Is zeuhl finally making meaningful inroads into metal? There are signs. In an interview with Machine Music’s Ron Ben-Tovim, Ὁπλίτης’s J.L. discussed the cultishly adored music genre’s impact on his solo band, particularly the project’s new and possibly final album, Π​α​ρ​α​μ​α​ι​ν​ο​μ​έ​ν​η. For J.L., the prime takeaway was to be “free and innovative musically.”

J.L.’s inspiration matches well with the founder of zeuhl’s own musical intentions. Christian Vander, the drummer, singer, and composer of Magma, the French band that’s the genre’s bedrock, has often spoken about his band’s creative independence, a “celestial force” inherent in their musical vision from the outset. Crucially, Vander had his own free and innovative source for pushing past musical constraints.

“1967, the year John Coltrane died, it seemed to me that afterwards, it was as though music had to try to start all over again,” Vander said to Paul Stump in a 1995 profile in The Wire. “Someone had to pick up the pieces, go on searching in the way that he had. Nobody could match him, but people could pick up the flame. It was almost impossible for anyone to do anything new after Coltrane, but you had to try, try to find other new directions. So that’s what I tried to do with Magma.”

Magma would become an institution, pioneering a new form of genuinely progressive rock that mixed jazz, fusion, and classical into intensely powerful, rhythmically wondrous compositions containing so much musically rich depth and wide-angle, fresh perspectives that they still feel like distinct universes. Vander and band member Klaus Blasquiz would even go the extra mile by inventing the language Kobaïan. This new vernacular not only contained the word that would give zeuhl its name but made Magma’s gloriously detailed longform space operas regarding refuges from a dying Earth immigrating to the newly discovered planet Kobaïa all the more immersive. It was a fitting approach and theme for a band that was so uncompromisingly out there in everything it did.

But it wasn’t just Magma’s sense of space, compositional complexity, and full-method commitment that tilled and fertilized the brain soils of adventurous avant-gardners. No, Magma’s music had the same visceral quality as a Mack Truck’s grill landing an 80mph direct hit upon your body. In the great Bandcamp Daily primer “There is No Prog, Only Zeuhl: A Guide To One Of Rock’s Most Imaginative Subgenres,” Jim Allen described the band’s muscular particulars as “choral vocals with a whiff of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana; scary, Stravinsky-savvy melodic themes; and hammerhead prog riffs bolstered by monster bass lines.” In other words, this stuff hits hard. It hits hard like Coltrane’s later work. It hits hard like heavy metal. Similarly, then, connecting with Magma feels like a religious experience, an enrapturing sense of transformational transcendence, of being torn from the husk of your broken body and lifted above this earthly plane.

Unsurprisingly, Magma sired a sizable amount of adherents and descendants ranging from French bands such as the Magma spin-off ZAO to a particularly fruitful Japanese scene that produced in-the-know, ultra-creative acts like Ruins and Happy Family. All these fresh zeuhlers would modify Magma while keeping its core components, particularly an insatiable desire to maintain its mission of freedom and innovation.

And, naturally, as the style branched out into other spaces, bands in the extended zeuhl family tree would also have their brushes with near-metallic heaviness. Weidorje’s self-titled 1978 full-length is reinforced with a familiar rippling strength, an earth-shaking thump that wouldn’t feel out of place on a bill with Black Sabbath and Budgie. Shub-Niggurath’s 1986 masterpiece, Les Morts Vont Vite, delves into the abyss for an album permeated with the stench of death, the kind of musical chaos magic recommended to every black metaller.

But despite serving as an influence for more experimental-minded metallers, a true zeuhl-meets-metal fusion proved elusive. There were signs, though, if you kept your ears peeled. The Japanese band Bondage Fruit has a fair share of Secret Chiefs 3-esque headbanging forays across its catalog, particularly on its 1994 self-titled debut. One could also say Yeti, the doomy no-wave space rocker that was a previous project of Pinkish Black’s John Teague, got closer than anyone on the 2000 undiscovered gem Things To Come… Or maybe fellow Texans Vaults of Zin finally spliced the zeuhl/metal genes together on its 2011 self-titled debut. Not to mention, there’s a whole category of zeuhl-adjacent “brutal prog” that contains many potential crossovers, such as PoiL, Ni, and, of course, PinioL.

However, while great in their own right, these scattered antecedents never set zeuhl metal in motion so it could snowball into its own heavy metal substyle. Instead, they remained curios, hinting at not a third stream but a six-six-six stream’s untapped promise. Well, until now. The last few years has seen an uptick in bands pursuing a new planet of metal on which to settle. There’s Papangu’s celebrated 2021 release Holoceno, an intriguing combination of post-rock, prog, sludge, and, yes, zeuhl. (Read more about the band below.) And there’s Ὁπλίτης aforementioned Π​α​ρ​α​μ​α​ι​ν​ο​μ​έ​ν​η, a wonderfully frenzied experience that reaches Magma-esque ecstasy via J.L.’s quest for a state of “theia mania,” Ancient Greek for “divine madness.”

“I want to achieve this state without resorting to, say, drugs or alcohol,” J.L. told Jellybones about Π​α​ρ​α​μ​α​ι​ν​ο​μ​έ​ν​η’s trance-inducing onslaughts. “I used to listen a lot to a band called Aspid, a progressive thrash metal band, and I would achieve this state. I was going crazy inside my dormitory, to the point of talking to myself, totally in delirium. I wanted to make an album that could recreate this state, and could bring some listeners to this state.”

Ultimately, theia mania helped J.L. from feeling boxed in. Again, to Jellybones: “When I was writing riffs, I was thinking, ‘Okay, that’s the riff that’s going to make people think, Oh, this is black metal. That’s the riff that’s going to make people think it’s punk.’ And I grew tired of it, so I said to myself, ‘Well, just don’t give a fuck. Just do your crazy stuff to try to achieve good old theia mania.'”

This year, J.L. is not alone in unboxing their creativity. Kraanerg’s Nat Bergrin shares a similar aspiration to be true to themselves, an artistic undertaking gleaned from zeuhl and the loosely related Rock In Opposition movement, a confederation of avant-prog bands that banded together to promote each other in the face of an apathetic response by record companies.

“I guess the fundamental lesson to be learned from zeuhl and RIO to me is that the best ideas are built from the ground up,” Bergrin told me earlier this year. “The core RIO scene had bands that sought to push compositional limits from a very fundamental level; they weren’t saying, ‘Let’s fuse our prog sound with genre X.’ It was art for art’s sake, in the best way. There’s a band for virtually every combination of 80 percent metal and 20 percent X, but so few are critical about how they go about that fusion or to what emotional end. Half the time, it feels arbitrary; half the time, it just feels like they want the sound to be even more hellish, more dissonant, etc., which also seems lazy to me. People like Penderecki or Xenakis were never trying to create cheap scares through dissonance; it was a search for artistic beauty through the unfamiliar.”

Kraneerg’s Heart Of A Cherry Pit Sun, one of the year’s best albums, launches headlong into that unfamiliar with the same sense of exploration as the settlers of Kobaïa. But like Magma, the songwriting is what makes it stick. It’s a gorgeous, complex work, one I described as “a many-sided marvel that never fails to unveil something new.” And while Bergrin stresses that Kraneerg is “PROG with metal influence, not METAL with prog influence,” it’s hard not to hear it as the start of something in metal, especially as it finds new metal fans every day.

