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Fashion is moving beyond simple ecommerce into a new era of AI-powered discovery, social commerce, and global resale. We break down 2026 market data, why newage fashion is growing faster than traditional apparel, and how Cheeky Fit is building Cheeky to simplify buying and selling through a smarter, lower-friction ecosystem.
#FashionTech #SocialCommerce #Resale #Thrifting #SecondhandFashion #Ecommerce #DigitalFashion #Marketplace #Startup #CheekyFit #CheekyApp
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Fashion is moving beyond simple ecommerce into a new era of AI-powered discovery, social commerce, and global resale. We break down 2026 market data, why newage fashion is growing faster than traditional apparel, and how Cheeky Fit is building Cheeky to simplify buying and selling through a smarter, lower-friction ecosystem.
#FashionTech #SocialCommerce #Resale #Thrifting #SecondhandFashion #Ecommerce #DigitalFashion #Marketplace #Startup #CheekyFit #CheekyApp
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Anyone want a cheeky lil tattoo tomorrow? I'll give you a 40% discount on any of my flash!
Booking: https://venue.ink/@goblinhellion
Or book by email: [email protected]
#tattoo #art #flashtattoo #cute #mastoart #creativetoots #fediart #yyj ##yyjtattoo
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Dive into HeatherEves' "Growing Pains" — a playful giantess fantasy with stunning visuals and cheeky scale drama! Perfect for fans of imaginative transformation and bold character moments. A fun PeerTube discovery that'll make you feel tiny in the best way. #Giantess #Growth #Transformation #HeatherEves #PeerTube #Fantasy #Art #English
https://sizetube.com/videos/watch/f4fe23e0-4151-4343-bae6-0b48be798087 -
Book Review: King Kong Theory by Virginie Despentes
Virginie Despentes’ King Kong Theory is a fierce and foundational text of modern feminism, a Molotov cocktail in book form. Part memoir, part punk manifesto, it is a raw, unapologetic, and deeply personal exploration of gender, power, and sexuality in our modern world.
Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
Genre: Non-fiction, Memoir, Essays, Feminism
Publisher: Fitzcarraldo Editions (UK, 2020), The Feminist Press (US, 2010)
Review in one word: Joyful
Originally published in French in 2006, this classic feminist work is now available in English. Despentes is a punk iconoclast, rebel writer and confrontational filmmaker. Arguably her most famous book is her first novel Baise-Moi, was later adapted for the screen. She is the author of more than fifteen works, including the acclaimed Vernon Subutex trilogy. Always seeing life from the outskirts, Despentes draws from her own experience as a former sex worker and rape survivor for her scathing and excoriating analysis of surviving in a world mired in misogyny and misandry.
Far from being depressing in nature, this book is irreverant, hillarious and cheeky in its analysis of our world.
There’s a whole range of taboos that are exploded in this book. As she states in the explosive opening, “from the realms of the ugly, for the ugly, the old, the bull dykes, the frigid, the unfucked, the unfuckable, the hysterics, the freaks, all those excluded from the great meat market of female flesh”.
The essays in this book are provocative, explosive and generous in their philosophical reach and insight. Despentes examines concepts of rape, prostitution, pornography and the myth of the ideal woman. She strongly rejects victimhood and refuses to apologise or explain her reasons for doing anything she has done.
The book shows its age in the discussion about the ultimate waif-like beauty of the 90’s – Kate Moss. Despentes joyfully aligns herself not with the unreachable ideal of Kate Moss but instead with the mythological monster – King Kong who is beyond male and beyond female. He is a potent symbol of polymorphic sexuality and raw power before he is captured and destroyed by society.
The overarching themes are of railing against oppressive forces of sexual and societal control in our world are refreshing and interesting. I particularly enjoyed the ethos so closely intertwined with rebelious culture, art and music which showed in her amazing Vernon Subutex series. Despentes argues for a “new punk feminism” that embraces and loves what society deems monstrous or unacceptable in women and any one else who feels marginalised.
She challenges the binary thinking that pits “good” women against “bad” ones, virgins against whores, and victims against aggressors. Her style is blistering, direct, and brutally honest, characterised by precisely phrased rage and a refusal to soften her message for the comfort of the reader.
Despentes’ tone is provocative, warm and unapologetic. King Kong Theory is an essential work that rejects polite discourse in favour of a raw truth about sex and power that is as uncomfortable, liberating and joyful. I cannot tell you how much this book means to me, it is foundational, liberating and life-changing in every way.
Content Catnip
Follow me on Mastodon Watch my videos Donate to my Ko Fi #book #BookReview #BookReviews #bookTag #BookReview #books #essays #feminism #feminist #French #gender #History #manifesto #memoir #nonFiction #Philosophy #power #punk #sexuality #storytelling #VirginieDespentes #VirginieDespentes -
Book Review: King Kong Theory by Virginie Despentes
Virginie Despentes’ King Kong Theory is a fierce and foundational text of modern feminism, a Molotov cocktail in book form. Part memoir, part punk manifesto, it is a raw, unapologetic, and deeply personal exploration of gender, power, and sexuality in our modern world.
Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
Genre: Non-fiction, Memoir, Essays, Feminism
Publisher: Fitzcarraldo Editions (UK, 2020), The Feminist Press (US, 2010)
Review in one word: Joyful
Originally published in French in 2006, this classic feminist work is now available in English. Despentes is a punk iconoclast, rebel writer and confrontational filmmaker. Arguably her most famous book is her first novel Baise-Moi, was later adapted for the screen. She is the author of more than fifteen works, including the acclaimed Vernon Subutex trilogy. Always seeing life from the outskirts, Despentes draws from her own experience as a former sex worker and rape survivor for her scathing and excoriating analysis of surviving in a world mired in misogyny and misandry.
Far from being depressing in nature, this book is irreverant, hillarious and cheeky in its analysis of our world.
There’s a whole range of taboos that are exploded in this book. As she states in the explosive opening, “from the realms of the ugly, for the ugly, the old, the bull dykes, the frigid, the unfucked, the unfuckable, the hysterics, the freaks, all those excluded from the great meat market of female flesh”.
The essays in this book are provocative, explosive and generous in their philosophical reach and insight. Despentes examines concepts of rape, prostitution, pornography and the myth of the ideal woman. She strongly rejects victimhood and refuses to apologise or explain her reasons for doing anything she has done.
The book shows its age in the discussion about the ultimate waif-like beauty of the 90’s – Kate Moss. Despentes joyfully aligns herself not with the unreachable ideal of Kate Moss but instead with the mythological monster – King Kong who is beyond male and beyond female. He is a potent symbol of polymorphic sexuality and raw power before he is captured and destroyed by society.
The overarching themes are of railing against oppressive forces of sexual and societal control in our world are refreshing and interesting. I particularly enjoyed the ethos so closely intertwined with rebelious culture, art and music which showed in her amazing Vernon Subutex series. Despentes argues for a “new punk feminism” that embraces and loves what society deems monstrous or unacceptable in women and any one else who feels marginalised.
She challenges the binary thinking that pits “good” women against “bad” ones, virgins against whores, and victims against aggressors. Her style is blistering, direct, and brutally honest, characterised by precisely phrased rage and a refusal to soften her message for the comfort of the reader.
Despentes’ tone is provocative, warm and unapologetic. King Kong Theory is an essential work that rejects polite discourse in favour of a raw truth about sex and power that is as uncomfortable, liberating and joyful. I cannot tell you how much this book means to me, it is foundational, liberating and life-changing in every way.
Content Catnip
Follow me on Mastodon Watch my videos Donate to my Ko Fi #book #BookReview #BookReviews #bookTag #BookReview #books #essays #feminism #feminist #French #gender #History #manifesto #memoir #nonFiction #Philosophy #power #punk #sexuality #storytelling #VirginieDespentes #VirginieDespentes -
Book Review: King Kong Theory by Virginie Despentes
Virginie Despentes’ King Kong Theory is a fierce and foundational text of modern feminism, a Molotov cocktail in book form. Part memoir, part punk manifesto, it is a raw, unapologetic, and deeply personal exploration of gender, power, and sexuality in our modern world.
Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
Genre: Non-fiction, Memoir, Essays, Feminism
Publisher: Fitzcarraldo Editions (UK, 2020), The Feminist Press (US, 2010)
Review in one word: Joyful
Originally published in French in 2006, this classic feminist work is now available in English. Despentes is a punk iconoclast, rebel writer and confrontational filmmaker. Arguably her most famous book is her first novel Baise-Moi, was later adapted for the screen. She is the author of more than fifteen works, including the acclaimed Vernon Subutex trilogy. Always seeing life from the outskirts, Despentes draws from her own experience as a former sex worker and rape survivor for her scathing and excoriating analysis of surviving in a world mired in misogyny and misandry.
Far from being depressing in nature, this book is irreverant, hillarious and cheeky in its analysis of our world.
There’s a whole range of taboos that are exploded in this book. As she states in the explosive opening, “from the realms of the ugly, for the ugly, the old, the bull dykes, the frigid, the unfucked, the unfuckable, the hysterics, the freaks, all those excluded from the great meat market of female flesh”.
The essays in this book are provocative, explosive and generous in their philosophical reach and insight. Despentes examines concepts of rape, prostitution, pornography and the myth of the ideal woman. She strongly rejects victimhood and refuses to apologise or explain her reasons for doing anything she has done.
The book shows its age in the discussion about the ultimate waif-like beauty of the 90’s – Kate Moss. Despentes joyfully aligns herself not with the unreachable ideal of Kate Moss but instead with the mythological monster – King Kong who is beyond male and beyond female. He is a potent symbol of polymorphic sexuality and raw power before he is captured and destroyed by society.
The overarching themes are of railing against oppressive forces of sexual and societal control in our world are refreshing and interesting. I particularly enjoyed the ethos so closely intertwined with rebelious culture, art and music which showed in her amazing Vernon Subutex series. Despentes argues for a “new punk feminism” that embraces and loves what society deems monstrous or unacceptable in women and any one else who feels marginalised.
