Weekly Spotlight, Week 17 / 2025

The underground stands strong this week, with death and doom offered from Dormant Ordeal, Ancient Death, Divide and Dissolve, and Tribunal.

Not a ton happening "overground", but you might want to check out:

Gama Bomb – Necronomicon Automaton (EP)

Melvins - Thunderball

Lik - Necro

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Dormant Ordeal – Tooth And Nail

Genre: Death/black metal

Subjective rating: 4.5/5

Objective rating: 4/5

Country of origin: Poland

Dormant Ordeal are a Polish band that play semi-technical, tonally blackened, austerely melodic death metal. This is not a project for people who like their DM raw and grimy, but as long as you're looking for genuinely heavy, convincingly brutal extreme metal, it does a lot of things very right and very well. First of all, despite its jaw-clenched aggression, it's impressively controlled and highly precise, without feeling like it's being held on a leash. The melodies give it depth and reach, without deflating the force or disrupting the progression, because it's so clearly well planned and integrated with the flow. The vocals have a very Nergal quality to them, and overall they do share more than just a trait or two with fellow Polish band Behemoth. But for the most part these are being utilized in a distinctly different way. This is not "fun" death metal, but it's also far from so conceptually rigid that you can't enjoy it on an individual song level. It's tight, confident and engagingly varied.

Highlights: "Halo of Bones" and "Against the Dying of the Light"

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Ancient Death – Ego Dissolution

Genre: Progressive death metal

Subjective rating: 4/5

Objective rating: 4/5

Country of origin: USA

This isn't your typical death metal experience. Although it's loaded with old school riffs and that malevolent tone, it moves in a very different way. Elements of hardcore sometimes enter the rhythms, and it has a very open-minded approach to changing tempos and intensity, without really screaming "progressive". Sometimes it slows things down completely into doom-like, even art-rock levels of melodic ease. Sometimes it's full-on harsh-chaotic, sometimes it gets into heavy grooves and sometimes it skips unpredictably ahead on agile beats. It's not extreme in its unconventionality, but does most things in its own way, like it's mutated from a very recognizable shape into something more complex, while retaining most of its original aspects. It doesn't feel pretentious at all, actually slightly understated all things considered. Dynamically and production wise it's not perfect, but overall it's a sound you are likely to remember and expect to keep developing.

Highlights: "Unspoken Oath" and "Ego Dissolution"

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Divide And Dissolve – Insatiable

Genre:  Doom/experimental metal

Subjective rating: 3.5/5

Objective rating: 4/5

Country of origin: Australia

This is a soundtrack that I think ought to be experienced in a small inside venue, completely in the dark, with the waves of bass-vibration being felt more than they are heard. It's instrumental, experimental doom that feels like the machinations of the deep earth at work. It's got a droning quality to a certain point, but it feels much more like a dark, sensory theatrical play than some sort of hypnotically repetitive, industrial thing. There are orchestral strings at work, as well as deep, beastly, ugly guitar, unrefined in just such a way that it feels like a massive being, or a force of nature. It moves slow, but it's highly captivating, especially when it goes heavy, with the force of the riffs feeling like they might crumble the walls around you. As a detached listening experience, without the right context, its potential is not even halfway realized, and so it certainly demands full commitment from its listener. But it's certainly utilizing the doom concept to its fullest in a distinct and rewarding way.

Highlights: "Provenance" and "Withholding"

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Tribunal – In Penitence And Ruin

Genre: Doom/gothic metal

Subjective rating: 3.5/5

Objective rating: 3.5/5

Country of origin: Canada

Canadian dramatic doom metal driven by dual clean/harsh vocals, cello and darkly epic melody. In a few ways it feels like a morose mutation of Finnish atmospheric folk metal, like that of Insomnium. But despite some heavy riffing, a lot of the time this sounds like epic heavy metal with a gothic flair slowed down to a funeral procession pace. The problem with this is that not every part feels like it's written to be slow, and so can get a bit unengaging from time to time, but it makes up for it with rewarding buildups that culminate with highlights of vocal performances and soaring instrumental performances. Style-wise it's committed and consistent, drifting from mildly disharmonic melodic sections to sinister, crushing riff crawls.  

Highlight: "A Wound Unhealing"