While not as heralded yet, Freak Puke might eventually elicit a similar response. The solo endeavor from Baring Teeth drummer Jason Roe is as forward-thinking as Kraneerg while doing its work in much smaller doses. Future Toast, Freak Puke’s new full-length debut, crams zeuhl, prog, math rock, and metal into highly concentrated miniatures. These brief blasts of musical mayhem often sound like neighbors in an apartment complex duking it out for control of the airwaves via their stereos, broadcasting battle-hardened soldiers of fortune in the form of 8-bit textures, powerfully nimble rhythms, and free jazz riffs that explore like searcher ants. You bet, Future Toast would’ve been a shoo-in for the top spot on an Aquarius Records list, the sorely missed citadel of strange music.

Kraneerg and Freak Puke — bands that are incidentally both from Texas, suggesting the Lone Star state is America’s Japan when it comes to zeuhl — feel like they’ve oriented themselves around Christian Vander’s prime directive, that in a genre such as metal where so few things feel new 50-plus years into its existence, Nat Bergrin and Jason Roe are compelled to try to find other new directions. Will those new directions lead us to zeuhl metal and the long-awaited rise of metal wortz? I interviewed Bergrin and Roe separately by email to find out.

What does zeuhl mean to you?

NAT BERGRIN: I mostly just think of it as prog rock that shoots for a particularly ecstatic energy. Rock that’s more “Creator Has A Master Plan” in spirit than the usual psychedelic groves of the ’70s, or if we’re talking modern bands, the usual angular chamber skronk. I realize that’s not necessarily what every modern band under the label fully shoots for, but I personally try not to pin down genre definitions in any clean-cut way. I’d rather just think in terms of emotions conveyed than influence lineages and all that.

JASON ROE: It is a fusion of classical and jazz called “third stream” music combined with the artist’s personal influences and experiences. Common traits include operatic singing, hypnotic textures, elusive rhythms, long melodic phrases, and improvisation. All this combined with fictional languages and backstories serve as a vehicle for individual expression with intent to create a new musical aesthetic.

How did you get into zeuhl?

BERGRIN: It’s funny. I definitely don’t remember any one particular moment. I think the first time I heard the word was in reference to Kōenji Hyakkei after getting into a bunch of the classic Skin Graft noise rock bands. I still quite like them, but things didn’t truly solidify until I got into Magma proper, which was a total love-at-first-sight situation. I think up until that point, I had been quite into classical and jazz, then also into punk and prog independently, but rarely did those worlds meaningfully cross, even though I very much wanted them to. Magma’s still one of the only bands I know that truly does justice to both the theoretical and alternative worlds, and they really opened me up to a lot of possibilities I never previously thought could happen.

ROE: My first exposure to zeuhl was Toscco by Happy Family. Instantly, I was floored with their punk rock jazz combo vibe. The album leaps out of the speakers with a raw energy only musicians playing in a room can create. I really enjoy the warmth and intimacy of the Van Gelder Blue Note recordings and Toscco seemed to celebrate that tradition, too. Further exploration led me to Kōenji Hyakkei and Ruins. Drummer Yoshida Tatsuya is a genius. One of the ways drummers become better musicians is by developing the ability to sing what they are playing, and no one does this more creatively than Yoshida Tatsuya. The dynamic nature of the Japanese wave inspired me to try and pin down the genre’s origins, and while I enjoy Magma very much, I found the supremely dark, doomy sounds of Shub-Niggurath and Univers Zero to resonate with me more.

How does zeuhl influence your work?

BERGRIN: One of my favorite things about zeuhl is that despite being a style that regularly tends towards pretty wild experimentalism, it’s not trying to use that innovation in service of just being dissonant and hellish. I find that the ecstatic atmosphere that Magma (also under the Offering name) in particular channels such daring compositional experimentation to the ultimate aim of cosmic elation, and not just to sound dissonant or aggressive. It’s daunting, yes, but it has a spiritual aim. It reminds of the way a lot of early free jazz used its noisiness, to push the envelope of unity and joy more so than to be unapproachable or unpleasant, even at its most esoteric to modern ears.

I’ve said before that I really only consider myself as having a zeuhl/prog project, not a metal one, and that’s true going forward to new material as well. I think metal does have some useful timbres to borrow, to give things some extra punch, as well as harmonic richness, but I don’t think I’ve used its “spirit” at all since my demos. I think that finally shifting my understanding of musical complexity away from just being the Next Craziest or Next Scariest thing was incredibly important for me to feel like Kraanerg could get off the ground and really say something that meant something to me, a real creative expression I could be proud of. It was only by shedding the sort of subcultural, anti-ethos that you get growing up into punk and metal that I actually felt like my vision could truly bloom, a transformation that also synced up quite well with a lot of new perspectives in my personal life. That’s by no means to say that there’s no value in the more conventional metal approach, but for the time being, I don’t think it’s for me.

At the end of the day, the longer I’ve tried to become a better musician, the more I feel like continuing to hold on to an ethos of antipathy actively gets in the way of my ability to grow as an artist. Rather, I like to see what I can do by appropriating some hefty guitars and blast beats but using them in service of a music ultimately geared towards beauty, romanticism, and affirmation since there is so much incredible untapped potential for them to do so. Going forward, I mostly just want to lean deeper into the idea of cosmic connection in my work, bridging myself to something greater, which is a goal that greatly benefits from raw sonic power. Zeuhl, and a lot of classic free jazz and free improvisation as well, really is a testament to how intensity in music can be liberated from assumptions of distorted aggression and break into something more sublime. That transformation is absolutely addictive to me, and channeling it is one of my main artistic goals, one which I’m still not sure I’ve actually attained yet.

ROE: Being authentic within a musical style is always a drummer’s first priority, and zeuhl allows me the freedom to incorporate all of my influences to create something genuine and unique. Improvisation is a key element of jazz music, and Magma founder Christian Vander constructed zeuhl with his love for jazz pioneers Tony Williams, Max Roach, and Elvin Jones in mind. These drummers were known for their melodically innovative drumming and relentless drive. In order to be more like my favorite drummers I started transcribing and learning. This gives me a vocabulary I can apply to different musical contexts through improvisation. Listening back to my improvised practice sessions with an optimistic ear gives me feedback for creating more interesting music.

What song or artist had the most significant impact?

BERGRIN: Offering – “Another Day,” specifically the version from the Theater Dejazet 1987 live album. Despite being closer to pure spiritual jazz than much of their discography, I think it’s quite possibly my favorite thing Christian Vander’s ever touched, and without a doubt, one of my favorite recordings of all time. The energy is completely infectious, and to me, it really embodies just a boundless joy at the idea of music or creativity itself. The momentum is so ceaseless, and so deeply affirming to the power that art has. I think one of my favorite things I look for in music is the feeling that whoever wrote the album both bared their soul while making it, and simultaneously had fun doing so, and I can’t imagine a better example of that that Vander’s vocal soloing, which is at its true zenith on this track. I can listen to it any place, any time, and I’ll be reminded that life’s worth living and music is worth making. I do find that those moments when a jam comes together into something greater are sacred, and rarely have I heard that unity sustained for so long as in that track.

ROE: As far as drumming goes, it would have to be Yoshida Tatsuya. The most striking feature of his playing is how lyrical he is. This comes from playing while vocalizing in a way that presents itself as radical scat singing, which also has roots in jazz music. He is articulate and introspective in softer passages that quickly thrusts into a frenetic overlay of rhythms at a moments notice. I enjoy listening to his left hand as it dances freely between the snare, toms, and hi-hat setting up accents for the rest of the ensemble.

