• SHRT REVWS • This condensed version of short(er) reviews focuses on releases arriving in the last two weeks of October (4th-18th) covering technical death metal, sludge/doom metal, death/doom metal, death-thrash metal, heavy/speed metal, post-black metal, and death metal. // In an attempt to be more conversational these are more easygoing and casual 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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Lublin, Poland-based technical brutal death metal quintet DEIVOS return for a seventh full-length album once again delivering pro-level grooves at a disgustingly brutal clip, hailing down violence from the first riff and moving in as an apocalyptic event from there. These guys have always had their own angle, something classic injected with something new to that point that there is an approachable aspect faceted into impossibly achieved rhythmic churn. In fact their previous album ‘Casus Belli‘ almost veered too far into the classic groove metal realm for my own taste having still associated their personage and sound with their early 2010’s Unique Leader era. This time around the leads really stood out for me, some Azagthothian wielding and sporadic whipped-at wailing just enough to emphasize the enduring motion of their attack with a directional flourish. These embellishments only become more intense as the album burns on, reaching a characterizing high around “Revelations” where the riffs are at their most blunt and the leads achieving an ear-piercing otherworldly wail. As a longtime fan I would say this is not only a sensorial event, a brain-crushing death metal album full of aggressive and coldly struck riff mayhem, but a vital reminder of just how far the medium can be pushed to reflect both extremity and a certain listenable, repeatable quality. If you’re already a fan I’d say consider this one of their harder-assed records, brutal but never stupid stuff with the sense to break things up in interesting way throughout (see: title track) without losing its intensity.

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It took a minute, eh… around nine minutes for this whopping hourlong double LP from Reykjavík, Iceland-based sludge-heavy psychedelic doom metal quintet MORPHOLITH to finally launch and begin burning up the atmosphere. The slow-burning dread of ‘Dystopian Distributions of Mass Produced Narcotics‘ almost can’t bear to sit still and fully focus as “Mountainous” builds itself up but once they’re soaring this album goes places quickly, detailing its planet-to-planet scope in nigh episodic fashion. The sky begins to part within the last minute of the opener (“Mountainous”), cracking open the range we know vocalist Snæbjörn Þór Árnason (see also: Nyrst) has in hand as their ‘Dopethrone‘ thugged distorted bas tones and nuclear-shot ‘Vænir‘ -era Monolord heavy production values and crooning ’til snarling vocal affect heat up as “Psychosphere” hits next. Though parts of that description sound more than familiar there’s no denying this is an eclectic vision of sludge/doom metal beyond the early 2000’s-built scuzz of stoney burst tones and estranged narration and I think that eclecticism will directly appeal to classic sludge fandom, the swinging aggression fans of Grief and Buzzo•ven and such will appreciate, first and spread the infection from there. I figure if you don’t have the fortitude or attention span for this type of music you won’t be shaken by it but I’d found some real entertainment value here in terms of maintaining strong variety song-over-song, showing a freshened range from beyond their previous two EPs, and despite how daunting some of those later track lengths were never falling back on anything too referential. This type of music should create its own world, take you somewhere else and each song here more-or-less does so regardless of a piece being four minutes or sixteen. Give this one more than a cursory scrape-through as it definitely rewards a bit of patience with something new around every corner.

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Though their launch back 2016 was an EP that’d featured more of a heavy/power metal inflected form a swap to Faroese vocalist Jón Aldará (Hamferð) and a focus on broad ranged, dramatic progressive metal has now resulted in two expansive and engrossing LPs from Copenhagen, Denmark-based quintet IOTUNN. What makes this band a bit special from my perspective is their integration of extreme metal structures, particularly on the ever-evolving ‘Access All Worlds‘ (2021). This time around there is a bit less bleeding room noise, a bit more atmosphere hanging in the air, and this translates to dramatic gravitas as ‘Kinship‘ bears more of a classic progressive rock structured listen, two great big epics sandwiching a host of ~5-6 minute suites which make for a demanding, overall taxing 70 minute listen. The challenge of a record in this style is almost predictable in my own experience in the sense that Aldará‘s presence always feels more vital than the voicing of the instrumentation and it is only when they link up in a very direct way that Iotunn‘s gig stands out, I’d say “The Coming End” (also: “The Anguished Ethereal”) does this best while remaining texturally interesting within its thickened production values and heavily layered sound. Otherwise I’d describe the experience as an ethereal rollercoaster of interest, where I’d just been along for the ride and appreciating the headier views amidst compositions which were interesting in their twists and turns but never shockingly stylized or ruthlessly unique.

