NEW RELEASE REVIEWS: BRAINWAVE, BLACK JESUS, TOXIC THRILL, TUMANDUUMBAND, TV CULT, PRIMITIVE KNOT, GOROTICA, HELLSTORM APOCALYPSE, BLOODY SADISM, SOULFLY, PERTURBATOR, AUTHOR & PUNISHER, AND (ONE OF THE YEAR'S BEST RELEASES) AGRICULTURE. ALL WORDS SPEWED OUT BY MARK JENKINS.
NEW RELEASE REVIEWS: BRAINWAVE, BLACK JESUS, TOXIC THRILL, TUMANDUUMBAND, TV CULT, PRIMITIVE KNOT, GOROTICA, HELLSTORM APOCALYPSE, BLOODY SADISM, SOULFLY, PERTURBATOR, AUTHOR & PUNISHER, AND (ONE OF THE YEAR'S BEST RELEASES) AGRICULTURE. ALL WORDS SPEWED OUT BY MARK JENKINS.
BRAINWAVE - Ill Intent
Brainwave crashes through your skull like a sledgehammer wrapped in barbed wire. Ill Intent is thirty minutes of pure, unfiltered aggression—crossover thrash that doesn't fuck around with intros or atmospheric bullshit. From the opening riff, they're out for blood, channelling that classic DRI/Municipal Waste energy but with production thick enough to choke on. The guitar tone is caustic, the drums sound like someone's kicking you down a flight of stairs, and the vocals spit venom like a cornered animal. Tracks like The Truth and Bleak Reality hit with unrelenting force, zero fat, all fury. This is pit music, pure and simple. No pretence, no progression—just raw, ugly intent made sonic. Essential if you need something to soundtrack your next drunken rampage.
BLACK JESUS - Onwards to Slaughter
Black Jesus never misses, and Onwards to Slaughter continues their flawless streak of devastation. This is death metal built on a hardcore foundation—all the brutality and technicality of DM but with that punishing, direct HC backbone driving every riff. They've mastered the art of making death metal groove like a beatdown without sacrificing an ounce of extremity. The vocals are inhuman, guttural belches from the depths, while the rhythm section locks into crushing grooves that'll have you throwing elbows. Harvest of Eternal Hate and False Dawn showcase their lethal blend perfectly—mosh-ready destruction with death metal's unhinged savagery. (Plus, recently on the live front, they have recruited Sir Dan McKay on a second nuclear-powered guitar!!!) This phenomenal band has yet to release a bad record, and Onwards to Slaughter proves they're not starting now. Bow down or get crushed. Stop reading and buy the album now, one of Australia's best bands.
TOXIC THRILL - EVENT T-618
Pure old school thrash worship, and Toxic Thrill nails it. EVENT T-618 could've been ripped straight from 1986—whiplash riffs, frantic tempo changes, and that raw, hungry energy that made the genre dangerous in the first place. These songs don't waste a second, tearing through your speakers with the precision of early Exodus and the venom of German thrash masters. The production keeps things gritty without sounding like dogshit, letting every riff cut through while maintaining that essential raw edge. Off the Grid and the title track are neck-snapping anthems that prove thrash doesn't need reinvention when it's executed this ferociously. No gimmicks, no trends—just classic thrash fury done right. Testament to the old ways.
TUMANDUUMBAND - Hail Satan, Triumph Awaits
A Satanic doom duo rising from the darkest depths of the West Midlands, UK, Tumanduumband have been steadily growing their Duum cult since 2018. Hail Satan, Triumph Awaits is their latest unholy riff-tual—instrumental doom drenched in sludge, complete with blood rites, robes, corpses, crushing drums and apocalyptic bass. This is monolithic, speaker-destroying heaviness with zero vocals needed; the riffs do all the preaching. The duo conjures suffocating atmospheres through sheer sonic weight, each track a slow-motion avalanche of distortion and despair. This amazing and hectic release showcases their ability to make two people sound like an army of the damned. The sludge elements add visceral grit to the doom foundation, creating something genuinely oppressive. True believers only. The triumph is in the devastation.