How do zeuhl and metal intersect?

BERGRIN: Well, part of why this panel is interesting to me is because I feel like the two styles are a very unlikely pairing. They occasionally have their commonalities on a very literal level when it comes to styles of riffs and songwriting, but their ethoses couldn’t be more different. Especially if I’m basing this response on my association with cosmic joy that I most often feel from Magma and their ilk, it couldn’t be more different than the best of the technical metal bands’ usage of instrumental rigor to tear things down and throw apocalyptic visions to the wind. Deathspell Omega’s the main one coming to mind at the moment for a metal band with comparable conceptual ambitions as the Kobaïan world, and while I find DsO’s vision infectious in its own right, fusion that’s faithful to their respective attitudes is nigh impossible without losing some degree of authenticity.

So, I think to make an intersection that actually seems genuine, you need to set aside at least part of the philosophy behind one of the two styles and create a new vision. Every band that’s arguably a fusion of both does this in a different way, with vastly varying results. I’m honestly not sure I could really find any uniting themes, but I often think that’s a good sign. It hasn’t been codified long enough to get stale.

ROE: One interesting feature common to both styles is their inaccessibility. Zeuhl features shifting rhythms, atonalism, and fictional languages that can make it difficult to digest. Although, its playful nature invites escapism and can create a rewarding and diverse listening experience. On the other hand, metal’s guttural growls, Halloween aesthetics, and quantized drums minimize human influence and leave listeners to compartmentalize and create subgenres that isolate listeners even further. Gonin-Ish is a band that blurs the line between zeuhl and metal with an adventurous combination of styles that doesn’t sacrifice the creative human element. A musician’s touch will always connect with people more intimately regardless of musical context.

How has zeuhl shaped metal, particularly over the last decade?

BERGRIN: I mean, honestly, it doesn’t really seem like it’s a proper trend yet, more just a collection of bands here and there. Come to think of it, it’s quite possible the influence has been stronger in the other direction since zeuhl has certainly gotten a lot more punk over time. Christian Vander was mostly just listening to what, Coltrane and Wagner? And then the Ruins/Kōenji Hyakkei wave came, and now you have the massive impact of the whole brutal prog movement. This probably just fits into the general punk-/metal-ification of a lot of prog idioms that have taken hold since the ’90s, but I do think it’s particularly notable how zeuhl went from being oriented around big jazzy improv arrangements to very discrete riff-oriented songwriting. If you think about the kinds of vocal lines Kōenji Hyakkei uses, they’re basically just math rock riffs transposed onto a soprano range and vocal timbre. It’s excellent in its own way, but the underpinning logic is extremely different from what was going on 20 years prior.

There’s also probably something to be said for the whole Naked City wave of jazzy grind and its descendents as a moment of more genuine prog/jazz impact on metal. I very much see that movement as more metal in fundamental approach than jazz or prog, even if there are lots of saxophones involved. Free improvisation on its own can serve all kinds of goals, but the way contemporary bands like Dead Neanderthals or Skin Tension involve improv clearly filters it as an agent of chaos, i.e., through a metal-based lens. But they’re still applying a totally new compositional logic to their work, so I do very much respect that whole vein of artists.

ROE: Listeners of metal are hearing truly novel things because zeuhl is so fearlessly wide-ranging in its influences. Metal musicians have grown more envious of this freedom and are willing to call upon all their influences to push against the grain. They might be motivated by industrial music, Sun Ra, or plodding rhythms and melodies filtered through a childhood of zombie flicks. Unique expression comes from the great care taken to combine such seemingly diverse backgrounds. It is simply not enough to cut and paste riffs created in the vein of your favorite artists and say, “We can put the Nile riff between the King Crimson part and the Opeth thing in 7,” ya know? You should ask yourself why these things sound similar or dissimilar? What instruments am I hearing? What did they listen to? Where did they record? How did they practice? One of my favorite things about Pyrrhon’s new record is the excitement they were able to capture. They achieved this feel by improvising during practice time, thus reinforcing and cultivating that sound. Plebeian Grandstand, Pinkish Black, Brain Tentacles, and Le Grand Sbam are other examples of artists I enjoy because of their unconventional takes on metal filtered through the zeuhl lens.

Do you feel the influence is now more pronounced around a wider array of substyles?

BERGRIN: I mean, I’m not really sure if there’s a “standard style” of zeuhl in general or a typical area where it turns up in metal. It’s volatile and that’s part of the fun. It turns up in little slivers every once in a while, and you never know where it’ll happen. If it became part of another set of established fusions, it would lose a lot of its magic.

ROE: Absolutely. Developments in music production software has created a more individualistic approach to composition. Bands tend to be more democratic in order to appeal to their general audience, while the individual is far more likely to abandon convention and utilize a collection of genres. The goal for the individual then becomes creating something new by combining personal experiences with hundreds of years of classical and jazz traditions. During my own practice time, I have fun trying to connect two or more styles that are seemingly unrelated. Like a wicked combination of Steve Gadd, Bryan Fajardo, and Shostakovich.

What are some takeaways from zeuhl that metal at large could incorporate?

BERGRIN: I mentioned this in my last interview as well, but I think metal as a whole gets held back a lot by its loyalty to the idea of genre tropes, both within the realm of metal as well as when it comes to outside influence. There’s a band for virtually every combination of 80 percent metal, 20 percent X, but so few are critical about how they go about that fusion, or to what emotional end. And a lot of the time, being able to just stick in a token “folk part,” or “jazz part,” or “modern classical part,” the last of which is particularly problematic to me, gets understood as innovation. The issue with this approach is that it nearly always relies on a kind of piecemeal songwriting, with different sections in different idioms, rather than a more horizontal integration of multiple styles across an entire song.

I think more often than not, the most impactful musical innovations never emerge from trying to deliberately engineer a fusion. They instead come from just deeply understanding a certain idiom and then pushing what that language can do. It’s something that’s really only possible with a truly intuitive familiarity of whatever musical language you are working in, and I think it particularly benefits from atomizing the level of focus at which composition emerges. Instead of arranging whole sections of songs, think about the individual riff. Instead of the individual riff, think about a single melodic or harmonic sequence. If you can push for something new at the smallest level again and again, then stitch it all together after the fact, the end result is going to be a lot more deeply striking than if you forgo this more basic breakdown of what you’re doing. It allows the level of intentionally you can apply to your songwriting to be far greater.

I’ll fully admit that I’m someone who vastly prefers music written with an ear for theory, which I realize is far from a universal opinion, but beyond just saying that it’s good to read up on the chords behind the vibes, I do think that listening to music like zeuhl is often a masterclass in ground-up songwriting. The core zeuhl and RIO scene had bands that sought to push compositional limits from a very fundamental level; they weren’t saying “let’s fuse our prog sound with genre X.” They just had a vision that they wanted to channel, and they tested different approaches until somehow it just made sense. I think it’s the same lesson that also comes from more classic progressive rock, or even straight-up jazz. It’s pushing songwriting just by playing and playing until it clicks, without a prescribed end goal beyond letting the vision form itself.

I think the metal bands that seem to have taken the time to undergo this process have very frequently been those behind what I would consider to be the true masterpieces of the genre. Some of them are pretty well canonized, things like Obscura or Paracletus. I think there are some unsung heroes too: Wormlust’s The Feral Wisdom, !T.O.O.H.! ‘s Pod Vládou Biče, Panegyrist’s Hierurgy, to name a few. But ultimately the “lesson to be learned” from zeuhl is less about literal stylistic borrowing and more about just embodying a daring yet well-crafted approach.

