Tag Archives: death metal

Sigh – Goh-Ka (Peaceville)

Posted by John Lithium on

Label Description: THE EPIC NEW STUDIO ALBUM FROM THE LONG-STANDING JAPANESE METAL PIONEERS, INCLUDING GUEST APPEARANCE FROM OPETH’S MIKAEL ÅKERFELDT.

Japanese metal pioneers Sigh formed in 1989/1990. Their genre-classic Black Metal debut ‘Scorn Defeat’ arrived in 1993, and with a subsequent journey through the strange and the psychedelic, incorporating a whole eclectic mix of genre styles & ideas throughout their career, Sigh has remained a vital creative force in the avantgarde field whilst maintaining their old school roots, as witnessed on the 2022 album (and first for Peaceville Records), ‘Shiki’. This was followed by the remaking of their ‘Hangman’s Hymn’ album as part of the band’s 35th anniversary celebrations, in the shape of ‘I Saw the World’s End: Hangman’s Hymn MMXXV’ (2025).

Considered as somewhat of a natural evolution, yet an even more diverse leap over the already compositionally and dynamically accomplished ‘Shiki’ opus, Sigh returns with ‘Goh-ka’; a new highlight of atmosphere, technical mastery, and meticulously arranged epics of metallic grandeur.

Main-man Mirai Kawashima notes this as being as equally personal an album as ‘Shiki’, both musically and lyrically. From a musical perspective, if you were to place the main ingredients of Celtic Frost, Voivod, Black Sabbath, horror movies and Japan into a cauldron and stir it, you will get ‘Goh-ka’. Numerous additional spices such as psychedelic rock, prog rock and classical music are also evident over the album’s close to one-hour duration.

The album title ‘Goh-ka’ has a triple meaning, being: 業火 infernal fire scorching sinners, 劫火 a huge fire that burns down the world at the end of time, and 業果 karma.
The primary theme permeating the album is Kuso-zu; a series of Buddhist paintings or illustrations depicting the nine stages of a human body’s decomposition after death, created to encourage meditation on the impermanence of life, the inevitability of death, and the detachment from physical beauty and worldly attachment. It openly shows the harsh reality that no matter how beautiful you are, you’ll be dead and rot sooner or later. And Kuso-shi is a poem based on these paintings. The artworks on the cover and in the booklet of ‘Goh-ka’ are therefore Kuso-zu themselves.

Joining Mirai Kawashima and Dr Mikannibal along with guitarist Nozomu Wakai, are Frédéric Leclercq (Kreator) on bass, plus renowned US drummer Mike Heller.

Among the additional contributors to the album, Mikael Åkerfeldt of Opeth notably delivers a special guest guitar solo on the track, ‘Unputenpu’.

‘Goh-ka’ was recorded across multiple studios, and once again mixed and mastered by Lasse Lammert at LSD studios in Germany. 

Ænigmatum – Infinitude’s Passage (20 Buck Spin)

Posted by John Lithium on

Label Description: ‘Infinitude’s Passage’ marks the third full length statement from Portland’s death metal seers Aenigmatum. Taking the intricate mastery of previous album ‘Deconsecrate’ as a point of departure, the band’s union of technical precision, dark melody and unrelenting force draw us ever further into a world where revelation and annihilation become indistinguishable.

Sudden turns, fractured rhythms and spiraling harmonies color a landscape of seemingly elaborate complexity, yet Aenigmatum are serving a larger, deeper structure with an exacting sense of purpose and focus. Frenetic eruptions of speed give way to passages of melodious clarity and dissonant turbulence allowing the compositions to remain in constant motion and expand idiosyncratically upward and outward.

Cerebral without sacrificing physical impact, majestic without surrendering menace and progressive without loosening its vigorous command, ‘Infinitude’s Passage’ rejects easy categorization within Death Metal’s exceedingly vast parameters. Its visceral impact, incandescent melody and aura of perpetual discovery places Aenigmatum at the threshold of the boundless.