TV CULT - Industry
TV Cult keeps getting better and better, cementing their status as a proper, dedicated post-punk force with Industry. This band isn't playing at post-punk/new wave revival—they're living it, refining their angular attack with each release. Industry is paranoid, claustrophobic genius—skeletal guitars cutting through minimal but punishing rhythms, vocals delivered with detached urgency that feels genuinely unsettling. There's a Wire/Killing Joke lineage here, but TV Cult have carved out their own neurotic corner. Overpressure and Crack the Whip are masterclasses in tension and release, building anxiety until it becomes physical. The production is deliberately uncomfortable, making everything feel invasive, immediate. This is an incredible band hitting their stride, proving post-punk isn't nostalgia—it's documentation of modern decay. Essential listening.
PRIMITIVE KNOT - Every Star A Dying Scream
One man, infinite darkness. Primitive Knot is a solo project that excels in savagery, blending experimental industrial with doom and extreme metal into something genuinely unique. Every Star A Dying Scream is always creative, always crushing—a sonic assault that refuses easy categorisation. Layers of crushing guitars meet mechanical percussion, feedback, and noise textures that feel both organic and alien. Tracks like The Great Unravelling and Under the Iron Heel showcase the project's ability to be punishingly heavy while maintaining an unsettling experimental edge. This isn't just doom-worship or noise for noise's sake—there's actual songcraft buried in the chaos, warped melodies that haunt long after the distortion fades. When moments of pure extremity erupt, they hit like collapsing stars. Singular vision, uncompromising execution. This is what happens when creativity meets total annihilation.
Gorotica - Daily Grind of the Medieval Age
In an era where extreme metal has splintered into a thousand micro-genres, each more obscure than the last, Gorotica arrives with their sophomore effort like a plague cart rumbling through cobblestone streets. Daily Grind of the Medieval Age is exactly what happens when death-doom meets grindcore's feral intensity, filtered through a lyrical obsession with feudal misery that would make Candlemass nod in grim approval.
The opening track hits like a battering ram against castle gates—blast beats erupt without warning before collapsing into sludgy, Sabbathian crawls that sound like they were recorded in an actual dungeon. The production is deliberately grimy, recalling early Autopsy and Grave, but there's a clarity to the chaos that lets every riff land with surgical precision. When the vocals kick in—a guttural bellow that shifts between Napalm Death's Barney Greenway and Obituary's John Tardy—it's clear these aren't your typical corpse-paint fantasists.
What separates Gorotica from the endless churn of retro-worship bands is their conceptual commitment. Where most bands slap "medieval" in a song title and call it a day, these lunatics have crafted an entire album around the grinding brutality of peasant life: crop failures, plague years, feudal oppression, and the Black Death as the ultimate leveller. It's Hieronymus Bosch meets the Earache Records roster circa '91, and it shouldn't work this well.
The mid-album centerpiece slows to a doom crawl that Electric Wizard would appreciate, all feedback worship and monolithic riffs, before erupting into a grind assault that clocks in under ninety seconds. This dynamic whiplash—the album's secret weapon—keeps you off-balance in the best possible way. Just when you're locked into a headbanging groove, they'll shift tempos like a medieval torturer switching implements.
The guitar tone deserves special mention: thick as castle walls, fuzzy enough to honor their punk roots (you can hear Discharge and early Napalm Death in the DNA), but with enough low-end heft to satisfy the death metal purists. The drumming is absolutely unhinged—blast beats that would make Danny Herrera proud, d-beats that nod to crust punk's dirty legacy, and doom sections where every hit sounds like an executioner's axe.
"Daily Grind of the Medieval Age" won't convert anyone who needs clean production and melodic hooks, but for those who worship at the altar of Repulsion, Obituary, and Eyehategod, Gorotica has delivered something genuinely compelling. This is the sound of historical brutality given sonic form—no dragons, no wizards, just the grinding horror of survival in humanity's darkest centuries.
Essential for fans of: Autopsy, Coffins, Undergang, Bolt Thrower's "War Master" era, Napalm Death's "Harmony Corruption."
A merciless siege engine of an album.
