Moonlight Malefice – Demo 2024

Artist: Moonlight Malefice Country: USA Label: Solitary Night Collective Formats: Digital Demo Year: 2024 In the span of just a week, American Moonlight Malefice has delivered two digital demos. Although both demos last only a little over 6 minutes, that…

Blackdeath – Mortui Incedere Possunt

Artist: Blackdeath Country: Russia Label: End All Life Productions Formats: LP / CD Year: 2024 Russian Blackdeath has never chosen the easy route. Over their three decades span career they have delivered quite a few records that were either hard…

Old Wainds – Stormheart

Artist: Old Wainds Country: Russia Label: Darkness Shall Rise Productions Formats: LP / Cassette Tape / CD Year: 2024 With ten years in the making, the unannounced release of ‘Stormheart’ is quite a bit of a surprise. Over the past…

Gorgon – For Those Who Stay

Artist: Gorgon Country: France Label: Osmose Productions Formats: LP / Cassette Tape / CD Year: 2024 Despite this being the seventh album in total, with the appearance of ‘For Those Who Stay’, it is fair to speak of the “third…

Ungfell – De Gh​ö​rnt

Artist: Ungfell Country: Switzerland Label: Eisenwald Formats: LP / CD Year: 2024 In recent years the phenomenon of Ungfell has been all over the place if you are into folky and creative Black Metal. With their splendid sense for dramatique…

Yoth Iria – Blazing Inferno

Artist: Yoth Iria Country: Greece Label: Edged Circle Productions Formats: LP / Cassette Tape / CD Year: 2024 All good things must come to an end. Heroes will die and empires will fall… Although Yoth Iria’s ‘As The Flame Withers’…

Tyrannic – Tyrannic Desolation

Artist: Tyrannic Country: Australia Label: Iron Bonehead Productions Formats: LP / CD Year: 2024 One of the most musically interesting bands from the celebrated Iron Bonehead Productions stables must definitely be Australia’s Tyrannic. Over the past decade the band has…

Malignant – Beyond The Grave [Demo]

Artist: Malignant Country: Chile Label: Iron Bonehead Productions Formats: Demo Tape Year: 2024 Malignant can more or less be seen as “the new band” from Occulterror, the former vocalist of Sepulchral Rites who teams up with her former band mate…

Angelcorpse – Goats To Azazael [Demo / Re-Release]

Artist: Angelcorpse Country: USA Label: Osmose Productions Formats: 10″ EP Year: 2024 Angelcorpse’s ‘Goats to Azazael’ is a nothing short of a milestone in the wild and furious brand of Black/Death Metal. Not only did this mark the beginning of…

Pyre – Where Obscurity Sways

Artist: Pyre Country: Russia Label: Osmose Productions Formats: LP / Cassette Tape / CD Year: 2025 Ever since Russia’s Pyre’s appearance on the international Death Metal scene the band has been appreciated for their take on the Old School way…

Pentacrostic – De Profundis [Re-Release]

Artist: Pentacrostic Country: Brazil Label: Nuclear War Now! Productions Formats: LP Year: 2025 While Pentacrostic’s debut album, ‘The Pain Tears’ from 1992, is generally regarded as the band’s finest hour – even a bit of a cult album in the…

Canis Dirus – By The Grace Of Death

Artist: Canis Dirus Country: USA Label: Bindrune Formats: LP / CD Year: 2024 In this wretched world, life can still sometimes surprise you in a positive way. When I was asked to dive into this latest record of Canis Dirus,…

Tormentador / Sex Messiah – Split 7″ EP

Artist: Tormentador / Sex Messiah Country: Brazil / Japan Label: Sex Desire Records Formats: Split 7″ EP Year: 2024 This release may be a bit older, but as a fan of the 7” EP format and the underground qualities of…

Svrm – Скорбота [EP]

Artist: Svrm Country: Ukraine Label: Self-Released Formats: Digital EP Year: 2025 The prolific Ukrainian one-man Black Metal operation that is Svrm seems to prefer shorter releases over full-lengths. Although S. has delivered three full-length albums, ‘Скорбота’ is the band’s 11th…

Nocuous Lust – Demo

Artist: Nocuous Lust Country: USA Label: Self-Released Formats: Digital Demo Year: 2025 Sometimes very little words are needed, or they can even take some of the magic away. That must have been the way of thinking of this newly found…

Grief – Dark Epiphanies Of Nihilism [Demo]

Artist: Grief Country: Chile Label: Self-Released Formats: Demo Tape Year: 2025 Over the past few years, Chilean Black Metal is something that we have learned to reckon with. Yet, it certainly is not only Lord Valtgryftåke that is dictating the…

Hasswald – …Der Waldgang [Demo]

Artist: Hasswald Country: Estonia Label: Warhorn Formats: Digital Demo Year: 2025 With their great debut demo, ‘Und So Begann…’ the Estonian Hasswald came as a bit of a surprise. Not only for the somewhat obvious fact that there’s not many…

Wolves Of Desor – The Witch Of November [Demo]

Artist: Wolves Of Desor Country: USA Label: Self-Released Formats: Digital Demo Year: 2025 At the last days of December 2023 I stumbled upon the debut demo by Wolves Of Desor, a then new one-man project by M. who had otherwise…

Irae – Promiscuous Fire [EP]

