Decibel's Top 40 Albums of 2020

With 'Alphaville', the enigmatic New York City Extreme Metal trio has successfully broken with all genre conventions and elevated into a realm of Avantgarde Metal that is as fascinating as it is scary. Not that conventions ever held back Imperial Triumphant, but this album is certainly their most obscure and experimental yet. The good news is that it's not at the cost of intensity. The demanding, yet always intriguing clash of jarring atonality and gloomy Jazz fusion ('City Swine') finds its match only in the city it is so openly inspired by. There is plenty of both ends of the spectrum - and everything in between - on 'Alphaville', which will undoubtedly go down in history as the band's magnum opus. For fans of: Ved Buens Ende, Portal, Oranssi Pazuzu Under exclusive license from Century Media. TDW023

Paysage D'Hiver are a phenomenon within the black metal genre. Wintherr, the Swiss project's sole and solitary member, has released ten albums and several splits within 20-plus years, all of which became underground successes and sought-after items while he kept mostly to himself, feeling no need to go public. Uninterested in flocking to the herd, the artist and his craft remain an enigma that never fails to surprise … which rings especially true with regards to his first full-length since 2013: "Im Wald" ("in the forest"), a monochromatic epic in the truest sense of the word. With 120 minutes playing time, "Im Wald" is not only Paysage D’Hiver's longest effort so far but also another chapter in the tale of winter travel (thus the French name Paysage D'Hiver) that runs through the project’s entire work like the proverbial golden thread. In the context of his highly detailed narrative, Wintherr locates it after "Steineiche" and "Schattengang" (both 1998) which describe the beginning of the travel, and before "Das Tor" (2013), "Kerker" (1999) and "Die Festung" (1998), which are set at the end. "Im Wald" is available as limited and hand-numbered 2MC (ltd. 300), 2CD (ltd. 500) and 4LP (ltd. 500) wooden box sets (all incl. 20-page booklet and poster) as well as non-limited 4LP box set (also incl. 20-page booklet and poster) and 2CD Digipak with 20-page booklet in black envelope. All products have been assembled by hand. Buy at our shop here: worldwide: en.spkr.media/label/kunsthall US/Canada: us.spkr.media/label/kunsthall

With their fourth album, metal duo Spirit Adrift wanted to create a sharp contrast to the doom and gloom of their first three. As such, *Enlightened in Eternity* is an upbeat and triumphant record that recalls the chalice-hoisting classics of a bygone era. “I\'ve put enough energy into making really emotionally devastating and painful music,” guitarist, vocalist, and founder Nate Garrett tells Apple Music. “That\'s been pretty much everything Spirit Adrift has done up to this point. So I wanted to make something that was a little more empowering and uplifting. It still deals with death and pain and suffering and trauma and all of this stuff I\'ve always been trying to unpack and analyze, but I feel like it focuses more on the solutions rather than just the problems.” Below, Garrett shows us the path to heavy metal enlightenment. **Ride Into the Light** “I didn\'t even know that I was working on a new album—I just picked up the guitar and started playing some of those riffs. But then I kind of realized that it was taking on a shape of what sounded to me like an epic, classic type of opening track to a heavy metal album. So it became this completely unapologetic, badass heavy metal song. I tried to make it really aggressive and intense, kind of in the tradition of the classic, epic album openers like \[Judas Priest’s\] ‘Electric Eye’ and songs like that.” **Astral Levitation** “When I started playing around with this, it was pretty obvious to me that I was drawing from the Iommi School of Riffs, but every era of Tony Iommi. It\'s taken me a little bit of maturity and more open-mindedness to appreciate the later stuff, like the Tony Martin era of Black Sabbath, so I wanted to represent the entire history of that school of thought. When I was trying to come up with fitting lyrical content, I thought about a story in his autobiography where he explains without a hint of irony that he has the ability to astral project. To me, it seems to explain a little bit how he is able to just keep cranking out these archetypical, powerful songs for so long. So I took that concept and applied it in a more general sense. The song ended up being about how to achieve and maximize your full potential as a human being.” **Cosmic Conquest** “I was getting tattooed, and I heard a certain drumbeat in the tattoo shop and I realized it was that straightforward, faster rock drum beat that we hadn\'t utilized yet. I don\'t even remember what song I was listening to, but I wanted to incorporate that. I was also listening to a lot of Rick Rubin-produced metal albums at the time, like Danzig and Slayer and Trouble. Then I tried to turn my mind into Rick Rubin\'s mind and produce a Spirit Adrift song. That\'s ‘Cosmic Conquest.’ Lyrically, I like to talk about science fiction and religion and spirituality and where they all intersect. I feel like it\'s a good literary tool to chip away at some deeper questions. I\'m definitely doing that on that song.” **Screaming From Beyond** “Track four on our last few albums has been important—we’ve been doing the track-four ballad thing that so many bands have done over the years. But I got really tired of tripping over my foot switch all the time to change from dirty guitar to clean guitar, so I decided I wasn\'t going to do a ballad on this album. That\'s why there\'s no clean guitar anywhere this time. But I still wanted to make track four special, so I decided to write what I felt like would be our radio hit in the vein of bands I grew up with, like Ozzy Osbourne, Black Sabbath, and AC/DC. And then I put a sludge ending on it, like a nod to New Orleans to not make it too much of a hit, you know? Lyrically, it’s a ghost story, but the real issue I’m trying to address is grief and death and what it means when a loved one dies and how that haunts people.” **Harmony of the Spheres** “I like to do things that are heavier and faster than anything we\'ve done before, and I like to do things that are slower and more melodic and more psychedelic than we\'ve ever done before. Obviously, this one is more towards the aggressive end of the spectrum. The lyrical content was inspired by a book I was reading about John Dee, who was into chaos magic and influenced \[Aleister\] Crowley. So that sort of mystical creepiness kind of ties it back to our last album.” **Battle High** “On this song, again, I was trying to put myself in Rick Rubin\'s shoes and also returning to the Tony Iommi School of Riffs. But probably it’s more from the perspective of the Matt Pike School of Even Chunkier Riffs. I was listening to a podcast and I heard someone use the phrase ‘battle joy’ to describe someone that is completely euphoric and at peace only when they are in the heat of absolute chaos and physical violence. I started thinking about that concept and I thought ‘battle high’ sounded cooler, like somebody literally getting a high off of violence and war. But the song is more about how the military programs people to get to a place emotionally and psychologically where can they turn off their conscience and experience that battle high. But then, when they come back from war, there’s nothing to deprogram them and turn them back into human beings. So it ended up being an anti-war song, which I think is an important statement to be making.” **Stronger Than Your Pain** “Much like ‘Harmony of the Spheres,’ I wanted to write a song that was pushing the limits of what\'s expected from us in terms of aggression and heaviness and tempo. As for the lyrics, I was reading this book—*The Power of Now* by Eckhart Tolle. At first, I didn\'t think that sort of self-empowerment type of stuff was necessarily the most metal subject matter, but then I started thinking about all of my favorite metal albums—*Vulgar Display of Power*, *Powerslave*, *Screaming for Vengeance*, *Heaven and Hell*—they all kind of have this underdog mentality that it\'s us against the world. So I realized that self-empowerment is metal as fuck.” **Reunited in the Void** “This started off almost as an inside joke to myself, because I get such a kick out of people trying to force labels on us. First they said we\'re a doom band, which at the time was probably accurate. Then they said we\'re not a doom band. Some people still call us ‘stoner doom,’ which I completely don\'t understand. So I figured it would be funny to make a whole album of these pretty concise, aggressive, upbeat metal songs, and then hit them with a song that\'s ten and a half minutes long. It\'s super slow and downtrodden and melodic. Lyrically, it’s about the hope for the possibility of some sort of reconnection with everything that you love after death. Both of our dogs died around this time, so we put their collars on the last half of this song as alternate percussion. If you listen close enough, you can hear it.”