ROE: Metal at large can be more adventurous with its color palette and utilize other third-stream traditions. I think the average listener disengages when presented with cookie monster vocals and 350bpm double bass patterns. If you are going to be inaccessible, then why not really take them for a ride? How does that double bass pattern sound with a cascara rhythm on top? How about not repeating a note until the other eleven are played? Grab a synth, scat growl, I dunno, let’s try running a saxophone through an octave pedal, let’s take them somewhere they never knew they needed to be. Then it would fall upon the listeners to be less exclusive with their listening habits and a bit more open-minded like zeuhl demands.

Too often modern metal bands rely on production techniques that struggle to convey a sense of realism. They feature a sterile, synthetic quality that inhibits full immersion into the music. Albums tend to take on a life of their own once the drums are quantized or replaced altogether. Often guitars are so processed and layered together that they could never be recreated with a human’s touch. Musicians should be on top of their game to execute what they are actually capable of playing. Zeuhl music allows you to hear the individual performance with an unfiltered sound that can only be captured through live performance. One of the many things I admire about Colin Marston’s recordings and the dissonant metal genre as a whole is their ability to be heavy while maintaining authenticity.

While I feel like there are more metal bands influenced by zeuhl based on releases this year, it still accounts for a tiny percentage of the genre. Why do you think that is?

BERGRIN: Ultimately, it makes sense to me because of that incompatibility on a more philosophical level. Metal inherently struggles with reaching any kind of spiritual aspiration just by the nature of its attachment to very concrete aggression. That’s not to say it’s impossible, but complexity in service of cosmic joy and complexity in service of apocalyptic technicality are two very fundamentally different approaches to experimental music. I think to effectively work in zeuhl influence in a way that makes sense, any metal band is going to already have to sit back and question the assumptions of what being metal even means. I ultimately decided to eschew overt aggression entirely when making the switch to a full band, and I feel like at that moment I sold Kraanerg’s soul to the zeuhl gods. There’s a tradeoff that happened, even though I’m glad I went down this route. I think there are absolutely other bands that have done this — Stabscotch’s whole “white magic” spiel immediately comes to mind — but it’s something that requires a lot of active intentionality.

ROE: There could be several reasons for zeuhl’s minimal influence on metal. The perception of being too weird for metal could play into a band’s decision to play more traditional styles. Another reason could be people’s preoccupation with rehashing old things instead of looking forward. I think it’s a combination of these things with money ultimately dictating the trends. No one seems to be sinking money into weirdo metal projects or zeuhl festivals, so it has to evolve naturally through people’s genuine interest in expressing themselves through music. I think the influence will grow once fruitful blends of zeuhl and metal reach more listeners’ ears.

What’s ahead for you, and how will zeuhl continue to influence your work?

BERGRIN: Well on a literal level, the next Kraanerg album is already written in full, and I’ve already finished recording my piano and guitar for it, too. It’s over an hour long, and the orchestration is even more elaborate though, so I could imagine it taking up to a couple years to get all the features and production done. It’s written very squarely under the same philosophy as Cherry Pit, very oriented towards rich harmony, beauty, and sentimental autobiography that might not translate to anyone else. High Romanticism is the name of the game more than ever.

That being said, I’ve made something of an active effort to broaden my range of influences further on that album, and honestly hope to rely less on explicit references to the past of zeuhl. After all, I do think that borrowing too heavily from Magma somewhat defeats the whole purpose of that notion of ground-up innovation for which I admire bands like them so much. I want to channel the adventurous spirit of old-school prog rock, without actually using the same language. For myself, that’s typically meant going back further in time to try to get more hands-on familiarity with music with a sheet music tradition, but which isn’t the impressionistic solo piano cannon that’s been my go-to for as long as Kraanerg’s been in my head. I’ve found that a lot of choro is a gold mine for getting my creative gears going lately, for example — Garoto, Radames Gnattali, etc. A lot of 19th-century Latin classical music too is still at the forefront of my mind, as well as some early New York-style salsa. On the flip side, I’ve been finding the tragic take on punk that a lot of the skramz greats channel to be very inspiring lately as well, so it’s not all stuffy IMSLP catalogs. Ultimately, I doubt anyone else would characterize its primary style any differently from Cherry Pit though, even though I did try to shoot for some more variety as far things like pacing and dynamics go.

ROE: I am grateful that I can create music knowing all my weird inclinations are very much welcome. So, I will continue to work on my craft every day, hoping to one day create something uniquely special. This pertains to Baring Teeth, Partaker, Freak Puke, Vmthanaachth, or any other project I am fortunate enough to be a part of in the future. –Ian Chainey

FOUL EMANATIONS FROM THE VOID

10. Siderean – “To Build Ruins”

Location: Ljubljana, Slovenia
Subgenre: progressive death metal

“To Build Ruins” begins with drips of starlight lighting the black of space, but it soon finds itself inside a horror-filled, reality-distorting nebula. The Slovenian five-piece Siderean do all the things challenging, forward-thinking technical death metal bands do best, running through atonal, fiendish scales like M.C. Escher while arhythmic drums blast and smash, but they bring it into a digestible format that won’t leave your stomach, and brain, in knots. Siderean uses strange building blocks, but they’re used to construct worlds that will absorb, or rather consume, you. So while the subject matter — deep space horrors, “Spilling The Astral Chalice” — is disorienting and disquieting, you’ll be able to hang a hook to the tune as it pulls you into its dark orbit. It’s a masterful turn from a band that, on its second full length, is planting a flag from Slovenia in the outer reaches of the known death metal universe. [From Spilling The Astral Chalice, out now via Edged Circle Productions.] –Wyatt Marshall

9. Förfallet – “Passiv”

Location: Stockholm, Sweden
Subgenre: post black metal

Förfallet swirls massive and relentless dark riffs into monumental tracks that call from the void but are shot through with glittering starlight. The Swedish project, whose member(s) are anonymous, has a necromancer’s skill in crafting disquieting, indifferent atmospheres — there’s a sense of one’s futility in the face of the unfeeling forces of time, matter, and energy. “Passiv,” and every other track on the project’s second album, VE, is masterful. Rich and polished, it feels momentous from the start, as if something fateful is unfolding, a sentiment conveyed in mournful, regal, creeping dread melodies hanging on high like a cursed star. An unrelenting heaviness adds to that sense, too, as if the track is weighed by dark matter and low-end doom. Pained, croaked vocals express a sense of surrender. Everything hits so hard and so precisely — a passage of riffs that begins shortly after the three-minute mark is a prime example when Förfallet unleashes a kind of earth-churning fury that reverberates palpably. All told, it’s a fascinating work of cosmic proportions, a grand drama that questions and shakes the very foundations of reality. [From the VE, out now via Fiadh Productions.] –Wyatt Marshall

8. Teeth – “Devour”

Location: Los Angeles, CA
Subgenre: death metal

In the words of a chronically snake-bitten bookie trying to pay off a debt to the Tooth Fairy, as promised, here’s Teeth. Last month, I covered the other band half the Los Angeles quartet plays in, the mosh marauders DUHKHA. In that blurb, there was a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it parenthetical teasing Teeth’s then-forthcoming third full-length, The Will Of Hate. I said it was good. A month later, I can confirm The Will Of Hate is indeed good, another fine offering in Teeth’s expanding, consistently different catalog. So, are my legendarily fallacious prognostication powers finally turning around? Was I able to foretell the future by making a magical tea out of Six Feet Under CD booklets? No. I had a promo.

