The brainchild of multi-instrumentalist Charlie Anderson, Weft’s album ‘The Splintered Oar’ isn’t a record that’s easily categorised. Across five fairly lengthy, mostly instrumental numbers, the Panopticon violinist takes in elements of folk metal, melodic black metal, dark folk, prog metal and even an element of alternative country to create a musical journey that’s full of twists. It is a record that won’t be loved by a mass audience, but it’s ultimately one that feels very rewarding in terms of depth and variety.
Tag Archives: extreme metal
ROT FESTER – Death Row EP
Rot Fester’s debut EP – 2024’s ‘Condone Or Condemn’ presented eighteen minutes’ worth of old school death metal fury. With the bulk of the material adopting a bass heavy approach coupled with a guttural roar, the Swedish duo were certainly heavy, but the sludgy tone of the recording ensured they didn’t just sound like they were casually retreading a traditonal death metal path.
FALSE GODS – Lost In Darkness And Distance
In a pre-pandemic age, False Gods released a two track EP ‘The Serpent and The Ladder’, a twelve minute musical assault that blended industrial and hardcore influences with a pinch of sludge and black metal, improving upon their earlier work. Via a couple more digital singles and their eagerly awaited full length ‘No Symmetry…Only Disillusion’ (released between 2020 and 2023), the band cemented the feeling that their often uncompromising sound had enough power to take on many of the scene’s most intense bands.
Check out ‘Sentinel Hill’, the new video by In Dakhma
When a band is pitched as “death metal”, there are certain tropes that the listener will expect. There are the pnrumatic drums – an integral part of the death metal sound, from the genre’s formative years, due to the brutal assault of bands like Suffocation – and the guttural vocals, often associated with the genre’s bigger names like Death and Entombed. You’d probably also expect to hear speed driven, huge sounding bass grinds, often providing a pivotal aspect to the aural assault.
Croatian band In Dakhma’s debut album ‘He Who Sows The Ground’ features all of that…and more. Check out ‘Sacrum’ and you’ll find a classic death metal sound delivered with a genuine enthusiasm; listen to ‘In Dogma’ and you’ll discover a hardcore infused bass part colliding with thrash riffs that are direct descendants from Sepultura’s massively influential ‘Arise’. Elsewhere, ‘Lies Beyond The Golden Ruins’ colours the band’s riffs with a hard nod towards groove metal, and the epic closer ‘Tower of Silence’ introduces sludgy riffs to bring something even heavier to the fore.
BURIAL – Rejoice In Sin
When most people think of black metal, they think of Scandinavian bands with unreadable logos. They’re also likely to think of harsh sounding albums with particularly trebly production values and material topped with hissed and retching vocals, often with absolutely brutal lyrical content. Manchester’s Burial certainly tick some of those boxes, but their third release ‘Rejoice In Sin’ is, thankfully, blessed with a bigger, more professional sound than many of their Scandinavian forefathers and key influences. This, at least, makes for an album that’s far more listenable on a technical level.