HELLSTORM APOCALYPSE - S/T Demo EP
(Sphere of Apparition Records | SOAR-004)
Fifteen years is an eternity in the underground—long enough for scenes to calcify, for pretenders to fade, and for genuine devotees to stockpile their venom. Adelaide's HELLSTORM APOCALYPSE have emerged from that protracted silence with their self-titled demo like a sulfurous exhalation from the Pit itself, reuniting Doomsayer (Beyond Mortal Dreams, Suffering, Oath of Damnation) with longtime conspirator Hellaeon for a conflagration that justifies every second of the wait.
This isn't some retro-worship cash-grab or bedroom project masquerading as menace. HELLSTORM APOCALYPSE traffic in death/black metal that sounds like it was forged in actual damnation—raw production that recalls the grime-encrusted ferocity of early Bestial Warlust and Sadistik Exekution, but with an apocalyptic grandeur that brings to mind Angelcorpse's most unhinged moments. The synth work adds chthonic atmosphere without neutering the aggression; this is cinematic in the way a nuclear holocaust is cinematic.
Doomsayer's pedigree bleeds through every riff—there's a veteran's understanding of dynamics here, knowing precisely when to unleash full-throttle blasphemy and when to let dissonant dread simmer. The vocals rasp with genuine malevolence, none of that cookie-monster posturing that's plagued extreme metal for two decades. This is the sound of the City of Churches receiving its long-overdue immolation, a sacrament performed in tremolo-picked fury and blast-beaten devastation.
For a demo, the compositional maturity is striking—these aren't just three-riff bulldozers but actual songs, serpentine and vicious, that reward repeated immersion. Sphere of Apparition continues their streak of unearthing the real deal, giving this proper treatment with an MCD release come November 21st.
Essential listening for devotees of Destroyer 666, Abominator, and anyone who believes Australian extreme metal still has ungodly territory to conquer. The hellstorm has arrived. Take cover or be consumed.
—4.5/5 inverted crosses
BLOODY SADISM - Tides of Terror
Sevared Records | Brutal Death Metal | Iran
Tehran's one-man brutality engine returns with a tidal wave of grotesque extremity that makes Suffocation sound like easy listening. Pooyan Ahmadi's Tides of Terror is the kind of album that makes you question whether your speakers are broken or if you've finally found the exact frequency at which human decency disintegrates.
Since crawling out of Iran's non-existent official metal scene in 2014, Bloody Sadism has been a singular anomaly—a solo grindcore/brutal death project existing in a place where concerts are forbidden and the underground stays buried deep. But that geographical isolation has only sharpened Ahmadi's blade. This isn't music made for acceptance; it's the sound of complete psychological discharge, programmed drum fury meeting guttural depravity in the kind of unholy matrimony that would make Devourment nod with grudging respect.
Tides of Terror hits like Cryptopsy's None So Vile filtered through the nihilistic lens of goregrind's most uncompromising practitioners. The production—courtesy of Sevared Records, those Rochester stalwarts who've been championing the sickest shit since '97—is appropriately suffocating. Every blast beat feels like a steel-toed boot to the skull, every breakdown a descent into some Lovecraftian abyss where riffs go to die and be reborn as something even more malignant.
What separates Bloody Sadism from the legions of basement brutalists is the conceptual thread running through the chaos. Like Pig Destroyer's narrative experiments but stripped of any redemptive arc, this is interior monologue as a weapon. The album traces the psychological unraveling of a sick mind trapped in its own room, its own thoughts, building to crescendos of violence that exist purely in the cerebral space between hate and action. By the time the first track kicks in, you realise you've been listening to a horror film scored entirely in blast beats and pig squeals.
The programmed drums don't detract—they enhance the inhuman precision, recalling the mechanized battery of early Mortician or the calculated savagery of Brodequin. This is music that doesn't want to sound human because humanity is the problem. Every riff is a misanthropic manifesto, every vocal a primal howl against the ignorance Ahmadi sees suffocating Tehran's underground.
For fans of the sick stuff—the heads who collect Disgorge demos and know the difference between slam and slamming brutal death metal—Tides of Terror is essential. It's proof that brutality knows no borders, that the most extreme music can emerge from the most unlikely places. Sevared knew what they were doing signing this. This is pure, uncut brutality with no chaser.
Crawl into the abyss. You won't find redemption here, just the cleansing violence of total sonic annihilation.