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This latest 12″ EP from Malmö, Sweden-based blackened death/doom metal quintet GRAND HARVEST checks in on the development of their sound here a couple of years beyond their debut LP (‘Consummatum Est‘, 2022) which I believe we can consider underrated to some degree at this point since it has held up well. Here we have two songs averaging about eight minutes where the main event is of course the title track “Till Förruttnelsen” alongside a Swedish language version of the title track from their LP (“Consummatum Est (Det är fullkomnat)”) where we find the band expanding some of their black metal vernacular, focusing on the melodramatic yet steadied hand of their melodic death/doom adjacent sound and refining their already pretty damned crisp production values with some additional atmosphere. That said each song offers a different side of their coin, the main event being the dramatic extension of themselves into the stoic title track and a more direct dive into the death and doomed directive split and rejoined on the rerecorded song. They’ve implied that this single is foreshadowing for a second full-length and from my point of view this is a very good omen, much as I’d like their sound to include a wrathful death metal touch there is something particularly gripping and personalized about “Till Förruttnelsen” which I’d like to hear more of.

https://grandharvest.bandcamp.com/album/till-f-rruttnelsen

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With the momentum offered by ‘Nightmare Logic‘ unto the greater next-gen crossover headspace now waning so far beyond 2017 enough time has passed that many similar groups have cycled in and out since (Red Death, etc.) with a few reaching for their own original ideation (High Command) with no real salvation in sight in terms of that level of impact. The one possible exception is the oddly satisfying consistency of Richmond, Virginia-based crossover thrash metal quartet ENFORCED who’d had more of a Slayerized edge to their gig early on, having obviously been pulled from a hardcore punk background to start, as I fondly recall reviewing their 2019 debut ‘At the Wall‘ and spurging out on their somewhat referential take. This latest EP from the band feels like a “keep ’em on the road” kind of release, a hit of three songs to tour on in between albums alongside a re-recording of a flexi-disc exclusive (“Casket”) as well as two cover songs paying tribute to English Dogs and Obituary, two choices which are insanely well-made and well done. For now we’ll consider the three originals which appear to be leftovers from the songwriting sessions for ‘War Remains‘ (2023). The root of their action is in late 80’s thrash and the heavier ’86-’88 tail end of the crossover trend but these guys have evolve over the course of three albums toward a death metal adjacent heaviness, not the dry metallic hardcore stuff but stuff with viable riffs as you’ll find on the title track (“A Leap Into the Dark“) and the big song here for my taste “Deafening Heartbeats” which at this point it feels like you could definitely put these guys in the same lane as classic Power Trip but not necessarily a “clone” or whatever. Otherwise I basically showed up for the English Dogs cover, thought they’d crushed.

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Swirling guitar effects, esoteric vocalizations, temperamental bass and drum jams that go wherever the wind is least chill… all that feeds into the restless psychedelic doomed pow-wow of Canadian quintet LARVAL speaks to the part of my brain that’d never left the bad acid trip I’d had back in 2001. We’ve got a three-jam freakout full-length here from members of well-known psychedelic and bestial black/death bands (Black Death Cult, Antediluvian, Solar Winds) who find their signature in banging basslines (see also: Oranssi Pazuzu) as foundation for waves of feedback and wandering guitar noise amidst wailing vocals (re: Abruptum) and general derangement which wanders in and out of lucidity. The distraught tone and experimental nature of ‘Psilodaemonic Revelation‘ feels like natural expansion of their general voice beyond their 2020 demo ‘Black Metamorphosis‘ in the sense that these three works still sound improvised but appear more practiced, focused and locked into their collective droning action.

