02 Oct 2025 - PBV
Modern ClassicalChamber Pop

The musical sphere is as vast as it is myopic with every genre bending niche, unsingable crescendo and head-scratchingly-butterfly-in-stomach-elated arrangement that raises the hairs on the back of your neck as it plummets you into a sun room or a cavernous well without much supposed warning. These records come along when you least suspect and leave a mark as a stone inscription somewhere in a recess of your mind like a covert epitaph.

Continue reading >

01 Oct 2025 - Knut
MetalcoreSludge Metal

How dismal and thunderously heavy can a band´s music get, and still be utterly engaging? The answer is probably Adur´s music on this high-velocity album.

Continue reading >

30 Sep 2025 - Andrea
Doom MetalSludge

Three years after their debut Remnants of the Vessel, Faetooth have released their second album, Labyrinthine, on The Flenser. This work showcases the band’s artistic maturation, transforming the premises of “Fairy Doom” into something deeper and more personal.

Continue reading >

29 Sep 2025 - Kurt
Black MetalProg Metal

Ever since its inception, one of the chief criticisms about Black Metal is that it is arguably the most narcissistic strain of heavy metal. Sure, almost every metal band deals with depression, hopelessness, cynicism and other self-focused maladies. But far too many Black Metal projects revolve around an individual who consciously and self-centeredly decides to embrace his own fatalism and spiral toward death — rather than looking for a community of like-minded individuals struggling with the same mental issues.

Continue reading >

19 Sep 2025 - Knut
Progressive Metal

This album is massive and expansive, as the music sweeps through eighty minutes of highly addictive melodic themes composed by a trio of talented musicians.

Continue reading >

12 Sep 2025 - Martin
SludgeDeath DoomPost-Metal

In a world overstimulated by surface signals and synthetic truths, Hypostasis, the latest offering from Finnish post-metal four-piece Sunniva, demands something else entirely: stillness, confrontation and depth. This isn’t music designed to entertain—it’s crafted to initiate.

Continue reading >

06 Sep 2025 - Thorsten
Post-HardcoreMathcore

Another awesome release by our dear friends in Ripcord Records, who are becoming more and more the go-to label for everything heavy and melodic, yet intricate and underground in the UK, or should I say in Scotland? Anyway, Wolv3s is a new outfit formed by veterans who want to showcase their love for everything between Thrice and Dillinger.

Continue reading >

03 Sep 2025 - Thorsten
Prog-FunkSynth-Rock

Sometimes it is important to step out of one’s comfort zone to, afterwards, be able to re-focus on one’s main focus and projects. Brann Dailor does exactly that with the help of Arcadea, his Synth-Rock/Prog-Funk project in which he is not only the amazing drummer animal but also the vocalist. And as if that change of role would not be enough, the whole thing also needs to be a Sci-Fi-epic set 5 billion years in the future. Of course.

Continue reading >

31 Aug 2025 - PBV
SludgePsychPost-Metal

We open on an empty street as a semblance of light streams between the two spires of the Basler Münster Cathedral. The cold wind gives the trees a gentle tussle. The reflections in the puddles shake with an immutable unrest. It is a quiet dawn, the city vibrating with a certain fretfulness. The picture is askew struggling to focus. The lens refracts and lights with the flick of a cigarette as some figures slowly start to enter the frame.

Continue reading >

28 Aug 2025 - Stephan
Goth RockPost Punk

With a delay of almost two years, Årabrot finally present us with the title track of their 2023 album Of Darkness and Light - and a full new album from the same recording sessions around it.

Continue reading >

25 Aug 2025 - Andrea
SlowcoreFolkAmericana

Hayden Silas Anhedönia released her second full-length album under the moniker Ethel Cain. The album came out on 8th August and is named Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You, after the former boyfriend of Ethel Cain.

Continue reading >

15 Aug 2025 - Thorsten
Noise-Punk

“Those folks who say there’s no good new music out there anymore - you are just not looking enough!” That‘s what you should say, and the new EP by Irish band Nerves called Iarmhaireacht should be proof enough for that statement! Welcome to the most exciting EP this month!

Continue reading >

10 Aug 2025 - Thorsten
SludgeNoise

What do you get, when two of Down Under‘s most interesting bands/projects team up together for a split record? Well, you sure do not get a second installment of the (admittedly great, but heard too effin often) “Where the Wild Roses Grow“ - for two reasons: First – there is no need for a sequel, as she is already dead. Second – UBOA and Whitehorse are not really pop-artists! But their split is awesome – in a very different way!