She challenges the binary thinking that pits “good” women against “bad” ones, virgins against whores, and victims against aggressors. Her style is blistering, direct, and brutally honest, characterised by precisely phrased rage and a refusal to soften her message for the comfort of the reader.
Despentes’ tone is provocative, warm and unapologetic. King Kong Theory is an essential work that rejects polite discourse in favour of a raw truth about sex and power that is as uncomfortable, liberating and joyful. I cannot tell you how much this book means to me, it is foundational, liberating and life-changing in every way.
Content Catnip
Follow me on Mastodon Watch my videos Donate to my Ko Fi #book #BookReview #BookReviews #bookTag #BookReview #books #essays #feminism #feminist #French #gender #History #manifesto #memoir #nonFiction #Philosophy #power #punk #sexuality #storytelling #VirginieDespentes #VirginieDespentes -
Human Vapor – Season 1, Episode 4: Terror Zone (2026) – Review
As we hit the midway point of Toho and Netflix’s sci-fi mystery, we find something of sudden shift in our regularly scheduled programming that finds the show taking a whole new viewpoint out of nowhere. While the puzzle-solving aspect of deciphering the who, what, why and where of the Human Vapor is still intact, the powers that be have decided to make the potentially jarring choice to temporarily ditch all of its main characters and secondary plot threads in favour of introducing two entirely new faces trying to crack the enigma of the vaporous killer.
It’s a risky move, because after spending three whole episodes following both detective Kenji Okamoto and reporter Kyoko Kono as they try and crack the case, the complete rug pull of basing an entire episode around two misfit livestreamers could be in danger of confusing, frustrating, or downright infuriating viewers who are caught out by the rather unsubtle change. However, hang in there, because not only do we get more, shocking revelations concerning the Human Vapor, but Fujita and Kaho Fujikawa prove to be quite the sleuths in their own right.While we previously left Kenji and Kyoko clearing up another one of the Human Vapor’s murders after a Yakuza crime boss became his latest victim, we take a quick jaunt back in time to see what two entirely new characters have been up to. Fujita and Kaho Fujikawa are a couple of siblings who keep to themselves and are trying to find fame and fortune through their struggling livestream horror channel, The Terror Zone. Brother Fujita is socially awkward and despises the poor life that he and his sister are forced to lead, while Kaho is withdrawn because she’s massively self conscious of the birthmark that covers half of her face. However, the two have an unbreakable bond that kicks into high gear when they discover a lead to the whereabouts of the Human Vapor.
After watching a DVD of a music video featuring J-pop band, Dream Succubus, performing a song called “Bakuretsu Aishuteru”, Fujita notices that in one of the shots, the Human Vapor is visible in one of the windows of the abandoned warehouse where it was shot. Realising that they’re in with a chance to make their livestreaming channel finally successful with this information, they post it, only to get a meager handful of hits. However, they do get an offer from the mysterious “dadashow”, who wishes to pay them handsomely for any more details.
Snapping into detective mode, the brother and sister team start to backtrack in an attempt to discover the location of the warehouse used in filming. First faking an interview with eccentric director, Goro, and then tracking one of the equally weird band members back to a club where they discover the video’s original cameraman, the siblings not only locate the warehouse, but find the Human Vapor too. However, things aren’t what we first assumed about the misty marauder as he’s not only in a petrified state, but he’s also triggered by the playing of a certain song. Is the Human Vapor actually the brainwashed weapon of someone else; and who is the mysterious benefactor who calls themselves dadashow?There’s a sense that with such a large shift in the show’s status quo, Human Vapor has reached something of a make of break moment. While both co-writer Yeon Sang-ho and director Shinzo Katayama are obviously looking to keep us on our toes with such an audacious shift in focus, it runs the very real risk of switching us off entirely. If I’m being honest, I initially came pretty close to zoning out myself as not only does the show demand that we suddenly empathise with entirely new characters, but it does so immediately after a previous installment that proved to be the season’s best. Simply put, going from a special effects laden, car chase setpiece to a whole new plot line that requires introductions to fresh characters could have been disastrous, and yet despite the break in momentum, “Terror Zone” ultimately ends up being a fun place to be.
I would say that the decision to abruptly focus all of the episode entirely on two character only briefly seen in a couple of episodes means that we have to start an entirely new angle on the investigation into the Human Vapor mystery, but when you realise that the entire show seems to be a ode to figuring out X-Files-style problems, it does make thematic sense. However, while the show seems dead set on coming at this Humor Vapor conundrum from multiple angles, there’s a massive risk that comes with flipping an entire season on a dime.It admittedly took me a little while to adjust to the changes and the fact that the show was essentially starting from scratch by turning the clock back to the time of the first murder meant that we’re going over some already familiar territory. It also took me a little longer to fix onto the wavelength given out by the two new – and very strange – lead characters; but while a lot of “Terror Zone” proves to be unnecessary in the grand scheme of things, the second half of the episode yanks it out of the three-star range and comfortably back into four. With the focus now on the determined Fujita and the terminally shy Kaho, not only does the humor content increase thanks to cheeky pisstakes of J-pop bands (stay tuned during the end credits to get the entirety of the Bakuretsu Aishuteru music video), but the rather sad lives of the media obsessed siblings actually add a great amount of heart to the show. Not only did Fujita and Kaho gradually grow on me as the episode went on, but it’s fairly interesting to see yet another angle of the titular mystery cracked from scratch. Of course, just like any good mystery show, any answers lead to yet more bizarre questions, and it seems everything we thought we knew about the Human Vapor is false.
