UNDER THE RADAR is a four part short reviews series focusing on overlooked and well above-average releases from 2023 with this first part accounting for ten releases. Of course I like all of these so, the scores will seem fairly high on average. // I’ve done my best to showcase the most interesting works that I come across while still presenting some decent variety here but choices boil down to what sticks, what inspires or what is worth writing about. These are more easygoing than longform reviews, so relax and think for yourself — If you find something you dig go tell the band on social media and support them with a purchase! If you’d like your music reviewed, read the FAQ and send promos to: grizzlybutts@hotmail.com

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This set of Roadburn-REDUX captured and relatively simple rhythmic jams performed by this exceptional Netherlands-based duo are foundation and muse for countless summertime daydreams on my part this year, a stomping and heavy rock built mountain from psychedelic/space rock kicked emanations, hymnal rafter-sung muttering and twanging drones. While the video of the performance is probably the most illuminating part of the experience there is some intense value in sitting back and letting this record rip, its floating blanket of post-music drift and hum meeting up with a prominently stamped beat which might last anywhere from ten to twenty minutes per piece. I found this album curative of head noise and exhaustion, inspiring for its even-keeled planar push and pure pleasure every time I dove in. Here’s hoping this is more than a body-high spiked one off as I love their prior post-black not-metal work but find this a different brand of magick altogether.

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A sect of Satanic art drains from the north to the south as Toulouse, France-based collective Sektarism have been entirely in fluxion beyond their impressive 2018-released LP ‘Fils de Dieu‘ where their work was variously described as funeral doom, dark ambient, monastic drone, and such while the spiritual and performative aspect of the music was what’d been most interesting to me at the time. Though ‘Et Facta Est Lux‘ is split into two distinct halves, as their previous release had been, it is a vastly different experience with a modified line-up; Each piece drones in distant scene, stretching the ear between occasionally sparse dark ambiance and improvised, difficult to pin movements where guitar and percussion create only a few bursts of directive interest and vocals are elusive but impactful in their presence, especially on the second piece. From what I gather these performances were recorded live in studio to achieve a specific feeling beyond practiced ritual but this only began to occur to me as I became more invested in the work, I guess cranking it up and hearing the deeper layers of the experience. If you’re prone to soak it in and seek some deeper meaning this might be your kind of thing too.

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New Standard Elite have been killing it all year long and of course I missed a few big ones, Trichomoniasis ‘Makeshift Crematoria‘ is the debut full-length from this California based brutal death metal band and no doubt the snare ping is strong on this one. The mind-scouring barrage of initially incoherent noxious aggression they present is certainly of a certain era of gory experimental underground bruising, a refined tradition of Enmity and Orchidectomy et al. The full listen is just one stupid-ass 1-3 minute nuke after another and I’d quickly found myself obsessed with making sense of it and feeling the morbid drip of it all. Maniac shit and an inarguably impressive debut.

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Back in 2018 I accused Mikko Aspa‘s work in Clandestine Blaze of constantly improving, that his tenth LP ‘Tranquility of Death‘ was inspiring but that he was capable of work that was far more mind-altering than it’d bee. It seems his focus became doomed and slaughterous rawness beyond that point on the follow-up ‘Secrets of Laceration‘ (2021), an excellent record in a similar vein. With ‘Resacralize the Unknown‘ there is a real disgust in the artist’s vocals which stands out first, and even during the performative motions this point of view, where disdain reeks from every pore of the album and even when he more-or-less kicks it ‘old school’ with simpler rhythmic circa ’93 black metal feeling pieces, not that “Our Cross to Bear” is dated in feeling but that a miserable solemnity, a rare feeling of olde wretchedness and barbaric percussion pierces through. While I agree with most that ‘Fist of the North Destroyer‘ and some of the early 2010’s releases are most prime in hindsight this was an inspired listening experience which occasionally equals his best work.

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The latest EP from Chilean black metal quartet Insurrexión is a preview of what is to come as they continue their tirade beyond a stunning and vastly overlooked self-titled debut back in 2021. Short at just ~20 minutes but impactful as all of their work thus far this is a band who understand the limitless reach of black metal per a pair of talented guitarists and where the riff and the evolution of the melody must merge to generate illustrative and cutting meaning. “La Memoria de la Sangre” may very well be one of the best black metal pieces I’ve heard all year. If you are a fan of Astriaal as well as (related band) Faustian Spirit‘s debut from a couple of years ago and appreciate a classic fusion of Swedish, Greek and nearby melodic austerity this band may be an important revelation.

