Tag Archives: prog death metal

Lugubrious Garment – In The Wide Vale Of Uncreated Night (20 Buck Spin)

Posted by John Lithium on

Label Description: Following the ferocious declaration of intent laid down by 2025’s Demo MMXXV, Milan-based musician Gabriele Gramaglia offers the first full-length manifestation of Lugubrious Garment, ‘In The Wide Vale Of Uncreated Night’. Known for his work with Cosmic Putrefaction, Vertebra Atlantis and numerous other entities operating within the more adventurous reaches of extreme metal, Gramaglia established Lugubrious Garment as an outlet for a more ravenous and instinctive strain of Death Metal; one driven by brute momentum, frenzied aggression and an uncompromising rawness. On ‘In The Wide Vale Of Uncreated Night’ that initial impulse erupts into a considerably more formidable and fully developed beast.

While retaining the layered, multifaceted songwriting characteristic of Gramaglia’s broader body of work, Lugubrious Garment directs that complexity toward outright pandemonium. Gritty, abrasive guitars churn through pummeling and intricate rhythmic contortions as tortured vocals howl from within the tumult and cascades of shrieking lead guitar slash across the album’s fractured landscape. Yet beneath its seemingly unrestrained violence lies a meticulously engineered attack: riffs twist and collide at excessive velocity, tempos lurch between hammering force and sudden acceleration, and flashes of classic Heavy and Speed Metal emerge through the wreckage before being swallowed by the surrounding maelstrom.

‘In The Wide Vale Of Uncreated Night’ thrives upon this collision of precision and savagery, harnessing technical ability as another weapon in an arsenal built for maximum destructive force. Lugubrious Garment channels the restless imagination behind Gramaglia’s other work into something noticeably more feral and antagonistic; a sustained barrage of serrated riffing, relentless battery and deranged metallic energy. ‘In The Wide Vale Of Uncreated Night’ tears open the gates on Lugubrious Garment’s first full-length campaign with a frenzied Death Metal assault built to leave nothing standing in its wake. 

Gabriele Gramaglia: Guitars, vocals, bass, synths, sound design
Yr-nhhngr: Additional vocals here and there throughout the record
Giorgio Trombino: Additional solo in the ending section of “Transient Wounds, Spiritual Wilt”
Andrea Morgan: Additional violins and violas in “…And Therein Plant unto Their Souls Asunder”
and in “Eternal Scars and Imperative Backfires”
Claudio Invidia: Session drums

Artwork crafted by the refined mastery of Mariya Popyk.

Written, recorded, mixed and mastered between fall 2025 and spring 2026 by Gabriele Gramaglia in Crepuscular Sound Studio.

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