Spirit Adrift refuses to slow down. With ‘Enlightened In Eternity’, Nathan Garrett, alongside drummer Marcus Bryant, has created yet another monument to the timelessness of heavy metal. And while ‘Enlightened…’ builds on the sizable foundation established by previous albums, it also sets itself apart in formidable new ways, widening the scope of what Spirit Adrift can be. What Spirit Adrift have mastered, where others have failed, is the ability to invoke the power of metal’s past, whether it be the 70s, 80s or even the 90s as we hear on ‘Enlightened…’, without ever feeling throwback or ’retro’. Spirit Adrift urgently represent the sonic and emotional zeitgeist of 2020. “Enlightened In Eternity” carries the same enormous magnitude of the most significant metal records of every era, but Nathan Garrett has carved out his own place among the greatest of songwriters, by crafting uniquely classic and instantly recognizable songs. Vocally, Garrett again showcases an obvious evolution of his already high-level ability with more soaring soul and snarling venom injected into his classic metal form. The gorgeous guitar leads, melodies, harmonies and unforgettably heavy riffs benefit from a huge, timeless production quality. Drummer Marcus Bryant has elevated his playing to new levels of intensity and tasteful subtlety. And as always, the tracks remain imprinted on the mind long after the album has finished. Whether it’s the ever-expanding catalog of incredible albums and songs or the searing live performances, the dominance of Spirit Adrift upon the current Heavy Metal landscape is now undeniable. And while ‘Enlightened In Eternity’ already marks the band’s fourth album, Spirit Adrift have only just begun. credits

With the hotly anticipated follow-up to their 2017 debut *Blood Offerings*, Oakland power trio Necrot has delivered a master class in old-school death metal, underpinned by the mother of all existential themes: mortality. “For us, talking about mortality and impermanency is a positive message, because you can’t get sad about something that is inevitable and is a shared destiny,” Italian-born vocalist/bassist Luca Indrio tells Apple Music. Musically speaking, Indrio and his bandmates—guitarist Sonny Reinhardt and drummer Chad Gailey—somehow created an even more impressive album than their highly regarded debut. “There was definitely more pressure to do something really good because *Blood Offerings* was super well-received, but we were also so much more prepared,” Indrio explains. “For us, it was never a question that this album was going to be better.” Below, he breaks down each song on *Mortal*. **Your Hell** “This track talks about how trauma creates more trauma; the effects that any negative or violent action will have on the person that is the victim is eventually going to create the next perpetrator of trauma and violence. ‘My hell will be yours’—that’s what the lyrics say—it’s a cycle of pain that gets perpetuated by marking people and creating more trauma. It’s like contagious hate. Fixing things now will benefit future generations more than ourselves, but the way we are conducting our lives is creating more pain in the future for people that are born right now.” **Dying Life** “This song talks about the mortal human condition. It talks about taking off your skin—like taking off your mask that you created to live in society. It’s about being more conscious of what you really are, which is a struggling body holding together a mortal life that is every day getting closer to the end. People forget that they’re going to have to die—and not only in the physical sense of dying, but also we often lose so much in terms of people, situations, or a job or a house or a family—things you thought you were going to have forever. But it’s important to be able to let things go instead of living in this facade of being here forever or maintaining the things that you have.” **Stench of Decay** “‘Stench of Decay’ talks of human greed and how money drives 90 percent of everybody’s actions and thoughts, even on an artistic level. So many things we do are related to money and success, and lots of times it’s like we get influenced by the results. We are driven by wanting more for ourselves rather than the bettering of everybody. We are living by a standard that is destroying pretty much everything. And that’s why lots of people feel empty in society and out of place—because not everybody wants to be driven by these things. But we live in a world that teaches you that if you’re not producing and making money, you’re pretty much wasting your time and you’re a loser.” **Asleep Forever** “This goes back to the mortal theme of the album and of ‘Dying Life,’ which is acknowledging that you’re dying, acknowledging that everything is going to end. You’re going to be asleep forever. Most people don’t want to think about that, but other people can find comfort in it, because the truth is that you get to let go and suffer less. When you accept that idea, you can live more fully rather than hiding behind thinking that things are meant to be forever.” **Sinister Will** “‘Sinister Will’ talks about soldiers going to war. I’ve met a lot of veterans at our shows and heard a lot of stories, so I felt driven to write a song about war from the perspective of the person who is there before they become a soldier. Because once you become a soldier, you’re just following orders and you’re completely expendable. Often people go to war driven by bigger ideals but after you’ve been there—if you survive—you kind of wonder why you went. So it’s about people deciding to go to war and then having the realization that they’ve been used and that actually this greater purpose didn’t exist.” **Malevolent Intention** “This kind of goes back to \[the theme of\] ‘Stench of Decay,’ but it focuses on power more than money. If your goal is being more powerful, the things you’re going to have to do often have a malevolent connotation. Because when your actions are driven by the goal of gaining more power, you’re not trying to make things better. You’re not doing things to help anybody. Your actions are not for your spiritual growth or growth as a person. You’re forced into a game where there is not much space for morality or anything else.” **Mortal** “‘Mortal’ is the ultimate reminder that you’re going to die. A lot of our songs talk about this, like ‘Shadows and Light’ on *Blood Offerings*. And it’s not just your physical body that dies—your memory is going to disappear along with everybody else’s. Everything is 100 percent impermanent, but you believe differently because you don’t understand time or you have a limited way of seeing time that only goes like a hundred years after your death or something. So this is about acknowledging that you’re a mortal being on a place where everything disappears if you wait long enough.”

Out of Stockholm / Sweden comes SWEVEN, named after Morbus Chron’s final record. Founder Robert Andersson, previously the main songwriter of Morbus Chron, comments: ”Sweven was a record you shaped like any other, but it also ended up shaping me and my goals with music. It came to mean a lot of things personally. So when the time was ripe to form a new band and continue the journey, there were no other names even considered.” SWEVEN’s debut album ”The Eternal Resonance” was in many ways a DIY project, with the assistance of Rasmus Booberg, who led the drum recording, and David Castillo, who helped out with the electric guitars. Mastering was handled by Magnus Lindberg of Redmount Studios. The cover artwork was crafted by Raul Gonzalez, who previously worked closely with Morbus Chron as well. Robert states: ”To me it’s an old album by now, one which I’ve lived with for a long time. Like with most endeavours that you care deeply about, they tend to take longer than planned, and this was one of the more extreme cases. As I prepared to once again leap headfirst into a never-ending cycle of anger and frustration, I knew it had to stop. All things considered, I’m proud of this album. The songs mean the world to me. It is at this point the closest I’ve come to realising what I want to do musically. The biggest thank you to Isak and Jesper for pulling their weight and colouring this record in a profound way. You’ve been indispensable. Expect the unexpected.” "Mycelia" - Official Track Stream: youtu.be/E7atkNuadaE Tracklist: 1. The Spark 2. By Virtue Of A Promise 3. Reduced To An Ember 4. The Sole Importance 5. Mycelia 6. Solemn Retreat 7. Visceral Blight 8. Sanctum Sanctorum Line-up: Robert Andersson - Guitar/Vocals Isak Koskinen Rosemarin - Lead Guitar Jesper Nyrelius – Drums

