You haven’t lived until you’ve heard an Australian recite Dante. Once a niche ritual available only to the geographically privileged, everyone’s somethingth-favorite Australian prog-death band Xenobiotic are using their aptly titled third LP to democratize access to this sonorous phenomenon, and some other sonorous phenomena to boot, familiar to those acquainted with much-lauded sophomore effort Mordrake. The band’s adventurous efforts are well-suited to epic literature, and, as for the subject matter, recall that this is a death metal record. But also recall, if you will, your favorite moment from Mordrake. We’ll need it later.

As expected, Dante is all about drama. Vocalist TJ Sinclair kicks off the record with narration from Inferno, and largely directs the show from there, whether by burly roars or acrid sneers. Guitarist Nish Raghavan’s repertoire of drawn-out arpeggios, palm-muted chugs, and hammer-on grooves tends to take a backseat to whatever Sinclair is doing, but comes out in force when allowed to. “The Slave State” is a mid-album highlight because of his athletic interpolation of Joe Haley and Duplantier, sprinting through hammer-on grooves, then stumbling into syncopation. The following “Dante II: Pariah” gives the whole band a chance to charge together through quick Gorod-ey odd-time riffs and gives new(ish) drummer Matt Unkovich a nice opportunity to step back from the blasts and add a bit of flair, which he pulls off well under a solo from Raghavan and a memorable chorus from Sinclair. Whenever given a chance to hit a big new vocal moment, the band take it, but for all their effort, Dante doesn’t quite land.

Now, for me, the standout moment from Mordrake would be the scrambling tremolo lead from “Light that Burns the Sky.” That whiny, winding melody that ends on such an alarming and unexpected note was a stroke of brilliance that the band integrated perfectly into a dense song with a lot of other things going on. Your favorite moment probably has similar properties; cool alone, brilliant with backup. Like Kardashev, Xenobiotic rely heavily on atmosphere and melodrama, at times propelling their records through orchestration rather than riffcraft. Mordrake suffered a bit from this, but the mass of novel ideas, executed with ample kinetic energy, shot through the fluff and made quite an impact. Danteis lightweight and slow-moving, trying to make up momentum through combinations of interchangeable chuggy riffs, chord-outline tremolos, and heavily produced vocals.

Maximalist production and a compressed master exacerbate these writing faults. High-register guitar leads are muffled by beefed-up kick drums and guitar chugs. Sinclair’s roars, screams and narrations, subject to near-continuous studio embellishments, fight for space with the guitars when double-or triple-tracked. Not much of the contested territory really seems worth the battle. When the group quiet down, as in the subdued guitar solo in the middle of “Dante II: Pariah,” they give themselves enough space for performances to really matter, but they don’t seem to have much panache to lend. Unkovich is bent over blasting at every opportunity and seems religiously opposed to fills, and even when Raghavan’s written something interesting for himself, it’s hard to tell what that is.

I jealously snatched Dante from the promo pit in the hope that Xenobiotic would treat me to another Mordrake. While Dante follows closely in that style, it’s a far less substantial record, too focused on executing its concept to introduce much musical interest and too overproduced to let those scraps of interesting music make an impact. Raghavan’s strong sense of melody keeps a few of the slow-moving leads stuck in my head for a while after the record, and Sinclair’s narration makes for a few emotionally resonant moments, especially in the record’s climax. But after so many listens, I’m left wondering how all of this sound adds up to so little.

Rating: 2.5/5.0
DR: 5 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps MP3
Label: Self-Released
Websites: facebook.com/xenobioticau | xenobiotic.bandcamp.com
Releases Worldwide: March 3rd, 2026

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Dusk have been at it for a while now, toiling in the shadows to scrape together an acid concoction of abrasive noise and screaming menace. But who hasn’t? Newcomers to the blog, or the metal scene in general, may not have enjoyed of the deep sadness of early-2010s underground metal, when the promo pit burst with bedroom black metal from a seemingly inexhaustible trove of men who owned a guitar and made up for their lack of talent, and bandmates, and vision by pure profligacy. Though we’re now blessed with far more in the way of interesting music, the Vardans of the world are still out there, now and again transformed by their toil into something worthy of remark. And the crisp mashup of industrial synthesizers and black metal intensity has been worth a listen for the last decade in which Dusk have operated. Now it’s worth a few more.

Bunker is the Costa Rican band’s seventh record, and sixth this decade, masterminded by the eponymous producer who has had the Dusk aesthetic down to a science; enveloping low-end rumbles, echoing synths, spares instructions for his attendant vocalist and string-slingers, and a grim sense of inevitability. With the sound palette sorted out, it’s up to Dusk’s compositional skill to make Bunker worthwhile. It’s all too easy for electronic music to lean heavily into repetition; the infinitely replicable nature of composition in the medium lends itself towards riding extended grooves while adding and subtracting new elements. While Dusk certainly use this to their advantage in the latter half of the album, Bunker is front-loaded with two exciting tracks that move much faster than their tonal palette would suggest. “BUNKER I” begins in noisy ambience before introducing an Author & Punisher beat as its other sounds warp and stutter. A sudden blast of tremolo picking by guitarist Implacable gives way to more complex industrial beats and a simple, martial guitar riff, and then it’s over, transitioning into the Anaal Nathrakh-meets-Bliss Signal “Bunker II,” which vacillates between electronic blasts and subdued keys, with a lonely sonar ping accompanying both. Neither element ever overstays its welcome, and just six minutes in to Bunker, I was hooked.

Dusk can pack detail into songs even when they’re allowed to stretch out, and Bunker succeeds on meticulous sound design. In the doomy, menacing “Bunker III,” Dusk re-uses beats and samples dozens of times, but never outright repeats the same combinations of elements, making full use of the tools available to them. Though the song is slow-moving, subtle crescendos, particular spacing of instruments across the sound stage, and slowly adjusting cutoffs that amplify the intensity of a clip of breaking glass combine to keep this reprieve interesting for as long as the first two tracks lasted.