Discovered in a petrified, statue-like state, it seems that the Vapor has been programmed to attack his targets by a Rube Goldberg style set up that activates him like a sleeper agent with the playing of a particular song by the Japanese band, Southern All Stars. As revelations go it’s huge, as it means that the Vapor is only a tool in someone else’s agenda and the finger of suspicion falls on an unlikely party when it’s revealed that the interested party known “dadashow” who claims to be willing to pay the siblings for the Vapor’s location is none other than Kyoko. Does this mean that she’s actually in this far deeper than she previously let on, or is this just the reporter once again getting to the bottom of a story by extreme means? We’ll find out soon enough; but Terror Zone deserves top marks for pulling off such a risky move.While at first it seems that the writers have outsmarted themselves with such a ballsy choice (literally a third of the episode is arguably unnecessary if we’re being scientific about it), the introduction of two random, puzzle-solving weirdos not only proves it’s worth by the end, but even has us stumbling upon yet more startling revelations. It’s nice to know that a show called Human Vapor is able to successfully shift forms at will.
#2026 #HumanVapor #Japan #KentoHayashi #Netflix #SciFi #ShinzoKatayama #ShunOguri #SouthKorea #SuzuHirose #Toho #TVReview #YutakaTakenouchi #YūAoi
🌟🌟🌟🌟 -
Human Vapor – Season 1, Episode 4: Terror Zone (2026) – Review
As we hit the midway point of Toho and Netflix’s sci-fi mystery, we find something of sudden shift in our regularly scheduled programming that finds the show taking a whole new viewpoint out of nowhere. While the puzzle-solving aspect of deciphering the who, what, why and where of the Human Vapor is still intact, the powers that be have decided to make the potentially jarring choice to temporarily ditch all of its main characters and secondary plot threads in favour of introducing two entirely new faces trying to crack the enigma of the vaporous killer.
It’s a risky move, because after spending three whole episodes following both detective Kenji Okamoto and reporter Kyoko Kono as they try and crack the case, the complete rug pull of basing an entire episode around two misfit livestreamers could be in danger of confusing, frustrating, or downright infuriating viewers who are caught out by the rather unsubtle change. However, hang in there, because not only do we get more, shocking revelations concerning the Human Vapor, but Fujita and Kaho Fujikawa prove to be quite the sleuths in their own right.While we previously left Kenji and Kyoko clearing up another one of the Human Vapor’s murders after a Yakuza crime boss became his latest victim, we take a quick jaunt back in time to see what two entirely new characters have been up to. Fujita and Kaho Fujikawa are a couple of siblings who keep to themselves and are trying to find fame and fortune through their struggling livestream horror channel, The Terror Zone. Brother Fujita is socially awkward and despises the poor life that he and his sister are forced to lead, while Kaho is withdrawn because she’s massively self conscious of the birthmark that covers half of her face. However, the two have an unbreakable bond that kicks into high gear when they discover a lead to the whereabouts of the Human Vapor.
After watching a DVD of a music video featuring J-pop band, Dream Succubus, performing a song called “Bakuretsu Aishuteru”, Fujita notices that in one of the shots, the Human Vapor is visible in one of the windows of the abandoned warehouse where it was shot. Realising that they’re in with a chance to make their livestreaming channel finally successful with this information, they post it, only to get a meager handful of hits. However, they do get an offer from the mysterious “dadashow”, who wishes to pay them handsomely for any more details.
Snapping into detective mode, the brother and sister team start to backtrack in an attempt to discover the location of the warehouse used in filming. First faking an interview with eccentric director, Goro, and then tracking one of the equally weird band members back to a club where they discover the video’s original cameraman, the siblings not only locate the warehouse, but find the Human Vapor too. However, things aren’t what we first assumed about the misty marauder as he’s not only in a petrified state, but he’s also triggered by the playing of a certain song. Is the Human Vapor actually the brainwashed weapon of someone else; and who is the mysterious benefactor who calls themselves dadashow?There’s a sense that with such a large shift in the show’s status quo, Human Vapor has reached something of a make of break moment. While both co-writer Yeon Sang-ho and director Shinzo Katayama are obviously looking to keep us on our toes with such an audacious shift in focus, it runs the very real risk of switching us off entirely. If I’m being honest, I initially came pretty close to zoning out myself as not only does the show demand that we suddenly empathise with entirely new characters, but it does so immediately after a previous installment that proved to be the season’s best. Simply put, going from a special effects laden, car chase setpiece to a whole new plot line that requires introductions to fresh characters could have been disastrous, and yet despite the break in momentum, “Terror Zone” ultimately ends up being a fun place to be.
