Welcome to 2025! We’ve got a basket of malicious-minded stuff waiting for you, ready to take you in wildly different places.
Acacia’s Temple – Elegiac Pilgrimage
Genre: Atmospheric black metal
Subjective rating: 3.5/5
Objective rating: 3.5/5
Entering a dark, fire-lit room, you’re drawn in by the near-chanted words of a dark-clad figure whose voice has everyone in the room transfixed. The voice tells a story, the contents of which, you quickly realize, you will come to wish that you didn’t hear. But it’s to late now, you can’t help but listen intently. That’s my experience of Acacia’s Temple’s debut atmospheric black metal album. It blends in elements of doom, creating a gloomy, ritual-like atmosphere with spoken-work-like vocals and chilling tremolo melodies. The production is great, if perhaps a tad too smooth, but you get the feeling it’s not meant to be an unpleasant experience. It’s more about the overall feel than delivering standout moments, and in that regard you might find yourself at the end of the album not quite having identified any individual tracks, but still feeling like you’ve been properly submerged in dark depths.
Highlight: “Unveiling romantic darkness”
Black Pegasus – Mass Omega (+ Mass Omega II: THe South Chamber)
Genre: Experimental deathcore/industrial metal
Subjective rating: 4/5
Objective rating: 4/5
Noise, melody, groove and crushing, rhythmic punishment. That is, in essence, what you’re in for on Black Pegasus’ first half of their double “Mass Omega” release, the second being “Mass Omega II: The South Chamber”, which is, to a certain extent, more of an ambient experience, although a very loud, hostile and horrifying one. For this review, I will concentrate on the former of the two albums. A quick, casual listen might not offer you more than breakdown-y noise terror, but there’s a lot more to unpack if you stick with it. Yes, the djent guitars and double base barrages are front and center, backed by oppressive distortion and executed with industrial rigidness, but all of a sudden you get straight-up stoner groove, metalcore-like or symphonic melody and nu metal beats. It’s not what I’d call a “wild” or “unhinged” kind of experimental project, but it goes to show how many different styles can be successfully blended given enough will and talent.
Highlights: “Holy Waters” and “Apollo’s Gait”
Enchanted Steel – Might and Magic
Genre: Power metal
Subjective rating: 3/5
Objective rating: 3/5
A solo Polish power metal project that practically radiates fantasy nerd. While the vocals aren’t completely up to scratch (best noticed on the ballads) the tone and guitar work send your mind to a simpler, happier place.
Fermentor – Release Me
Genre: Psychedelic death metal
Subjective rating: 3.5/5
Objective rating: 3.5/5
This album is a lot of fun if you’re in a playful mood. What you get is 17 short-runtime songs of instrumental (only guitar and drums, so they say), psychedelic/experimental death metal. It’s not exactly brutal, but it is heavy, and showcases some serious progressive groove, the like of River of Nihil and Gojira. My main issue with it is its episodic structure, where songs don’t really flow together, and so you feel like it’s “starting over” jumping something new quite often, without really having reached a climax for a lot of its tracks. But if structure is less of a concern to you, and you just want to be transported along to wherever the music takes you, there’s plenty to enjoy along the way on here.
Highlight: “Vortex”
Manic Outburst – Dead and Dying Fast
Genre: Thrash/speed metal
Subjective rating: 3/5
Objective rating: 3/5
Hoarse-shouty speed thrash that’s at its best when either going full tilt with blazing solos or leaning in to slightly lower tempo grooves. There’s not a ton on here to separate these guys from the crowd, but it’s tonally on point and suitably ferocious.
Mutagenic Host – The Diseased Machine
Genre: Death metal
Subjective rating: 4/5
Objective rating: 3.5/5
First week of 2025 and we’re already getting great old school death metal. I Like where this is headed. These lads are from London, and are clearly not optimistic about where technology is headed these days. Setting aside the theme of machine overlords though, this is mid-to-low tempo, properly crushing stuff with great low-end punch, a dark tone and truly spectacular dry-throat, roaring vocals. I had a great time all the way through, especially considering how consistent it is, although I found myself craving more focused riff sections as track highlights. It feels raw, even though there’s no unnecessary low-fi-ing to the production, but also powerful and meaty.
Highlight: “Artificial Harvest of the Obscene” and “Incomprehensible Methods of Slaughter”
Paleface Swiss – Cursed
Genre: Deathcore/nu metal
Subjective rating: 3.5/5
Objective rating: 3.5/5
Matured into a more thoughtful, more straightforwardly deathcore, more melodically inclined band, this is not the rabid animal we met on 2022’s “Fear & Dagger”. There are certainly still instances of the early-Slipknot-Corey manic, agonized groans, and many of the riffs hit supremely hard. But bigger parts of the album feel a tad tame, like the band is settling in intead of evolving.
Highlight: “…and with hope you’ll be damned”
Patriarkh – Prophet Ilja
Genre: Black metal
Subjective rating: 3.5/5
Objective rating: 4/5
If Gearea’s “Coma” has you looking for more epic evil, then turn your gaze in this direction. If you’re already familiar with Batushka’s sound, that these ex-members are very much still building on, then this will appear a more free-standing, evolved release. It’s very much still a “monastic” kind of sound, full of chants and with a tone of divine worship, although in the unholy form. Personally, I wanted the album to do a bit more, but it’s still a mighty release that feels both ambitious and highly intentional.
Highlight: “WIERSZALIN II”
As always, if you think I’m completely off on an observation, unfairly dissed your favorite band, or need to give an album another shot, why not pop a comment down below?
The Metal Dispatch 