Weekly Digest, Week 40 / 2025

It's a week for the big names this one, but the underground echoes their qualities of riff happiness, melodic affinity and technicality, with releases from Last Retch, Korypheus, Cosmic Reaper, Demiurgon and Hei'An.

Here are the ones shouting loudest for your attention this week:

Amorphis – Borderland

Dying Wish – Flesh Stays Together

Mors Principium Est – Darkness Invisible

PeelingFlesh – PF Radio 2

Rage – A New World Rising

Revocation – New Gods, New Masters

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Last Retch – Abject Cruelty

Genre: Death metal

Subjective rating: 4/5

Objective rating: 4/5

Country of origin: Canada

It's been a while since a straight death metal band has scored this high on my banging-riff-o-meter. What is otherwise a perfectly murky, malevolent, mid-tempo affair with dry-gurgling vocals, almost sinking into doom on a few occasions, will on most of its tracks set off on a riff rampage that, at times, feels almost comically eager. Thanks to the tone and slightly more reigned-in drums it never really breaks character, and instead takes the best of the headbang-ability and groove from a death thrash sound and couples it with proper, cave-dwelling morbidity, It doesn't score big on originality, but god damn is it a brutally good time.

Highlights: "Beasley Meth Merchants" and "Dissolved in Lye (Down to Rot)"

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Korypheus – Gilgamesh

Genre: Progressive/groove metal

Subjective rating: 4/5

Objective rating: 3.5/5

Country of origin: Ukraine

Korypheus are a young prog metal band out of Ukraine, playing an aggressive-yet catchy, riff-focused variant of the genre, bringing in elements of modern groove and metalcore. It reminds me of Fractal Universe, perhaps with a splash of Jinjer thrown in there, and a bit less conceptual and atmosphere-minded. While it's not quite at a point yet where it stands clearly out in its own crowd, it does a lot of things right while building on familiar elements. It's eager to play around with instrumental flourishes and different rhythm approaches, while staying on target and constantly moving forward, with an appetite for solos and a good mix of vocal styles. Perhaps not quite as mature as some other stuff you'll hear this week, but I was left both entertained and impressed.

Highlights: "Sleeper" and "Odysseus"

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Cosmic Reaper – Bleed The Wicked, Drown The Damned

Genre: Doom/psychedelic metal

Subjective rating: 3.5/5

Objective rating: 3.5/5

Country of origin: USA

Here's some dark, crushing psychedelia, which I feel like I haven't been able to dig into for quite a little while. This is absolutely doom, with noticeable traces of stoner, but the way the tone of the riffs and solos flows and swirls around the bass, being pressed forward by the drums, feels a bit like a mind-warping spiral slowly descending into the deep. It's crunchy and solidly heavy, with a vocal style that brings to mind a blank-eyed, joyless Ozzy. Which fits the vibe of the music perfectly well. It keeps up the quality throughout, even though you feel like you've heard the full range of the ambitions for the album a little before it concludes.

Highlight: "Hammer"  

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Demiurgon – Miasmatic Deathless Chamber

Genre: Technical death metal

Subjective rating: 3.5/5

Objective rating: 3.5/5

Country of origin: Italy

This is technical death metal, but not "tech death", if you know what I mean. It's being driven by some very precise, violently forceful and rhythm-focused instrumentation, but it's also very much about the savage, malevolent feel. It attacks you like some titanic, thousand-maws-and-claws predator, but not directed by a thousand different minds. It's fairly mono-tracked in its destructive pattern, even as it brings a number of murderous limbs to the task at once. Not outstanding among its peers in any major way, it's still a really well crafted and impressively hard-hitting effort that I'd love to see evolve into something slightly more distinct.

Highlight: "Aspiring to Omnipotence"

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Hei'An – Kiss Our Ghosts Goodbye

Genre: Progressive metal

Subjective rating: 3.5/5

Objective rating: 3.5/5

Country of origin: Slovenia

To me this feels a bit like a mix between Haken and Leprous, just less caught up with instrumental acrobatics and with an alternative metal twist. It's vibrant and young, but with a concise, stargazing tonality and great production. There's a bit of pop and electronica and a cinematic scope, some of it reminding me of "A Thousand Suns"-era Linkin Park, but you also get metalcore-like aggression. In the end, it's a little bit let down by its sometimes simplistic choruses and vocal lines, as they compete with expansive atmosphere, exciting melody lines and genre-fluid rhythmic twists and turns.

Highlight: "What a Shame"