Anyway, from a bird’s eye view, The Will Of Hate generally follows the path of Finite, Teeth’s 2021 EP. On that watershed release, the grimy sludginess of Teeth’s earlier incarnations (baby Teeth?) and the tech inclinations of 2019’s still-ripping The Curse Of Entropy were used as stylistic shades to paint a broader, larger canvas. Instead of saying, “Here are some sick riffs,” Finite used those riffs to construct top-to-bottom songs with the flow of a well-spun story. (This is going to be a running theme for my blurbs this column. Prepare a drinking game if needed.) Granted, “death metal tale teller” makes Teeth sound stuffier than intended, as if it were, at best, the Crypt Keeper if it looked like Glen Benton, and, at worst, an eternal creative writing undergrad who has read The Hero’s Journey more times than they’ve gone on dates. Teeth is neither, to be clear. What I mean is that there was more going on in Finite than the lazy structuring of Mad Libs mosh parts, which is how some bands have made their bones of late. Especially in the genre Teeth was inhabiting, the slightly warrish disso beast kind of brutality, the fact the band dodged that fate was no small thing.

Teeth: still dodging it. The Will Of Hate carries Finite’s thesis forward, except with one crucial distinction: it is far gnarlier. Goddamn. Perhaps it’s because 75 percent of Teeth are now in Tzompantli (jeez, do any of y’all have time to, like, sleep?), a band known to throw riff haymakers. Regardless of where Teeth caught the chug bug, the band seems so stoked to beat you the hell down. Like fellow Angelenos Our Place Of Worship Is Silence, Teeth often calls upon the lizard-brain intensity of the world-ending chug to settle any doubts. For example, a track like “Writhe” makes the listener do precisely what its title implies as it swings the chug hammer for vicious stretches of total soul destruction. However, the chugs that fall from the sky with the crushing regularity of pianos in Warner Bros. cartoons are all in service of creating a mood that feeds into grander narratives. Again, these aren’t riffs spun out solely so a band can preside over the pit. No, Teeth hews complete thoughts out of the big blocks of brutality.

Teeth is also…smart. I don’t know. I feel like that’s a loaded descriptor in death metal these days. Sure, much of The Will Of Hate sounds like it adheres to an ethos of cave-dwelling ignorance, like the only thing that really matters at the end of the day is one’s willingness and ability to threateningly wield a club made out of a used femur. When Teeth isn’t chugging, it’s wrestling with the Portal-ian cryptic pummeling that bands such as Altarage have weaponized. Riff scrying into the darkness? Kind of smart. But how about really smart: Right when you start to brace yourself for another barrage leaving bruises, wouldn’t you know it, there’s like a Meshuggah-y riff or Coronor-esque solo sprouting like a leafy green from within the rubble.

The Will Of Hate’s closer, “Devour,” is what I’d imagine you’d get if you paired Meshuggah’s “Obsidian” with Impetuous Ritual and asked that ungodly creation to start a circle pit. I love how guitarists Erol Ulug and Justin Moore can so easily switch gears between big ol’ grooves, the kind of choppy seas that the USS Morbid Angel used to surf during the Steve Tucker years, and smarty-pants, near-fusion soloing. How do those elements hang together? Bassist Peter King and drummer Alejandro Aranda do their utmost to strengthen Teeth’s backbone so nothing breaks it. Thus, Teeth can deadlift both sides of itself, the primordial ass whomper and astute ponderer. “Devour”: banger.

Pushing all that aside, the other thing I want to stuff into this blurb is that you can definitely tell Teeth’s members like playing with each other. Whenever you notice it, it always adds a little extra frisson of radness to a record. “We’re already working on new songs, and we’re all in our 30s and have jobs, so we don’t have huge plans of touring our balls off, but we definitely want to get out there again,” Ulug told New Noise Magazine in 2021, presumably with balls still attached. “But the big goal is just to make more albums and write more music. We really do this because we just love making the music for its own sake. And that’s really the thing that keeps us going.” Keep chugging, my friends. [From The Will of Hate, out now on Translation Loss Records.] –Ian Chainey

7. Starer – “Transience”

Location: Bowling Green, KY
Subgenre: atmospheric black metal

Josh Hines’s Starer has always offered a unique vision of black metal that channels a naturalist’s and philosopher’s awe into ripping, rawish black metal buoyed upward by symphonic, light-filled melodies. You’ll know a Starer track when you hear it; it’s recognizable by its brushstrokes — a distinct ring in how riffs and synths blend into the one-person band’s brand of blast. It can sound like a concerted, distorted pinging that plays like some sort of deep-space distress signal, the fabric of the universe itself sending an urgent message to whoever may be tuned in to pick it up. You also can’t miss the meandering bass that introduces mischievous, winking undertones and the raspy beyond raspy vocals. Starer’s latest EP is a collection of songs cut from the project’s earlier albums, and it’s hard to believe “Transience” would end up on any album’s cutting floor. It begins with mysterious picked guitars that cast a watery ambiance before latching onto big, ringing, bad-omen melodies that hit like a sun through the smoke-filled sky. In the end, though, it reaches a higher plane, a gorgeous, luminous one to which Starer has special access, where weighed with cares and scarred by the past, a kind of peace awaits. [From Waking, out now via the band.] –Wyatt Marshall

6. Mind Mold – “Hill”

Location: Calgary, Canada
Subgenre: doom / sludge / death metal

Mind Mold’s debut full-length, Erosive, is a release. It feels like an album someone needed to get out of their system. The Canadian trio’s catharsis is drenched in dejection. I mean, ignore the album title that’s so telling, it was immediately flagged for a psychiatric evaluation. Poking its little head out from the tracking listing is a quiet, breath-catcher of an instrumental titled “Oubliette,” and boy, does Erosive ever feel like it, a ‘there’s only one way out’ escape valve of turmoil and grief. This is music for those late nights when you’re at your emptiest, an SOS from the depths of the soul.

Mind Mold functions better than an average heavy metal weeper because it’s heavy. Very heavy. Skepticism on Jupiter heavy. The line I keep cycling through my mind is Peaceville Three rerouted through diSEMBOWELMENT, two prehistoric touchstones that ably demonstrate that I am so old that I have AOL free trial CDs on vinyl. But Mind Mold freshens things up by blasting off the rust and restoring death/doom’s classic body with the many-guitar-string thrum of omnicore, the all-genres-on-deck style plied by Convulsing and others in the Total Dissonance Worship extended universe.

It makes sense that Mind Mold would trend toward omnicore. Per the last census conducted during its 2017 self-titled EP, two of Mind Mold’s players, Ryan Kennedy and Robert LaChance, play in Wake, the one-time grinder that reached its final form with 2022’s Thought Form Descent, a panoramic pummeler that was kind of like if good-era Disillusion was also Augury. “We wanted to create something that was big and expansive that doesn’t rely on brutality,” LaChance said about that album to Decibel. And if the Mind Mold members want to take the easiest PR route possible, that quote can double for Erosive to an extent. Both records have a penchant for explosive, unrestrained emotions that hit as hard as the heaving riffs. Big, expansive: both of them. However, the feel and timbral shading is different. Wake is the sun burning away the night. Mind Mold is the night, the endless stretch ennui, the quicksand of self-loathing, the seemingly immovable bleakness that keeps the small hours at arm’s length.