If there’s one thing that defines UK doom/death progenitors Paradise Lost, it’s consistency. Not musical consistency—the band has taken detours through hard rock, goth, and even dark synth-pop since forming in Halifax, England, in 1988—but in terms of quality control. Which is no easy feat considering that *Obsidian* is the band’s 16th album featuring original members Nick Holmes (vocals), Gregor Mackintosh (guitar), Stephen Edmondson (bass), and Aaron Aedy (guitar)—not to mention their second with Finnish drum wizard Waltteri Väyrynen. As esteemed metal veterans, Paradise Lost has had time to appreciate the perspective that experience has given them. “When you’re older, you understand the consequences of your actions,” Holmes tells Apple Music. “When you’re a teenager, you make rash decisions that can really impact you later on. My children are at the age where they’re young adults, and I just think about what they’re going to be doing in ten years. I think that impacted me somehow when I was writing the lyrics.” Below, Holmes takes us through *Obsidian*’s shadowy depths. **Darker Thoughts** “This originally started as an intro piece for the album. Greg sent the acoustic recording to me, and I just came in with a singing line for it. The song was written so incredibly fast that I can hardly remember doing it. Usually it takes us weeks and weeks, if not months, to write songs. But I think it came out better for it, because it\'s quite a different song to the rest of the album as well. It’s probably one of my favorite songs on the album, if not the favorite, actually.” **Fall From Grace** “This is about the cracks appearing in a situation, and everyone else sees it but you don’t. So it’s literally a fall from grace. I think Ash Pears, the video director, ran with the lyrics a little bit in his own artistic way for the video, but the video is more like a mini-film that we wanted the song to be a soundtrack for. We’ve always liked that type of video. The old Radiohead videos were always great in that way, and that’s what we wanted to do with this.” **Ghosts** “I think it’s one of the most direct and instant songs on the album. The band was paying homage to the music that we grew up with—we were always metal guys, but goth music was always there in the background. If we ever went out to nightclubs, they were always goth clubs, and you might hear Motörhead’s ‘Ace of Spades’ or ‘Run to the Hills’ by Iron Maiden, but everything else would have been Bauhaus or The Call or Sisters of Mercy. It was always there and very much the soundtrack to our young teen lives, so this is kind of a tipping of the hat to that.” **The Devil Embraced** “This is a mishmash of different styles. It’s obviously very dark, with a very heavy chorus. Lyrically, it’s a similar kind of topic to ‘Ghosts,’ about perhaps seeking some kind of religious belief later in life to try and cushion yourself if you believe in some kind of afterlife. I find it fascinating when people to turn to religion later in life, but I could never imagine doing it. Even the most hardcore atheist I’ve known turning to religion—I just wonder what makes that happen. Maybe I’ll find out. Probably not, though.” **Forsaken** “This song is very reminiscent of something we might have written in the early 2000s. It\'s a period of music that we haven\'t touched upon since that time, really. With that said, the musical approach seems quite fresh, and we’ve got the choir on it. I remember we changed the chorus at the last minute. But yeah, it’s the only song that’s really like this on the album. It’s quite out there on its own, I think.” **Serenity** “If you were listening to this on vinyl, this would be the B-side opener. Musically, it’s got a faster, galloping pace. Lyrically, it has to do with the horrors of a medieval battle and the aftermath—and who decides when it’s won. There must’ve been a lot of people that died after these battles had been won, so I was thinking about being out in the field still fighting even though it’s finished. It’s kind of like a Monty Python thing, but it must’ve been so horrendous.” **Ending Days** “Someone called this a ballad. I wouldn’t say it’s a ballad, but it’s probably the saddest song on the album. If I was in a particularly melancholic mood, I could have a good cry to this one. Lyrically, I was thinking about when people fall out through petty grudges and lose contact—particularly when families do this. And then when you hear someone’s dying or they’re really ill, you make friends with them again. It hasn’t happened to me directly, but it has happened to people I know. And you think about all those decades wasted, but I guess people are just too busy getting on with their lives to realize the time’s passing by.” **Hope Dies Young** “I was thinking about the phrase ‘teenage dreams so hard to beat’ \[from the Undertones song ‘Teenage Kicks’\] because I used to listen to John Peel’s radio show and he used to say it all the time. I think he’s even got it on his gravestone. But I never really got my head round it ’til I got older. And it’s such a true statement, because I do find the teenage years were such a good time—no cynicism; just excited about things. Especially music. It was the only thing I cared about as a teenager.” **Ravenghast** “Greg came up with the title, and I don’t even know what it means. I think maybe it’s an evil ghost or something, but not everything has to have a great meaning. It\'s like a painting—I know I just like it or I don\'t. And this is one of those kind of moments where I just thought, ‘Well, that\'s a great title,’ so we went with that. Lyrically, it’s about how the higher you are, the harder you’re going to fall. So it’s better to be three-quarters of the way up than right at the top.” **Hear the Night** “This song and the next one are bonus tracks. They didn’t make the album because we thought it was complete as it was. But ‘Hear the Night’ is actually one of my favorites. Greg’s wife Heather sang the chorus on this, so it’s got a very catchy hook, but the rest of the song is crushingly heavy.” **Defiler** “This song has a very traditional rock riff to it, which is quite unusual for us. It’s going to raise some eyebrows. The chorus is very Paradise Lost, but you kind of need the rock riff for the chorus to work. When you hear it, you’ll know what I mean. I’m interested to see what people say about it. This one was a bit too different for the album, but it’s still interesting, hopefully.”

Goden is the spiritual successor to Winter, a band that has been heavily influential and highly revered in the metal underground since its inception and treasured demos. A long-awaited continuation of what Winter would have been from co-founder Stephen Flam’s vision, the new album “Beyond Darkness” throws us into an existential voyage out of the past and into the future. A familiar yet distinctive new opus that expands the unmapped shadow world that Winter once opened in our nightmares. A soundtrack that takes the listener on a dark and ominous journey, Beyond Darkness is a conceptual deep dive into wildly unexplored and unknown sonic territory. The story has three characters, each with different symbols: Stephen Flam as “Spacewinds”, the time and space in which these characters dwell; Vas Kallas as “NXYTA (Goddess of Night)”, lead vocalist and the darkness: Tony Pinnisi as “The Prophet of Goden”, who speaks in the name of Goden and is the light, plays keyboards and also played in Winter. Beyond Darkness is a tale of the dark and the light, set to a score of heavy music. The artwork was conceived by Eva Petric, a Slovene multimedia artist based in Vienna, Austria and New York. Eva worked with Stephen Flam, creating a visual story book within the LP/CD booklet that the listener can look at while they are consumed by this heavy sound trip. Stephen Flam leaves us in the outer blackness and inner gloom with these last words as ethereal guidance: “I hope you enjoy this endeavor – Listen with a free and open mind… Journey now Beyond Darkness” …

Death metal pioneers INCANTATION return with their highly anticipated new album, Sect of Vile Divinities. For over 30 years INCANTATION has consistently remained one of the underground's most influential and respected artists in the genre. True to form, Sect of Vile Divinities sees the legendary band adhering to the ways of the old school, unleashing twisted, mangled, and utterly disgusting Death Metal once again. A pitch-black mix of unrelenting Death Metal and imposing Funeral Doom, each track on Sect of Vile Divinities is a dirge dedicated to different ancient evils across various cultures. At a point where the world's most vile converge, tracks such as "Propitiation" see the band's driving riffs and pummeling drums crush the very foundations of religious zealotry, while standouts such as "Entrails of the Hag Queen" and "Fury's Manifesto" champion no-frills Death Metal in its purest form. Three decades of Death Metal still the funeral procession carries on. With Sect of Vile Divinities, INCANTATION hail a return to form for the genre, and release one of 2020's most blasphemous and unforgiving titles.

On their first album in five years, LA metal veterans Armored Saint deliver an updated version of their classic ’80s sound. *Punching the Sky* sees vocalist John Bush and bassist and main composer Joey Vera addressing society’s ills on “End of the Attention Span” and “Missile to Gun” while paying tribute to fallen neighbors on “Unfair” and offering a glimmer of optimism with the anthemic “Standing on the Shoulders of Giants.” Meanwhile, the song “Bubble” took on a prophetic tone when the COVID-19 pandemic arrived. “These songs were written before the pandemic, but it’s weird how some of them take on different meanings now,” Bush tells Apple Music. “That’s the beauty of music and art. It can constantly take on a different face depending on the way life goes.” Elsewhere, Guns N’ Roses keyboardist Dizzy Reed contributed to “Fly in the Ointment” and “Lone Wolf.” Below, Bush discusses each track on *Punching the Sky*. **Standing on the Shoulders of Giants** “I originally didn’t want to have this song first because it’s the longest song on the record. But Joey thought we should open with it, and I agreed because it’s a great song and it’s very, very classic Armored Saint-sounding. The lyric and title came from a quote I read—I think it was from Isaac Newton. The idea is, you’re standing on this mountain that’s giving you a great view of the landscape, and you’re also on a giant—someone who inspired you—and you’re standing on their shoulders, so you’re even higher. It gives you a better perspective of how you want to conduct your life. It’s a way to remind yourself to do right and be a better person.” **End of the Attention Span** “Smartphones and computers basically do everything for us, and it’s affecting people’s focus. There are certainly amazing pluses to technology, but we’ve got to find the balance so computers don’t do everything for us and actually impede our growth and progress. There’s one verse of the song where I poke fun at people at the show who watch the band through their phone. Like, ‘You’re at a concert and you’re staring through your screen?’ It’s bizarre. On the other hand, I’m grateful when people record shows, because if I want to look back on something, I can usually find the show.” **Bubble** “The verses on this song have a big open-air kind of sound—a lot of space to sing through or over. It was challenging, but I liked it. Lyrically, it’s kind of about getting into a secret world—it could be a political world or an elitist club that alienates other people. It could be a circle of friends that you’re trying to break into. And then there’s a reversal as you say to yourself, ‘Oh, I see this now and I don\'t think I like this anymore and I want to get out of it.’ And then there’s this difficulty that you may find trying to get out of this world that you wanted to get into—the bubble. Again, all these songs were written before the pandemic happened, so it’s weird because now we’re seeing that term used all the time.” **My Jurisdiction** “This is a hard rocker with a big, cool riff. It sounds like vintage Saint, but modern. \[Drummer\] Gonzo \[Sandoval\] playing the ride cymbal brings this giant groove when he locks in with Joey. I think it’s a funkier way of playing than a lot of metal bands do, and we try to embellish that. There’s little shades of Aerosmith, too. Lyrically, I was caught up in all the political upheaval that’s taking place and just the silliness of it all. Whether it’s the courts or the government, you think, ‘I don’t even want to be a part of it because I just think it’s a mockery.’ It’s not directed at one particular political arm or anything—I just think sometimes the whole thing is ridiculous.” **Do Wrong to None** “The very beginning of this song is a recording of this weird creature, and we still don’t know what it is. We were in Italy doing a show near this boggy creek, and this animal sounded really scary so we recorded it. Then the song goes into a drum march, which Gonzo does with Jacob Ayala, the son of a good friend of ours. Jacob was in marching band in high school and he’s really talented. Some people have said the riff here has shades of \[Pantera’s\] ‘Cowboys From Hell.’ I don’t think that was intentional, but perhaps there’s a little inspiration there. The title is a Shakespearean quote that I felt was really fitting for the times we’re in.” **Lone Wolf** “I love this song—it’s one of my favorites on the record. I’ve said it’s like our Faith No More meets Earth, Wind & Fire meets Armored Saint kind of song. The background vocals that Joey did on the chorus are huge—it sounds like something you would hear on an Earth, Wind & Fire record. The verses have this bluesy thing that reminds me a little bit of Faith No More. Lyrically, it’s for the people who are on their own and don’t have a family or siblings or really good friends. I have a family now, but I was single for a long time in my life, so I can relate to the idea that you need to be strong to get through life if you don’t have the luxury of a support system.” **Missile to Gun** “This might not sound like a peace song musically, but it is. The first verse was inspired by one of the numerous school shootings that have happened. In the old days, if you had beef with somebody, you would pick a fight with them—or not, depending on your size. I’m a small guy—I haven’t had many fights in my life. But with a gun, you don’t need to be big. You can take out a lot of people, including the person that might be bullying you or whatever. The chorus is asking, ‘With more powerful weapons, are we possibly regressing?’ You can go as far as a nuclear missile, but reverse it all the way back to throwing stones at each other. We still act like cavemen but we’ve got insanely powerful weapons.” **Fly in the Ointment** “I think this is one of those songs that’s a sleeper. I really love this one—it’s got a big riff and a huge chorus. The title comes from the idea that no matter what happens, there’s always a fly in the ointment—something that is the irritant, the thing that prevents things from going smoothly. Like sometimes you get a flat tire on your way to work and you’re like, ‘Fuck, I don’t have time for this!’ and then you’re late and your boss is giving you shit. I actually wrote almost all of the lyrics when a pipe broke in our house in Big Bear and water leaked all over, so it’s got some references to the road signs you see on your way up there, like ‘Icy Conditions’ and things like that.” **Bark, No Bite** “There’s a lot of humor in this one, which I think Armored Saint doesn’t get enough credit for. And certainly there’s a little bit of Thin Lizzy influence with some of the double guitar leads and melodies. They’re probably one of the most underrated rock bands of all time as far as I’m concerned, and we channel our best Lizzy whenever possible.” **Unfair** “We’ve written numerous ballads in our past, but this one really had this melancholy feeling to it. And coincidentally, a tragedy happened right around the time that Joey gave me the music for this. These two children that my daughter went to school with were killed in a car accident. It was a drunk driver that killed them, but the parents survived. We’ve all had people around us die, and you try to find the silver lining, but with this it was just impossible. I felt I had to write about it, and I played it for the parents kind of reluctantly because I don’t want them to think I’m trying to capitalize on this tragedy, but I also wanted them to know I was paying tribute to them. So we dedicated the song to them, and I think it ended up being one of the best things we’ve ever done.” **Never You Fret** “We wanted to end the record on an uplifting note after ‘Unfair.’ Gonzo had this idea of playing a Native American flute on this, which really changes the color of the song in a cool way. And those monk voices are actually Joey, which I didn’t realize until he told me—I thought he pulled them off some chant record. To me, this song has a slightly Ministry feel, because it’s just relentless. Lyrically, I just wanted to write a song about our band and how, no matter whether we play in front of 10,000 people or 10 people, we bring it. It’s just who we are. We’re not always tight, but we always give it our all.”

