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Iron Bonehead Productions is proud to present the long-awaited third album of Argentina’s Infernal Curse, ‘Revelations Beyond Insanity’, on vinyl LP format.

Hailing from the oft-overlooked scene of Argentina, Infernal Curse are a study in patience and defiance. Forming in 2008, early on, the band’s sound was strictly within the blown-out Black/Thrash characteristic of South America’s most-underground metal, culminating in the clattering ‘n’ chaotic ‘Awakening of the Damned’ debut LP in 2012. However, it was with the Iron Bonehead-released mini-album The End Upon Us in 2014 where Infernal Curse truly found their stride. Reigning in the chaos for a more pulsing form of barbarity, the power-trio were as violent and virulent as ever, but pushed the still-overwhelming physicality into the beyond. Amazingly, they then pushed beyond The Beyond with 2016’s ‘Apocalipsis’ full-length, again released by Iron Bonehead. Bestial metal taken to its psychedelic extremes, ‘Apocalipsis’ presented a paradox between profundity and crudity, forever elevating Infernal Curse above the mongrel hordes mindlessly battering away to the same well-worn, black/white/red-all-over Blasphemy tropes.

That album no doubt proved to be an apex for Infernal Curse, and thereafter did the band stick to EPs and splits – and even then, three years on from ‘Apocalipsis’. Now, at long last, Infernal Curse deliver their third album, ‘Revelations Beyond Insanity’. Once again, the Argentinians both embody and defy the bestial metal paradigm, and harken back to the earliest expulsions from mid ’80s South America. After its eerie church-organ intro, ‘Revelations Beyond Insanity’ kicks in with one of the most SAVAGE guitar/bass tones in many years; swirling and deliriously effected, all strings chundering forth from their fingers congeal into a crumbling cathedral of nightmarish enormity. That drummer Bestial Offensor follows suit with a loose & lively tornado of DD Crazy-style controlled chaos should not be surprising: South American touchstones like ‘Bloody Vengeance’, ‘Immortal Force’, and especially ‘INRI’ and ‘Sexual Carnage’ are recast in a manner both world-eating and ceremonial.

Yet, for Infernal Curse, even when plumbing the depths of primitivism, a haunting throughline elevates their approach above base barbaric physicality and into the realm of rigorous mind-expansion – that that Beyond explodes into a kaleidoscope of feral atavism at the heart of the psychedelic experience. Or, simply dispense with fancy words altogether and submit to the overwhelming onslaught of ‘Revelations Beyond Insanity’: Infernal Curse have returned to the full-length front to reclaim their throne.

Purity Through Fire is proud to present The Kryptik’s highly anticipated third album, ’A Journey to the Darkest Kingdom’, on CD and vinyl LP formats. The CD version will be released on June 2nd while the vinyl version will follow later.

With a past that stretches back to the late ’90s and a patient path that began in 2013 with a moniker change, Brazil’s The Kryptik burst forth into brilliance when they aligned with Purity Through Fire. In the autumn of 2019 came their acclaimed second album, ’When the Shadows Rise’, a startlingly immersive gem of symphonic black metal, and many finally took notice. A year late came the 40-minute ’Behold Fortress Inferno’, which poignantly expanded on their vast canvas despite “only” being a mini-album. Between these two records especially, The Kryptik proved that “symphonic black metal” need not be a dirty word; with no outside influence from the nowadays “black metal” scene, the duo dependably practiced their mystical arts and erected a grand citadel of sound – an atavistic awakening of when all was simply BLACK METAL, heedless of appellations.