And so we find ourselves at “Hill,” Erosive’s closer. Straight from the gate, you’re hit with the heaviness and heavy-heartedness. The vocals, a dual-tracked hell barf that’s a warning sign reading “begone, weaklings,” rumble across the track like thunder while a pensive progression worthy of the sorrowful death/doom Scandinavian set unceasingly plows ahead with the forward momentum of a snowplow driven by a meth head. All of Mind Mold’s sonic elements are there, from the synth-assisted swirl to the underlying gritty throb of the low end. And thanks to the no-snags songwriting, “Hill” just scoops you up without a sweat and delivers you to its destination, a fine little hamlet called Glorious Bummer.

Of course, a glorious bummer might not be what Mind Mold aims for. I have to acknowledge that. The thing we don’t often talk about [extremely grating Adam Duritz voice] ’round here is how much one’s appreciation of music is shaped by external factors. To that end, I think Mind Mold fits into this burgeoning cohort I’ve begun describing as “mood ring metal.” Whatever energy you put into Erosive, you get back tenfold. Like, not to brag, but I’m writing this blurb in the gym at 3 a.m. No one wants to be here, in multiple senses. It has been a rough week for your least favorite metal writer. And right now, during these dark hours when I somehow can’t even find a free squat rack, what Mind Mold is exorcising in my cheap headphones just feels so right, like the band is sticking a hand down to me to help me up, saying, “Yep, me too, bud.” Then again, is that the music or just my life stuff spilling over and flooding into everything around it? Impossible to say, but Erosive does feel empathetic in a sense, a willing vessel to pour your pain into. So, maybe it’s just Glorious Bummer, population one, and Mind Mold is the best Airbnb host you could ask for. On the other hand, Ryan Kennedy wrote the following on Instagram when announcing Erosive was finally seeing the light of day: “Seven years is many seconds. Some were long, some were short.” I feel that. Glad you released it. [From Erosive, out now via the band.] –Ian Chainey

5. Abriction – “Superposition”

Location: The Bronx, NY
Subgenre: blackgaze

Abriction first came on my radar thanks to a split with Sadness in 2023, the year when Damián Antón Ojeda was churning out unreal Sadness splits like there was no tomorrow. Ojeda was finding bands that complimented his bright and mournful black metal in searing, gorgeous harmony, but Abriction’s split stood out among all the other incredible offerings. As Abriction, 21-year-old Meredith Salvatori plays blackgaze, dark, gothic, experimental pop, emo, shoegaze, electro, ambient, and more, arranging it all together into albums of nocturnal music lit by the 3 a.m. glow of a computer monitor or a car’s dash display. It certainly can feel like the product of the social media, streaming, terminally-online age, and the Repose Records website probably says it best in the liner notes for Abriction’s album, Banshee, writing, “A friend once described this album to me as ‘the complete Myspace-era alternative music scene condensed and refined into one album.’” (The album, originally released earlier this year, is now getting a physical release from the label.) 

All that helps situate Abriction, but it doesn’t fully do the music justice. Take “Superposition,” a gut-punch of a song that is melodically thrilling and emotionally devastatingly draining and endlessly stylish. It’s full of venom and rage, but the grand melodies and youthful vigor of it all find purposeful resolve. Electropop flourish and dramatic gothic panache cast it all in a dead-till-dark ambiance. It’s a remarkable track, one that can serve as an introduction to Abriction’s world of earnest, dark magic and drama. [From Banshee, out now via Repose Records.] –Wyatt Marshall

4. Oryx – “Myopic”

Location: Denver, CO
Subgenre: sludge / doom

Oryx knew it had something on “Oblivion,” the massive 15-minute closer to the Denver sludge band’s 2021 album, Lamenting A Dead World. “Creating ‘Oblivion’ was a defining moment for our band,” drummer Abigail Davis explains in an email. “Writing that song pushed us to new creative heights, allowing us to craft a truly cathartic and fulfilling musical experience for our listeners and ourselves. Our music is a reflection of our emotions and mental state, so the length of our songs often mirrors the depth of our exploration. We embraced this process with ‘Oblivion’ and carried that same approach into Primordial Sky. The longer songs on our new album weren’t planned to be a specific length; the riffs and layers naturally unfolded, and we continued to explore and add to them until they reached their organic conclusion.”

That conclusion is everything but an end: Primordial Sky, the trio’s fifth album and first with bassist Josh Kauffman, is the next phase in its evolution. Oryx still slays speakers with ear-incinerating riffs and head-pulping drums, but its emotive resonance runs far deeper than the average Does It Doomer. Case in point, “Myopic,” Primordial Sky’s lead stream, hits the right balance of Oryx’s newly defined intentions: Its feelings and riffs echo within you equally.

“Emotion is a fundamental element of our music, serving as the driving force behind our songwriting and performances,” Davis writes. “This is perhaps most evident in Primordial Sky, which delves into complex emotional landscapes and invites listeners to connect with the music on a personal level. The writing on our previous release, Lamenting A Dead World, was influenced by the pervasive sense of uncertainty that came with living in the year 2020, and with our new album, there was more of a feeling of clarity and grounding in our songwriting. We spent countless hours crafting these new songs, refining them through a process of mass writing and critical editing.”

Those countless hours paid off. Primordial Sky is one of those albums where you can tell it was labored over because it so effortlessly sweeps a listener along. And yet, there are always transfixing points of interest when Oryx drives the tour guide bus through its journey. Guitarist Thomas Davis’s chrome-chord riffs and flashes-from-the-heavens leads on the 13-minute title track never fail to put your attention span in a submission hold. It’s a curious effect: You know intuitively where “Primordial Sky” is headed, and there’s a sense of satisfaction to that payoff, but you never want the ride to end. Oryx is so adept at patiently slow-playing its hand, wringing the maximum drama out of each section, that you just appreciate the passing scenery. In an age when bands need to wham and bam as quickly as possible for Spotify streams, Oryx lets these songs tell their own stories at their own pace.

“We’ve always been captivated by the power of restraint in all genres of music,” Abigail Davies writes. “Heaviness, to us, is not defined by volume or the number of amps or cabs that a band has on stage. From our viewpoint, the pursuit of heaviness is better defined by dark emotionality and is achieved through dynamics. Heaviness is also subjective, where atmosphere and contrast create a weight on your chest. This has been our motivation as a band, not just to write long and loud songs, but to really captivate the listener with a dark atmospheric journey that contains multitudes and extreme dynamics. Some of our strongest influences have been soundtrack composers and instrumental music, where the defining heavy darkness of the songs has nothing to do with the tonality of a vocalist, but the cadence and ambiance of the song itself. For us, the ability to show real restraint was the product of years of writing and refinement, allowing songs to build organically in the direction that feels right for the song, not foremost concerned with how we think it will be received.”

Follow the direction that “Myopic” takes. Despite the title, Oryx is playing the long game. Opening with a pacing that could be described as the powerful deliberateness of a colossal hurricane, the band then smoothly switches to a minimally melancholic mode. It’s big-big and then small-small and back again. But even the small sounds big. This is Mahlerian stuff, titanic, like comparing the size of planets.

But here’s the thing: Similar to how Oryx excels at the above-stated dynamics, finding the heaviness in the big-big and small-small, the little things within those sections do the heaviest lifting. A nifty rhythm here, an extra expressive guitar flourish there. And there’s an ineffable energy pulsing below those moments, too. Thomas Davis’s riffs and vocals feel rich with experience. Abigail Davis and Joshua Kauffman have this uncanny ability to make rhythms pop, the most essential component in any slower metal music. And if you dig into those little moments, you’ll find even more.

