• MASSIVE REVIEWING CAPACITY • is our latest short review column focusing on stray quality releases a few times a month, or, roughly every two weeks depending on the current month’s release schedule. In an attempt to be more conversational these are easygoing and casual thoughts for the most part, so relax and think for yourself as I attempt to find something, anything to say about multitudes of new releases relevant to my interests. — If you find a record 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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Oldham, England-based quartet EXTINCTION OF MANKIND return after some years with a new rhythm section and a brilliant fifth album in ‘Slave to No One‘, a thrashing crust punk/stenchcore record righteously centered by protestation and the riff. If your golden standard for this sort of deal is ‘Beat the Bastards‘ and ‘Guttural Breath‘ you’ll be kicking along with these songs in a matter of minutes as I was, an instant and easy connection made via barked up frustration and big crunched-out guitar tones. Huge bass guitar tone with some grime on it, prime drum capture which is both mammoth in presence but not-so overpowering locked into a d-beat, and none of it drowns out all that longtime vocalist Ste has to say where topics veer between societal regression, environmental collapse, state media corruption/collusion, and more. Couldn’t ask for a more ideal return from these guys.

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In the process of plumbing my brain for memories of the discourse surrounding ENTOMBED‘s eighth full-length album, ‘Inferno‘, when it’d originally released twenty three years ago the main notes from corpo reviews at the time were “muddy tones/production values” and lyrics which “took the piss” so to speak. No doubt reading career rock reviewers processing whatever “Nobodaddy” and “Flexing Muscles” were saying in a sentence or two was kind of funny at the time but I’d always gotten the impression the record was meant to be some manner of dissent… a death n’ roll/punk extraction in the age of major label sludge metal and garage punk revival. I’d been a fan for a decade at that point and remember figuring this was the band’s “doom” record to compliment the more thrashing ‘Morning Star‘. For the sake of context I was ~twenty at the time and my life largely centered around smoking cheap weed, listening to ‘Seven Churches‘ and playing the guitar in my parents garage when this album released.

Was it well-received? I was too locked into my fandom for Entombed to care at the time, it was a darker and heavier deal either way. Production values were seeming “anti-commercial” for the time, raw and downtuned stuff lead by Petrov‘s (R.I.P.) roaring diction but it wasn’t the mud of its sound that’d made ‘Inferno‘ something different. If anything album number eight was as far as they could juice their post-‘Same Difference‘ streak, a cumulative record that’d collected all of those ideas and gave them a bloodied and blunt as possible render while attempting to capture the whole persona fostered up to that point. So, what is left when the guts and the grime of it all is wiped up, given precision and clarity? A surprisingly eclectic, sometimes wryly grinning death n’ roll record.

If there was any record in Entombed‘s discography that’d called for a remaster it was probably ‘Inferno‘ and I’d said as much within a longer editorial surrounding the remaster of ‘Morning Star‘ back in 2022: “I suppose at this point I’m anticipating how far they’ll go with ‘Inferno‘ if that is in the cards because, eh, if any record of theirs needs a real ass wiping in the minds of fans it is that one, but I kinda love how ridiculously dark and sludged it was.” and to be fair I still enjoy the stuff that a remaster couldn’t/wouldn’t take away, such as the growling-low bass guitar tone and the gristle whipping main rhythm guitar sound. Jump into the fire of doomed-ass “Children of the Underground” and you’ll appreciate what this remaster via maestro Magnus Lindberg @ Redmount Studios brings into focus: The atmosphere these performances generate in their own right. This remaster generally brings more room, more space rendered within an album which’d been notoriously suffocating yet none of its pulverizing station is lost in the process. “Nobodaddy” still sounds like a ‘Same Difference‘ leftover, “Flexing Muscles” is still kinda funny and whatnot but this level of polish applied only accentuates the strength of the original double LP’s first half as a strange kinda ‘anything goes’-fed beast.

