Latest Reviews

There are way too many records released every week - which one should you listen to? We want to help you by reviewing lots of records every week and you can also check out a little teaser before reading the whole thing. And if you want to, you can also browse through our archive and have a look at the amazing records you might have missed out on.

  • Reverb on Repeat - Жить

    18 Mar 2024 - Knut
    Ambient | Shoegaze

    Four tracks of melodic meditative, soothing, comforting Ambient-Shoegaze from what can be called a supergroup of the St Petersburg scene.

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  • Mastiff - Deprecipice

    15 Mar 2024 - Knut
    HardcoreSludge Metal

    Brutal, desperately aggressive, and deeply emotional doomy Sludge that feels like a fresh slap of cold water in your face. Mastiff is right on track to become trailblazingly genre-defining with their new album.

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  • convulsing - perdurance

    13 Mar 2024 - PBV
    Death MetalProgressive

    There are many ways the construct of genre can seemingly work against an album. It’s usually all the peripheral elements; the artwork, the grammar choice, even things like handwritten lyrics. Many don’t care about iconoclasm in a bloodied-up slaughterhouse with meat strung up in a row. They want the burger; they tell you to hold the extras. And those folks not looking for wild spices in their meal or dwelling in conversation after ‘ are likely to get up from the table and travel their merry way to their next destination.

    All this to say that perdurance is a clear labor of love with every intentional detail accounted for. From the lengths of the silences’to the naming of the tracks and album; from the cadences and codas ‘ to the literal and figurative breaths in the auditory aesthetics.

    The trajectory of this album, which comes approximately six years after Brendan Sloan’s last work Grievous, transcends the notions of the Death Metal genre as we’ve come to know its seasoning and reasoning. It’s an album of risk, and plentiful reward for anyone wishing to digest, sit, and pour into the liner notes and lyrics. A bonafide emotional ride, which for the initiated and uninitiated alike, may recall the anguish of mister Steevo Hurdle on Gorguts’ Obscura; the ingenuity of Swan’ on Edge of Sanity’s Moontower; coupled with the expressiveness of the Mongrain’s and Holdsworth’s of that connected world. The sequencing alone, along with the secret bonus, recalls a time when full album listens were received without interruption, with full submersion into the material, in awe, with headphones on or sitting on the bed, following along to the lyrics.

    This is a ferocious one. If classical composition can feel ferocious. It is curious; if one feels that the gleam and luster of that death metal blade have dulled over the last decade, this blacksmithing is the leap into that magic. If these dark corridors entice your propensity to discover and uncover’this album is very much for you. A return to a certain form, that is simultaneously completely obliterated by the notion of what the future may hold in this genre. There are delicate sauces here; they’re tactile and they are complex; they are ‘baroque’ as a friend put it. With that said’every song is a ‘hit’ with and without the quotations. If the world listens intently ‘ this can be a watershed moment for the Heavy Metal cultural continuum as the namesake of the album suggests. In my recipe book, it very much is.

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  • Monkey3 - Welcome To The Machine

    12 Mar 2024 - Simon
    Psych RockStoner Metal

    Monkey3 return with a stunning slice of next level rock music to transport the most weary of listeners away into their musical cosmos.

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  • Beenkerver - De Rode Weduwe

    11 Mar 2024 - Lucia
    Black Metal

    All great stories are accompanied by a great soundtrack, and such is the case of Beenkerver’s De Rode Weduwe in telling the story of Sophia, the red widow. In this story, she deals with abuse, witchcraft, revenge and remorse. From the 90s Black Metal sound to the fast-paced riffs that are characteristic of Beenkerver’s music, this is him at his finest, creating a story that gives a female character a leading and heroic role. Thus, if you enjoy great storytelling with well-crafted Black Metal, let’s join Sophia and Beenkerver into this journey.

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  • Sleepytime Gorilla Museum - of the Last Human Being

    04 Mar 2024 - Thorsten
    AvantgardeFree Everything

    One of the most innovative bands on all of the planets of our milky way is back after 17 years and they show how a proper comeback should be done. Do not in any way compromise your art but look for the elements that defined your sound, try to keep the most important ones and add new elements that are challenging to your audience but never pushing them away. Welcome back Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, and thanks for bringing us of the Last Human Being!

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  • Chelsea Wolfe - She Reaches out to She Reaches out to She

    01 Mar 2024 - Gene
    Dark FolkElectronic

    Exactly everything I could have hoped for!

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  • Clouds Taste Satanic - 79 A.E.

    27 Feb 2024 - Knut
    Atmospheric Stoner Sludge

    A year after their amazing eighth full-length release the New York-based lords of heavy psych-fuzzy Sludge Doom Metal are back with their ninth massive instrumental opus.

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  • They Came From Visions - The Twilight Robes

    26 Feb 2024 - Thorsten
    FolkAtmospheric Black Metal

    Hephaestian Black Metal. There I did it. Came up with another unnecessary name for a genre that many by now have closed the lid on as it has become stale for them. But isn’t inventing new genre names also fun? Of course we need a basis on which to formulate our idea upon: They Came from Visions is an anonymous Atmospheric Black Metal trio from Kyiv, Ukraine. In the middle of the war-torn times they release their second full-length The Twilight Robes now via Eisenwald and it is a pure pleasure to listen to.

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  • Kali Malone - All Life Long

    26 Feb 2024 - Stephan
    Modern ClassicalExperimentalDrone

    Dear VoS Ultras, is an artist with a recent feature in the New York Times even still underground enough for this platform? In case of Kali Malone I would say yes, since despite almost unanimous critical praise the composer/organist still operates at the minimalistic fringes of every musical realm she touches.