Kelly McLaughlin – Vocals/Guitar/Bass Clarinet
Eli Lundgren – Guitar
Brian Rush – Bass/Backup Vocals
Pierce Williams – Drums/Synths/Backup Vocals

Patrick Corona – Saxophone
Danny Quetzal – Backup Vocals

Drum recording engineered by Charlie Koryn at Elektric City
Pre-production and guitar/vocal recording engineered by Pierce Williams
Bass & Bass Clarinet recording engineered by Brian Rush
Saxophone recording engineered by Patrick Corona

Reamp, Mix, and Master by Colin Marston at Menegroth, The Thousand Caves
Additional reamping by Keith Merrow at Merrowsound Studios

Artwork: Daniel Hermosilla @nox_fragor_artworks
Liner Art: Marcus Kempton @artwork_from_the_graveyard_pnw
Logo: Connie Wang @iconartisty
Layout: Matt Oien

Primary Composers:
“Pitiless”, “Architects”, & “Passage” by Williams
“Inseverable” by Lundgren
“Nexus” by McLaughlin.
“Nocturne” by Rush
All lyrics by McLaughlin

Funebrarum – Beckoning the Void of Eternal Silence (Pulverised Records)

Posted by John Lithium on

Label Description: FUNEBRARUM “Beckoning the Void of Eternal Silence”

New Jersey death metal veterans FUNEBRARUM have announced their long-awaited third full-length album, Beckoning the Void of Eternal Silence, set for release on May 29th via Pulverised Records. Marking the band’s first new material in seven years, the record sees the revered underground outfit return with their most fully realized and crushing work to date, reaffirming their status as torchbearers of classic, doom-laden death metal steeped in the spirit of the late ’80s and early ’90s.

With a perturbed atmosphere writhing around the entire record, the pulsation of which “Beckoning The Void Of Eternal Silence” breeds is an expertly calculated Deathdoom craftsmanship and yet emitting at times a surreal bridging between extreme genres in orchestra-like precision. The core DNA of FUNEBRARUM has remained intact albeit the exalted darkness have shaped themselves to be cut from a different cloth.

Track List:

1. The Arrival (Intro)
2. Beckoning the Void of Eternal Silence
3. Sa Nagba Amāru
4. Through the Barren Halls of Grieving Emptiness
5. Into Dark Domains
6. Ancestral Manor (Intro)
7. Anhela Odor Mortuorum (The Adepts)
8. From Rotting Burial Shrouds
9. Turning the Stones of Torment
10. The Whispering Cathedral
11. Epilogue 

Daryl Kahan – Lead Vocals
Samuel Osborne – Rhythm Guitars
Phil Tougas – Rhythm & Lead Guitar
Winslow – Bass
Charles Koryn – Drums

Intros by DuskLord and Daryl Kahan
Keyboards and Acoustic Guitar by Phil Tougas
Backing Vocals: Winslow and Phil Tougas
Guest Leads by Patrik Fernlund *

Recorded by Charles Koryn at Elektrik City Recording.
Portland, Oregon
Recorded and Mixed by Stephen DeAcutis at Sound Spa Studios,
Edison, New Jersey
Co-Produced by Daryl Kahan and Phil Tougas
Mastered by Daryl Kahan at Winterdark – Jan 2026
Executive Producer: Roy Yeo
All Music by Funebrarum © 2026All Lyrics by Daryl Kahan except “Beckoning the Void of Eternal Silence” by Winslow and Daryl Kahan
All Artwork and Design by Daryl Kahan 2026
Logo by Turkka Rantanen


www.funebrarum.com
www.pulverised.net

Goetia – Mortuary Cult (Carbonized Records)

Posted by John Lithium on

Label Description: “Mortuary Cult”, the first Full-Length album from Goetia, features ten blasting tracks of Death Metal desecration.

Goetia:
Matt Scott – Bass & Vocals
Demir Soyer – Guitars
Nadia Tydings-Lynch – Drums

Recorded and Mixed by Matt Michel at Viva Studio in Fairfax, VA
Mastered by Will Killingsworth at Dead Air Studios
Cover Artwork by Chris Taylor
Logo by Matt Scott

Skeleton – Skeleton (20 Buck Spin)

Posted by John Lithium on

Ripping forth like a dagger from the flesh of Austin, Texas comes the self-titled debut LP from the lone star state’s new wreckers of civilization Skeleton. Having plied their black market trade for several years in grime infested underground dungeons and sub-basements, 20 Buck Spin was called forth to issue Skeleton’s first LP, a cataclysmic expansion of the band’s unhallowed vision venturing well beyond its earlier borders.