At twenty-three minutes, Bunker is an exercise in restraint that pulls ahead of the band’s back catalog in part on the strength of its concision. These songs move through ideas quickly enough to never grow stale, but there’s also a nagging feeling that Dusk’s compositions are somewhat automatic; each new idea that the songs explore is a small one, introduced almost scientifically so as to see just what that little tweak will do in the context surrounding it. No bizarre riff, jarring melody, or impressive performance could maintain this paradigm. Bunker, like most records Dusk put out, is something of a mood piece, hewing closely to a particular exploration of what this industrial/black metal hybrid can be without producing standout songs that make the sound creatively compelling. I’m left wanting something a bit less well-considered, something vital that’s often difficult for me to find in electronic music.

Nevertheless, Bunker is a compelling introduction to Dusk for anyone who hasn’t encountered the group before, and it stands as a concise exploration of their sound. Its damp, brooding atmospheres contrast expertly with moments of screaming static, and it’s all bolstered by enveloping production. Among the band’s now lengthy back catalog, Bunker’s combination of concision and vision stands out, but it’s only the sum of its many intricate but unimpressive parts. For Dusk to break through, they’ll have to break their own carefully-constructed mold.

Rating: 3.0/5.0
DR: 5 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps MP3
Label: Self-Released
Websites: duskvt.bandcamp.com
Releases Worldwide: February 20^th, 2026

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I swear I’ve seen that saguaro before, in Pima County, standing just off the side of the road, marked among the millions crowding the bajadas. At that size, the sun rising over the Ajos has cast its strange shadow westward tens of thousands of times, yet it’s still young; a few generations removed from a pre-invasion Sonoran desert that thrived before the mountains had Spanish names, before the concept of the gringo, before the thousands of hung-over ones flattened every snake living within half a mile of Highway 85 driving back from “Rocky Point.” Maybe its great-great-grandmother’s seeds were carried by a coyote, lips stained sticky sanguine, slinking under the monsoon clouds when the only people around were O’Odham, themselves too distracted by the bounty to notice her stealing one more fruit from their baskets. Four generations later, a gray fox takes a pit stop under a creosote, setting a lucky propagule up for seventy years of extension, inch by inch, towards the noon summer sun, until a freak event smears its meristem into a radiate new form, ending this lineage forever.

Just after that point, someone takes its picture, and a couple of Italian guys slap it on a black metal album. A black metal album bent on re-orienting the genre away from a frostbitten North and towards an imaginary sun-bleached South, the saguaro being perhaps the most resilient (and, tellingly, clichéd) symbol thereof. Ambitions often crumble against this landscape; the schemes of miners fall through, the hopeful homesteads dry into rubble, at the bodies of desperate migrants collapse in the canyons. Beauty and hostility, available in such great measure here, produce the romance of the desert, the basis for Radici. Diespnea fail to capture either.

Diespnea practice oddball black metal in the Dødheimsgard idiom, attempting to reinvigorate a staid sound with odd and abrupt inclusions. At the end of “Radici,” they iron a bass groove flat onto gridded electronic beats, then gradually build vocals, drums, and guitars back into the matrix in what would be the record’s most memorable section if it didn’t feel almost identical to the ending of “Vultures.” When the tactic comes around yet again in “Mescalynia,” the effect is more of annoyance than interest. When the duo isn’t dabbling in dull electronica, they’re often whooping and cackling in what seems to be an awful pastiche of pre-Columbian musical traditions.

But the core failure of Radici isn’t in its lazy discursions but the soporific black metal that they depart from. Say what you will about 666 International, there’s no denying the intensity on display. Radici’s official kvlt tab book leads are usually played at three-quarters speed, and the spaces between them sag even more in tempo. Creative songwriting on cuts like “Radici” and “Mescalynia” is hard to appreciate when dragged out for six minutes, though tediously predictable guitar work, and the dull production and brickwalled master don’t do the record any favors. It’s a bit too on-the-nose for a band called Diespnea to sound this asthmatic.

Diespnea have the creativity to embark on something adventurous, but lack the curiosity to decide on a destination, instead floating around their “imaginary South” totally insulated from the confrontation with the real. It’s a painful missed opportunity; the places and traditions and feelings that the duo smudge at are truly profound, and Diespnea’s lazy Tintin “South” is at best an obfuscation and at worst a downright parody of the beauty that desert landscapes, their life, and their peoples hold.

The key to survival in the desert is specificity. In the Sonoran desert, oaks cling only to shady canyon bottoms; senitas populate only the hottest, sandiest washes; water scorpions flourish in ephemeral pools the size of bathtubs, and whole biotas erupt and disappear with the summer monsoons. The desert’s beauty comes from millions of years of coevolution, from novelty and extinction and cycles of glaciation that have stripped away that which does not belong again and again until everything that remains has its place and is fighting to keep it. Radici’s vagaries have nothing in common with places like this, and what Diespnea offer beyond those vagaries is just as unconvincing. And so, Radici comes nearly dead on arrival.

Rating: 2.0/5.0
DR: 4 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps MP3
Label: Code 666 Records
Websites: facebook.com/diespnea | diespnea.com | diespnea.bandcamp.com
Releases Worldwide: February 13^th, 2026

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Defaced operate in the style of bands like Abysmal Dawn or Throne of Heresy, unabashedly ornamenting their death metal with splashes of black metal and melodeath and foregoing flashy playing and stylized production. “The Antagonist” opens Icon at full speed, demonstrating Defaced’s strengths. After a bit of string bending, the song’s low, tremolo-picked theme kicks in, and the band trades between this riff and a few others for the rest of the song, adding a new flourish each time. A secondary melody here gets a few variations, first staccato, then subdued to back a solo, then broadly chugged with a subtle pinch harmonic tag at the end, then chugged again with a big rest after the first phrase for a bit of ornamentation. Guitarists Matze Schiemann and Marco Kessi don’t pull out show-stopping riffs but play around plenty with what they do put forth and transition very smoothly between variations, ones that usually give the rhythm section (drummer Massimiliano Malvassora and bassist Michael Gertsch) some room to show off. The other Gertsch (gruff-voiced Thomas) gets a few nice cut-outs as well, with the more melodic, black-metal-influenced “The Initiation” letting his burly roars and hoarse croaks ring out above the other instruments, frequently multi-tracked. The Gertsches even get themselves a little bass/barker duet before the bouncy pit riff of “Culling the Herd” kicks in.