Artist: Irae Country: Portugal Label: Signal Rex Formats: Cassette EP / CD EP Year: 2025 Just a few years ago, we might have started a review of a Portuguese Black Metal band by saying that this sunny country by exception…

Drowning The Light – Conquer Or Serve IV: Xeperapep

Artist: Drowning The Light Country: Australia Label: Dark Adversary Productions Formats: CD Year: 2025 After having been involved in a few more humanly or earth-bound spirited albums in the ‘Conquer Or Serve’-series, this fourth chapter is a somewhat more otherworldly. In an almost literal…

Masacre – Ola De Violencia [EP / Re-Release]

Artist: Masacre Country: Colombia Label: Osmose Productions Formats: 12″ EP / Cassette EP / CD EP Year: 2025 In many ways the term “cult” applies to the early work of Masacre, and basically the band still very much fit to…

Fides Inversa – Pillars [EP]

Artist: Fides InversaCountry: ItalyLabel: Self-releasedFormats: Cassette EPYear: 2024 It’s been rather quiet around Fides Inversa, but in late November 2024 the band made their return to the stages, performing at the Unholy Congregation festival in Belgium. To mark that resurfacing,…

Naked Whipper – Chapel Defilement

Artist: Naked Whipper Country: Germany Label: Iron Bonehead Productions Formats: LP / CD Year: 2025 With the reissue of Naked Whipper’s cult back catalogue and its (unexpected) return on stage, appearing on the Never Surrender festival, it should come as…

Izrod –  Ulica, Trnje i Kamenje [EP]

Artist: IzrodCountry: Bosnia and HerzegovinaLabel: Signal RexFormats: 12” EP / CD EPYear: 2025 In 2023 Izrod, the latest assembly of gifted Black Metal musicians from the Bosnian Black Plague Circle, presented their debut album ‘Sarajevski Odisej’. In reality, that first recording was born from…

Vider – Strike With Putrefaction

Artist: Vider Country: Sweden Label: Self-Released Formats: Digital Year: 2025 On a miserable, rainy, grey and stormy January day, nothing really fits better than an all-consuming darkness in musical form. For that joyous occasion today, I threw in the debut…

Mörkvind & Tårfödd – Shadow Over The Fallen Lands

Artist: Mörkvind & Tårfödd Country: Italy & Germany / Sweden Label: Self-Released Formats: Digital Year: 2025 Despite Tårfödd’s impressive output, having released three albums and two EP’s in 2024 alone, the band never crossed my path before. Mörkvind, on the…

Behexen – Beyond the Four Gates [Compilation]

Artist: BehexenCountry: FinlandLabel: Werewolf RecordsFormats: CDYear: 2025 2016. It’s nearly nine years ago that Behexen released the sledgehammer called ‘The Poisonous Path’, the last release of the band. Never the most productive band, it is by far the longest period…

Mercenario – Tormented Souls [EP]

Artist: Mercenario Country: USA Label: Atolinga Records / Hell’s Headbangers Records Formats: Cassette EP / CD EP Year: 2024 In a conversation about the recent split up of Morbosidad, my interlocutor reported that Tomas Stench of that band had already got…

Xulux – Ex Favilla Nos Resurgemus [EP]

Artist: Xulux Country: Finland Label: Self-Released Formats: Digital EP Year: 2024 A few months after the split with Kurjuus, Xulux returns with a new EP and further develops its brand of Finnish Black Metal. The band’s first EP was released…

Bloodthorn – Natteskyggen [Demo / Re-Release]

Artist: BloodthornCountry: NorwayLabel: GoatowaRexFormats: 12” DemoYear: 2024 While the current Black Metal scene from Trondheim is still drawing firm attention, the Norwegian city has an equally interesting and to some extent influential past. To commemorate that contribution to second wave…

Sex Blasphemy – Pungent Ovulations Of The Sorceress

Artist: Sex Blasphemy Country: USA Label: Self-Released Formats: Cassette Tape Year: 2025 You don’t necessarily need to be a seasoned metal veteran or completed your metal studies at the Miskatonic University to make an educated guess of where this is going, musically…

Armoured Angel – Baptism In Blood [Demo / Re-Release]

Artist: Armoured Angel Country: Australia Label: Hell’s Headbangers Records Formats: LP Year: 2024 Before the band would go on and gain some cult status as one of Australia’s first Extreme Metal bands with quite some demos that influenced the first generation of…

Rotting – Crushed [Re-Release]

Artist: Rotting Country: Canada Label: Hell’s Headbangers Records Formats: LP / CD Year: 2025 While Hell’s Headbangers is primarily known for its released out of the Black/Death/Thrash Metal pond (preferably a mixture of all that), the people behind the label do have…

Wiatyk – Tron Wlen [Demo / Re-Release]

Artist: Wiatyk Country: Poland Label: Diabolical Vitriol / Pro Morte Formats: Demo Tape Year: 2024 This second demo tape from Wiatyk, originally released in 1996, was simultaneously reissued with the band’s first effort. And while ‘Mysticism’, from 1995, showed a band in a blueprint…

Wiatyk – Mysticism [Demo / Re-Release]

Artist: WiatykCountry: PolandLabel: Diabolical Vitriol / Pro MorteFormats: Demo TapeYear: 2024 I won’t pretend I knew Wiatyk before I laid eyes on the recent reissues of the band’s only two demo tapes (by Diabolical Vitriol and Pro Morte). In my defense, the two…