“For Primordial Sky, I recorded on an acrylic drum kit, which allowed me to achieve a massive drum sound,” Abigail Davis notes. “Josh, being a drummer himself, led to us collaborating on the creation of new drum tones in the studio that I hadn’t captured yet in previous recordings. I also got a new bell brass snare that sounds like a cannon on each hit and has subsequently become my prized possession. Every aspect of this recording has been meticulously crafted to capture the intensity of our live performances. Playing our songs live is always a transcendental and physically demanding experience. I give it my all on stage every performance, leaving nothing behind.”

And that’s kind of it: Oryx doesn’t leave anything behind. It’s all out there, ready to be heard, ready to be felt. It knows exactly what it has, and it’s ready to show you everything Primordial Sky has to offer. [From Primordial Sky, out 10/18 via Translation Loss Records.] –Ian Chainey

3. Papangu – “Acende A Luz: II. O Encandeio / III. Sagüatimbó”

Location: João Pessoa, Brazil
Subgenre: prog metal

The sextet Papangu blends elements of prog and psychedelic jazz rock, stoner metal, zeuhl, traditional Brazilian music, indie rock, and more into bright, captivating songs that are full of lively and charming magic. Initially formed by two brothers and longtime friends in Brazil’s (and the Americas’) most eastern point, the band worked for seven years on their debut album. That one, Holoceno, was sludgier and a bit darker than their new one, Lampi​ã​o Rei. On Lampi​ã​o Rei, it just feels like they’re having fun. It bounces, it grooves, and it hammers home a gnarly, mean-mugging refrain that gets a dose of radical in the form of far-out Hammond organ sweeps and hits. Even without knowing what they’re saying — they sing decipherable lyrics, but in their native Portuguese — you feel there’s a literary, narrative arc to the song, thanks to the shifting melodic themes and fast-changing atmospheres.

And indeed there is, with the band noting in the liner notes that Lampi​ã​o Rei is  “an epic, biographical narrative of magical realism, recounting the trials and tribulations of legendary bandit leader Virgulino Ferreira da Silva, a.k.a. Lampião (1898 – 1938), from his birth until his rise as the most fearful man in Brazil.” They promise to continue the tale to its fateful conclusion in a future recording. But for now, we have Lampi​ã​o Rei, which the band notes was, incredibly, largely recorded live in the studio as first takes. [From Lampi​ã​o Rei, out now via Repose Records.] –Wyatt Marshall

2. Fórn – “Soul Shadow”

Location: United States
Subgenre: doom / sludge

“Pact Of Forgetting,” the opener of Fórn’s third full-length, Repercussions Of The Self, is about how the past is always present. Fittingly, the themes it introduces reverberate throughout the rest of the record.

“Musically speaking, I think our first single, ‘Pact Of Forgetting,’ does a really lovely job of introducing this kind of theme and explaining why it’s the opening track on the record,” guitarist Joey Gonzalez writes in an email. “A simple melodic idea is introduced, and then cascading layers of soaring leads, harsh industrial sounds, and eerie vocals are constantly re-contextualizing every repetition of the main melodic theme with each turn. The song both feels like it never changes and is constantly changing all at the same time until it’s swallowed up by an overwhelming swell of static and feedback. To me, this feels like a perfect encapsulation of the experiences in my life that led to writing this record. At the core of those experiences, I never felt like I was changing, but by the end of it, I certainly didn’t feel the same either. For better or worse, these things shape you, both in the moment and the echoes of those moments felt throughout your life.”

The slo-mo churn of sludge, notably the funeral variant Fórn has spent over a decade formulating, is a good vessel for exploring the nearly imperceptible slow creep of change, that moment-to-moment, second-to-second perpetual tick and tock of time. Unlike occurrences of instant upheaval, what Fórn explores hangs around in the background. It’s the lifetime of experiences, memories, and feelings — the totality of reality that doesn’t feel like much at the time because one is living through it — that act like droplets of water carving a canyon. You’re always you, and then one day, you’re different, sanded down into a shape your younger self wouldn’t recognize. But “Pact of Forgetting” is about another type of change, too, the eternal tug-of-war between the past and the future and the life-shaping narratives one needs to disentangle oneself from to stop repeating the same mistakes.

“The opening lyrics of the song also really set the board thematically for the record,” Gonzalez explains. “‘Through the fog, figures form. There are hands to guide, someone to show the way. Life is a story you tell yourself, honey is sweeter than wine.'” The lyrics here really punctuate the idea that when we are blind and navigating unfamiliar areas of turbulence in our lives, all we really have to guide us are the shadows of our past selves. Each of those shadows points us in directions that can reflect whether we have been kind to ourselves or if we chose to lose ourselves in our own created delusions. Ultimately, the path to treating ourselves with more kindness and forgiveness is always going to be wrought with pain and accountability if we want to grow, and meaningful growth means forgetting your delusions and stepping into the unknown.”

Fórn stepped into the unknown on Repercussions Of The Self. While sludge and doom are still the bones of the band’s skeleton, many other styles and timbres have become the new flesh. There’s the mechanized crunch of industrial’s interlocking gears, the shimmering quiet/loud swells of the post-everything’s heart-sleeved reveries, and even the crepuscular ambiance of trip-hop’s darker side. And along with the new components come new members. Plus guests, Fórn RSVPed for eight people on the album, including Andrew Nault on live drums and electronics and ILSA’s Orion Peter on guest vocals. That’s a lot of mouths to feed, but unlike some guest-heavy albums that seem more of an excuse to get the gang together, Repercussions Of The Self would feel far emptier without their contributions. That is to say, everyone comes to play, everyone adds their critical contribution. That is especially true of the performance from another new face, Lane Shi Otayonii from Elizabeth Colour Wheel (along with this year’s pretty great Hypnodrone Ensemble album).

“Once we had the instrumental tracks done I had been in talks with Lane about collaborating on one song,” Gonzalez said in Repercussions Of The Self’s PR copy. “What she sent back was, as always, immaculate and breathtaking, which was no surprise having worked with her before. From this bloomed a conversation of her joining Fórn as a member, to which she agreed. It’s been tough keeping that a secret but relieving to be able to reveal that to the world now.”

“Soul Shadow,” Repercussions Of The Self’s second song, reveals that new side of Fórn the best. Easily eclipsing 10 minutes, “Soul Shadow”’s length offers plenty of film in the cannister to set the scene. However, Fórn wastes no time getting down to it. Guitarists Gonzalez and Danny Boyd have a sturdy riff at the ready that’s additionally strengthened by the excellent rhythm section of bassist Brian Barbaruolo and drummer Josh Brettell, both of whom put in some real work across Repercussions Of The Self to maintain an engaging, dynamic quality. Singer Chris Pinto lets loose that bone-rattling yet emotionally resonant roar that has so characterized Fórn’s past works, like on the still-excellent Rites of Despair. So far, so Fórn.

Then Fórn begins to diversify. The doom drops away for a hushed section of richly textured quietude, with Otayonii’s vocals wafting above an arpeggio and multiple-tone drone. When the sludge crush kicks back in, Pinto, Otayonii, and a guitar lead become locked in this death-defying trio of dueling emotions, the aural analog to a restless psyche. Fórn stretches out and then rubberbands back, collapsing everything together for a recapitulating chug. But this chug is different. It’s subtle, but it has changed and is all the more powerful because of what we just experienced. Like life, it’s a false crescendo, though. Fórn returns with a gut-spilling ending that feels so real, that I’m hit with the horripilation or relatability every time I hear it.