Icon is expertly paced and organized. Mid-album duo of “Anthem of Vermin” and “Sonate” shakes expectations just as things seem to get static, the former ending in trem-picked triumph before transitioning to the latter, an acoustic guitar piece that a half-dozen Gothenburgers would have been proud to write to tape thirty years ago. In both pieces, Defaced practice the same shrewd and thoughtful songwriting found across the album; neither follows a predictable path, but each new idea flows from the last seemingly without effort or thought.

Yet Icon lacks the punch to compel listening. The band plays expertly with their compositions and, at small scales, demonstrates a playfulness and creativity that’s often missing from death metal. But somewhere in the middle detail—the riffs and melodies themselves—things are a bit gray. Defaced’s last effort—the decade-old Forging the Sanctuary—suffered similarly, though it had a bit more ambition. Icon plays death metal well but plays it safely, carefully welding riffs together and sanding the joints smooth into something very strong and very cube-shaped.

The more closely I listen to Icon, the more I appreciate Defaced’s obvious skill; it’s more than a competent record, with watertight songs that wring their riffs pretty dry without ever getting tedious. But those riffs just aren’t very exciting, and this middle-of-the-road modern death metal style really needs spectacle to excel, like the catchy choruses and wild Death-isms of Abysmal Dawn. Icon doesn’t offer listeners excitement, but there’s room in it for plenty of contentment. If you like your death metal well-played and without the fuss, Icon is your cup of tea.²

Rating: 3.0/5.0
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 192 kbps MP3
Label: Massacre Records
Websites: facebook.com/defacedswiss
Releases Worldwide: January 30th, 2026

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It’s possible that Sally Gates and her Titan to Tachyons co-conspirators know nothing of the giant photomultiplier retina buried in the mountains of Japan, but the cover of Vonals seems awfully suggestive. The placid echoes that close the record’s first song, “Neutron Wrangler” likewise seem just a bit too suggestive of a cool, dark, and occasionally blinking tank of ultrapure water. But one could read all the wiggling mysteries of the universe into the band’s playful jazz-prog. With a lineup of New York experimental metal and prog veterans, it’s no surprise that the group glint and dazzle like so many subatomic scintillations, but the strength of Vonals lies in its subtle ebb of the ridiculous and the restrained.

Vonals six songs oscillate between orbitals; one moment they’re buzzing, unstable cacophonies of tapped odd-time, the next they’ve collapsed to a lower power level. “Blue Thought Particles” is particularly illustrative of this approach. Bassists Trevor Dunn (Mr. Bungle) and Matt Hollenberg (Cleric) begin in jagged line behind Gates’ guitar work, but loosen into background parts for her first solo before taking over a dusky, sneering groove section that I could swear is ripped straight from that Intercepting Pattern record. It’s not long before Gates whips them into a frenzy for an odd-time solo section, only to suddenly take the back seat once again, letting Imperial Triumphant’s Kenny Grohowski steal the show with his free-wheeling kit work. Each time the band seem to run out of steam, they’re jolted back into action by a cue from Gates.

You will not be shocked to hear that Colin Marston’s production does not hurt Vonals one bit. Grohowski’s drums are beautifully rendered, with sizzling cymbals and a snappy snare. Dunn and Hollenberg’s basses are panned to different ears and given tones just distinctive enough to separate them timbrally, yet there’s a continuity between the string slingers such that it can be tough to know at times which of the three is playing what. It’s especially tricky when Gates’ guitar shifts from one side of the sound stage to the other. Impeccable detail aside, Vonals does sound a bit different from the usual Marston projects. Befitting the band’s sci-fi shadings, there’s a certain sheen and polish to the record that’s just a tad smoother and silkier than what you’d get on a Behold the Arctopus release. The result is a real joy to listen to; Vonals feels inviting despite its oddness.

For a sophomore record, Vonals is remarkably self-assured, often opting for weirdness over wizardry. The droning front half of “Wax Hypnotic” is hardly a technical showcase, but Gates’ lilting guitar stings inject enough interest to keep its slow crescendo engaging. At six minutes, the band seamlessly switch into a lazy lounge waltz, closing with a fuzzed-out version of the same for Gates to solo over. Her snarling, bubbling guitar lines bring the song to a satisfying conclusion, so much that the following “Close the Valve and Wait” feels like a well-earned and charming digression. Even the closing track, “Blue Thought Particles,” spends most of its time grooving, impressing with subtle flourishes. Titan to Tachyons know how to impress and entertain no matter how fast their fingers are flailing, and it makes forty-five minutes of jazz metal go by remarkably quickly. When it’s done? Sure I could move on to the new Faceless Burial. But a lot of the time I just spin Vonals again.

Rating: 3.5/5.0
DR: 9 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Tzadik Records
Websites: titantotachyons.bandcamp.com | titantotachyons.com | facebook.com/titantotachyons
Releases Worldwide: September 16th, 2022

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Revocation

It’s like The Outer Ones never even happened. Appropriate to its theme, Netherheaven makes for a natural successor to Deathless, falling from twilit graves into fire-lit caverns, and though the band credit Dante, I can’t help but hear the gothicism of Poe in their morbid but mischievous music. Netherheaven is as clearly a death metal album as Revocation have made, but even without the wacky, winking thrash of their first four records, it possesses a vitality that was dulled on Great is our Sin and The Outer Ones. My suspicion is that it’s in part a reaction to the departure of Dan Gargiulo; with the guitar work squarely in his hands, Davidson can’t rely on anything but his own riffing to keep songs going, and he fills every second with the heaviest he can muster. I’m struck that Netherheaven isn’t just another Revocation album; it’s Revocation’s death metal album. Unsurprisingly, it’s great.