And so it goes with The Kryptik’s massive third album, ’A Journey to the Darkest Kingdom’. Truly titled, the seven-track/70-minute ’A Journey to the Darkest Kingdom’ reveals the duo’s grandest vision yet: neo-ancient symphonic black metal drenched in the dark waters of the cosmos, a castle of crystalline ice whose spires reach into boundless space. The band’s ebon flow continually crests and cascades, synths swirling all about and with utterly magickal effect. The production here in this Darkest Kingdom is clear and sharp – all murk excised for maximum immersion, gorgeous swell, and pulsing violence – altogether sounding incredibly vintage and era-authentic yet somehow fresher than most nowadays black metal recordings. But, that magick largely resides in The Kryptik’s songwriting, as each song is an epic in its own right and then are all threaded together as one fever dream: melodicism, majesty, and malice in perfect balance. Thus, ’A Journey to the Darkest Kingdom’ follows logically in The Kryptik’s continuum whilst pushing their creativity to even-more-breathtaking heights. Have they delivered a classic on par with ‘Witchcraft’, ‘The Sad Realm of the Stars’, or even ‘Stormblåst’? Only time shall be the judge…

Shadowlords
from us the gift of eternity
so the Lucifer’s star to shine
a journey to the darkest kingdom

Iron Bonehead Productions is proud to present a brand-new mini-album from Malaysia’s Tomb, ‘The Dark Subconscious’, on CD and 12″ vinyl formats.

Formed in 2014, Kuala Lumpur’s Tomb hail from the small-yet-lethal Malaysian black/death underground that features such stalwarts as Mantak and Thorns of Hate. And just like those two contemporaries, Tomb exhibit a frightening feralness that can only come from South East Asia. And while many/most bands wimp out or slick up as they go along, the reverse is actually true for Tomb, as proven by their latest ‘The Dark Subconscious’ mini-album.

While their earlier EPs are hardly “refined,” the throbbing mysticism compared favorably to earliest Samael, Root, and Black Funeral. Here on ‘The Dark Subconscious’ do Tomb go even more primitive – “bestial,” yes, but a form of bestiality birthed by the likes of Abhorer. Indeed, it’s no accident that Tomb’s logo change is not unlike that of those cult Singaporeans: a swirling, sulfurous mass of gutter frequencies soon assault the listener on ‘The Dark Subconscious’, occasionally colored by no-less-primitive synths left over from their earlier days. In that regard, one could liken the 16-minute miasma to Beherit’s ‘Drawing Down the Moon’, the ’90s work of Greece’s Disharmony, or especially Mystifier’s paradigmatic duo of ‘Wicca’ and ‘Goetia’…but there’s still that sense of strange, of scene-unbound lawlessness, across Tomb’s latest short-length. Short but VERY sweet, long may they obey that lawlessness!

Krucyator Productions presents ‘Skeletal Grotesquery’, the upcoming live album by Finland’s death metal group Corpsessed. The album is scheduled for CD and digital formats on 29 May.

Corpsessed was spawned from putrescent slime in 2007 at the rotting houses of delta-area Järvenpää — a quiet somnolent town in the suburbs of the Southern Capital Area of Finland. The five-piece, with four full-length albums and two EPs under their belt, has been solidifying their presence as one of the most vital torch-bearers of the current Finnish Death Metal scene for the past 15 years.

The band is known for their dark brand of death metal that harks back to the old days of the early ‘90s and has received high praise for their hard-hitting and suffocating live shows, and this is precisely what the band was created for — crushing music that is best experienced live.

‘Skeletal Grotesquery’ is a live recording from Corpsessed’s performance at Braincrusher in Hell Festival in Hirschaid, Germany, on 25 November 2022. The live setlist, comprised of nine songs from their formidable discography, displays a visceral and unyielding form of sonic aggression. The audio was captured directly from the soundboard and later mixed by M.M. of the band and mastered by Loic Fontaine at Krucyator Studio in early 2023. No overdubs were done, and this recording presents the band in its raw and vital form. This live recording is a testament to the fact that Corpsessed is, above all, a live band and can be best experienced at maximum volume.

This live album contains tracks like ‘Succumb to Rot’, ‘Death-Stench Effluvium’, ‘Demoniacal Subjugation’ and ‘Forlorn Burial’ among others.

We have described their last full-length album ‘Succumb to Rot’ as: “Corpsessed deepened and perfected their sound to this huge and all-devouring cthulhian monster. It is less grinding but leans more on haunting dark riffs and thunderous drums, something that brings Corpsessed closer to a band like Dead Congregation than to, say, Purtenance or Convulse….Corpsessed proves to be one of the best bands in the genre and anyone how liked their previous efforts won’t be disappointed by ‘Succumb To Rot’.”