Continue reading >

08 Aug 2025 - Thorsten
Prog RockNoise Rock

First of all, thank you so much to Doug for showing me Gláss, that‘ s why we do the Plugs of the Day at the beginning of our interviews, a chance to shine a bit of light on those bands that deserve a bit more attention. And now onto a review for the self-titled Gláss record, a labyrinth for those who are willing not to be found and not to escape.

Continue reading >

07 Aug 2025 - Thorsten
Death MetalDoom Metal

A record that, unwillingly of course, takes me back to my days as a young student – 25 years ago. Taking university classes in English Lit and discovering the works of Samuel Beckett – what a thrill it was to read something that was outright undeniable and utterly denying. The absurdity of life put into a nutshell. Who would know that a quarter-century later I would be reviewing a record indirectly connected to one of his plays? Nobody would have. Not even the guys in Malthusian.

Continue reading >

05 Aug 2025 - Thorsten
DoomNeoclassical

Seldom but then importantly are our pre-established notions of what “Heavy” or what a certain genre is really challenged as we most often seek out a sound or a feeling that confirms our stereotypes. With their new record Breathless Spirit Toronto-based trio Völur do just that alongside with Cares, the experimental project of sound engineer James Beardmore. All four participants created a record that really shows that “Doom” does not necessarily rely on amped-up guitars. Or guitars at all.

Continue reading >

01 Aug 2025 - Kurt
Desert rockStoner Doom

There’s an expression here in the States that rolls off the tongue quite nicely but, like all American idioms, is laced with an underlying, nasty bite: “You snooze, you lose.” It’s a smug, “them’s the breaks”/“sink or swim” way of telling someone that if they missed out on something, they’re the one to blame. The expression is ubiquitous among music snobs in particular. “You mean to tell me you weren’t at the party I hosted 35 years ago at my parents’ house outside Seattle where Nirvana played six songs for the 12 of us who were there? Too bad, bud: You snoozed and you losed.” (Remember, this fictional scenario takes place in the educationally challenged US of A.)

Continue reading >

30 Jul 2025 - Knut
DarkwaveSynhpop

Rule of Two set out to make a summer song by putting their distinct sonic thumbprint on Robyn´s highly successful “Dancing On My Own” from 2010 and ended up creating an appealing five-song EP surrounding the track with their darkened dreamgaze sonics.

Continue reading >

29 Jul 2025 - PBV
Progressive MetalAvant-Garde

When one speaks of freedom in the modern world, or a world gone past—there are oftentimes allusions to some arduous battle in overcoming political turmoil, obstruction or insurmountable conflict. There are stark but worn faces raising their fists up in solidarity or protest, photographed in austere black and white, a headline hanging above their head in bold firm letters. And nonetheless it becomes an iconic memory that forms a time and a place.

Continue reading >

20 Jul 2025 - Simon
Blackened Post-HardcoreGrunge

Ba’al summon forth turmoil and catharsis on their sophomore full-length!

Continue reading >

15 Jul 2025 - Andrea
Hip HopSpoken Word

Three years after his last album, South London artist Kae Tempest comes out with his brand-new album, self-titled, a 12-track record that is a turning point from the previous releases and is a coming back to his roots, returning to hip hop from slam poetry and spoken word.

Continue reading >

12 Jul 2025 - Knut
AmbientDreamgaze

It feels like the cosmos sings to you as you float meditatively through the torrents of ambient and dreamy soundscapes emerging as emotional streams from the deep layers of Remaining Warmths’ sonics.

Continue reading >

11 Jul 2025 - Kurt
RockDoom

Fyr, the new EP by superbly skillful Swedes GAUPA, is a downright infuriating listen. Well, to this embarrassed rock critic, at least. How does a band capable of writing and executing a record, even if it is just an EP, without the slightest blemish, scratch or scuff? Like a parasitic worm, that confounding question bores into the brain of the listener and refuses to dislodge itself from an ear canal, because it knows it’s onto something. Well, so do GAUPA, and they’ve clearly learned that if a parasite can enter your skull and nibble at your brain, they can execute similar sabotage with a quintet of songs that Do. Not. Quit.

Continue reading >

10 Jul 2025 - Knut
Doom Metal

As heavy as they come, Mosara continues to seep along the path of fuzz-induced stoner doom metal with juggernaut, ponderous music.

Continue reading >

07 Jul 2025 - Stephan
ClassicalIndustrial

“First we take Pyongyang, then we take Tehran.” (not Leonard Cohen)

Continue reading >