I would say that the decision to abruptly focus all of the episode entirely on two character only briefly seen in a couple of episodes means that we have to start an entirely new angle on the investigation into the Human Vapor mystery, but when you realise that the entire show seems to be a ode to figuring out X-Files-style problems, it does make thematic sense. However, while the show seems dead set on coming at this Humor Vapor conundrum from multiple angles, there’s a massive risk that comes with flipping an entire season on a dime.It admittedly took me a little while to adjust to the changes and the fact that the show was essentially starting from scratch by turning the clock back to the time of the first murder meant that we’re going over some already familiar territory. It also took me a little longer to fix onto the wavelength given out by the two new – and very strange – lead characters; but while a lot of “Terror Zone” proves to be unnecessary in the grand scheme of things, the second half of the episode yanks it out of the three-star range and comfortably back into four. With the focus now on the determined Fujita and the terminally shy Kaho, not only does the humor content increase thanks to cheeky pisstakes of J-pop bands (stay tuned during the end credits to get the entirety of the Bakuretsu Aishuteru music video), but the rather sad lives of the media obsessed siblings actually add a great amount of heart to the show. Not only did Fujita and Kaho gradually grow on me as the episode went on, but it’s fairly interesting to see yet another angle of the titular mystery cracked from scratch. Of course, just like any good mystery show, any answers lead to yet more bizarre questions, and it seems everything we thought we knew about the Human Vapor is false.
Discovered in a petrified, statue-like state, it seems that the Vapor has been programmed to attack his targets by a Rube Goldberg style set up that activates him like a sleeper agent with the playing of a particular song by the Japanese band, Southern All Stars. As revelations go it’s huge, as it means that the Vapor is only a tool in someone else’s agenda and the finger of suspicion falls on an unlikely party when it’s revealed that the interested party known “dadashow” who claims to be willing to pay the siblings for the Vapor’s location is none other than Kyoko. Does this mean that she’s actually in this far deeper than she previously let on, or is this just the reporter once again getting to the bottom of a story by extreme means? We’ll find out soon enough; but Terror Zone deserves top marks for pulling off such a risky move.While at first it seems that the writers have outsmarted themselves with such a ballsy choice (literally a third of the episode is arguably unnecessary if we’re being scientific about it), the introduction of two random, puzzle-solving weirdos not only proves it’s worth by the end, but even has us stumbling upon yet more startling revelations. It’s nice to know that a show called Human Vapor is able to successfully shift forms at will.
#2026 #HumanVapor #Japan #KentoHayashi #Netflix #SciFi #ShinzoKatayama #ShunOguri #SouthKorea #SuzuHirose #Toho #TVReview #YutakaTakenouchi #YūAoi
🌟🌟🌟🌟 -
Human Vapor – Season 1, Episode 4: Terror Zone (2026) – Review
As we hit the midway point of Toho and Netflix’s sci-fi mystery, we find something of sudden shift in our regularly scheduled programming that finds the show taking a whole new viewpoint out of nowhere. While the puzzle-solving aspect of deciphering the who, what, why and where of the Human Vapor is still intact, the powers that be have decided to make the potentially jarring choice to temporarily ditch all of its main characters and secondary plot threads in favour of introducing two entirely new faces trying to crack the enigma of the vaporous killer.
It’s a risky move, because after spending three whole episodes following both detective Kenji Okamoto and reporter Kyoko Kono as they try and crack the case, the complete rug pull of basing an entire episode around two misfit livestreamers could be in danger of confusing, frustrating, or downright infuriating viewers who are caught out by the rather unsubtle change. However, hang in there, because not only do we get more, shocking revelations concerning the Human Vapor, but Fujita and Kaho Fujikawa prove to be quite the sleuths in their own right.While we previously left Kenji and Kyoko clearing up another one of the Human Vapor’s murders after a Yakuza crime boss became his latest victim, we take a quick jaunt back in time to see what two entirely new characters have been up to. Fujita and Kaho Fujikawa are a couple of siblings who keep to themselves and are trying to find fame and fortune through their struggling livestream horror channel, The Terror Zone. Brother Fujita is socially awkward and despises the poor life that he and his sister are forced to lead, while Kaho is withdrawn because she’s massively self conscious of the birthmark that covers half of her face. However, the two have an unbreakable bond that kicks into high gear when they discover a lead to the whereabouts of the Human Vapor.
After watching a DVD of a music video featuring J-pop band, Dream Succubus, performing a song called “Bakuretsu Aishuteru”, Fujita notices that in one of the shots, the Human Vapor is visible in one of the windows of the abandoned warehouse where it was shot. Realising that they’re in with a chance to make their livestreaming channel finally successful with this information, they post it, only to get a meager handful of hits. However, they do get an offer from the mysterious “dadashow”, who wishes to pay them handsomely for any more details.