This remaster is probably the best way to revisit ‘Inferno‘ these days if your Entombed fandom ever took you that far in the first place. This record and ‘Unreal Estate‘ (2005) were the peak of my interest in the group, nothing against the stuff that came beyond that point but their greater experiment kind of ended here and the big personality of the band was loudest via this version. Otherwise I’d note that I don’t think all of the ‘Averno‘ stuff is included in these new versions but “When Humanity’s Gone” thankfully is.

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Although they’d initially appeared as a mediocre speed metal band back in 2023 Kildare, Ireland-based trio CUTTHROAT pivoted to thrashing 80’s death metal style by 2025. Releasing a cassette-only version of their second demo (limited to 66 copies) sans any digital component doesn’t score any points with me: “Can’t hear it? Fuck off.” resounding on my end but they sound pretty ace on this first official EP, ‘Invoking Terror‘. Lots of guitar feedback, wobbly divebombs, plenty of ripping speed and snarling vocals suit their intent as they approximate the sound of the late 80’s underground without fully leaning into the chaotic riff saladry and ‘Pleasure to Kill‘ worship typically applied to this form. While I’d felt these five songs sport a decent attention span and the right rotten sound the riff count ain’t all that high and they basically grind through each of these pieces without a clever thought ’til “Life Beyond the Grave” chimes in at the end. I definitely see the potential of their throwback approach and their aesthetic makes great sense but I don’t know if they’ve carved out a compelling place for themselves beyond maybe the title track (“Invoking Terror”) and the closer.

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CELESTIAL POWER is a side-project from folks known for their tenure in Manchester, England-based psychedelic droners Dead Sea Apes alongside the fellowe behind Cardinal Fuzz label and Optical Sounds Fanzine intending an experimental jam. For their debut, ‘Celestial Power‘, they’ve honed those sessions into four ~10 minute pieces which read as ritualized and seemingly improvised jams which feature very little communication between the two guitarists. Much like their associated acts there is a sort of amplifier worship meets kraut-psych step to these songs and the main action on offer is the clashing non-interplay between the two guitarists who frequently vaunt and scribble through their own threads without taking turns or feeding off one another in obviate ways. Far from meditative and often maddeningly chaotic Side A is all about searching with two hands given their own will while the body (the drums) struggle to keep them in line, the effect is fascinating and even a bit obnoxious in its rambling-loud state.

Over on Side B the inclusion of Nik Rayne of the venerable The Myrrors appears to pull the band into alignment via “Mandate for Heaven”, flipping a switch which also includes a more readable clean bass guitar tone and slow-hanging desert bound movement. “Folk Wisdom” sort of splits the difference, allowing a little bit of that initial chaos within its dreary quasi post-rock assisted float without leaning into the dual-screaming guitar work of Side A. I’d enjoyed the experiment of it all and a few of the tangents along the way, not quite a one-and-done sort of deal but also not much to cling to when left on repeat.

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Paris/New York-based avant-garde metal/jazz trio KILTER invoke a journey through temporal eternity on this latest album, an experiment which expands a dense ten-part 10 minute arrangement into a ~40 minute drone by slowing it 4x before writing a full album atop it. ‘Ten Billion Years‘ is themed on their portrayal of water, specifically a molecule of water persisting through an unimaginable tract of time which essentially envisions the history of life on Earth. This notion of depicting temporal experience beyond typical cognitive perception here is suggested as at least partially inspired by the work of John Cage but these movements are not so sparse or spaced with silence, instead manifesting as a sort of microscope set upon a dilation of time wherein finer-detailed compositions create minutiae atop what are yet otherwise finely detailed compositions themselves mutated by time. If you can wrap your head around the modus here and you recognize names like Laurent David, Kenny Grohowski and Ed Rosenberg III no doubt you’ll appreciate the speaker warbling combination of drone and metal-jazz they’ve created here, heady travels through unreal climes.

The appeal of this whole idea held little water for me ’til I’d taken the time to listen to ‘Ten‘, the aforementioned composition slowed and bedeviled into the framing for ‘Ten Billion Years‘, as it’d provided key context as to what was actually going on within an otherwise surreal, idiosyncratic jazz-fed experience. Matching the point where the gloom of the fifth minute of ‘Ten‘ versus the feeling applied to “Depth & Darkness” as the fifth track on this album squares up both the broader transformation and the possibilities offered within this experiment. The world-within-a-world point of view manifested is uniquely entertaining.