The new album from death metal outfit OF FEATHER AND BONE, “Sulfuric Disintegration” (out on CD/LP/Digital Nov 13), sees the Colorado power-trio deliver their most brutal, dynamic, and punishing album to date. Following up 2018’s “Bestial Hymns Of Perversion”, an album which signaled a new paradigm shift for the band and saw the band get the worthwhile recognition deserved through acclaim and notable touring cycles (the band being recognized for their devastating live performance), bringing a new sense of awareness to the band. “Sulfuric Disintegration” takes OF FEATHER AND BONE’s intensity and aura to the next level. With not only delivering a more dynamic and complex musical vision that balances the genres of pure dark death metal, blistering grind, and unrelenting bestial metal, “Sulfuric Disintegration” sees OF FEATHER AND BONE become the full-on sonic killing machine that one was given a mere glimpse of with their past works. Not only is the sound on “Sulfuric Disintegration” more devastating than anything done previously, but the tighter and warmer production courtesy of a lethal mix and master executed by Arthur Rizk (tracking was done at Juggernaut Audio by Ben Romsdahl) gives the band their deadliest sounding album yet.

Since forming in 2014, the Ontarian sludge/doom duo Vile Creature has railed against oppression of all stripes while promoting a pro-LGBTQ and pro-vegan stance. The band’s third album, *Glory, Glory! Apathy Took Helm!*, sees drummer/vocalist Vic and guitarist/vocalist KW sawing off a trio of sprawling, crawling, and abrasive salvos before enlisting the angelic choir of Laurel Minnes and Minuscule alongside pianist Tanya Byrne (of Bismuth) for the alternately ethereal and caustic two-part title track.

Their long awaited third album, recorded by Kurt Ballou and Zach Weeks at God City and mastered by Brad Boatright at Audiosiege. Musically, the third Dropdead album is a bit different from previous recordings, style-wise and vocally, with the latter being delivered so the words have an impact more so than just raw screaming. With 23 songs in 24 minutes, the songs themselves vary much more in tempo and style, but ultimately, it's a Dropdead record that makes sense in 2020. Lyrically, this record is relevant to the times we live in, focused on the alarming state of the world, the disturbing rise of right-wing extremism, animal abuse, and the continued social failures of humankind. "These are dark times we find ourselves living in," says the band, "and this is how we vent our frustration and anger in a positive way." Track List: Prelude Torches Road To Absolution Only Victims Warfare State Corrupt On Your Knees Vultures The Black Mask Ashes Book Of hate Flesh And Blood Stoking The Flame Bodies Hatred Burning Nothing Remains Abattoir Of Pain Stripped By The Knife Hail To The Emperor Before The Fall United States Of Corruption Will You Fight? The Future Is Yours

All songs written , recorded and mixed during the caustic fires Summer of 2020 by Lamp Of Murmuur. Track 8 originally on the album "Within The Realm Of A Dying Sun" by Dead Can Dance , written and performed by Brendan Perry and Lisa Gerrard. Vinyl version by Death Kvlt Productions (UK) and Not Kvlt Records (US) . Logo , artwork and border by Amalantrah Workings . Death Kvlt version logo and additional inlay design by Viral Designs .