Netherheaven stirs Davidson’s extravagant guitar work into the lavished maleficence of The Black Dahlia Murder¹, boiling Satan’s cauldron over with all the wild flames of Hell. It’s lit by scorchers like “Nihilistic Violence,” a chuggy, bilious track that runs Slayer through the Deathless filter, complete with probably the least tuneful solo Davidson could bear to produce. But the record’s highest points imagine a more spectacular, Boschian inferno. The scrambling Escher-staircase riff of “Lessons in Occult Theft” and the spectacular steeplechase solo section of “Strange and Eternal” are the sorts of things you can stare at, following the curves of every melting form and scrutinizing the tortured little figures to find out what awful things the devil has in store for their tender, unprotected genitals.

Among a crop of great songs, “Galleries of Morbid Artistry” proves a particular highlight. Its introduction and bridge nod to the delicate harmonies of Archspire, but the meat of the song is charred and bleeding. Falling from high-register chords through a winding tremolo to low chugs, Davidson’s guitar echoes his scream: “Descending down the skeletal staircase/ deeper into the catacombs/ Ghastly images put on display/ in galleries of sinew and bone.” Sure, that’s about as death metal as your imagery can get, but Revocation invite rather than repel, dispensing these proclamations with warm theatrics, as if reading a cherished ghost story from a yellowed book with ornate drop capitals.

Not a return to form, but an intriguing new shape, Netherheaven is Revocation’s best record in a decade. Expanding the dark romanticism of Deathless, Davidson, Bamberger and Pearson crank out the darkest, heaviest songs of their career together, never missing a beat. The album’s greatest fault is their singular focus; Bambegrer and Pearson take background roles to the guitar and the trio’s dedication to heft results on a less varied record than Deathless, though it avoids that record’s missteps. But the sparks of joy that ran through the band’s early career are here again. When the searing “Re-crucified” drops the thrashing and blasting to groove around Davidson’s probing, pawing riff, it never fails to put a smile on my face, one that lasts until the spectral wails of harmonized guitars scream Netherheaven to a close.

Rating: 4.0/5.0
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Metal Blade Records
Websites: revocation.bandcamp.com | revocationband.com | facebook.com/revocation
Releases Worldwide: September 9th, 2022

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Divine Council is every inch a Psycroptic album. Every tech death act is fast, but from (Ob)servant onward, Psycroptic have cultivated a precise athleticism reminiscent of Olympic sprinters. Every snare hit and hammer-on is muscular and tightly trained in a full-body, full-extension movement. “A Fool’s Errand” packs a few unmistakable Joe Haley riffs, impossible mashes of rapid picking, string bends, whirlwind runs and hammered notes. As ever, his brother Dave matches that speed with tight drum work; Dave propels the bridge of “Rend Asunder” with creatively syncopated snare marks. Vocally, the band are mixing it up yet again. Amy Wiles still makes occasional contributions, though she’s far less prominent than she was in As the Kingdom Drowns. Instead, Jason Peppiatt’s usual screams and barks are accompanied by the nasty growls of Origin’s Jason Keyser, used to best effect on the climactic “Enslavement.”

But in being an obvious Psycroptic album, Divine Council often feels too similar to Psycroptic’s past work. Joe Haley often draws on patterns you’ve heard him play many times before, and the strings and pomp of “Enslavement” and “Exitus” are the same thing any other band would pack into their song to add a little drama. When the latter brings in Amy Wiles’ guest vocals, it’s only for a moment, and too obvious a callback to her pivotal role on As the Kingdom Drowns. There also aren’t many of the wild “fidget spinner” riffs that spill out across sixteen bars¹; Haley’s riffs are still eclectic and unique, but they’re at times just plain tidy here, a word I would never use to describe the band’s earlier work.

As an album, Divine Council works well. Keyser and Wiles’ contributions provide continuity between the tracks on which they’re featured, and the somewhat controlled guitar phrasing doesn’t pull the listener out of the song with a rambling, endless riff. Divine Council is probably most similar to the band’s 2015 self-titled record, but with a bit more ambition and flourish. Consequently, the production employs the warmer, wetter style of As the Kingdom Drowns, rather than the dry, abrasive sound of the band’s earlier albums. As usual, bass guitar is totally absent in the mix; it’s the Haley show with their vocalist guests.

I can’t imagine I’ll ever get tired of listening to Joe Haley riffs, but after a while I did get tired of listening to Divine Council. It’s a good record in the way that pretty much all the other Psycroptic records are good; the band play tech death that’s hooky and confident, and their particular sound is unmistakable. Haley’s guitar tone, chord progressions, and particular mix of techniques just sound sick every time. Divine Council nails a few songs, in particular, “Rend Asunder” and the smoldering “The Prophets Council,” but it doesn’t really need to do much more than that. There are better introductions to the band if you haven’t heard them before, but this certainly clears the bar established by their previous work. After two decades, the band are running just as fast and with just as tight a form as ever.

Rating: 3.0/5.0
DR: 5 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Prosthetic Records
Websites: psycroptic.bandcamp.com | psycroptic.com | facebook.com/psycroptic
Releases Worldwide: August 5th, 2022

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That’s not to say that I’d recommend it. If you want unsophisticated, unpretentious death metal, Molder would be downright elated to give you 47 minutes of it for $12¹. But I struggle to think why you’d want theirs specifically. It’s not due to any particular deficit; Engrossed in Decay lacks neither polish or passion. Vocalist Aaren Pantke steals the show with an unhinged performance that’s just a tad more conservative than that of Obscene’s Kyle Shaw. His gruesome, campy screams color Molder’s paint-by-numbers death metal in fluorescent hues, lampshading the music’s inherent corniness in a way that I really appreciate. The record’s production is no less appropriate; the drums ring with reverb, the guitars have the texture of gritty swamp mud, and the bass is barely distinguishable at the best of times.