FOR FANS OF: Devourment, Kraanium, Defeated Sanity, early Dying Fetus, Brodequin
RIYL: Programmed drums that sound more human than most drummers, gutturals that require subtitles, breakdowns that break spines
SOULFLY - Chama
Max Cavalera refuses to slow down, and Chama proves the experienced warhorse still has raging fire in his belly. This is Soulfly at their most focused in years—tribal grooves meet thrash metal brutality, all wrapped in that signature Cavalera riffing style. The Brazilian influences are prominent, giving the heaviness an organic, almost primal quality. Tracks like Storm the Gates and Ghenna surge with infectious energy, Max's weathered but commanding voice delivering every line like a battle cry. Yeah, you know what you're getting here—there are no surprises—but the execution is tight and the conviction undeniable. This is veteran metal done right: no nostalgia trip, just pure, unpretentious aggression from a legend who's still hungry. Respect your elders and bang your fucking head.
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PERTURBATOR - Age of Aquarius
James Kent returns with his synth-drenched magnum opus, and Age of Aquarius is pure gothy electro heaven wrapped in coldwave darkness. Yeah, it's cheesy as fuck—and that's exactly what makes it great. This is Perturbator leaning fully into darkwave theatricality, shedding none of the synthwave DNA but coating everything in black lipstick and fog machine atmosphere. From the opening moments, Kent establishes that this album isn't about restraint or subtlety—it's about maximum drama, cinematic scope, and synths that could soundtrack both a vampire nightclub and the apocalypse simultaneously.
Apocalypse Now kicks things off with Ulver's haunting vocals floating over layers of menacing electronics, immediately setting the album's tone: this is darkness you can dance to. Lunacy follows with driving beats and that classic Perturbator energy, arpeggios cutting through the mix like neon through fog. But it's Venus featuring Author & Punisher that showcases the album's willingness to get heavy—Tristan Shone's mechanised growl adding genuine industrial weight to Kent's synth assault. The Glass Staircase and Hangover Square keep the momentum relentless, each track building on swirling textures and hooks that embed themselves in your brain. The Art Of War strips things down momentarily before exploding back into full synthwave warfare mode. The album's second half delivers peak gothic cheese with 12th House and Lady Moon (featuring Greta Link's ethereal vocals that could've been lifted from an 80s darkwave treasure), while The Swimming Pool creates unsettling atmospheres that feel like drowning in reverb.
The closing tracks cement Age of Aquarius as Perturbator's most ambitious statement. Mors Ultima Ratio builds tension through shimmering electronics before the title track Age of Aquarius featuring Alcest closes everything with expansive, almost shoegaze-tinged grandeur—blackgaze meeting synthwave in ways that shouldn't work but absolutely do. This is Perturbator at his most unashamedly theatrical, and that's the entire point. Kent knows exactly what he's doing: crafting electronic soundscapes that are simultaneously ridiculous and fucking brilliant. Turn off the lights, embrace the cheese, and let the synths consume you. Essential for goths, metalheads, and anyone who misses when music was allowed to be gloriously over the top.
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AUTHOR & PUNISHER - Nocturnal Birding
Tristan Shone has spent over a decade building literal machines to punish speakers, and Nocturnal Birding finds Author & Punisher refining the man-versus-machine brutality into something increasingly sophisticated without losing an ounce of crushing weight. This time, the concept is unexpectedly organic—each track named after and inspired by actual birdsongs, dedicated to migrants who've lost their lives crossing the US-Mexico border. The custom-built controllers, masks, and drone machines remain, but guitarist Doug Sabolick joins as the first genuine bandmate in the project's 20-year history, adding riffs and humanity that complement Shone's mechanized assault. The result is Author & Punisher's most focused and immediate work—eight tracks in thirty-four minutes of crushing industrial doom with actual songcraft.