Snapping into detective mode, the brother and sister team start to backtrack in an attempt to discover the location of the warehouse used in filming. First faking an interview with eccentric director, Goro, and then tracking one of the equally weird band members back to a club where they discover the video’s original cameraman, the siblings not only locate the warehouse, but find the Human Vapor too. However, things aren’t what we first assumed about the misty marauder as he’s not only in a petrified state, but he’s also triggered by the playing of a certain song. Is the Human Vapor actually the brainwashed weapon of someone else; and who is the mysterious benefactor who calls themselves dadashow?There’s a sense that with such a large shift in the show’s status quo, Human Vapor has reached something of a make of break moment. While both co-writer Yeon Sang-ho and director Shinzo Katayama are obviously looking to keep us on our toes with such an audacious shift in focus, it runs the very real risk of switching us off entirely. If I’m being honest, I initially came pretty close to zoning out myself as not only does the show demand that we suddenly empathise with entirely new characters, but it does so immediately after a previous installment that proved to be the season’s best. Simply put, going from a special effects laden, car chase setpiece to a whole new plot line that requires introductions to fresh characters could have been disastrous, and yet despite the break in momentum, “Terror Zone” ultimately ends up being a fun place to be.
I would say that the decision to abruptly focus all of the episode entirely on two character only briefly seen in a couple of episodes means that we have to start an entirely new angle on the investigation into the Human Vapor mystery, but when you realise that the entire show seems to be a ode to figuring out X-Files-style problems, it does make thematic sense. However, while the show seems dead set on coming at this Humor Vapor conundrum from multiple angles, there’s a massive risk that comes with flipping an entire season on a dime.It admittedly took me a little while to adjust to the changes and the fact that the show was essentially starting from scratch by turning the clock back to the time of the first murder meant that we’re going over some already familiar territory. It also took me a little longer to fix onto the wavelength given out by the two new – and very strange – lead characters; but while a lot of “Terror Zone” proves to be unnecessary in the grand scheme of things, the second half of the episode yanks it out of the three-star range and comfortably back into four. With the focus now on the determined Fujita and the terminally shy Kaho, not only does the humor content increase thanks to cheeky pisstakes of J-pop bands (stay tuned during the end credits to get the entirety of the Bakuretsu Aishuteru music video), but the rather sad lives of the media obsessed siblings actually add a great amount of heart to the show. Not only did Fujita and Kaho gradually grow on me as the episode went on, but it’s fairly interesting to see yet another angle of the titular mystery cracked from scratch. Of course, just like any good mystery show, any answers lead to yet more bizarre questions, and it seems everything we thought we knew about the Human Vapor is false.
Discovered in a petrified, statue-like state, it seems that the Vapor has been programmed to attack his targets by a Rube Goldberg style set up that activates him like a sleeper agent with the playing of a particular song by the Japanese band, Southern All Stars. As revelations go it’s huge, as it means that the Vapor is only a tool in someone else’s agenda and the finger of suspicion falls on an unlikely party when it’s revealed that the interested party known “dadashow” who claims to be willing to pay the siblings for the Vapor’s location is none other than Kyoko. Does this mean that she’s actually in this far deeper than she previously let on, or is this just the reporter once again getting to the bottom of a story by extreme means? We’ll find out soon enough; but Terror Zone deserves top marks for pulling off such a risky move.While at first it seems that the writers have outsmarted themselves with such a ballsy choice (literally a third of the episode is arguably unnecessary if we’re being scientific about it), the introduction of two random, puzzle-solving weirdos not only proves it’s worth by the end, but even has us stumbling upon yet more startling revelations. It’s nice to know that a show called Human Vapor is able to successfully shift forms at will.
#2026 #HumanVapor #Japan #KentoHayashi #Netflix #SciFi #ShinzoKatayama #ShunOguri #SouthKorea #SuzuHirose #Toho #TVReview #YutakaTakenouchi #YūAoi
🌟🌟🌟🌟 -
Human Vapor – Season 1, Episode 4: Terror Zone (2026) – Review
As we hit the midway point of Toho and Netflix’s sci-fi mystery, we find something of sudden shift in our regularly scheduled programming that finds the show taking a whole new viewpoint out of nowhere. While the puzzle-solving aspect of deciphering the who, what, why and where of the Human Vapor is still intact, the powers that be have decided to make the potentially jarring choice to temporarily ditch all of its main characters and secondary plot threads in favour of introducing two entirely new faces trying to crack the enigma of the vaporous killer.
It’s a risky move, because after spending three whole episodes following both detective Kenji Okamoto and reporter Kyoko Kono as they try and crack the case, the complete rug pull of basing an entire episode around two misfit livestreamers could be in danger of confusing, frustrating, or downright infuriating viewers who are caught out by the rather unsubtle change. However, hang in there, because not only do we get more, shocking revelations concerning the Human Vapor, but Fujita and Kaho Fujikawa prove to be quite the sleuths in their own right.While we previously left Kenji and Kyoko clearing up another one of the Human Vapor’s murders after a Yakuza crime boss became his latest victim, we take a quick jaunt back in time to see what two entirely new characters have been up to. Fujita and Kaho Fujikawa are a couple of siblings who keep to themselves and are trying to find fame and fortune through their struggling livestream horror channel, The Terror Zone. Brother Fujita is socially awkward and despises the poor life that he and his sister are forced to lead, while Kaho is withdrawn because she’s massively self conscious of the birthmark that covers half of her face. However, the two have an unbreakable bond that kicks into high gear when they discover a lead to the whereabouts of the Human Vapor.