These sounds combine to produce a convincing clot of grimy glop. The band’s riffing is up to par, with a few highlights in “Unsubstantial Hallucinations” and closer “Cask of Maggots.” The occasional solo or break for a drum fill keep the record well-drained enough not to drown in its own muck. Molder are competent enough songwriters to keep the record from being a total bore, but they’re not so ambitious as to make any part of it particularly interesting. If Molder want nothing more than to play their way through Chicagoland’s metal bars and open for a cool tour once in a while, Engrossed in Decay is a great résumé. If I still lived in Chicago, I’d be quite happy to see them at a show, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to witness them.

Still, it’s hard to call Engrossed in Decay anything other than a success. Molder clearly want to play dumb B-movie death metal and they’re doing it as well as anybody else in the game. But that’s really all they do. The ten songs here rely on patterns of alternating grooves and kick rolls or alternating d-beats and blasts, and though the riffs are only appropriately stale, I’m at a loss to pick out more than one or two to report on. Everything is just good, and authentically so; there’s not the faintest suggestion that Molder have any motive but to play death metal, and, ideally, to do so while drunk and high. I want nothing more for them.

But I want something more from the art I encounter. If you saw that album cover² and knew you had to hear this record, you probably do, and you’ll probably be totally satisfied with it. But I’ve heard so many death metal records like this that I’ve forgotten any way to distinguish between them. Engrossed in Decay accomplishes exactly what it sets out to do, a task far from trivial but short of remarkable. Molder aim low and hit their subterranean mark with a damp thud.

Rating: 2.5/5.0
DR: 5 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Prosthetic Records
Websites: molder.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/molder
Releases Worldwide: July 15th, 2022

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On a video call from Tucson, with her playful dog Kansas and a huge Visigoth poster in the background, Alicia Cordisco filled me in on what she’s been up to. A prolific metal guitarist and occasionally, singer, with plenty to say, she’s a joy to interview, speaking extemporaneously on her community within the metal scene, the joys of Manilla Road (“they’re the greatest band ever and I will accept no other option”), and the challenges of coming out and of living as a trans woman. We covered too much ground over an hour to fully reproduce here (and my questions were embarrassingly inarticulate), so the interview below is mostly in Alicia’s own words, pulled from our conversation and then lightly edited for clarity and flow. I’ll let her introduce herself.

“I’m a 32 year old transgender woman and I’ve been playing heavy metal… oh goodness… 20 years now. I started playing thrash and punk when I was a little kid – 13 years old. Probably my best known work is with a power metal band called Judicator that I was in for almost a decade. I started in my early 20s and released 5 records, the most recent of which was on Prosthetic. I did end up leaving that band slightly over 2 years ago and these days I’m doing at least 3 projects right now. I’m in a funeral doom band called Wraithstorm, a very angry, very, hah, very queer thrash band called Transgressive. Probably the most high-profile of the three right now is called Project: Roenwolfe, a band I actually started before I was in Judicator but was broken up for a long time and recently reformed.”

Power metal is Alicia’s bread and butter, and she was drawn to it from a young age, drawn by both the music and the sense that people who loved metal would accept her.

“There’s a reason that so many women, so many queer people, so many of different groups of marginalized people are drawn to metal. I like to think of heavy metal as a subculture that very much embraces the DIY perspective of being a lower-class musician. We don’t have the fancy tools of rich millionaire musicians. People just went out there and made DIY labels and fucking hand-drew flyers and copied tapes and did what they had to do and it was rooted very much in punk. But there’s a reason that that sense of being othered by mainstream society reflects that sense of being accepted in metal, and for me, that was what initially drew me to the genre. I always felt that there was this sense of wrongness in how I was in the world. For a long time I blew it off as pomp and ego – which I guess it is to a point – but there was more to it – my queerness. And those messages and that kind of ‘ragtag group of outcasts that will accept you’ mentality really appealed to that part of me.

It was disappointing to get older and find that some of that sentiment was false. Some of it was just people play-acting, some of it was to sell records, a lot of it is to chase clout. But a lot of it is genuine. Especially on the more underground level, a lot of it is genuine. And for me pre-figuring my queerness out, music, and particularly heavy metal music, was the language I used to speak to the part of me that I didn’t know how to explain yet.”

“The thing that really appealed to me in power metal was the escapism,” says Alicia, “And it’s the same reason I like fantasy. Because yes, it may not be directly political or directly allegorical, but the cool thing about power metal is that it explores those themes of being in a situation or world or society where there is some kind of evil or corrupted power that feels unconquerable or all-encompassing, and it gives you a safe place to explore what it would be like to overcome that. I really love that empowerment because it’s often not true in the real world. We often feel, or at least I often feel, hopeless as an individual. I sometimes feel there’s nothing I can do and what I do doesn’t matter. But the cool thing about power metal is, even in non-specific messages. Even if I’m listening to Dragonforce or something, which is really vague in what it’s talking about. It hits on those themes in such an easily consumed way that it’s just very empowering and pleasant to listen to; it’s motivational. It’s a pick me up, honestly. It’s a way to explore those things in a way that makes you feel better. It’s like the audio equivalent of watching Lord of the Rings or reading Lord of the Rings. That sense of “we can do the thing and little, insignificant people matter, too.”

When asked about her musical influences, Alicia goes straight after the AMG favorites; “If we just talk to my tastes,” she says, “my current favorite band is Manilla Road and they’re the greatest band ever and I will accept no other option. You know, I heard of them a long time ago but they never really clicked for me until a couple of years ago but once I really got into it and I was like ‘Oh, these 17 albums plus the 2 Hell Well albums plus Mark’s solo album, this is the greatest discovery I have ever heard. Please inject this into my veins every single day.’” In the same vein of pandering to AMG management, Alicia Outed herself as a huge Opeth fan – perhaps unsurprising for listeners of Project: Roenwolfe.

“I found them as a wee little babe: around when damnation came out. I’ve just always appreciated Mikael Åkerfeldt’s chord theory and the way he can construct layers and compose songs, too, and keep them interesting. Definitely a huge, huge influence for me.”

