116th part of the short reviews.
WICKED LEATHER – Echoes of the Storm
Year: 2024
Label: Jawbreaker Records
Rating: 6 / 10
The debut single by the Spanish dark Heavy Metal band featuring an Argentine vocalist. Yami Martins looked like she stepped off a cover of VIRGIN STEELE “Age of Consent”, and this will undoubtedly ensure the popularity of WICKED LEATHER for at least the next few years of its existence. On the other hand, her vocals are very... specific, so not everyone will like it. As for the music, the track "Night Hunter“ is very pleasing, but ”Lightning Strike" is an absolute filler with an imbecile happy riffing. We'll see if something comes out of this band.
HJEMSØKT – Om vinteren, på en sort trone
Year: 2024
Label: Purity Through Fire
Rating: 6,4 / 10
PTF has finally released an album that doesn't sound like everything else he's released in the previous few years. "Om vinteren, på en sort trone" offers Norwegian dark metal about frosty forests and misanthropy. And although the authors of the album obviously aimed at the old DARKTHRONE, ULVER and SATYRICON, they got something between MÚSPELLZHEIMR and PAYSAGE D'HIVER. The music has the right atmosphere, but it's too intense. If you want to convey a wintry feeling, then you don't have to constantly blast like no tomorrow. Don't be fooled by the beautiful Kittelsen's pine tree on the cover - there's almost nothing like it in HJEMSØKT's music.
ONIROPHAGUS – Revelations from the Void
Year: 2025
Label: Personal Records
Rating: 8,3 / 10
The Spaniards' new album. As before, it is a massive, grandiose death doom metal, which with equal success brings oppressive gloom and melancholic hopelessness. The sound has improved significantly compared to the previous album. All that remains is to do something with the vocals, since mr. Paingrinder does not roar low and fat enough for this style, and his screams and chants do not fit this music at all.
WULDORGAST – Cold Light
Year: 2024
Label: Iron Bonehead Productions
Rating: 6,8 / 10
US blackened metal which is supposedly not "right-wing", but about the Black Sun, survival of the fittest, and so on. The debut album. All the music here is played by a rather dubious character Sceadugenga, who has connections with the ASRAR faggot, the drug addicts from Nithstang and Rivfader (it's a young NS clown from US who recently lost the last piece of his small mind and created a "patriotic Christian Black Metal project" COMPATRIOT - and, of course, ASS-RAR shat it out on vinyl!). Apart from these sad facts, WULDORGAST's music is pretty good, dynamic, angry and really cold. There is both tremolo evil and good quality riffs. Nothing outstanding, but it works. As for the vocals, they are technically not bad, but, as is customary among Americans, are either passed through some harmonizer or heavily mixed with useless sound effects, so they sound like crap.
RECKLESS MANSLAUGHTER – Sinking into Filth
Year: 2024
Label: Memento Mori
Rating: 7,5 / 10
One hundred percent expected release from Memento Mori! I haven't looked at this label's releases for a long time, and I'm glad to find out that it hasn't changed at all. "Sinking into Filth" is the approximately one hundred millionth album in the style of INCANTATION on Memento Mori. A ”meaty" sound component is added to the characteristic heavyweight and super-dark riffs. The vocalist roars in the style of Chris Barnes of early XXI century, and the bass drum thumps dryly in the vein of those brutal Death Metal bands that like to pour the contents of other people's intestines down their throats. Very good.
