Album Reviews

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    Drouth - The Teeth of Time (2025)

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    Unleashing a cavernous and quite engaging Doomy Black Metal release, today we have Portland’s Drouth and their third full-length release “The Teeth of Time”. Featuring a fierce mixture of crafty melodic interludes and blistering aural onslaught, this album delivers five tracks and over 40 minutes of intense music. With a very piercing and yet balanced sound, the band’s songwriting is quite polished and intense.

    Opening with the piercing “Hurl Your Thunderbolt Even Unto Death”, we get a twin guitar onslaught that unleashes harsh screams and deep growls. The song is both crafty and heavy, setting a very hectic pace for the release. This sinister atmosphere continues in the commanding “False Grail” with Doom and Crust elements thrown into the mix as the song progresses. Far from linear, the band also oozes melancholy when needed with the album title track providing crafty duality, and sustained intensity through this piece.

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    Ghost Bath - Rose Thorn Necklace (2025)

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    Fully going back to their roots, Ghost Bath unleashes another masterclass in melancholy and devastation. The band’s Depressive/Post Black Metal sound made a more prominent comeback in their previous release, “Self Loather”, and now they elevate it with the highly melancholic “Rose Thorn Necklace”. Featuring nine tracks and around 36 minutes of music, this album is very engaging, crushing, and yet walks a very fine line between sorrowful and intense.

    Opening with the dreamy atmospheric opener, “Grotesque Display”, the band sets a bleak mood that is masterfully continued with the piercing album title track. The harrowing screams perfectly flank intense tremolo picking alongside a very lively modern Post-Black Metal vibe, similar to Harakiri For The Sky and such bands. In “Well, I Tried Drowning”, the melancholy starts to ooze as the tempo slowly increases, flanked by crafty guitar leads and harsh growls. The atmospherics in this track give “Moonlover” vibes and we are all for it.

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    Behemoth - The Shit Ov God (2025)

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    Arriving like a freight train without any breaks, today we have Behemoth and their latest opus “The Shit Ov God”. Nergal and company never shy from controversy and unleash the most powerful music they can, and with this release, the band unleashes nearly 40 minutes of their most potent and yet highly polished songs. For a band that has been around for 34 years, these guys sound like no one else, without any signs of slowing down or just doing more of the same.

    Opening with the fierce “The Shadow Elite”, the band unleashes mystery and chaos at the same time with hellish atmospherics that lead to pummeling riffing onslaughts by Nergal and Seth. The drumming is massive, as it is always expected from Inferno, ripping through tracks like “Sowing Salt”, and the eerily atmospheric album title track. With a more ravaging Black Metal edge, “Lvciferaeon” is a crafty track that changes the tempo of the release a bit, while still unleashing the aggression and magick that the band always delivers.

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    Lux Interna - New Wilderness Gospel (2025)

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    Creating a truly haunting and intoxicating dark folk release with tons of influences from post-punk to gothic americana, Lux Interna is finally back with the immersive “New Wilderness Gospel”, full length release. Featuring nine tracks of fully immersive music, this release is full of crafty instrumentation and captivating compositions that need more than a few spins to fully unravel themselves to the listener. If you liked any of the band’s previous releases and/or outfits like Rome, Amber Asylum, King Dude, etc. you can’t miss out on this album.

    Opening with the somberness of “Dark Fire Revelator”, the band comes back after ten years in full force, unleashing a very lush onslaught. The richness of the band’s instrumentation creates very unique and engaging soundscapes that are fun to digest and very powerful, as tracks like “Over the Timberlines”, “Brittle”, and one of our favorites “Like Wolves”. There early vibe in this release is a mixture of King Dude with Tenhi, Nest, and even some non-Metal Empyrium hints, We love how Kris T. Force infuses melancholy to “Like Wolves”, creating a very mellow and yet sublime atmosphere alongside Joshua Levi Ian’s vocals and guitars.

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    Kardashev - Alunea (2025)

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    Showing their breakthrough release “Liminal Rite”, was not a fluke, North American outfit Kardashev returns with the brilliant “Alunea”. Perfectly blending genres and creating totally unique aural experiences, this outfit delivers eight tracks of crushing melancholy. Taking their “Deathgaze” genre to new heights, the band showcases extra maturity and polish in one of our early candidates for album of the year.

    Opening with the dreamy “A Precipice. A Door.”, the band embarks on a very ethereal journey that is perfectly flanked by completely crushing Deathcore onslaughts. Mark Garrett’s vocals are some of the most exhilarating in Metal music, as they go from dreamy cleans to insane growls and harsh shrieks, creating an extremely contrasting and yet satisfying experience, through tracks like “Reunion”, “Seed of the Night” and “Speak Silence”.