As if that weren’t a compelling enough endorsement of her refined tastes, Alicia traces her aggressive riffing style back to Danish thrashers Artillery.

“The number one influence on my playing is a record I have hanging right there in front of me, and that’s By Inheritance by Artillery. I worship at the feet of By Inheritance. That is my fucking Bible. I love all other Artillery too, but that album changed my entire outlook on guitar playing, from how just completely off the wall the rhythm playing is to the melodic construction of all the riffs, all the counterpoint in it and how the melodies interact, and then the insane vocals on top of it. That definitely runs through Project: Roenwolfe the most. All the tight picking interlaced with the little, you know, legato leads and things like that in my playing, that’s like 100% just me really liking By Inheritance.”

When I ask her about her current thrash band, Transgressive, with former Judicator Guitarist Josh Payne and Leona Hayward of Skelator and Northern Crown, Alicia smiles.

“We’re a bunch of commie trans women” she says, “And we want music that is made by and for that crowd and also related crowds that represent our friends and our families.”

“Well, our lead guitar player (Josh Payne) – he’s not a commie trans woman but he’s a dear and we love him.”

Transgressive is just one of the vehicles by which Alicia and a growing community of trans, nonbinary, and queer metal musicians are making a space for themselves using the music they love.

“One thing that me and Leona were talking about is; when we think about queer metal or female metal or transgender metal we don’t really have a lot of examples. There are certainly queer, female, and transgender artists that play metal, but there aren’t a whole hell of a lot of songs that we were aware of that speak specifically to those experiences. We honestly can only think of one metal song offhand that’s by a popular artist that is even about LGBT rights and it’s that Kreator song (“Side by Side” from Gods of Violence) – which is a great song. Something needs to be outspokenly about these things because that’s what heavy metal is a lot of the time. It’s outspokenly about whoever is playing it. Whether it’s about D&D or Ronald Reagan (or if you like Blind Guardian, that’s on the same album). So we wanted to really make something that nailed down that specifically, from the name, to the album art, the execution, even the very nature of how the band is operated.

It’s a charity project, it’s completely grassroots; all proceeds are going to funding abortion funds. Last year we raised about $500 off a 2-song EP and right now we’re working on another EP and an album. You’ll have to pay for them, but all the money goes to that charity as well. All the lyrics are very angry, some of it is satire, some of it is definitely not, but it should be a good time and I’m sure it will make a lot of people a little cross with me, but that’s part of the job.”

That element of provocation sets Transgressive apart from much of Alicia’s other work, but it fits nicely within the community of artists she’s part of.

“It’s kind of funny; we mentioned like, if you’re a trans woman in the metal scene, you probably know all the other trans women in the metal scene, and you know all the trans men, and you know all the nonbinary people. While it’s not explicitly true, it’s true enough.”

“If you went back in time to about 2011 you would see me, Lux (Edwards, of Soulmass and in Wraithstorm with Alicia), Lorelai (Laffey, of Steamforged and keyboardist for several Judicator and Project:Roenwolfe releases), and several other people that have been in associated projects, and you’d probably see a whole lot of straight dudes. Fast-forward ten years later, we probably put out two, three dozen albums between myself, the aforementioned friends and our extended social circles, and so many of us have come out as trans, as queer, as bi, as ace, as demi; you name it. It’s kind of funny, because we didn’t do that on purpose. We all sort of somehow found each other. Back in the day we had this community called Masters of Metal Productions, which was just a bunch of these straight dudes making metal together and now it’s a lot of the same people that we go to for help on our different projects, but we’re all different brands of queer. It’s cool that we have that friendship and that safety and that community through music. To safely come out and explore those things. I don’t know if I would have been able to feel that safety and that sense of connection to come out without those friendships and without those partnerships, or feel the ability to continue to make music without those partnerships, without those friendships. When you see one person doing it, that gives you the thought; I can do this too. And even if every other person leaves me at least I’ve got them.

I was probably one of the late bloomers in my circle, honestly. Around 2015 some of my friends started to come out. Other musicians. I knew a few who were closeted and just gradually, over the years, one by one, into the dozens, that started to happen. The notion that we’ve all gotten to with this is – and I know a lot of my friends in my queer circle would agree – it’s not about trying to take out the bigoted or problematic parts of the metal scene and making it a space for queer people or a space for trans people. It’s about making our own scene. At the end of the day we have to protect us and we have to define our own boundaries and we have to define our own scene. Fortunately, metal is an expansive and creative enough medium that you can do that within it and people will generally accept that. If you run into people who won’t, you can make your own space and your own scene away from that. We really focus on cultivating our own spaces, cultivating our own craft, cultivating our own music, and if other people want to be a part of that, cool. If other existing systems, people want to be a part of that, awesome. If they don’t: fuck ‘em. We’ll do it anyway.”

While coming out among that scene was a largely positive experience, Alicia has still encountered much of the same discrimination and many of the same hardships that are unfortunately inherent in the trans experience in America.

“Coming out was very hard. I, unfortunately, lost most of my extended family in doing so. My immediate family have been supportive even though they come from a very different background and it hasn’t been the easiest for them or for me, but they are supportive. I definitely lost a decent amount of friends both in the metal scene and in my personal life from coming out. Not even necessarily from them being actively bigoted but when you’re the first trans person somebody knows there can be a lot of tension and a lot of things can go wrong. And unfortunately, some of those things are irrecoverable.

I was pushed out of one job when I came out. It was very clear they saw my transition as a disturbance to them. I did leave that job before anything happened but they made it very clear what their intentions were and I was in a state with no employment protections so I didn’t have a lot of recourse. I had to relocate and had a very uncertain 6 months or so where my immediate future was definitely not guaranteed

From a social standpoint – I don’t want to get too into the nitty-gritty details – but definitely, there are some complications and some unpleasantness when it comes to like socializing and certainly dating or even just going out in public. I don’t live in the best area. It’s very much Trump country out where I’m at and as somebody who definitely does not pass in cis society, I stick out like a sore thumb in public. I don’t mind it from a personal standpoint, but it definitely has led to some not-so-fun situations for me. Nobody has physically gotten into an altercation with me or anything like that, but there has been harassment, unpleasantness, and it has made me very careful about my choice of job – I work from home now and I’m not advocating violence—merely being ready for the kind of violence we unfortunately face, and my choice of friends and my willingness to meet strangers and to go places alone, that sort of thing. That’s a very different dynamic, even for somebody who is traditionally a homebody.