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This debut EP from São Paulo, Brazil-based duo Uncönquerable was technically first released in late October of 2022 but didn’t receive its official release until earlier this year. Formed back in 2019 and focused on a combination of tuneful speed metal influence melodic death and mid-paced black metal movement this band features at least one musician you should recognize from the likewise underrated Açoite. While it would be simple enough to compare their sound to maybe Arghoslent and Destroyer 666 at face value there seems to be some inspiration from Greek black metal, ancient heavy metal, and these guys already have a strong sense of their own personality and themes on ‘Imperial Genocide‘. I’d talked about this EP earlier this year some but I wanted to give it another mention because I’ve loved their work even more with each pass as they’ve squarely focused on the riff to the point that a narrative becomes inevitable.

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Mexico/U.S.-based black/death metal quartet Demonized were a pretty short lived group that most considered an offshoot of Ravager back in the day but the original crew would also function in plenty of other high-grade killers (Hacavitz, Profanator, Reverence to Paroxysm, Infinitum Obscure et al.) to this day. They’d put out a demo in 1999, got picked up by Gene Palubicki‘s (Malefic Throne, Perdition Temple, ex-Angelcorpse) label and a self-titled record was ready but the label dropped out, Osmose picked it up and the band split soon after. Twenty years later and they’re ready to kick back into this realm, this time Palubicki is in the band cutting riffs. That first album was from a certain era of brutality, this record tempers some of that for the sake of blitzing out some ‘Blessed are the Sick‘ feeling pieces, plenty of thrashing and hissing attack throughout which is different but still generally related to what they were doing two decades ago. Malevolent, deadly stuff from thrash heads still pushing extremes and blurring the black/death line in an effective way.

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Southern Brazilian black/speed metal trio Evilcult return for a second full-length album and this time around they’re especially hooked on the heavier later-era NWOBHM sound, something kinda circa ’84 but written for one guitar and kicking a lot of arena-level beats and wild shrieks as they bark through 5-6 minute heavy/speed metal songs. The appeal of ‘The Devil is Always Looking for Souls‘ is in the stomping, anthemic evil heavy metal it provides, a rush but a distant sound that has clearly been inspired by the old ways be it the 70’s Priest inspired side of the great wave or stuff like Cruel Force and Whipstriker today. This is the sort of record that only grew in mind over several listens, repetitive in some aspects but effective in its eerie Satanic soldiery.

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Sulphuric Death are a Santiago, Chile based quartet who’d initially formed as a duo in 2020 aiming for obscure and erratic death metal that pulled from old and new cults. Their sound on this debut tape is a brutal crossing of bestial death metal and its tornado-spawned aggression and the wailing and thrashing edge of the early Floridian scene focused on riffs as much as war metallic surges. Think of Ascended Dead and Beyond to start and consider there is an early Blasphemy cover on this thing. If they lean into just a bit more of their riff-intensive, thrashing evil side this’d be golden.

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At this point, actually ever since 2015 or so it doesn’t feel like brutal death metal and its tech variations can surprise me anymore and it isn’t that I have a jaded attitude on new takes on old sounds, ha, but that I’d spent so much time obsessing over brutal tech-death in the 2000’s that the most influential stuff became too obvious and the unique touch of niche freakery got buried under all the dummy chug danceable gear. Anyhow the mini rant above is a partial explanation of why a project like Paroxysm Unit stands out to me, anytime I felt like I’d heard all of the possibilities of their work they’d interrupted that thought and corrected my lazing mind with a whip. This group hails from Russia with members from the United States and France included with brilliantly reactive and fiendish guitar work from Colin Marston (Krallice, Gorguts) obviously being a major foil here but also ex-7 H.Target members on the rhythm section with the touch of bassist and all around maestro Konstantin Korolev (Passéisme, Wombripper) notable in presence here. If you are a fan of the rhythmic excitation of Defeated Sanity and the outraged hive mind explosions of Wormed you’ll be as stoked as I was to discover this band earlier this year. They keep it brief at high impact, creating the most maddening vortex around “Self Splitting Tragism” consistently hitting with enough sense that a classic Deeds or Decrepit Birth fan will find a clear line to follow through the maze of it all but the nowadays brutality-bound mind should appreciate the wrath involved.

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