Album opener Meadowlark establishes the dichotomy immediately: Shone's clean vocals, surprisingly vulnerable and unprocessed, float over building tension before everything kicks into massive, earth-shaking industrial heaviness. The production captures every grinding detail—you can practically hear the metal groaning under pressure. Titanis featuring Indonesian artist Kuntari is one of the heaviest things Shone has ever written, tribal rhythms meeting mechanical punishment, blast beats switching between organic euphoria and suffocating industrial crush. Mute Swan brings in Megan Oztrosits of Couch Slut for eerie spoken-word passages over lurching riffs and haunting atmospheres that recall Neurosis at their most oppressive. Black Storm Petrel with France's Fange is pure unrelenting assault—double-kick drums thundering under monstrously heavy sound, sludge as black as a banker's heart, no room to breathe. The paired tracks Titmouse and Titmice showcase classic Godflesh-style chug, mammoth grooves that could flatten buildings.
Rook brings definitive riffing forward in transgressive ways, Sabolick's guitar chugging with surprising prominence while maintaining that crushing low-end. It's the birdsong concept made sonic—the melody literally mimicking the rook's call, transformed into industrial doom. Closing track Thrush ends the album with surprising vulnerability, Shone's clean singing recalling Steve Von Till's soulful delivery over brooding, crawling instrumentation that feels genuinely emotional. Nocturnal Birding proves Author & Punisher has moved beyond novelty into genuine artistry—this is the sound of one man wrestling with machines he built himself (now with a genuine collaborator), finding beauty in brutality, humanity in the mechanical. The concept ties everything together with poignant messaging, but the music stands on its own as crushing, immediate, and increasingly unafraid of melody. Heavy as fuck, surprisingly human, and still uniquely punishing.
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AGRICULTURE - The Spiritual Sound
Los Angeles quartet Agriculture call their sound ecstatic black metal, and The Spiritual Sound makes that description feel like an understatement. This is blackgaze, post-black metal, screamo, shoegaze, noise rock, and indie sensibilities colliding in ways that shouldn't work but create something genuinely transcendent. Chief songwriters Dan Meyer and Leah Levinson bring distinct visions—Meyer channelling Zen Buddhism and historical collapse, Levinson drawing from queer history and AIDS-era literature—that the band (rounded out by Richard Chowenhill on guitar and Kern Haug on drums) deconstructs and rebuilds communally. The result is forty-four minutes of unpredictable, emotionally devastating music that refuses easy categorisation while remaining rooted in black metal fury and post-hardcore intensity.
My Garden opens with a count-in that launches into blast beats and math rock chaos before dropping into familiar metal chug, then abruptly shifts to soft singing over strummed chords. It's the album in miniature: violent mood swings that somehow flow naturally. Flea transitions seamlessly into Micah (5:15am) with echoing riffs creating a song cycle—the latter track blending tremolo-picked blackgaze melodies with punk gallops and frenzied dissonance. The Weight introduces doom-laden sludge that could fit on a Primitive Man record, slow and crushingly heavy with inventive guitar work, before erupting into frenetic noise. Serenity brings back the tremolotic fury underpinning Levinson's manic vocals and Haug's unhinged drumming. These aren't just stylistic detours—they're essential to Agriculture's concept of ecstasy through extremity. The title track The Spiritual Sound functions as a harsh noise interlude, setting up Dan's Love Song's Slowdive-esque shoegaze beauty—waves of reverb-drenched guitars and clean singing that feel like oceanic release after the preceding brutality.
The album's final third showcases Agriculture's full arsenal. Lead single Bodhidharma opens with one of metal's best riffs this year—huge, fist-pumping, arena-ready—before stopping dead. Levinson screams "You look like you're dying…" and everything becomes delicate, vocals above a whisper, drums a slow march, until sharp hits bring the riff back with devastating impact. The guitar solo here is genuinely jaw-dropping, inventive shredding that takes cues from Tom Morello and Larry LaLonde, splicing harsh noise with sublime beauty. Hallelujah goes full acoustic singer-songwriter before accelerating into aggressive blast beats and guitar heroics, black metal meeting folk in the most unlikely synthesis. Closing track The Reply delivers the album's most beautiful moment—oceanside reflection and historical meditation building to a blackened coda that mirrors Explosions In The Sky's grandest emotional peaks. The Spiritual Sound isn't background music—it demands your full attention and rewards it tenfold. Agriculture has created something genuinely unique: extreme music that's as spiritually nourishing as it is physically punishing. Essential listening for anyone who thought they knew where heavy music's boundaries were. This is the future. Album of the year without any doubt.
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