There’s a whole other layer of tension and anxiety, whereas being online it’s fairly easy to slide into a community that is accepting and you know you won’t have much problem. You can run around metal twitter all day and you know everyone is really friendly and really polite and you know you won’t get into much trouble. Whereas if I want to go to a bar on a Saturday night, I need to have a safety plan in place.”

That safety plan means many things to Alicia. When I ask her for advice for people coming out, she stresses physical safety first and foremost.

“Honest to God my first advice is if you don’t know how to handle a weapon and you’re not armed you need to be. As a queer person in this country you should understand self-defense and you should understand the 2nd Amendment and you should understand everything there is to know about that. And I’m not advocating violence: merely being ready for the kind of violence we unfortunately face. Times are getting worse, tensions are rising. The last two years have been the most dangerous to be a trans person. Prepare yourself to be able to handle yourself.

That is of course if you have the ability to. And it’s OK if you don’t, and it’s OK if that doesn’t appeal to you. If it doesn’t, my other advice – and I follow this more – I’m not a fighter to be honest. I do what I can to keep myself safe but at the end of the day, I know my limits. So when it comes to the second bit of advice, it comes to communal safety. Have a plan, know the places you’re going to know the people you’re going with. Have accountability. If you’re going on a date with a stranger, make sure a friend knows, have a friend drop you off. If you’re going to a bar, don’t go by yourself.

Research places, especially when it comes to your medical care. Medical care is the place where you are going to encounter the most bigotry on an interpersonal level and there are resources online to find places that are safe. I know in Arizona El Rio Health Community is a very safe place to seek treatment. Planned parenthood is a very safe place to seek treatment. Know that those places are going to be good to you and make an effort to find them. People have been to them before, there are tons of discussions online. Vette everything you do so that you’re not surprised or caught off guard. It won’t prepare you completely but there’s never too much safeguarding when it comes to your own health and your own life.”

As for safeguarding the health and life of others, Alicia returns to community commitment. When I ask about her advice for allies, she stresses action.

“I don’t want allies, I want accomplices.”

“If you’re going to be an ally you have to be actively involved. That means not just educating yourself and ideologically accepting someone, that means being able to put the work in to changing your behavior and how you treat someone. That applies to race, gender, sexuality, ability, neurodivergence, everything. You have to respect people as the people they are.

It’s not about blending them into your life. That’s a good place to start but you also have to adjust your behavior. So it means not setting your friends up for failure or harm; if you are going to introduce them to one of your friends, make sure you know the person you’re introducing them to. You can’t introduce a queer friend the same way you would introduce a straight friend in your life. If you have family you’re going to be around, make sure you understand how that’s going to go. Have a conversation beforehand. Don’t put the onus on the queer person in your life to have to navigate the bigotry of people you don’t know. It’s your job to be the intermediary. It’s your job to educate. it’s your job to defend. You need to do the work to make sure those people are safe.

The thing that has been hardest for me to deal with is the apathy of moderates and how much they enable. I realize at this point in my life as a younger person I was one of those people. When I was a young teacher in my early 20s… if I encountered that person today I would be arguing with them in minutes. Because it’s really the moderate, the neoliberal if you will, that I have found does the most harm in my communities, does the most harm in my personal life, and does the most harm on a political scale.

I know somebody who wants to hurt me looks like. I can see them coming a mile away and I know to stay away from them. What I don’t know how to navigate is people who will pull the rug out from under you when you need them the most. The most harm I see is done by those people and those are the people and those are the people who are not held accountable; there is no cancel culture for these people. They don’t do anything that’s obvious enough for the conventional person for them to care. And that’s really the group that makes people feel outed; that makes people feel hated; that makes people feel othered. You know? We all know Nazis are bad. We don’t like them. Of course; that’s easy. What about your guy friend who says he is all these great things and then behind the scenes you know that he is hurting women in his personal life? Or hangs out with people who are dangerous to you and when you call them out on that they don’t care because ‘Oh, well, I’m not a Nazi so I’m fine’ or ‘I know the right things, I say the right things, I can pass the right way.’

That has been the hardest to deal with; that loss of faith in people who Ideologically I would have thought had been better, but when it appeared I was a bisexual cis man before I came out, I was never in a situation where that had to be tested and I couldn’t see that happening to other people because I took it on faith that they were OK and that was my own moderate-ness. It was my own moderate viewpoint clouding me to that. And now those are the people I stay away from but they are hard to spot and it’s usually when they start doing harm.”

When I asked Alicia about playing live, she was hopeful that it could happen again, but emphasized that it would be a challenge. First off, she wants a stage vocalist.

“[Vocals are] just not that fun for me. I have to stand in front of this mic the whole time and play and sing at the same time. I will gladly delegate that out.”

With current bandmates scattered around the country, getting everything together to play a Transgressive or Project: Roenwolfe show is logistically tricky, and Alicia is more selective now about where she wants to be.

“There are certain spaces in the metal community that I previously frequented or have been invited to, and I’m not going to name names – that’s not what I’m here to do – but that’s definitely where you run into a block because those spaces are not cultivated towards being inclusive spaces, being diverse spaces. Their concern is to make money their concern is to hustle to grind, it’s not about art, it’s not about heavy metal, it’s certainly not about inclusivity or protecting people, and some of them may wear the patches and play in the bands and they’ll bleat this all day that it’s about individuality, it’s about making a metal space for us to be empowered in. At the end of the day we’ve run into so many situations – and I know I have personally, where there will be a genuinely harmful person or harmful band and you’ll call them out or you will attempt to talk to a promoter about it and they don’t give a shit.”