Purity Through Fire is proud to present Kvad’s highly anticipated second album, ‘So Old’, on CD and vinyl LP formats. The CD version will be released on June 2nd while the vinyl version will follow later.

Hailing from Norway, Kvad indeed performs black metal exclusively in the ancient Nordic tradition. The band is yet another project of the ever-prolific Peregrinus, who numbers the likes of Unholy Craft, Solus Grief, Hjemsøkt, Darkest Bethlehem, and Praefuro among his current endeavors. Then a duo, in 2022, Kvad released the ‘Invocations’ EP and ‘Cold & Dark, As Life’ debut album in quick succession, and now Peregrinus continues to strike while the burning church is hot with their second album, ‘So Old’.

On one hand, ‘So Old’ is aptly titled: the album begins with a desolate melancholy of what once was, and then the blizzard of distortion leads into a cryogenic grimness not unlike mid-’90s Gorgoroth, particularly the hackle-raising, Hat-esque screams of Peregrinus. And so Kvad follows this trajectory for a good deal of the album…but their songwriting unfolds, fever-dreaming into strange shapes not found among the ashes of those churches. While never dissonant per se, that blizzard of riffing soon compounds into a fury/flurry backed by Peregrinus’ brisk-yet-building drums; it’s a howling hysteria that’s not altogether untuneful, and its slipstreaming vortex suggests the superlative late ’90s psychedelia of Svest and Weakling. But, much as he does with his other projects, Peregrinus is not one to be (exclusively) pinned down to one specific style, and possesses the songwriting nous to turn these classics-minded creations into ones respectably modern. ‘So Old’, and yet so alive!

At VM-Underground we described the debut album as “Kvad has not (yet) reached the same level of quality like a band such as Nordgeist, but this is a very promising first album nonetheless.”

20 Buck Spin announces Torture Rack’s new full-length, entitled ‘Primeval Onslaught’! It will be released on June 9th, 2023 on LP, CD, MC and in digital formats.

Torture Rack exists for one reason: to pulverize skulls and grind bones through bludgeoning gore-soaked Death Metal depravity! Their third album ‘Primeval Onslaught’ continues that bloodstained legacy, witnessed previously on ‘Barbaric Persecution’ and ‘Malefic Humiliation’ with a barrage of meat-torn-from-bone riffs and greased-flesh savagery.The band’s songwriting and intent has been tightened like a garrote, filling each track with meathooks into the skin and precise, constant battering, rarely eclipsing the 4 minute mark. The album will contain songtitles like ‘Ceremonial Flesh Feast’, ‘Morning Star Massacre’, ‘Fucked By Death’ and ‘Descent Into Infernal Chasms’.

Engineered, Mixed and Mastered by Seánan McCullough and Joe Anderson at Helvete Sound, Portland Oregon. Cover artwork by ROK of Australian legends Sadistik Exekution.

Get your first knockdown blow with the track “Decrepit Funeral Home” at 20 Buck Spin YouTube channel.

In any serious conversation about Death Metal the name Vomitory has to come up. Following their inception in 1989, between 1996 and 2011 they dropped eight of the most blistering albums the genre has spewed up, the quartet parting ways in 2013. However, the band’s retirement turned out to be short lived, returning to stages in 2019 to celebrate the band’s 30th anniversary, and now they drop their first new full-length in twelve years, the monstrous ‘All Heads Are Gonna Roll’.

Boasting the classic Vomitory sound with a few new twists and turns, it is everything their faithful could have hoped for, the band having taken their time before committing to it rather than rushing in. “We weren’t feeling any pressure, it was rather about making a decision whether we should continue as a band, i.e. release new material, or simply put the band back in the grave again,” explains drummer Tobias Gustafsson. “We wrote a few songs first just for the fun of it, to see if we still ‘had it’, before we made the final decision to continue and make a new full-length album.”