\"When we were finishing everything up and getting this music finalized, this record feels like all of our previous stuff wrapped up together, which you don\'t always end up with,\" vocalist/guitarist Brett Campbell tells Apple Music about Pallbearer\'s fourth album. Equally cathartic and melancholic, the record\'s eight tracks grapple with the strangeness of memory and the concept of time, with heavy subjects surrounding disease, death, and loss anchoring songs like \"Caledonia\" and the title track. Produced by Randall Dunn (Sunn O))), Earth), *Forgotten Days* incorporates moments of soaring prog-rock (\"Stasis\" and \"Silver Wings\"), furious thrash (\"The Quicksand of Existing\"), and sweeping aggression (\"Vengeance & Ruination\") into the band\'s relentless doom metal sound, threaded together in a cohesive collection that showcases Pallbearer at their darkest. \"I like the dynamism in general,\" says Campbell. \"I feel like on this album, each song is notably different from each other while maintaining some similar elements as well.\" Below, Campbell walks Apple Music track by track through *Forgotten Days*. **Forgotten Days** “This song was inspired by these ideas of identity and memory, sort of inspired by seeing my grandmother go through Alzheimer\'s over the last several years and just watching her slip away. She\'s still alive, but there are fewer and fewer recognizable moments of her being in there. I just used it to explore the themes of how much your memories of your life or your conception of yourself—how does that define who you are? If you can only remember versions of yourself from long ago, are you lost in time? A lot of Alzheimer\'s patients seem like they are displaced, because they have these memories that to them seem current, but it could be from 50 years ago. I feel it\'s got to be a very strange way to exist.” **Riverbed** “The skeleton of that song is from \[bassist\] Joe \[Rowland\]. So he demoed it and sent it to us, and I really liked it from the very initial moment. It sounds new, it sounds different than our old stuff. It\'s got the trade-off vocals—Joe does the softer vocals, and I do my typical thing. It will probably end up being a live staple, if we ever get to play shows again.” **Stasis** “I\'ve been flirting with writing more rock-ish songs lately. I wanted to have more of a swagger and groove to it rather than either something that hammers or big sweeping sort of stuff that we often do. I just wanted to test the limits of the Pallbearer format. The lyrics on that are essentially a reminder to not get stuck in shitty behavioral patterns that just drag down. Because you really only have so long to live, and if you waste lots of time just wallowing in misery or just the patterns that you\'re comfortable with, you don\'t get that time back.” **Silver Wings** “I always like to write at least one long, epic song per album. That\'s probably my favorite of mine on the album. And it\'s kind of concerned with similar ideas as \'Forgotten Days.\' I think I sort of have a fixation with this sort of concept in general. Just the idea of the unstoppable march of time and the inevitability of change. You find a person at a time that they\'re much different than they once were.” **The Quicksand of Existing** “We ended up really kind of having a ball over Devin \[Holt\]\'s guitar solo. We do a trade-off in the middle. Mine is the sort of more florid-sounding one, and then Devin just comes in with the fucking face-melting, fucking *Reload* guitar. You can hear the black-nail-polish-era Kirk Hammett rocking out. We were losing our minds in the studio when he recorded that, laughing our asses off. It\'s probably our simplest song we\'ve ever done, but it\'s a lot of fun to play.” **Vengeance & Ruination** “I\'ve had kind of a difficult time coming up with lyrics for that song because the music itself is so aggressive. I was kind of trying to approach it almost like a hardcore song, although it really ended up not sounding like that. I saw these pictures from probably 120 years ago of these victims of the death by a thousand cuts where they\'d like flay you alive, this Chinese capital punishment. It\'s horrifically, incomprehensibly cruel. And I use that as a jumping-off point as a kind of discussion of a state-sponsored cruelty.” **Rite of Passage** “Solstice is kind of one of our influences from early on. And we\'ve always really enjoyed that stuff, just kind of classic epic doom. And we haven\'t really done a straightforward Solstice-esque song before. So we just went for it. I think that the chorus ended up being pretty cool in that, because once we got to the studio, one of Randall\'s suggestions was to play the chorus on the toms instead of just playing it through, which I think was a really great suggestion and it opened up the chorus a lot.” **Caledonia** “It\'s pretty fucking weird. The really bizarre guitar solo from Devin, quadruple-track harmonies on there, I think it\'s pretty rad. But it\'s also just crushingly sad. That was another one of those songs about dealing with his mother\'s death. It\'s pretty heavy subject matter, but I like all the various textures and directions that that song goes in. It feels inherently progressive in the sense that there are so many different sonic directions throughout that song. It flows really well together and doesn\'t seem disjointed, which it could have felt with all the different things going on.”

As the mastermind of sludge lords Crowbar, a key member of New Orleans supergroup Down, and one half of Kingdom of Sorrow, Kirk Windstein has been playing in seriously heavy bands for over 30 years. But *Dream in Motion* is his first-ever solo album. “The idea of doing it has been around for a long time,” he tells Apple Music. “Of course, the immediate thought was to do an acoustic record, but instead I decided to show a different side of myself.” The result? A soaring, melodic doom record with mostly clean guitars, on which Windstein plays everything except drums (which were handled by his longtime collaborator and producer Duane Simoneaux). Below, Windstein takes us track by track through his solo debut. **Dream in Motion** “This is basically about my life. My whole dream since I was a teenager was to play guitar and write songs and get onstage and go on tour and all that type of stuff, and I\'ve been able to do it for the last 30 years and I\'m continuing to do it. I’ve been blessed and lucky and done a lot of great things. It’s not easy, but when you want something and it comes through, that’s always great. I think the title is very fitting, and it\'s totally autobiographical for me. It\'s a song about my life\'s journey.” **Hollow Dying Man** “Thankfully, the lyrics have nothing to do with me. I write in metaphors a lot and in what I call one-liners, where I’ll just come up with one line that I like. I like the wording, the way it’s phrased, and I’ll just write from there. I’m very spontaneous as a lyricist. ‘Dream in Motion’ is a regular heavy-tone guitar track, but I put this song second because it sets the tone for what the majority of the rest of the record is like—a lot of clean guitar, a dark vibe, a lot of melody mixed in with some cool heavy guitar stuff.” **Once Again** “Lyrically, this is a song that’s written about my wife, so obviously it’s personal to me. Musically, it’s different because it’s got a triplet feel, which is a different feel than what I would normally write in. In the beginning, I liked this song the least. Then the lyrics came in and I started adding extra guitars and stuff, and it ended up being a really strong track. Now I couldn’t be happier with it.” **Enemy in Disguise** “Originally, the lyric for this was ‘Enemy in my eyes.’ As I was singing in the vocal booth, Duane, the producer, said, ‘What did you say there? An enemy in disguise?’ I said, ‘No, but “enemy in disguise” sounds a lot better, and that’d be a great title for it.’” **Toxic** “My wife wrote these lyrics about someone we know, but it’s actually not just about one person. It’s really about negative people in general. The phrase in there ‘Your presence is toxic’ says it all. I try to surround myself with people who are upbeat, who have a positive attitude on things, who are optimistic. Unfortunately, when you’re in this business, and even just in public, you\'re not always able to choose who you have to deal with and be around. You’re forced to be around some negative people, and \[this song is about\] how unpleasant it is.” **The Healing** “This song is an instrumental. Duane and I were listening to it, and we both looked at each other. I said, ‘I don’t think it needs any lyrics or vocals.’ He said, ‘Me either.’ To me, lyrics weren’t going to make the song any better. ‘Less is more’ is usually my attitude on stuff, and lyrics would just be forced. It’s already got a great vibe to it, so I’m very happy with it just the way it is.” **Necropolis** “That\'s actually the first one I wrote for the record. For lack of a better term, it’s one of the prettier-sounding songs on the record—maybe not so much of a dark vibe as a lot of the others, and a little more upbeat emotionally. When you write a song, it\'s like painting with colors, and the majority of the songs \[on this record\] are painted with darker colors. This one’s got more light and brightness to it, musically and melody-wise.” **The Ugly Truth** “This was one of the first ones written as well, maybe the second or third song I wrote when I started this in 2017. Musically, I think it’s got a lot of dynamics. The chorus has a Beatles-type chord change. I was actually thinking about calling the record *The Ugly Truth* at one point, but I talked about it with \[Hatebreed vocalist and Windstein’s Kingdom of Sorrow bandmate\] Jamey Jasta, who co-manages Crowbar, and he said he looked it up and there are a million bands with albums called that.” **Aqualung** “I’ve always been a Jethro Tull fan, and I’ve been fooling around with this song for about 25 years. Crowbar did a weird version of it live once or twice back in the mid-’90s. It’s really a brilliant piece of music. I was only six years old when it was released, but it was heavily played on the hard rock station I listened to growing up. Every time I heard it, I cranked up the stereo. It was quite a task tackling the whole song, especially the guitar solo—it\'s not that it\'s fast, it\'s just so long. During the middle section, I added some guitar harmony stuff that\'s along the lines of Crowbar, to try to give it a little more of my own feel. We spent a lot of time getting all the parts picked out correctly, but it came out great. I’m very, very proud of it.”

He’s a man Pitchfork calls “a pioneer” with a voice recognized by Rolling Stone as the sound of resilience. Now, Kirk Windstein, wielder of the sludge sledgehammer and unmistakable earthmoving bellow of Crowbar, stomps forward as a solo artist for the very first time. On Dream In Motion, the inaugural effort from his eponymously monikered incarnation, the Dark Lord of the Southern Riff stretches his creative wings as he introduces new emotional depth and sonic texture that strengthen, rather than tarnish, the metal monolith’s career legacy and rightly revered catalog.