“I like to think of John Finberg as a great example. We knew that dude was trash decades ago. So many people knew he was trash in the ‘90s, and it took how long to take that guy out. How many people covered him, how many people enabled him? How many people are out there that just chimed in at the right time?

The first local show that I went to when I was 15, someone was murdered in a knife fight with white supremacists in the parking lot. That always stayed with me. It’s not every show, that’s not all the time, but that shit happens. Not every bigot you run into in metal is going to stab you to death in the parking lot, but that danger is real. When people are complicit in a culture that creates that and make no effort to distance themselves from that violence at all, is that really the scene we want to be part of?”

Alicia knows what scene she does want to be a part of, and it’s right where she is. At the end of the day, she’s more comfortable making metal and living in her own skin than before she began transitioning.

“There are aspects to transitioning that suck. There are aspects to being a transgender person in modern society that suck but none of it has to do with being transgender itself. All of it is external factors. It’s all in the way that people treat you. It’s all in the way that society treats you and I would rather authentically be hated to be quite frank than to suffer in silence to a world that doesn’t care. Anything I experienced pre-transition was much worse because even on my worst day now I know that I see the world and myself in the way I am meant to and I appreciate the extra layer of perspective that I have been given. I know that I’m a better person, I’m a better friend, I’m a better ally as a helper to other people than I was previously. I would not trade that. And external things can change.”

If you’re not already in Alicia’s circles, or familiar with a lot of trans artists, you can start to change those external things by just opening you ears to the people involved. You’re probably already familiar with some of the work of queer, trans and gender-nonconforming musicians lauded here at Angry Metal Guy; power metal from Dialith, death-doom from Soulmass, doom from Miasma Theory, and experimental drone-doom from Vile Creature. Alicia also points to Klaymore’s heavy metal and black metal from Rage of Devils – on the grindy, nasty side, Kronos recommends Cretin and SeeYouSpaceCowboy.

“For people in heavy metal that are maybe curious about queer artists and trans artists; if you see it, try to uplift it. If you don’t like it musically, that’s fine. Don’t uplift it unless you really think the quality is there; keep your standards. But if you find an artist that you’re really passionate about, chances are they need some spotlight on them. Champion them. One way to get artists noticed, especially when people who maybe previously weren’t as known for making it, is just to be that first follower. If the band is the leader, you as the first follower are going to be the one who gets other people into it. When they see other metal fans appreciating it, maybe it doesn’t seem like ‘Well, this band that is a bunch of trans people and queer people singing about trans and queer things, that’s not for me.’ But when they see other metalheads enjoying it, maybe they think – ‘Maybe this is for everyone. Maybe I can start appreciating it for what it is.’”

And if you’re a trans drummer, get in touch with Alicia.

“We’re really trying at some point to make an all-trans band but we realize that we don’t know any trans drummers, so we’re going to have to bully one of our guitar player friends into learning the drums, which Leona and I joke is how a lot of drummers come to be.”

The post Interview with Project: Roenwolfe’s Alicia Cordisco appeared first on Angry Metal Guy.

Author and Punisher

As Author & Punisher has before, Krüller brings alienating instrumentation and unconventional sounds to the fore in slow-moving but captivating songs. Opening with “Drone Carrying Dread,” the record nods back to the slow anthems of Beastland, crawling into the open under almost pretty synths, with Shone singing at his cleanest. “Centurion” winds whining noise through industrial percussion in its verses while Tool’s Justin Chancellor delivers terse and brooding bass lines, erupting in clanging, roaring choruses. Much of the added density in these songs comes courtesy of producer/collaborator Jason Begin, whose jittering breakcore meltdown “Blacksmith” is an unlikely late-album highlight. “Centurion” and the dynamic “Incinerator” demonstrate how well repetition and slow development work for the band.

But when Shone insists on slowly developing an undercooked idea, the result is downright exhausting. “Maiden Star” wraps its composition around delicate and abstract vocal phrasings that are almost shockingly directionless compared to the inexorable crawl of the usual Author & Punisher material. It’s a mess of odd tempo and rhythmic shifts that would take quite a charismatic singer to carry, and Shone’s cleans vocals sound particularly strained and thin as he forces himself to the top of his range. It’s cool that Shone wanted to do a track with is wife (Marilia Maschion), about navigating difficulties with a partner—it just could have gone a lot better.

Just after the awkward “Maiden Star,” Krüller’s B-side nearly sweeps away the missteps of the first half. “Misery” returns Shone to proper shouts and groans, opening with a trip-hop beat courtesy of Danny Carey (also Tool)². The record’s shortest track, “Misery” is also one of its most successful, slamming through a heavy chugging riff into a surprising melodic resolution. It’s songs like this that make Author & Punisher releases so exciting; Shone not only incorporates a new influence into his style but cements it as a highlight of his catalog. Just after, there’s another. In opposition to the shy and understated original, the Author & Punisher cover of Portishead’s “Glorybox” is anthemic. Yet it’s a beautiful adaptation and true to the song’s intimacy; hearing Shone croon the chorus is arresting.

Though it’s not as anthemic or energetic as Beastland, Krüller should leave any Author & Punisher fan satisfied. Shone’s collaborators turn in great performances that add a gargantuan depth to the record, and the back half is nearly as good as “Beastland.” Shone’s lyrics are more interesting than they’ve ever been, too; while past records were more abstract, Krüller is direct; reflecting with disgust on the American project as it salts its own stolen land. Krüller is as compelling an artistic response to the Covid pandemic as I’ve heard from metal, and a great accomplishment for Author & Punisher, proving that Shone is more than willing to reach out from his self-imposed cage of heavy electronics.

Rating: 3.5/5.0
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 225 kb/s VBR mp3
Label: Relapse Records
Websites: authorandpunisher.bandcamp.com | tristanshone.com | facebook.com/authorandpunisher
Releases Worldwide: February 11th, 2022

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