Perhaps the more adventurous Imperial Triumphant head will appreciate the fluttering beats and hymnal wailing of “Weather Cycle” or the push into opener “Built & Broken” but I think this record will wrinkle the brain of the high-functioning musician mind more than the zoned, jazz-eared type of metal weirdo. On my end I’d particularly enjoyed Rosenberg‘s bass saxophone features on this album and earlier-on collusion with David‘s bass movements via the first four pieces. Otherwise I figure there is some great illumination to be found in such a thoughtful experimental process as this work should find any artist pondering how they approach layers of detail, how they engineer time into experience and what possibilities lie within entirely recompiled ideas.

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Gothenburg, Sweden-based heavy rock quartet RÖDTJUT enjoy a somewhat harder-edged return to their unpretentious, sometimes kinda anthemic Middle Way-minded venue via album number two. ‘Framtiden var bättre förr‘ no doubt captures a certain 70’s ’til 80’s Swedish hardproggin’ ease but not so adventurous as prog rock adjacency might suggest, these are mostly riff driven songs with easily approached melodies and stamping beats set in place. They’ve put this new rhythm section (feat. folks from here to great use within pushers like late album standout “Rodogd blatira”, the kinda stoney groove through “VMA” and the bumping heavy metal dramatism of “Var tid”. Some of their bright ideas are a little bit too familiar but all things considered these folks efforts carry an easygoing, admirably stated sense of self to the realm and to the point that I’d stuck around for several repeat listens.

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Coeur d’Alene, Idaho-based experimental black/death metal band SEVEN CHAINS re-emerge after a half decade or so heavier, more concise and generally unburied beyond their last point of passage. The clangor of their dual-swarded guitar presence is persistent across most of ‘Swollen, in Flux‘ in ways which their work previously hadn’t been. Though their approach is yet steeped in a form of avant-garde (early Christian?) esotericism with precedence I’d appreciated the tumult and inspiration milling within their process more readily translated through riffcraft rather than the at-times minimal, hesitant temper of ‘Thus She Speaks, the Spiraling Maranatha‘. Despite the chunking death metal disturbances and scrambling blackened noise guitar of “Every Flame Structured, Every Face Ablaze” there is nuance which sifts past per layers of synth/keyboard and such, peeking through surface aggression to curious tonal effect. We could argue as to how coherent that statement ends up being beyond its own craggy, uneasily flowing movement but the bigger picture affords similar dynamic wherein elements of black and death metal are embattled despite how well their puzzling fits. The heavy metallic opening to “Whence Blood No Longer Flows” caught my ear best with this cross-bitten interest but “Gestating Ash (This Thickest Darkness)” probably outshines that effect with its varietal sojourn later on. Some drops into post-punk, smaller experiments freckle throughout but I’d found these folks were at their best veering into oddly paced, avant-black ideas moreso than death metal fronted interest.

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Aalborg, Denmark-based speed metal quartet SPEEDSLUT don’t necessarily stand out in the realm of cacophonic mid-80’s evil heavy metal revivalism per their style nor general function of their songcraft but rather their high energy performances in whopping supply. Though their work doesn’t quite smack the mirror out of Cruel Force‘s hands these folks are -pushing- these songs out in similar way, not just rattling through them but howling within their echoic reverb coughing gear. Taking their sonic exaggeration of records like ‘Show No Mercy‘ and juicing that idea with speed, some decent shredding and a fair number of riffs ensures their work should kick up some dust no matter how bored you might be with witching metal takes. As is the case with a lot of younger bands the art direction doesn’t seem to have much of a point of view beyond fashion yet ‘Cimbrian Rites‘ nonetheless pulls it off as an admirable inspired rip through this territory. They lose some of the out-the-gates novelty within the second half and the songwriting overall is almost entirely trope-built but put on an early album piece like “Asbestos Born Wrath” and the appeal of their work is yet loud and clear.

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