Since founding Tombs in 2007, vocalist/guitarist Mike Hill has steered the black/post-metal band’s ship through five albums, four EPs, and numerous lineup changes. After assembling his latest crew of musicians—guitarist Matt Medeiros, bassist Drew Murphy, and drummer Justin Spaeth—in 2018, he struck upon the most fully realized version of Tombs with 2020’s *Monarchy of Shadows* EP and follow-up full-length *Under Sullen Skies*. “For many years, I’d kind of resigned myself to the fact that I have to do this by myself,” Hill tells Apple Music. “But having a lineup where there’s actual collaboration and working with guys who are talented and committed on a creative level to make the band the best it could be has made things fresh and new again. It’s a really exciting atmosphere to work in right now.” Below, Hill takes us through the songs on *Under Sullen Skies*. **Bone Furnace** “I think the overarching theme on this record is embracing some of the early music that I got into when I was a kid, like Venom and Bathory and Celtic Frost. When I first heard the name Celtic Frost, I thought it was the coolest name for a band, and they had a very deep influence on me—and specifically Tombs. ‘Bone Furnace’ is just kind of digging deep into that influence and then combining that with my basic speculation about destruction and rebirth, about how humanity will decline and something new will take our place.” **Void Constellation** “I think this is one of our more thuggish-sounding songs. We’ve got Andy \[Thomas\] from Black Crown Initiate playing on this one, and I think he’s a brilliant guitar player. I really enjoyed our time touring together when he was playing live with Tombs. His contribution is very melodic, restrained, and tasteful. Lyrically, it’s about pondering other civilizations that might’ve existed prior to man’s arrival on this planet and remnants of that civilization combining with early man to make a different type of human that might be lurking in some hidden recesses somewhere.” **Barren** “Justin, our drummer, wrote the majority of this song—the guitar riffs. There’s a very Scorpions/UFO type of outro, and that’s my contribution to the song. I think that Michael Schenker kind of feel fits really well. And then Ray \[Suhy\] from Six Feet Under played the solo, which is almost a piece of music unto itself. There’s so much in what he contributed that you could just listen to that as a completely separate track and be satisfied.” **The Hunger** “Dwid Hellion is doing some guest vocals on this. He and I have a lot of the same interests, and I thought his voice would sound great on this song—and it does. As most people probably suspect, I’m a huge Danzig and Samhain fan, and I came up with this riff that was very much in the vein of the first Danzig record—just dark and blues-influenced. It sort of has this rock ’n’ roll vibe to it, which is very different for Tombs. The lyrics take the concept of vampires, that feeling of isolation and seeking connection with other people but feeling very much alienated from other people at the same time.” **Secrets of the Black Sun** “I’ve been wanting to write music like this for about a decade, probably. It sort of combines all of the elements of dark music that I really aspire to create within the band. There’s some heavy guitars, there’s noise, there’s a juxtaposition of this sort of brutality with beauty. Vocally, I’ve been working towards being able to deliver something like this, and I’m happy to say I can sing it live without any issues. We also have Sera Timms from Ides of Gemini on this song—she’s got a great voice, and having her on board to collaborate was an added bonus.” **Descensum** “This is a little bit more technical than some of the other songs on the record, but it starts off with a nice ignorant riff at the beginning. Lyrically, the song is about going to hell—literally—like how Lucifer fell from grace and was cast into the abyss. But it’s also about being in someone’s good graces and then, through possibly bad decision-making, being cast out of paradise into the darkness of the void.” **We Move Like Phantoms** “That’s an instrumental. I was thinking about Black Flag, and I think I was channeling Greg Ginn somehow in the song. The title comes from…have you ever lived in a house with other people, but you don’t ever run into them? You still feel like you’re alone. During the writing process of this record, I was living in a situation like that. I almost felt like I was vibrating out of phase with the rest of reality during that time. It makes you think if there are such a thing as ghosts or phantoms, they could be entities that vibrate out of phase with everyone else.” **Mordum** “We’ve got Todd \[Stern\] from Psycroptic on this one, and he’s a good friend of ours. His gear is in the practice space, so it was easy to get him on the record. Lyrically, it’s a fictionalization of an actual event that happened—getting jumped on the streets of Boston and just connecting with that bestial essence of the human hominid and having to express power and violence in a very concise way. So it’s that emotion being funneled into the song. It’s about the taste of blood. It’s about violence. It’s about smashing people—all the good things in life.” **Lex Talionis** “This is one of Matt Medeiros\' tracks. You can always count on Matt for these types of songs. They\'re death-metal-inspired, with a very frantic sort of pace to them. The song is about being a survivor of some kind of apocalypse and being one of the last of your kind left alive. You’re surveying all the damage and also realizing that the era that you were part of is now over and it\'s time to think about your own demise, however that comes, either slowly or very quickly.” **Angel of Darkness** “My dear friend Paul Delaney from Black Anvil is on this one. When people ask me about black metal in New York City, I tell them there’s only really two bands—us and Black Anvil. And that’s why Paul ends up on the album. We had \[Black Anvil drummer\] Raeph \[Glicken\] on *The Grand Annihilation*, so I try to involve these guys as much as I can. The woman doing the monologue is another friend of mine, Cat Cabral—she’s deeply involved in the occult and witchcraft. She teaches classes, and she’s also an actress, so I asked her to read this monologue I wrote. She did a great job.” **Sombre Ruin** “This song is probably one of my favorite tracks on the record. It just has that stripped-down, early-’80s Lower East Side feel to it. It kind of harkens back to one of my favorite bands of all time, Swans. When I hear Swans or a band like The Birthday Party, I hear very slow and bleak-sounding blues music. Not necessarily rock or metal, but deconstructed blues.” **Plague Years** “‘Plague Years’ is about being ready for the apocalypse and living in a world where you feel like the pestilence of humanity has created irrevocable damage and has to be completely wiped out in order for the universe to proceed in a positive direction. It\'s like when you have an infestation of maggots in your kitchen and you want to pour bleach on them to eradicate them and clean your kitchen—that\'s what humanity is to me at times. It\'s just a collection of filth and maggots that need be removed.”

Under Sullen Skies delivers a blackened fury of extreme metal, intertwining a doom-laden melodic atmosphere with savage Brooklyn brewed brutality. While the lyrical content focuses on dark and foreboding tales of folklore and the occult, the overall mood captures the agonizing misery, furious vexation, and psychological turmoil that has ravaged humanity at present day. The new album not only sees mastermind Mike Hill expanding his creative and collaborative comfort zone by wholly embracing the offerings of his band mates, but he’s also let down the drawbridge to allow folks from beyond the immediate Tombs family to include a wealth of guests, such as Intregrity’s Dwid Hellion, Six Feet Under’s Ray Suhy, Black Anvil’s Paul Delaney, Psycroptic’s Todd Stern, former Tombs member and current Black Crown Initiate guitarist Andy Thomas, Ides of Gemini/Black Math Horseman’s Sera Timms, and Cat Cabral.

With their third album, Detroit doom-death squad Temple of Void notches a rare achievement in closing the gap between extremity and accessibility. “Songwriting takes center stage with *The World That Was*,” vocalist and lyricist Mike Erdody tells Apple Music. “There’s an almost pop sensibility to the album, and the songs flow together as a cohesive listening journey. The songs have an added catchiness while still maintaining the heaviness listeners have come to expect from the band.” Meanwhile, Erdody meditates upon death and the hereafter on mythology-based songs like “Leave the Light Behind” and the acoustic instrumental “A Single Obolus” before taking a detour into the Warhammer gaming universe on the closing title track. Below, he guides us on a journey down the album’s own River Styx. **A Beast Among Us** “This was one of the last songs I wrote lyrics to on this album. I wanted at least one track that embraced the horror storytelling style of the previous albums. As the opener, it kind of works as almost an unofficial sequel to ‘Deceiver in the Shadows,’ which was the final track off *Lords of Death*. It describes a town banding together to find and kill an unknown creature that has been hunting and terrorizing them.” **Self-Schism** “Taking the lyrics at literal face value, it describes the act of digging your fingers into your scalp and slowly splitting your entire body in half from the skull downward, which I guess is a fairly death-metal concept. It’s also a commentary on the toxic nature of people-pleasing at the expense of your own time and happiness, and how certain types of people will use and exploit your generosity until you’re spread so thin that the only way to create more of yourself to go around is to start tearing yourself to pieces.” **A Single Obolus** “This song is an acoustic instrumental, but it serves as a dedication to a brilliant musician and close friend of our drummer, who sadly passed away a few years ago. In life we have an opportunity to touch and shape the lives of many people we encounter, and a huge element of death is the loss it creates for those around us who are still alive. When I was composing it, the parts all felt very natural and came together quickly. An obol or obolus was the currency used to pay Charon to transport souls across the Styx and Acheron into the land of the dead, which ties nicely into the next track.” **Leave the Light Behind** “On the exterior, ‘Leave the Light Behind’ is a first-person perspective of Charon as he laments the monotony of serving death as a livelihood. You get the sense of jaded apathy as he expresses that in the end, your quality of character doesn’t matter so long as you can pay the toll, and at this point he no longer casts judgment. It’s a simple financial transaction, and the journey is so automatic at this point he could navigate the rivers in total darkness if he had to. There are hints of humanity as he mentions being haunted by the souls who could not afford the toll—and while the darkness hides them, he still cannot hide from their cries and shrieks. Others who can afford the safe passage often deserve to reside under the water with the monsters below.” **Casket of Shame** “Sometimes life feels like it’s supposed to. Those puzzle pieces finally look like they connect, and you find yourself shifting priorities, setting goals, and thinking of the long term. No matter how well-thought your plan is, you’re never really prepared for the times when it all burns up in front of you. Sometimes it’s caused by your own recklessness and poor choices. Sometimes you unfortunately just happen to catch the wake of someone else’s poor decision, or sometimes you believe you make the right choice but end up implementing it in the completely wrong way. Resilience is the essence of a successful human being: having the ability to bounce back from tragedy/failure/heartbreak by being able to objectively look at yourself and correct the patterns that seem to continuously bring you back to the chaos.” **The World That Was** “This song takes place in the Warhammer universe and is a reflective piece told from the perspective of a fallen soldier as it sees its own slain body and watches as itself, the ongoing battle, and the entire world around it is lifted up and swallowed into an opening void. The lyrics make reference to some Warhammer mythos that really tries to harness the epic feel of the music. There’s a bit of an existential take on death by using the void to symbolize the uncertainty of the future and death as our ultimate equalizer. In part it could be interpreted as a social commentary on the futility of hatred and warmongering, but ‘The World That Was’ also signifies how many of us go through pivotal changes in our lives, often beyond our control, that force a chapter to close.”