That’s the other thing. I can’t ignore that my past shapes my reaction to Repercussions of the Self. I’ve seen Fórn live twice this summer, and both concerts were among the best I’ve seen this year. The one I’ll remember forever took place within a sweltering, no-AC-having pizza place. Let me tell you, a pie parlor sauna is a true test of one’s endurance, especially when additionally complicated by the hallucinatory effects of extreme body odor in an unventilated space. But when Fórn took the stage, all of that went away. The performance was, and I don’t use this word lightly, mesmerizing, with each member’s impassioned performance elevating the connectivity of each element. There was no wall between audience and performer. It was you and Fórn, a singular organism. And when Otayonii walked into the crowd, screaming right in front of me as the deep bass buzz of doom riffs shook me to my soul, I was there in the moment. There was no past. There was no future. I was right there. I was present. And there was nowhere else I wanted to be. It’s strange to think that fleeting moment, of shedding the armor of my insecurities and being so vulnerable and open and there, is something that will influence how I’ll always hear “Soul Shadow” going forward. But, hey, the past is always present, right? [From Repercussions Of The Self, out 10/18 via Persistent Vision Records.] –Ian Chainey

1. Immortal Bird – “Bioluminescent Toxins”

Location: Chicago, IL
Subgenre: black metal / death metal

Immortal Bird has a unique talent for turning elaborate technical wizardry into ripping, pounded-out, entrancing sluggers. And they do it at a mid-tempo pace, drawing out threads of dissonant flourishes into tightly coiled riffs that are guaranteed to get heads forcefully nodding. When it comes together, it’s an incredible force, with grooves further hammered home by razor-sharp, near-mechanical drumming that ups the caliber of the assault. It’s absolutely ripping, but it’s almost unusually stirring — the range of emotion displayed across “Bioluminescent Toxins” is remarkable, a mirror into the depths of despair. There are the big, body-lurching riffs, which give way to absolutely shredding, booming blasts of mania. Towards the end, a mesmerizing interlude sees Rae Amitay’s raspy screams turn to magical, haunting proclamations of fate. It’s a journey across troubled seas at night, with chop and churning waters turning to waves that crest and recede and offer glimpses of further storms on the horizon. In their eleventh year, the Chicago three-piece continues to set the bar for big, bruising, intricate, and deep-feeling blackened metal, and in Sin Querencia they have put together a work as layered and captivating as the human mind. [From Sin Querencia, out 10/18 via 20 Buck Spin.] –Wyatt Marshall

Bonus. Pyrrhon – “Not Going To Mars”

Location: New York, NY
Subgenre: death metal / noise rock

My favorite riff of the year kicks in at 1:43. That part of “Not Going To Mars” is Malignancy practicing in a tour van with serious transmission issues, a herky-jerky, neck-snapping, magically swinging storm of guitar wees and woos. It’s preceded by a section with the sky-rending qualities of a meteor shower destroying Today is the Day’s In The Eyes Of God. It’s followed by a comparatively contemplative section that could be Converge and Deadguy talking each other into starting a bar fight. The whole song is noise rock meets death metal, like if Cherubs and Suffocation were the main characters in Face/Off. Then again, it’s really none of those things. “Not Going To Mars” is pure Pyrrhon through and through.

“I’m not sure we really introduced many new ingredients on this album, though we perhaps arranged them a little differently,” singer and former Black Market column leader Doug Moore told Lelahel Metal about Exhaust, Pyrrhon’s fifth full-length. “For me, the defining quality of Exhaust relative to our prior albums is its focus and concision. There might be a bit more noise rock in there than before as well, but who’s counting?”

Well, Exhaust does a lot of counting. It’s keeping the score. The album is about getting older and the eroding external forces, the wave after wave of near-invisible indignities, that turn a boulder into a grain of sand. It’s about counting the days while the flames of burnout grow ever higher. And yes, as the would’ve-killed-on-Car-Talk double-entendre album title makes clear, it’s counting the miles between the beginning and the end of this long, lonesome journey, because if there’s one thing for certain, there’s going to be an end. “Gonna go, gonna go ’til I’m totaled,” Moore sings on “Out Of Gas,” the builds-to-a-blowout, no-wavey midpoint of Exhaust that is anything but a rest stop. “No respite at the end of this tunnel/ Just glare from a pair of headlights.”

Then again, for all of its downers, for all of its examinations of the lonelier side of life, from the curtain call for hopes and dreams of “Strange Pains” to the chewed-up-by-CTE Chuck Bednarik obit of “Concrete Charlie” to the self-medicating oneself to death of “Hell Medicine,” Exhaust is about the New York quartet coming together, too. Composed during a band-building sojourn to the beautiful, untouched Eden of [checks notes] northeastern Pennsylvania, Pyrrhon reconvened to find itself once more. The closeness kicked up a static-charge-esque spark that relit the band’s creativity. What came out of the togetherness is the most immediate and concentrated album of Pyrrhon’s career.

“Exhaust sounds like a band playing together, which is tough for a technical experimental death metal band,” guitarist Dylan DiLella explained to Justin Norton in a great writeup for the album’s liner notes. “That’s always been our goal, but we haven’t achieved it until this record. It’s our tightest record, but in some ways, it’s also the loosest. It’s easy to forget about the burning passion we all had when we started this band. We are all passionate music fans, and that is channeled into this band. We just have recently realized how lucky we are to have Pyrrhon.”

We’re lucky to have Pyrrhon, too. Listening to bassist Erik Malave’s dirty-as-a-city-rat buzz, guitarist Dylan DiLella’s lemon-juice-in-the-wound chaos engine squalls, singer Doug Moore’s stalked-by-a-psychotic-break layered screams, and drummer Steve Schwegler’s muscularly multifaceted carpet-bombing rhythms is like hearing this kind of metal’s past and future in one package. Everyone turns in career-best performances, which is no small feat considering that some members feature on two or three other records that should be shortlisted at the end of the year. Even Pyrrhon’s fifth member, artist Caroline Harrison, adorns Exhaust with one of her finest album covers, a simultaneously stunning and appalling memento mori of city life. It just is Pyrhrron.

So yes, Exhaust is Pyrrhon through and through. It’s a band flexing its singular ability to channel the too-real rot of reality into the music that possesses the same clarifying effects of a near-fatal car crash. Same as it ever was. But no, like how time changes us all, this is a different Pyrrhon, too. “I like to think that we also have a clearer sense of who we are, and how to get the most out of our efforts when we make them,” Moore explained to Lelahel Metal regarding the band’s trajectory. “Beyond that, we wake up earlier and have more joint pain than we did in 2008.” Sure. But if I may, let me float this idea: If Pyrrhon can rage against the dying of the light this hard, finding its best self in midlife when so many other facets of culture believe you already have one foot six feet deep when you cross the age of 25, then Exhaust is a compelling reason to keep waking up. Can I prove it? Yeah. My favorite riff is right there. And I want to hear it again tomorrow and the day after that until I can’t anymore. [From Exhaust, out now via Willowtip.] –Ian Chainey

HYMNS OF BLASPHEMOUS IRREVERENCE

My kitchen faucet is making Dungeon Synth now pic.twitter.com/svw42LdiQs

— Stefan – Epilogue Out Now! (@18slashes) September 12, 2024