CD

After years of silence, Toroidh returns with a somber new chapter — a fusion of dark ambient textures, martial industrial rhythms, and the distant echoes of funeral marches. Rooted in forest solitude and sharpened by a deep contempt for human folly, this album explores the fleeting nature of freedom — a concept always just out of reach, always reshaped by history and hubris.

Bleak. Reflective. Uncompromising.

Step into the cosmic night with Celestial Twilight: Beyond the Scarlet Veil — a symphonic black‑metal odyssey that weaves chilling riffs, soaring melodies and star‑lit atmospheres into one sprawling journey.

Silent Millenia channels the spirit of the greats (think 90s black‑metal classics) yet injects a modern, Finnish‑inflected grandeur. Expect shimmering synths, raw shrieks and melodic leads that swirl between the cosmic and the arcane, creating a soundscape where darkness meets astral majesty.

This is black metal reborn — cosmic, majestic and haunting.

Woebather returns with Swallowed by the Chains of Spirit Loss, a harrowing journey through sorrow, desolation, and the shadowed recesses of the human psyche. Released by Rabauw in a deluxe digipack with booklet, the album evokes the same crushing weight and spectral intensity that fans of Spectral Wound will recognize, blending devastating riffs with mournful melodies and atmospheric passages.

SMOHALLA's avant-garde black metal is overwhelming, rich in nuances, tempo shifts, and atmospherics. The arrangements are extremely layered; the structures, complex yet consistently coherent, serve a songwriting that masterfully interweaves epic dark melodies, nocturnal ambient/electronic interludes, and unstoppable explosions of metal violence, while Slo's vocal performance alternates between beastly screams and dreamy vocalizations.

The cosmic and hypnotic grandeur of "Ruina Draconis" is a religious experience that revives the great avant-black tradition of masters ARCTURUS and VED BUENS ENDE

Thirteen years later TEMPESTUOUS FALL are back to life with "The Descent of Mortals Past," which is not only the follow-up to "The Stars Would Not Awake You" but, more importantly, a reworking of the '90s death/doom style in light of the maturity and experience gained with MIDNIGHT ODYSSEY.

Today, as then, the music is grandiose and romantic, built on breathtaking melodies, shining like white cathedrals rising in the darkness of the night. Dis Pater alternates deep growls and his unmistakable, emotionally impactful clean vocals, intertwined with simple yet powerful doom riffs enhanced by the orchestral grandeur of the arrangements.

 Throughout the four lengthy tracks of "Obstinacy: Sisyphean Dreams Unfolded," FLESHVESSEL seem possessed. A kaleidoscope of colors pours forth from the rich instrumentation employed, which includes, among others, acoustic and electric guitars, flute, clarinet, piano, synthesizer, viola, and a multitude of exotic instruments. The vocals are also impressive and over the top, alternating deep growls and heavy metal falsettos, tying together bone-crushing death metal grooves and airy melodic landscapes into complex prog-style harmonic structures.

Burrowing into swirling, surreal and nightmarish scenarios, STRIGIFORM is a new entity from the void, exhibiting members of VERTEBRA ATLANTIS, AFRAID OF DESTINY and THIRST PRAYER, among the others. The Italian band's debut album, Aconite focuses on an intricate and incisive approach to songwriting, characterized by unorthodox riffs and a particular attention to the internal dynamics of the tracks, in order to maximize their impact.

Born between the UK and Morocco from the mysterious singer/multi-instrumentalist known as The Orator, TZEVAOT is a vehicle through which the occult - not just theatrics, but actual hidden mechanisms of reality - are unveiled. Merging the ever-malleable black metal sound with death, thrash and heavy metal elements, and with progressive, classical and jazz compositional influences, TZEVAOT’s first offering - appropriately named "The Hermetic Way" - is a dive into the ancient school of mystical understanding which ultimately gave rise to the modern scientific disciplines, bridged the gaps between pagan and Abrahamic theology, and bestowed the world with the greatest practical synthesis of Graeco-Egyptian wisdom.

Wrapped in a stunning painting by Luciana Nedelea, TZEVAOT’s “The Hermetic Way” is an album of magnetic charm, made even more intriguing on one track by the narration of Lon Milo DuQuette, the world’s most cited living occult author and a high-ranking figure in the Astrum Argenteum and the Ordo Templi Orientis, both institutions founded and shaped by Aleister Crowley during his lifetime. TZEVAOT complements the esoteric depth of their themes with incredibly creative music that, thanks to a mercurial songwriting, moves coherently and masterfully through every facet of black metal, tempering its raw, cutting sounds with compelling prog orchestrations.

Having released their self-titled debut album of progressive noise rock in 2022, French power trio CRATOPHANE returns to the scene with their brilliant blend of post-metal, heavy psych, noise rock and progressive, a sound that has previously earned them comparisons to the likes of SHELLAC, PELICAN, MAGMA, and CARBONIZED.

Their new album, "Exode" is once again an entirely instrumental work. Thanks to a multifaceted yet consistent style and a songwriting skill that has further refined in recent years, CRATOPHANE's music is a sonic journey full of surprises. "These are compositions that fall into the realm of a kind of instrumental, psychedelic, and cosmic prog metal," the band says, "in a spirit somewhere between BLIND IDIOT GOD and PELICAN, but played by fans of VOIVOD and ALUK TODOLO, with a mix of zeuhl-style melodies and many very dissonant, even noisy passages. In other words, a sort of RUSSIAN CIRCLES on LSD, trapped in an inhospitable parallel dimension."