Thanks to the following headbangers: Eric Blanchard (a true Templar), Ralf & Revel in Flesh, Markus & Sadistik Forest, Lasse & Hooded Menace, Anton, Chuck & Rotting Kingdom, Enrique & Crypt Sermon, Kari Kankaanpää & Solothus, Midnight, Mutilatred, Dutch and Taphos Nomos, Tomb Mold, Spirit Adrift, Ruinous, Trevor & the Black Dahlia Murder, Joe & Octopus, Mike & Warhorses, Demon Bitch, Fell Ruin, Isenblast, Centenary, Perversion, Cruthu, Tim & Shadow Kingdom Records, Eric & Unspeakable Axe Records, Albert & the crew at Decibel Magazine, Brad Wharton, Shane Merrill, Hasan, Will & Atlas Brewery, Steve Sommerville, Sam Fox, Dax in Toronto, Sam Lenz and the Warhammer / painting community, Clint Ford, Adam Burke, Tito Vespasiani, Iron City Gym in Waterford, Matt Hayes, the whole Pearce family, Amy Satterly, Pickle*, Marie & River Awn, Clyde Wilson & Vinny, Omar Jon Ajluni, Meredith Davidson, Adam Grignon, Don & Rima Horne, The Old Mill Crew (Dennis, Marv & Solo), James McCracken, Michael Woods, Jeff Pyles, Mike Itchue, The Lawry Family (Mark, Kari, Deven and Jorden), and most importantly... Jim Moore, Damian Juarez, Lawson Rains, Tracey Slayers, Keith Justus, Adam Mouyianis, Sophie Cox, Travis Taylor, Kalman Kovacs, Harrison Buchanan, Jeffrey Karrick, Josh Thacker, Kevin Ehbets, Todd Nabozny, Nick Dahm, Alex Saraceni, Robert Lyons, Jared Ginsberg, Andrew Thomas, Danny Protze, and all the other die-hard fans who continue to support us. Skol!

Although a brand new entity to some, PROSCRIPTION’s origins can be traced all the way to the late 90’s, back when Terry ‘Christbutcher’ Clark was still living in his native Colorado, learning to raise hell with EXCOMMUNION. A decade later, after relocating to Finland, MAVETH became his new vehicle and over the course of two demos, one album and one split CD redefined how ‘dark’ death metal ought to be and sound. And while the band’s sudden demise in 2017 took everybody by surprise, instead of resting on his laurels, Christbutcher immediately vowed to follow the same path albeit under a new flag of hate, PROSCRIPTION. Spearheading a new, broader and even darker sound, PROSCRIPTION aren’t MAVETH part 2, even more so since Christbutcher is here assisted by a whole new line-up,including Cruciatus from renowned DARK DESCENT alumni LANTERN who contributed to the music of ‘Thy Black Nimbus Gate’ for instance. The result is as majestic as it is menacing sounding. Simply put, this is the kind of death metal that can swallow worlds and exterminate all light. Only preceded by one digital only demo back in 2018, their first album Conduit, recorded between March and June 2019, showcases a new side to Christbutcher’s musical prowess while retaining that suffocating yet catchy trademark touch. Almost symphonic in parts (as hinted by the poignant intro ‘Four Wings Within the Samiel’) and with a new found sense of morbid melody emphasizing even more their taste for the epic, with a track like ‘Thy Black Nimbus Gate’ almost suggesting the grand opening of the red sea itself, Conduit is not only an extension of Christbutcher’s unique vision, it expands it even more to an almost apocalyptic level. This is just the beginning...

It’s hard to believe that nearly 30 years have passed since Cirith Ungol’s last album dropped. Neither part of the thrash movement of their ’80s heyday nor the death metal uprising in 1992 when they pulled their own plug, these sword-and-sorcery-inspired purists have always been men out of time. Until now: After decades in hibernation, the Ventura, California-based metal band reunited in 2016 to headline metal festivals around the world. Featuring original and longtime members Tim Baker (vocals), Robert Garven (drums), Greg Lindstrom (guitar), and Jim Barraza (guitar), Cirith Ungol has coalesced around new bassist and manager Jarvis Leatherby, who spearheaded the band’s revival by booking them for the second installment of his Frost and Fire Festival—which was named after Cirith Ungol’s first album. “When we first got back together, it took a little while to get into the groove of it,” Baker tells Apple Music. “But once we got acclimated, it just seemed like old times again. This new album still sounds like us—just hopefully fresher and better.” Below, Baker outlines the duality of *Forever Black*—the sword-and-sorcery themes of the album’s first half, and the real-world darkness of the second half. **The Call** “This is an instrumental intro thing. It’s the call of the legions to rise up, which leads into ‘Legions Arise.’ I think it’s pretty much the same riff from that song, but slowed down. You can hear the horn of chaos in there that Rob played. We’ll probably use this piece as an opener for concerts and stuff.” **Legions Arise** “The point of the title was to connect it to ‘Join the Legion’ \[the opener of Cirith Ungol’s last album, *Paradise Lost*\]. Rob wrote the lyrics to this one. Every one of our albums has a song kind of like this to open, like ‘Blood & Iron’ or ‘Frost and Fire,’ so it’s got a faster pace to get everyone’s adrenaline going at the start of the album. It’s something to get your blood pumping and get the crowd going, and hopefully the listeners, too.” **The Frost Monstreme** “This song and the next one, ‘The Fire Divine,’ are callbacks to our first album, *Frost and Fire*. In the song ‘Frost and Fire,’ the second line is ‘The frost monstreme and the fire divine,’ so now there’s two songs describing exactly what those things are. Greg wrote the lyrics to these songs, and I think they’re based on Fritz Leiber’s *Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser* series, these sword-and-sorcery type of books. I haven’t read those novels, but there’s heroes and villains and death, like most good sword-and-sorcery things. So it’s dark, and it’s also right in the pocket of stuff that we’ve done in the past.” **The Fire Divine** “Where ‘The Frost Monstreme’ is more of a heroic type of song, ‘The Fire Divine’ is pretty blasphemous. It may or may not be Greg’s commentary on organized religion and things like that. I don’t want to get too far into politics or religion, but this is more of a rocking song and the lyrics are very dark and very cool.” **Stormbringer** “So this is a reference to the character that’s been on the cover of all our records, painted by Michael Whelan. His name is Elric \[of Melniboné\], and he’s from an old series of books by Michael Moorcock. He’s an albino prince, and Elric’s sword is called Stormbringer. The last book of the series is also called *Stormbringer*—the painting on the cover of our first album is actually called ‘Stormbringer’ too—and that’s what I based this song on. Elric is weak, but whatever he kills with the sword—man, beast, or demon—it sucks its soul up and gives him the power to live and the energy to fight more battles. Hopefully the song will turn people on to the books.” **Fractus Promissum** “The title is Latin for ‘broken promise.’ I wrote this one describing our dystopian state of affairs that we always seem to have in the world. It’s describing the nightmares that we’ve been living through since mankind began. For me, this song and the two at the end are kind of in a similar vein.” **Nightmare** “This is probably the doomiest song on the record. I think everybody\'s going to really love it because it\'s got a great chorus and stuff. It describes a twisted recurring dream or vision that someone may or may not have had. I\'m not talking about anybody in particular here, but it’s pretty evil. And let\'s hope that it never comes to pass.” **Before Tomorrow** “Again, this is a commentary on our dystopian nightmares and Orwellian dreams and the horrors that have gone on for millennia. I try not to be a literalist when I’m writing lyrics—I try to leave things open to interpretation—so this might mean different things to different people. I don’t want to put too many ideas in anyone’s head, but obviously this is telling a tale of darkness that’s going on in the world and has always gone on. To me, that’s really what the whole second side of the album is about. The first four songs, excluding ‘The Call,’ are really the sword-and-sorcery stuff. The rest are about the evil that men do to themselves and each other.” **Forever Black** “This song is kind of like you’re shoveling dirt on somebody’s grave—or society’s grave, or the world’s in general. I think it’s probably one of the best songs we ever did. I think it’s a good ending for the album. It puts everything into perspective and puts the nail in the coffin, so to speak, for all the other things you’ve been living through on the album. ‘Look into my soul, forever black.’ Look at the world—everything’s going to hell. You’re born into it. You’re going to die as part of it. It’s forever black.”