Though some might be prone to lazily apply simplistic genre tags to Skeleton’s style, the reality is far more sweeping as the debut LP immediately reveals an excessively sharp metallic-charged juggernaut of severe force and high plains mayhem. War-like hymns for the soldiers of a scorched apocalypse to come, from which a bleak alternate future will emerge.

The 11 tracks comprising ‘Skeleton’ signal the black dawn of a new breed, and when the final somber strains of ‘Catacombs’ close out the album, an eerie sense of the end as the beginning lingers like a morbid premonition…

Growth – Under The Under (Wild Thing Records)

Posted by John Lithium on

Label Description:

Below rock bottom under the weight of truth. Yet in facing truth there is a spark that reveals there’s more to you than your darkest place. Over half a decade on from the release of their debut album, The Smothering Arms of Mercy, Melbourne progressive-death metal outfit Growth have re-emerged with Under The Under, the long-awaited second chapter of their planned trilogy aimed at going beyond expressing emotion, illustrating pathways of recovery while acknowledging the most dread-filled aspects of it.

The gap between releases has been deliberate….and necessary. Where The Smothering Arms of Mercy was written from within collapse, sickness and isolation, Under the Under exists in the far more uncomfortable space that follows: what happens when survival is no longer the question and you’re forced to confront who you are once the wreckage settles. In the bands own words, healing, is not gentle. It is an ugly process. Chaotic, disorienting and often more confronting than the pain that preceded it. Growth began in 2017 as a reflective space for brothers Tristan Barnes (guitar/bass/artwork) and Nelson Barnes(drums), and vocalist LF, later joined by Nick Rackham (bass) and Ben Boyle (guitar), to explore trauma, mental illness and grief without romanticising them. The project was never intended as catharsis for its own sake, but as a way to illustrate recovery in all its brutality. not as linear progress, but as something fractured, cyclical and deeply human. Under the Under is an album that documents six stages of recovery not as levels to be celebrated, but as thresholds to be endured. Across the record, Growth interrogates the dignity we attach to suffering, the comfort of identifying solely with trauma and the terrifying possibility that we might be more than the stories that have kept us alive.

If The Smothering Arms of Mercy was a document of total spiritual collapse, Under the Under is about the ugliness of its reconstruction. Shame, fear, memory and the quiet violence of choosing to move forward regardless. Growth does not offer solutions but instead offer honesty and an invitation to sit with the questions most of us spend our lives avoiding. Under The Under is planned for release on March 27 via Wild Thing Records and available for pre-order now.

Recorded, Mixed and Mastered by Tristan Barnes at Underland Recordings in Melbourne, Australia

Reeking Aura – On The Promise Of The Moon (Profound Lore Records)

Posted by John Lithium on

Label Description:

REEKING AURA, a 5 piece death metal group made of seasoned veterans from the NY/NJ underground scene, returns in 2026 with their second album On the Promise of the Moon to be released on April 17th via Profound Lore Records. Tracked at OK Studios in Kinderhook, NY then mixed and mastered by the legendary Dan Swano, On the Promise of the Moon builds on the “Fires in Deep Frost” EP released in 2025 with a dark, melodic atmosphere that does not compromise their brutal, guttural NY roots.

Returning from the first album are guitarists Terrell Grannum (Thaetas), and Rick Habeeb (Grey Skies Fallen) as well as vocalist William Smith (Afterbirth). Drummer Hudson Barth and bassist TJ Coon (both also in Trog) round out the lineup and bring fresh blood to the band, with all members having contributed to the writing process.

The album also features contributions from guest vocalists Eston Browne (Vulnificus) and Jon Berg (The Path) as well as string arrangements by Ben Karas (Slaughtersun).