After watching a DVD of a music video featuring J-pop band, Dream Succubus, performing a song called “Bakuretsu Aishuteru”, Fujita notices that in one of the shots, the Human Vapor is visible in one of the windows of the abandoned warehouse where it was shot. Realising that they’re in with a chance to make their livestreaming channel finally successful with this information, they post it, only to get a meager handful of hits. However, they do get an offer from the mysterious “dadashow”, who wishes to pay them handsomely for any more details.
Snapping into detective mode, the brother and sister team start to backtrack in an attempt to discover the location of the warehouse used in filming. First faking an interview with eccentric director, Goro, and then tracking one of the equally weird band members back to a club where they discover the video’s original cameraman, the siblings not only locate the warehouse, but find the Human Vapor too. However, things aren’t what we first assumed about the misty marauder as he’s not only in a petrified state, but he’s also triggered by the playing of a certain song. Is the Human Vapor actually the brainwashed weapon of someone else; and who is the mysterious benefactor who calls themselves dadashow?There’s a sense that with such a large shift in the show’s status quo, Human Vapor has reached something of a make of break moment. While both co-writer Yeon Sang-ho and director Shinzo Katayama are obviously looking to keep us on our toes with such an audacious shift in focus, it runs the very real risk of switching us off entirely. If I’m being honest, I initially came pretty close to zoning out myself as not only does the show demand that we suddenly empathise with entirely new characters, but it does so immediately after a previous installment that proved to be the season’s best. Simply put, going from a special effects laden, car chase setpiece to a whole new plot line that requires introductions to fresh characters could have been disastrous, and yet despite the break in momentum, “Terror Zone” ultimately ends up being a fun place to be.
I would say that the decision to abruptly focus all of the episode entirely on two character only briefly seen in a couple of episodes means that we have to start an entirely new angle on the investigation into the Human Vapor mystery, but when you realise that the entire show seems to be a ode to figuring out X-Files-style problems, it does make thematic sense. However, while the show seems dead set on coming at this Humor Vapor conundrum from multiple angles, there’s a massive risk that comes with flipping an entire season on a dime.It admittedly took me a little while to adjust to the changes and the fact that the show was essentially starting from scratch by turning the clock back to the time of the first murder meant that we’re going over some already familiar territory. It also took me a little longer to fix onto the wavelength given out by the two new – and very strange – lead characters; but while a lot of “Terror Zone” proves to be unnecessary in the grand scheme of things, the second half of the episode yanks it out of the three-star range and comfortably back into four. With the focus now on the determined Fujita and the terminally shy Kaho, not only does the humor content increase thanks to cheeky pisstakes of J-pop bands (stay tuned during the end credits to get the entirety of the Bakuretsu Aishuteru music video), but the rather sad lives of the media obsessed siblings actually add a great amount of heart to the show. Not only did Fujita and Kaho gradually grow on me as the episode went on, but it’s fairly interesting to see yet another angle of the titular mystery cracked from scratch. Of course, just like any good mystery show, any answers lead to yet more bizarre questions, and it seems everything we thought we knew about the Human Vapor is false.
Discovered in a petrified, statue-like state, it seems that the Vapor has been programmed to attack his targets by a Rube Goldberg style set up that activates him like a sleeper agent with the playing of a particular song by the Japanese band, Southern All Stars. As revelations go it’s huge, as it means that the Vapor is only a tool in someone else’s agenda and the finger of suspicion falls on an unlikely party when it’s revealed that the interested party known “dadashow” who claims to be willing to pay the siblings for the Vapor’s location is none other than Kyoko. Does this mean that she’s actually in this far deeper than she previously let on, or is this just the reporter once again getting to the bottom of a story by extreme means? We’ll find out soon enough; but Terror Zone deserves top marks for pulling off such a risky move.While at first it seems that the writers have outsmarted themselves with such a ballsy choice (literally a third of the episode is arguably unnecessary if we’re being scientific about it), the introduction of two random, puzzle-solving weirdos not only proves it’s worth by the end, but even has us stumbling upon yet more startling revelations. It’s nice to know that a show called Human Vapor is able to successfully shift forms at will.
#2026 #HumanVapor #Japan #KentoHayashi #Netflix #SciFi #ShinzoKatayama #ShunOguri #SouthKorea #SuzuHirose #Toho #TVReview #YutakaTakenouchi #YūAoi
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Human Vapor – Season 1, Episode 4: Terror Zone (2026) – Review
As we hit the midway point of Toho and Netflix’s sci-fi mystery, we find something of sudden shift in our regularly scheduled programming that finds the show taking a whole new viewpoint out of nowhere. While the puzzle-solving aspect of deciphering the who, what, why and where of the Human Vapor is still intact, the powers that be have decided to make the potentially jarring choice to temporarily ditch all of its main characters and secondary plot threads in favour of introducing two entirely new faces trying to crack the enigma of the vaporous killer.