On their 15th album, Norwegian prog-metal warriors Enslaved explore a landscape from Norse mythology known as Utgard. “It\'s where the giants dwell,” bassist/vocalist Grutle Kjellson tells Apple Music. “The giants are a metaphor for the more uncontrollable forces in nature and in your own mind, so it’s a realm of chaos, of dreams, of the more frightful fantasies you have. It’s something you can’t control, but also something you are deeply in need of, because it’s the realm where creativity, humor, and your wild side dwell.” *Utgard* also marks the official debut of Enslaved’s not-so-secret weapon, new drummer/vocalist Iver Sandøy, who has worked with the band as an engineer and coproducer as far back as 2010’s *Axioma Ethica Odini*. “He also did some backing vocals on *E* and *In Times*, so this was like a continuation of the collaboration, but this time we have some lead vocals and drumming from him as well,” Kjellson explains. Below, the bassist guides us on a journey through *Utgard*. **Fires in the Dark** “This begins with some chanting in Old Norse, and it deals with the creation of the world according to the Norse mythology. It is also very much touching on the concept of Utgard, because it\'s kind of, ‘In the beginning, there was nothing—only fire and ice.’ And it\'s really connected to the lyrics, with the fires in the dark, something in the making, something both wonderful and hostile at the same time, really uncontrollable. Interestingly enough, it was the first song that was written for the album and ended up as a natural opener. I think that’s the first time that’s ever happened.” **Jettegryta** “In English, ‘Jettegryta’ can be translated into ‘the giant\'s cauldron.’ There are these holes all over the world called ‘giant’s cauldrons’—they were made by waterfalls after the Ice Age. In folklore, it’s said that they were made by the giants because they’re really big and look like big pots or cauldrons for the giants to cook food in. It connects back to Utgard as well, and it’s easy to picture the people that lived thousands of years ago—they obviously didn\'t have the kind of science to explain phenomenon like we have. So to them, that was a totally logical explanation. Musically, we always end up making a song that sounds like Bathory, without being conscious about it. And this ended up being that song on this album. \[Departed Bathory mastermind\] Quorthon is still there, fucking with our lives—in a good way.” **Sequence** “I think that was the second song we wrote for the album. It’s a surprisingly catchy song, but then we kind of tore everything apart with the inclusion of a session performer at the end of the song—a musician called Martin Horntveth. He is playing some electronics, some bells and xylophones and stuff like that. So he takes this mellow, esoteric part and turns it into kind of a sonic nightmare in the background there. You feel you are listening to something really beautiful, but don’t be tricked, because there’s always a dark side to things. There’s something disturbing in the beauty there.” **Homebound** “This one has lead vocals by our new drummer, Iver. Such a nightmare, right? A combination of a drummer and a singer, like the worst of both worlds. You have the nutcase and the diva in one. No, seriously—he is a fantastic drummer and a great vocalist, a great musician. He’s been in the background ever since *Axioma* in 2010, working with us as a coproducer and engineer for many albums. So he was the natural choice when \[former Enslaved drummer\] Cato \[Bekkevold\] decided to leave. We’re really, really satisfied with him.” **Utgarđr** “In the song ‘Utgarđr,’ we have a spoken thing in an archaic dialect that used to be spoken in our area. It’s a sort of concentrated narrative of the whole album. It really somehow tells you everything. It’s both an epilogue for the first songs and an introduction for the remaining songs. And it was actually recorded in my living room. It was probably the last recording we did for the whole album, and all the guys in the band were present and it was late at night. We had many drinks. It somehow concludes and introduces the album.” **Urjotun** “Many people look upon this opening as a dance beat or like a modern electronica thing, but it’s actually the most old-school part of the whole album, because it’s an analog Moog sequencer like they used in the late ’60s with bands like Silver Apples and the Krautrock scene later. And then comes this distorted bass, so we like to explain this song as a fusion between Kraftwerk and Hawkwind, with a little Scott Walker/David Bowie influence on vocals. So that’s really perhaps the most old-school song we’ve ever done, and it might be my favorite song on the album.” **Flight of Thought and Memory** “This is the story of Odin’s ravens, basically. The ravens are called Huginn and Muninn, and they represent thought and mind. So it\'s basically a dream about a flight into the realm of Utgard and all the things that are. It’s about accepting something you cannot conquer, but also a thing that you have to remain trying to conquer—otherwise you will pretty much cease to exist. You have to be a seeker or you will die. It also has the longest guitar solo we have ever done—it’s like one and a half minutes. It’s like I can almost hear the chest hair growing on \[guitarist\] Ice \[Dale\], because it’s a really cool rock ’n’ roll solo.” **Storms of Utgard** “I remember me and Iver, our new drummer/vocalist, arranged that song and did the demo recordings in a hotel room when he was on tour with one of his other bands—he plays drums for this woman that records children’s music. This song is really like hard rock, so I thought maybe Iver finally has been listening to classic hard rock albums. I’m a really big fan of early Scorpions and UFO, but I don’t think Iver has ever picked up a UFO album. So I think it sounds like this by accident, but I really love the vibe in this song. It’s another one of my favorites.” **Distant Seasons** “This is the really mellow closer, and \[guitarist\] Ivar \[Bjørnson\] wrote this song to his daughters. They are even participating in the last chorus, singing on the album. I really love this song. It’s sort of like an airy Pink Floyd-ish tune. And it’s a perfect song to conclude such an album. It really connects with the other songs, and it was the last song we made for the album as well. So the opener is the first song we wrote, and ‘Distant Seasons’ is the last one. So it was really, really logical.”

Pre-order physical editions here: shop.dying-victims.de/de/ DYING VICTIMS PRODUCTIONS is proud to present MEGATON SWORD’s highly anticipated debut album, Blood Hails Steel – Steel Hails Fire, on CD, cassette and vinyl LP formats. It was but November of last year when MEGATON SWORD unleashed their glorious debut EP, Niralet, via DYING VICTIMS. Arriving fully formed, virtually without warning – no prior demo recordings existed, at least not publicly – this Swiss quartet evinced an ages-old sound that was wise (and wizened) well beyond their young years. Already, MEGATON SWORD knew the mystery of steel…and wielded it with a startling confidence. And no one knew just how high they could fly, only that they were just getting started. Now, with the arrival of their imminent debut album, Blood Hails Steel – Steel Hails Fire, MEGATON SWORD are marching into the halls of greatness, with no one to stop them. Retaining the same, well-named lineup – vocalist Uzzy Unchained, guitarist Chris the Axe, bassist Simon the Sorcerer, and drummer Dan Thundersteel – MEGATON SWORD maximize the strengths of the EP and then some, revealing new twists to that mystery of steel whilst retaining the charisma and crunch that endeared them to the true-metal underground the first time around. Indeed, Blood Hails Steel – Steel Hails Fire is aptly titled, almost ridiculously so: this is true-as-steel HEAVY METAL drunk on high fantasy and the enduring themes of conquest and valor, triumph and tragedy, but rendered in a form even bloodier and possessing more bravado. It’s also more dynamic, maximizing drama between notes and from one passage to the next, each movement a narrative crucial to their conquest. Those notes are suitably wrapped in a production that’s powerful in its clarity and pure in its intention, revealing MEGATON SWORD as both craftsmen and warriors, and never sacrificing grit on the altar of perfection (or vice versa). Above all, Blood Hails Steel – Steel Hails Fire is comprised of legitimately awesome SONGS that stick in your head immediately, even when traveling upon a winding, suitably epic path. Each one of the eight contained herein feel far vaster than their succinct track times suggest; credit is thus due to MEGATON SWORD’s firing-on-all-cylinders songwriting. Or perhaps it's the patient pacing they employ, which they first revealed on Niralet, allowing each bellow of bathos and push of pathos to ring out and as true as possible; perhaps it's the passion and machismo dripping from every element, every drop of blood, sweat, and tears tangible and intense; or once again, perhaps it's the band simultaneously sounding timeless and fresh, safely evading both rote "retro" throwback and over-modernity in kind, and doing it more effortlessly than ever. Either way, MEGATON SWORD have delivered an album both bold in its ambition yet urgent in its delivery – truly, the thing that classic debut LPs are made of. With Niralet, we made references to '80s Manowar, Warlord, and Manilla Road as well as early Running Wild and Nasty Savage, but with Blood Hails Steel – Steel Hails Fire, MEGATON SWORD truly sound like no one but themselves: the growth is palpable, but not once overextended. And graced again with unforgettable cover art courtesy of Adam Burke, one of the best debut albums of the year is ready to be wielded!

With a musical span from foreboding doom / death to more elating melodic territories, "Solve Et Coagula" is a journey through purge and creation, death and rebirth.