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    Solfatare - Asservis par l'espoir (2025)

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    Unleashing a savage debut full length release, today we have Belgium’s Solfatare with “Asservis par l'espoir”. Featuring six tracks and over 40 minutes of crushing Black Metal, this release showcases that there are still bands pushing the limits of the genre and crafting releases that do not sound exactly like most. With a ferocious take on the genre and the musicianship to back this up, this release is as intense and fierce as they come.

    Starting with the blistering “Des monarques anhédoniques” we get that crispy Mgła-esque guitar driven style, but with some sinister twists, creating a very haunting experience. The harsh vocals masterfully add that extra level of desperation and aural abuse that songs like “D'hommes et d'isoptères” and “Du deuil affairé” need to be pushed over the edge. There is a certain intoxicating nature to the sneaky melodic undertones of the guitar work that makes them more effective.

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    Karg - Marodeur (2025)

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    V. Wahntraum (aka J.J) has been on a roll as of recently, not only with his exploits in Harakiri for the Sky, but also with this upcoming crushing Karg release titled “Marodeur”. With eight tracks and over 54 minutes of piercing music, this Post-Black Metal release is full of visceral rawness. Masterfully crafting highly melancholic music, this release is both punishing and demoralizing, creating a very bleak and yet lush atmosphere.

    Opening with the enigmatic “ Schnee ist das Blut der Geister”, which also features guest vocals from Perchta and solemn piano elements from Michael Eder, the band sets a very emotional mood. There are certain similarities to Harakiri for the Sky, due to the vocals and some of the guitar melodies, however, this band takes it further into darker and bleaker territories with more solemn and direct songs like “Findling”, “Yūgen”, and our favorite “Annapurna” and its very dramatic atmospherics and cathartic moments.

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    Eluveitie - Ànv (2025)

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    Six years have passed since the last release from the Swiss masters of Celtic/Folk Metal Eluveitie and they sure make up for it with the awesome “Ànv”. Filled with their highly crafty and melancholic brand of Metal, this release delivers twelve tracks and over 40 minutes of the band’s highly refined music with a few extra more modern influences thrown into the mix.

    Starting with a mood setting atmospheric intro, the band quickly gets to business with the explosive “Taranoías”, a fierce track that sets a high-octane vibe from the get go. The hard-hitting “The Prodigal Ones” keeps the momentum going as Chrigel Glanzmann and Fabienne Erni deliver engaging alternating “Beauty and the Beast”-styled vocals, while the album title track changes the pace with an eerie ethereal piece that showcases Fabienne’s range.

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    Liv Kristine - Amor Vincit Omnia (2025)

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    Returning with her enchanting vocals, today we have Liv Kristine’s latest solo effort “Amor Vincit Omnia”. Featuring eleven tracks and nearly 45 minutes of music, this release was composed with Sascha Dannenberger, creating very enchanting compositions that are slightly different from her previous release, but yet deliver her signature sound. Filled with melancholy and very captivating, this release masterfully showcases the magic of Liv Kristine.

    Opening with the album title track, we start strong with playful guitars, solemn vocal interludes, and a bit of a mixture of very old-school Theater of Tragedy (thanks to the harsh vocals) and the more modern influences of Liv Kristine’s latest solo efforts. This melodramatic tone continues through the dramatic “Ode to Life Pristine”, the melancholic and very dreamy “12th February”, and the catchiness of “Angel in Disguise”. Sascha perfectly leverages Liv’s vocal harmonies to create very engaging and powerful tracks that are very direct and effective.

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    Ahamkara - The Harrow of the Lost (2025)

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    Hailing from the UK, today we have Atmospheric Black Metal outfit Ahamkara, with their sophomore release “The Harrow of the Lost”. With a more than 10 year gap between releases, this outfit nicely delivers four tracks and over 42 minutes of music that blends elements from outfits like Saor, Fen, Fellwarden, and Panopticon. Creating a very organic and effective sound, this band masterfully crafts immersive atmospheres that will capture the listener’s attention.

    Creating a very mellow and intoxicatingly bleak atmosphere, “The Circle of Remembrance” opens this release with a slow burning approach that quickly is flanked by piercing riffs and harrowing harsh vocals. Austin Lunn of Panopticon fame handles the drums in this release, keeping things tight and very versatile as each track changes moods. The band’s atmospherics are subtle and never overbearing, thanks to Alexandra Blenkarn-Durning keyboards and effects, like on “Our Scars Shall Abide In The Thaw”, a very elegant track that blends in fierceness with Alcest-like dreaminess.

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