CD

Official reissue of VORDVEN's full length album "Towards The Frozen Stream", originally released in 1999.
A majestic journey through frostbitten melodies, ancient atmospheres, and the raw spirit of nature. An album where melancholy and power flow together like an endless frozen river.
Available in a six panel digipak edition limited to 500 copies.

Release Date: May 22, 2026

Formed in the crucible of 2023, Finland's RITUALHAMMER emerge as a formidable force, drawing members from the legacies of Riivaus, Sacrificium Carmen, Mörbid Vomit, Licht Des Urteils, Coraxul, and Wömit Angel among others. While the majority of these members' background centers around black metal, their sound here in RITUALHAMMER is squarely within the most barbaric, violent expressions of death metal. In fact, their self-applied handle is APOCALYPTIC EVIL METAL.

And such is exactly what you'll be confronted with on RITUALHAMMER's debut album, Grand Pestilential Flame, now finding physical release courtesy of WEREWOLF. Reminding of many and no one, this nine-song / 28-minute statement of ripping, south-of-Heaven death metal begins its assault with no warning nor with no quarter given. Both frantic and finessed, RITUALHAMMER here tempt the corners of chaos with their churning angularity, but their just-tight-enough execution exudes all-too-tangible physicality that's a fist in the face of over-processed / punched-in "death metal." Likewise, their songwriting retains just enough linearity to latch onto and then many a diabolical construct is rubbed raw and rudely spat out, altogether making Grand Pestilential Flame a throwback to the ancient underground. As such, this band and record are highly recommended for maniacs of Order From Chaos, VOMITOR, Peru's Mortem, Germany's Desaster, and even earliest Deicide.

This new edition of ‘Gothic’, marking the album’s 35th anniversary, is presented on double CD, with remastered audio courtesy of Jaime Gomez Arellano at Orgone Studios. The bonus disc features the band Live in Ludwigsburg, 1991, performing tracks from Gothic and their debut album. The release also includes a four page booklet containing recollections from the band on the period and the shaping of the album,  as originally featured in 2021’s ‘The Lost and the Painless’.

MOONSPELL return via Napalm Records with Far From God, a record born out of five years of creative searching, doubt and ultimate rediscovery. Far from playing it safe, the Portuguese pioneers deliver a work that feels like a rebirth: darker, sharper and emotionally unfiltered. Rather than bending to modern trends, MOONSPELL double down on identity and substance. Far From God is a bold and beautiful statement of Gothic Metal in its purest form: dark, romantic, dramatic and unapologetically heavy.
The first single and album title track, “Far From God”, sets the album’s tone with burning intensity. A hymn to tragic vampiric love, the song revives the mystique and romantic darkness that once defined the genre, while layered keyboards subtly expand the atmosphere without softening its heaviness. Dense guitars, deep resonant vocals and dramatic dynamic shifts evoke a timeless gothic aesthetic, restoring danger and elegance to the narrative of the vampire.
Songs such as “Cross Your Heart” reveal a more affirmative side of the album, built on brooding melodic motifs and grounded, deliberate riff work that balances restraint and impact. Echoing the spirit of the band’s past while embracing a modern, shadowed edge, the song reflects on roadside shrines and lives lost too soon; the steady forward drive of the rhythm section mirrors the endless motion of the road itself. Fernando Ribeiro’s unmistakable and singular vocal presence, moving between low gravitas and restrained intensity, reinforces the song’s emotional weight without excess.
With “The Great Wolf in the Sky” feat. Alicia Nuhro (strings), MOONSPELL deliver one of the album’s most epic moments, structured around expansive keyboard themes, harmonized guitar lines and a chorus built for collective resonance. Melancholic yet powerful, the track stands as a tribute to wolves who once walked alongside the band and to a fan and friend who passed before hearing the album, bridging MOONSPELL’s past, present and future in one sweeping, dignified anthem.
Thematically, Far From God moves through Baudelairian love, existential guilt and redemption, Christlike resurrections and the quiet nobility of creatures of the night. Vampires, werewolves and sacred symbolism are not escapism here, but vehicles for genuine dark emotion: solemn, romantic and unfiltered. The album rejects artificial gloss in favour of fantasy grounded in sincerity, rediscovering the heart of Gothic Metal in its most authentic form.
MOONSPELL’s forthcoming magnum opus – produced with Jaime Gomez Arellano (Paradise Lost, Sólstafir, Ghost among many others) – shines like a black diamond, luminous yet shadowed in texture and colour, both musically and sonically. It reconnects with the darker spirit of MOONSPELL’s classic era while sounding powerful and contemporary. Far From God is not nostalgia; it is a statement. A Gothic Metal hallelujah. MOONSPELL’s Irreligious of the 21st century. It’s not only a powerful reminder that MOONSPELL remain a defining force in the genre they helped shape, but an album that will truly save Gothic Metal from boredom and predictability!

Norwegian titan, Mork, was created by Thomas Eriksen in 2004, with the debut album ‘Isebakke’ eventually surfacing in 2013. Since then, Mork has been ceaselessly rising through the echelons of Black Metal, and on the heels of 2024’s intense and groundbreaking ‘Syv’ opus - which has resulted in the band branching out with tours in the Far East & Australia - Eriksen continues on this evolutionary path with the new album, and what is undoubtedly set to be a new benchmark, ‘Monolitt’.

“A stark monument to the unrelenting brutality of reality, the monolith looms above us, immovable, indifferent, eternal. Its crushing presence bears down on the spirit, suffocating hope and testing the limits of endurance. It is an experience carved in stone, unyielding”.

‘Monolitt’ is an album that further expands the sonic and atmospheric depth of existing Mork releases; unafraid to challenge the listener, while steadfastly rooted in the cold traditions of the genre. With this uncompromising vision and direction for ‘Monolitt’, Mork delivers a sound which is brutal yet expansive, whilst also heavy and epic, for a relentless journey through the shadows of Norwegian Black Metal, while forging new paths within that ancient and revered framework.

Across these songs, themes of collapse, transformation, isolation, and destruction form the central pillars. From the crushing burden of existence to spectral wanderings through forgotten landscapes, ‘Monolitt’ explores the human condition through bleak introspection and grand imagery. Nature rages, giants awaken, faith crumbles, all in pursuit of experience beyond the limits of flesh and mind.

Double full-length album out now on Double CD in jewel case.