Weekly Digest, Week 43 / 2025

A big week with strong releases in all tiers, with the underground featuring releases by Evoken, Tombs, Graveripper, Kaupe and Sintage.

In the upper echelons, cheesy bombast clashes with cerebral aggression:

Battle Beast – Steelbound

Biohazard – Divided We Fall

Carach Angren – The Cult Of Kariba (EP)

Carcosa – The Axe Forgets, The Tree Remembers

Coroner – Dissonance Theory

Grailknights – Forever

Sabaton – Legends

Sunn O))) – Eternity's Pillars b/w Raise the Chalice & Reverential (EP)

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Evoken – Mendacium

Genre: Doom/death metal

Subjective rating: 4/5

Objective rating: 4/5

Country of origin: USA

Seven years after their last release, funeral doom staples Evoken drop their seventh full-length descent into terror. And while, yes, the abyssal death metal elements make for an ever-ominous presence in the pooling blackness of this album's underbelly, it's also what makes it shift forwards in lurches and lunges, on squealing guitars and pouncing drums. And the solemn, darkly medieval atmosphere is enough to describe an entire odyssey crawling through catacombs and castle dungeons. The pace is agonisingly slow at times, but it feels like just the right kind of emptiness and space in the soundscape, and only adds to the mood of despair and hopelessness. It's epic in a way, but not fated for any sort of glory, wonder or conquest, only horror, decline and dark fascination.  

Highlights: "None" and "Matins"

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Tombs – Feral Darkness

Genre: Experimental sludge/black metal

Subjective rating: 4/5

Objective rating: 4/5

Country of origin: USA

A style-indifferent, groove-amendable, crunchy, noisy and coarse amalgamation of sludge, black metal and a few other, related flavors into a beast of a record. It's got grit pouring out of every crack and cavity, and a death-stare, anti-conventional gothic attitude radiating from the vocal performances and subdued melodies. It's stronger the more aggressive and crushing it gets, with some of the atmospheric, spoken-word sections not feeling quite as convincing as they need to be compared to the blackened confidence of the harshness. But it provides character, and lets you know that there is more to this than just snarling nihilism and skull-grinding heaviness. It's just unpredictable enough to keep you intrigued as well as feeling like wielding a sledgehammer.

Highlights: "Feral Darkness" and "Wasps"

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Graveripper – From Welkin To Tundra

Genre: Thrash/black metal

Subjective rating: 3.5/5

Objective rating: 3.5/5

Country of origin: USA

Graveripper slapped me in the face in all the best ways with their 2023 debut "Seasons Dreaming Death". It was an all-guns-blazing, rough-edged graveyard demolisher of a pissed-off blackened thrash album, promising great things for the future. Now they're back, with a tone that's clearly been hung to chill in the cooler, and a much cleaner and crisper production. Whether that's a good or a bad thing I will leave up to individual taste, but some of the chaotic ferociousness has been lost in favor of precise, well-defined beats and riffs. It's still highly aggressive, and definitely gets your head moving, track after track, but a few of the tracks do come off as fairly by-the-numbers blackened thrash. It's a ripping good time, if not a bit too reined-in.  

Highlight: "Bring Upon Pain"

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Kaupe – Destroyer of Worlds

Genre: Progressive metal

Subjective rating: 3.5/5

Objective rating: 3.5/5

Country of origin: USA

A (mostly) instrumental prog metal band out of Florida, here presenting their third full-length. It feels grounded, not massive in scope, but still conceptually solid and coherent, with a dry, warm sound that bears elements of heavy metal, hard rock and sludge. It's not your typical shred-fest of colorful melody, rather something approaching classic doom and stoner in mood. That's not to say it's particularly understated, but while it's decently adventurous and groovy, there's a certain stoicism about it as well, which I find characterful. It doesn't really offer any massive hits, but no two tracks feel quite the same, and tickle the mind in ways that will take you to both soothing and exciting places.

Highlight: "Unresolved Trauma"

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Sintage – Unbound Triumph

Genre: Heavy metal

Subjective rating: 3.5/5

Objective rating: 3.5/5

Country of origin: Germany

A glorious trip back to the 70s and the heyday of classic heavy metal. The raspy, high-pitched-vocals, galloping rhythms and soaring, feelgood solos - it's all there. Just as depicted on the cover, this is stuff you imagine projected like a lightning bolt from the highest mountain peak, causing the denim-and-chains masses to converge in headbanging worship. The spirit is not quite as effectively evident in every single song on the album, but enough to be thoroughly convincing. It doesn't go off the rails or really surprise you, but it stays on message and is willing to rock your socks off all the way through.

Highlight: "Electric Walls"