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  • A Burial at Sea - Close to Home

    23 Feb 2024 - Knut
    Post-Rock

    A flow of unhurried contemplative music through subtle misty, sometimes elusive, sonics. The cascades of distorted, yet translucent crescendos. The omnipresent timbre of glimmering melodic Post-Rock. All of that and more is fused into the ten tracks on the astounding second full-length from this musical collective.

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  • Dream Unending & Worm - Starpath

    22 Feb 2024 - Thorsten
    Funeral Doom

    There is certainly a red thread going on here: 20 Buck Spin‘s last record of 2021 was Dream Unending‘s wonderful Tides Turn Eternal. 20 Buck Spin‘s last record of 2022 was WORM‘s amazing Blue Nothing EP. 20 Buck Spin‘s last record of 2023 was Dream Unending teaming up with WORM for a powerful split record named Starpath and my god, if they do a real collaboration for the end of 2024 – I think that record might be one of the very highlights of the year. Listen to this record here to get what I mean!

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  • Spectral Voice - Sparagmos

    14 Feb 2024 - Gökhan
    Funeral DoomDeath Metal

    Rituals have been with us since the Paleolithic era, stretching back to tens of hundreds of thousands of years ago. It is highly likely that the act of repetitive rituals was one of the earliest documented forms of collective behavior in the history of humankind. Sometimes a sacrifice to the gods, sometimes to send a loved one to another plane of existence. Music in its various forms, whether being performed by a throat singing shaman, a chanting of a “church” choir accompanied by an organ, or a simple rhythm that comes out of a crudely made percussion, has always been an integral part of these endeavors.

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  • Bipolar Architecture - Metaphysicize

    12 Feb 2024 - Daria
    Post-Metal

    This February marks a comeback from one of those bands that we will surely have to keep an eye on in the next future! Bipolar Architecture presents its sophomore album Metaphysicize, released via one of those music labels that is always synonymous with good quality: Pelagic Records!

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  • Slift - Ilion

    08 Feb 2024 - Simon
    Psych RockSpace Metal

    Slift return with a monolithic slab of the finest music to transport you to the edges of the Cosmos!

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  • Solbrud - IIII

    07 Feb 2024 - Lucia
    Atmospheric Black Metal

    There are four classical elements within nature: Wind, Water, Earth and Fire. Just like these elements bring something of their own to nature, the four members of Solbrud bring something unique and phenomenal to IIII making this band one that has a unique take on creating atmospheres and patterns in their music. Delivering slow moments of tranquility, just to take you into ones full of fiery rage. This is not just an album, it’s an experience and a journey through various and diverse emotions that all come to make this an amazing listen from start to finish.

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  • Chapel of Disease - Echoes of Light

    06 Feb 2024 - Martin
    Classic RockDeath Metal

    Change is inevitable. Everything is possible. Embrace deathtastic Classic Rock!

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  • Vægtløs - Aftryk

    01 Feb 2024 - Knut
    BlackgazeBlackened Post-Hardcore

    A cacophony of emotional atmospheric metal music oozes from the yearning arpeggios and tremolos. The melodies swirl, the music swells and rushes as the bass and drums drive the anguished vocal screams from strength to strength.

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  • Kariti - Dheghom

    31 Jan 2024 - Daria
    Dark Folk

    Long time no see, but we’re definitely back at work! This year 2024 is going to be another year filled with good music, and I can’t wait to listen to it, the expectations are high! So, there’s no better way to start this new year of reviews than with one of those records that will surely be one of my favorites for the next few months!

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  • Minerall - Bügeln

    29 Jan 2024 - Stephan
    Space Rock

    Three prestigious members of the contemporary German-speaking Kraut Rock scene met in January 2023, set up their stuff in Hanover (So please read all this in the voice of either Klaus Meine or ex-chancellor Gerhard Schröder!), pressed record and just went wherever the moment would take them.

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  • Uragano - LP1

    27 Jan 2024 - Knut

    With a band name translating to hurricane, you expect turbulence as a listener; a rollercoaster of a listening experience. You get that and even more when you are dragged into the vortex of Uragano´s music.

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  • Olhava - Sacrifice

    26 Jan 2024 - Knut
    BlackgazeAmbient

    A force of meditative, hypnotic, mesmerizing, emotive, beautiful, uplifting music - Olhava.

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  • Kalt Vindur - Magna Mater

    24 Jan 2024 - Knut
    Atmospheric Black Metal

    Inspired by the ancient deity of Cybele and influenced by the second wave of Black Metal, the Poles discharge their vehement magnus opus in their third full length for those of us who cannot get enough of fierce undulating Black Metal.

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  • Jarhead Fertilizer - Carceral Warfare

    23 Jan 2024 - Gökhan
    Death MetalCrust-Punk

    What would happen if Regurgitate and Incantation had a love child who was covered in so much slime at birth, thrown out on the streets in their infancy, grew up learning how to fight, full of scabs, who got meaner and meaner and turned into a mutant freak by the age of 16? Well, Jarhead Fertilizer definitely would have happened, that is for damn sure.

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  • Kara Delik - Singularities I-IV

    20 Jan 2024 - Stephan
    Post PunkKrautrockAnatolian RockDub

    It’s January and I know everybody’s transitioning from retrospective into expectant mode. Nonetheless here comes one more throwback to the whole year 2023 - yet merely focussed on only one group this time. Different than usual this review isn’t about one release, but a whole four-part series of seven inches which Kara Delik released from February to December of last year.

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