CD

With an inception going back to 2019, Defacement rapidly gained momentum within the underground realms with two full-length records marked by an intense and experimental take on death and black metal, Deviant (2019) and self-titled Defacement (2021). Three long years after their latest output, the international band flares its cryptic head yet again with an epic tome of twisted and gnarly emanations, an immersive pathway into the void entitled Duality.

Defacement's third studio record is challenging and confrontational in its invocation of primal forces lying dormant in the world below. Inspired by the unfathomable, shadowy corners of human existence, Defacement hatches a penetrating sonic journey, unpredictable in its own dynamic, ever-changing form. Intricate and complex riffing lay as a basis for dexterous melodies, making Duality the most complete and mature among the band’s outputs. The cold and experimental interludes entangled between tracks, serve as halting moments that further the conceptuality of Duality and broaden the gist of the main songs.

The tremendous rhythmic section, a complex and throbbing pulse of drumming fierceness and serpentine bass playing, is superiorly captured by the dynamic and organic production, a vigorous sound that evokes both an oppressive aura and wistful solemnity. Gabriele Gramaglia (Cosmic Putrefaction, Vertebra Atlantis) and Simon Da Silva (Aversio Humanitatis) took care respectively of the mixing and mastering, finely crafting the details of Defacement’s new album. 

Set di 4 Promo CD dei Vintersorg e promo CD di Fission "Crater" (side project di Vintersorg)

NOVEMBERS DOOM return with their twelfth full-length album, which is entitled "Major Arcana". Following six long years after their acclaimed latest opus "Nephilim Grove" (2019), the American dark metal stalwarts have raised the stakes even higher by creating a conceptual album that thematically draws inspiration from tarot and divination. This overarching theme reflects in the artwork and design of "Major Arcana" as well as in the lyrical storytelling throughout the album. Founded in 1989 in Chicago, Illinois by vocalist Paul Kuhr, NOVEMBERS DOOM have continued to grow and evolve over more than three decades. Initially emerging as one of the leaders of American death doom, their debut album "Amid Its Hallowed Mirth" in early 1995 set the band firmly on a dark musical course. Over the following years, they have gradually refined and developed a style that they have coined "dark metal". NOVEMBERS DOOM's mastery of seamlessly blending their death metal and doom roots with progressive, folk, and classic rock influences has allowed the band to grow and change in fresh and surprising ways, while always retaining their signature feel and atmospheres that have remained a constant throughout the band's career. From the hauntingly ethereal vibes of the opening track, 'June', through brutally crushing songs like 'Ravenous', as well as the epic sadness and yearning of tracks like 'Mercy' and 'Bleed Static' to the frenetically energetic hooks found on 'The Fool' and 'Dusking Day', their twelfth opus witnesses NOVEMBERS DOOM covering a wide range of sounds and emotions. Get ready to hear "Major Arcana" and to see it unleashed onto an eagerly anticipating world!

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.

Debut album of Philadelphia unholy metal band after several EP releases

For fans of Vastum, Krypts, Phrenelith, Master, Incantation, Abhorrence, Funebrarum, Disembowelment

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.

Three years after their crushing debut Defiled In Oblivion, Castrator return with Coronation Of The Grotesque, an album that not only exceeds all expectations but leaves them shattered in its wake, firmly cementing the band among the North American death metal elite. 

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.

• Blackened, funereal psychedelic death metal from Denmark

• Featuring members of Undergang, Sulphurous, Sequestrum and more

B-side collection of doom-laden dark heavy metal band’s 2024 critical juggernaut The Stygian Rose (Decibel Magazine’s Best Album Of The Year)

Features a transcendental revisioning of Mayhem’s “Dem Mysteriis Doom Sathanas”