the slow, sad realisation that tomorrow promises only more of the same – tormented by the half-heard whispers of the spirits bound to the soils, our pain continues. And we can only endure." With "Elemental Part One: Mourning Earth", FEN have reached a new pinnacle in their exciting career and achieved a perfect balance between their black metal foundations and post-black metal innovations. FEN take their listener on a journey to grim bogs, languid waterways, and dismal fogs over bare rock – yet on the other side waits a sense of surcease to the endless existential ennui within.

For more than fifteen years, Nachtzeit has explored the atmospheric fringes of black metal through his main project, Lustre. Emerging in 2008, the one-man project quickly carved out a distinctive sound: minimalistic, lo-fi compositions where layers of keyboards form the backbone. The result is music that often feels closer to ambient than traditional black metal – mesmerising, hypnotic, and built around melodies steeped in nostalgia, mysticism, and nature.

With Eitr, Nachtzeit takes this atmospheric sensibility one step further. Where Lustre still retains the distant pulse and distortion of black metal, Eitr strips away the remaining traces of the genre, focusing entirely on immersive ambience. The result feels like a more archaic, distinctly Nordic counterpart to Lustre’s dreamlike soundscapes.

The project’s second full-length, “Kvasis Dreyri”, draws its inspiration from Norse mythology and the legendary mead of poetry created from the blood of Kvasir. Across nine pieces named after the myth’s sacred vessels – Óðrærir, Són, and Boðn – the album comes to life through melancholic synthesiser melodies, subtle percussion, patient repetition, and vast ambient textures.

Saidan has been consistently dropping some of the most interesting takes on melodic black metal over the last year, and their second full-length album somehow manages to eclipse all of it with an almost effortlessly malevolent swagger. Mixing various strains of malicious raw black metal with d-beats and euphoric energy of hardcore and effervescent j-rock, cut up with some savage breakdowns and inspired segues, along with the lyrical themes of Japanese horror, folklore and the supernatural, this has the potential to give some people an out of body experience (and bring the BM purists out in hives).

Atmospheric furious Swedish Blackened Death Metal with deep roots in the 90’s!
Sarcasm rank among those Swedish Death Metal units that’s tricky to label. Tags such as “Swedeath” and “Melodic Death Metal” are far from the complete truth. The band has deliberately avoided those safe realms. There is so much to show and tell so they chose to embrace the much of the metal spectrum while remaining the outmost extreme.

The band has now reached their sixth album. This time they pushed the limits once more, the intense energy and speed combined with complex riffing and catchiness few bands can pull off has made Sarcasm truly top of the league. These 8 songs presented on their new album “Lifeforce Omnibound” show the band at their highest quality, musically and production-wise.

“Thrashin Blues” finally available again, Thrash Metal with a dirty blues edge!

Violent Playground is one of the many Thrash Metal bands that ended up forgotten without ever having serious opportunities; the fact is that they deserved much more than their peers. In 1988, they were able to create an unparalleled blend of Thrash Metal, Hardrock and Blues that did not open the doors to fame for them at all.

These five guys lived their musical experience exclusively within the underground scene for a relatively short time (about three years), without any chance to emerge in the slightest (at least to achieve the popularity of groups like Tankard, Razor, and so on). For this series of reasons, the group is one of the most ignored within its environment. And their “Thrashin Blues” has become a collector’s item. The only link Violent Playground has with the world outside the underground is the album cover: created by the famous Ed Repka, the same who drew for Megadeth, Death, Toxik, Vio-lence, and others.

It’s no coincidence that they deserved more than many other bands of the time: their only album is a true masterpiece. Frankly, we do not find a single excessive derivation, a single plagiarized note; you can hardly even hear the influences from the usual genre epigones, but the sound is typically thrash, accompanied by contamination ranging from Blues to Classic Rock. The production isn’t too raw for a record like this, made of captivating riffs and solos that haven’t been heard since the days of “Kill ‘Em All”. The originality of the product is evident from the very first spectacular seconds of the title track.

Unable to repeat themselves and strained by the harsh failure of the album, the Playground disbanded shortly after, and with them, that kind of explosive mix of “blues fusion” came to an end.