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Having formed under another name back in 1995 Santiago, Chile-based thrash metal staple NUCLEAR have always been more of a 90’s thrash metal band in the sense that the post-‘Chaos A.D.‘ state of groove metal, that whole dull affair, is part of their vernacular though much like countrymen Criminal they’ve always been pretty solid at working up a death-thrashing riff count and having something crucial to say be it political or social. For ‘Violent DNA‘ they consider barbaric human nature to start while approaching this EP with some of their fastest, most straight-forward thrashers in quite a few years as they take a step away from the less interesting ‘Murder of Crows‘ (2020). There is a current of death-thrash that skates through the full listen pretty fast but always tightly wound here and this is emphasized by the three choices for cover songs that make up the second half of the tracklist including Napalm Death, Benediction, and an early Desultory song. For my own taste this is one of the better things these folks have done in a while but it doesn’t totally blow my mind otherwise, just sounds great and has a lot of good anger behind it.

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Hailing from Ljubljana, Slovenia and playing a unique form of epic heavy/speed metal CHALLENGER features the former lead vocalist/guitarist from Vigilance as well as an early member of Teleport and generally resemble the former in terms of allowing a hint of black/heavy metal into the edgier parts of their otherwise heavily melodic and surreal sound. If you are familiar with pre-’85 US heavy metal and the edge of both Priest and Scorpions etched 80’s power metal be it early Liege Lord, pre-‘Rage For Order‘ Queensryche, or rougher edged stuff like early Running Wild. I’d appreciated how patiently they craft each of these songs, even opting for a ~5 minute instrumental (“Recurrent Universe”) in the midst of things as this’d given the full listen its ‘epic’ feeling overall. Otherwise “Force of Nature”, “Victims of War”, and the brilliant opener “Imperial Madness” made for engaging and varietal work that covers quite a lot of ground without fully losing the plot. “Sleepless” doesn’t fully fit for my own taste but it’d hardly slowed the momentum built at that point. Solid heavy metal record and an all-around impressive debut. The only thing that’d help out the listening experience from my point of view would be to stick with one lane a bit more clearly, the full listen doesn’t always transition seamlessly from song to song.

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Always on the cusp of the profound beyond 2014 but never quite there for my own taste Basel, Switzerland-based gothic post-black metal quintet SCHAMMASCH didn’t get the most glowing praise from me back in 2019 via ‘Hearts of No Light‘ for the sake of their last few albums having been in love with their own voice yet rarely saying anything all that profound. Yes, the introduction of gothic rock and atmospheric/progressive black metal elements were improving in terms of the general soundscapes built yet these were dramatic more often than they were substantive from my point of view. This time around ‘The Maldoror Chants: Old Ocean‘, which seems to be a continuation of ‘The Maldoror Chants: Hermaphrodite‘ (2017) EP, once again pulls from the infamous romanticist/pre-surrealistic work in question for an album which now openly attempts a more complete escape from their prior post-black metal backdrop. The result is unique, lush in its distraught layers with few tuneful points of punctuation, often featuring operatic gothic verse in run-on stanzas which are backed by smoldering alt-rock guitar exaggerations in slow simmering progression. Structurally this still resembles post-black metal married with something akin to gothic rock gilding its opening moments but as we move towards the back-end of this ~50 minute record a proggy post-metal sound develops more clearly with “I Hail You, Old Ocean” going as far as bearing an anthemic “heavy metal” quality to its initial stride. There are a thousand unique details here and to be fair many of them are buried in the thrum and smokey movement of Schammasch‘s rhythms but with some repeated listens under my belt it began to feel like these folks were finally onto something worth sitting with for an hour or two and sinking into.

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Galician melodic pagan black metal quartet LÓSTREGOS celebrate their tenth year applying their native folkore to black metal craft which is oaken and often set within ~8-10 minute stretches with a certain ‘epic’ flair to their construction. I’d enjoyed their previous album enough that I’ve been looking forward to this one for a few years and ‘Nai‘ doesn’t disappoint in that it feels like a continuation of that signature, a sound which has a later Kawir type of intensity at times but should interest fans of bands like Belenos and even Windir sans the lead guitar theatrics. What holds my interest within these longer pieces is of course the guitar work, finely arranged and often erratic feats of melodic black metal riffcraft which are eventful to a point which is well above-average for my own taste. Much as I’d typically focus on the folkore and the accoutrement that helps characterize this album really I stuck with it for many listens because the riffs were awesome, especially the almost death-thrashing elasticity of “Proclama da Nai” which’d caught my attention every time. A finely crafted immersive experience which always finds an interesting turn to take on its circuitous journey.

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