‘All Heads Are Gonna Roll’ is best described as “fast, grinding, D-beat, fist-in-your-face Death Metal”, it features fresh aspects that are uncommon to Vomitory records. “One thing in particular we did was to try to build distinct choruses in the songs, which is something we didn’t put too much effort into earlier,” explains drummer Tobias Gustafsson. “We have also spent a lot more time working with the backing vocal arrangements, which we certainly think paid off very well. It brings something new to our sound. We have also tried to write more straightforward riffs, like we did in the early 2000s.”

The instruments for the record were tracked in the band’s rehearsal space, on a mobile studio setup engineered by Mats Lindström, and was self-produced. This allowed them to work at their own pace in the hours that worked for them, rather than having this dictated to them as would be the case if they had rented a studio. “Although we had a lot of flexibility to choose our working hours, it was still crucial to keep the recording schedule as strict as possible, because it was so easy to say ‘let’s do it tomorrow instead’.” For vocals, they went to Leon Music Studios and engineer Rikard Löfgren, which was where they recorded their last three albums. They brought in good friend Christian Fredriksson (Vulkan) to play some guitar solos, but otherwise it is entirely their own work.

With vivid horror movie-inspired artwork – with a hint of anti-religion thrown in for good measure – ‘All Heads Are Gonna Roll’really is the whole package for Death Metal fans, and a stunning return to form after so many years between releases.

A new video can be found on the Metal Blade YouTube channel.

Both demos from Wisconsin’s purveyors of putrid, crunchy Death Metal compiled on a single tape with new artwork by the master of gore and filth Bram Bruyneel, Putrid Mass were a shortlived band from the US who released 2 demos, the 1993 demo ‘Stripped Of My Flesh’ and the 1994 demo ‘Crushing The Masses’. 50 minutes of gore-dripping Death Metal for fans of Autopsy, Obituary and especially the mighty Dr. Shrinker.

After Putrid Mass split-up at some point of the 90’s, members Baron Rehak (bass), Brian Rehak (drums, vocals, also from Dr. Shrinker and Death/Doom band Sickness from Wauwatosa, Wisconsin) and Matt Schmitz (guitars, currently in Sleestak, former member of the same Sickness and Put Her in the Trunk) formed the band Memory’s Garden.

Raw Skull Recordz released the following news:

We are proud to welcome Eternal to our Raw Skull Recordz family. Eternal is a 4-piece American death metal band from Phoenix, Arizona. The band formed in 2021 from a collection of like minded individuals who are heavily influenced by bands such as Obituary, Death and Dissection.

We will be re-releasing their ‘Faceless Evil’ EP and to finish that whole package off, we will be adding a huge pile of bonus tracks. For those that are not familiar with their amazing style of late 80s, early 90s style of Death metal. Go check them out here; https://eternalaz.bandcamp.com

Arcane Archivist Zine & Inscripted Mist Creations made the following announcement:

Today I am finally ready to announce a project that I have been planning for over a year now. I have formed a small record label / publishing company called Inscripted Mist Creations. For the debut release, we – along side Nuclear War Now! Productions – are proud to produce the first vinyl pressing of Vemod’s (NOR) cult 1998 demo!

Hailing from Tunsberg, Norway, Vemod (not to be confused with current Norse metal band Vemod) rose from the ashes of Norway’s legendary 2nd wave of Black Metal. Nearly 5 years removed from the genre’s murderous peak, brothers – Saargh and Chagrin – formed the band during unprecedented times in the history of Black Metal. Though many people are quick to write off the late 90s as an era plagued by corporatization and trend-hopping, demos like this are perfect examples of the mystical black force that was still percolating in the underground. The recording itself is notable for its drab atmosphere and desolate production – somehow perfectly blending the styles of groups like Emperor and Lycia. Experimental in its compositions and boundary pushing in its influences, Vemod would truly lay their cards on the table with this single release.

A must listen for those drawn to dark and sorrowful music of any genre. Highly recommended for fans of Emperor, Odium, Limbonic Art and Potentiam. Available soon on 12” LP.