It’s a risky move, because after spending three whole episodes following both detective Kenji Okamoto and reporter Kyoko Kono as they try and crack the case, the complete rug pull of basing an entire episode around two misfit livestreamers could be in danger of confusing, frustrating, or downright infuriating viewers who are caught out by the rather unsubtle change. However, hang in there, because not only do we get more, shocking revelations concerning the Human Vapor, but Fujita and Kaho Fujikawa prove to be quite the sleuths in their own right.While we previously left Kenji and Kyoko clearing up another one of the Human Vapor’s murders after a Yakuza crime boss became his latest victim, we take a quick jaunt back in time to see what two entirely new characters have been up to. Fujita and Kaho Fujikawa are a couple of siblings who keep to themselves and are trying to find fame and fortune through their struggling livestream horror channel, The Terror Zone. Brother Fujita is socially awkward and despises the poor life that he and his sister are forced to lead, while Kaho is withdrawn because she’s massively self conscious of the birthmark that covers half of her face. However, the two have an unbreakable bond that kicks into high gear when they discover a lead to the whereabouts of the Human Vapor.
After watching a DVD of a music video featuring J-pop band, Dream Succubus, performing a song called “Bakuretsu Aishuteru”, Fujita notices that in one of the shots, the Human Vapor is visible in one of the windows of the abandoned warehouse where it was shot. Realising that they’re in with a chance to make their livestreaming channel finally successful with this information, they post it, only to get a meager handful of hits. However, they do get an offer from the mysterious “dadashow”, who wishes to pay them handsomely for any more details.
Snapping into detective mode, the brother and sister team start to backtrack in an attempt to discover the location of the warehouse used in filming. First faking an interview with eccentric director, Goro, and then tracking one of the equally weird band members back to a club where they discover the video’s original cameraman, the siblings not only locate the warehouse, but find the Human Vapor too. However, things aren’t what we first assumed about the misty marauder as he’s not only in a petrified state, but he’s also triggered by the playing of a certain song. Is the Human Vapor actually the brainwashed weapon of someone else; and who is the mysterious benefactor who calls themselves dadashow?There’s a sense that with such a large shift in the show’s status quo, Human Vapor has reached something of a make of break moment. While both co-writer Yeon Sang-ho and director Shinzo Katayama are obviously looking to keep us on our toes with such an audacious shift in focus, it runs the very real risk of switching us off entirely. If I’m being honest, I initially came pretty close to zoning out myself as not only does the show demand that we suddenly empathise with entirely new characters, but it does so immediately after a previous installment that proved to be the season’s best. Simply put, going from a special effects laden, car chase setpiece to a whole new plot line that requires introductions to fresh characters could have been disastrous, and yet despite the break in momentum, “Terror Zone” ultimately ends up being a fun place to be.
I would say that the decision to abruptly focus all of the episode entirely on two character only briefly seen in a couple of episodes means that we have to start an entirely new angle on the investigation into the Human Vapor mystery, but when you realise that the entire show seems to be a ode to figuring out X-Files-style problems, it does make thematic sense. However, while the show seems dead set on coming at this Humor Vapor conundrum from multiple angles, there’s a massive risk that comes with flipping an entire season on a dime.It admittedly took me a little while to adjust to the changes and the fact that the show was essentially starting from scratch by turning the clock back to the time of the first murder meant that we’re going over some already familiar territory. It also took me a little longer to fix onto the wavelength given out by the two new – and very strange – lead characters; but while a lot of “Terror Zone” proves to be unnecessary in the grand scheme of things, the second half of the episode yanks it out of the three-star range and comfortably back into four. With the focus now on the determined Fujita and the terminally shy Kaho, not only does the humor content increase thanks to cheeky pisstakes of J-pop bands (stay tuned during the end credits to get the entirety of the Bakuretsu Aishuteru music video), but the rather sad lives of the media obsessed siblings actually add a great amount of heart to the show. Not only did Fujita and Kaho gradually grow on me as the episode went on, but it’s fairly interesting to see yet another angle of the titular mystery cracked from scratch. Of course, just like any good mystery show, any answers lead to yet more bizarre questions, and it seems everything we thought we knew about the Human Vapor is false.
Discovered in a petrified, statue-like state, it seems that the Vapor has been programmed to attack his targets by a Rube Goldberg style set up that activates him like a sleeper agent with the playing of a particular song by the Japanese band, Southern All Stars. As revelations go it’s huge, as it means that the Vapor is only a tool in someone else’s agenda and the finger of suspicion falls on an unlikely party when it’s revealed that the interested party known “dadashow” who claims to be willing to pay the siblings for the Vapor’s location is none other than Kyoko. Does this mean that she’s actually in this far deeper than she previously let on, or is this just the reporter once again getting to the bottom of a story by extreme means? We’ll find out soon enough; but Terror Zone deserves top marks for pulling off such a risky move.While at first it seems that the writers have outsmarted themselves with such a ballsy choice (literally a third of the episode is arguably unnecessary if we’re being scientific about it), the introduction of two random, puzzle-solving weirdos not only proves it’s worth by the end, but even has us stumbling upon yet more startling revelations. It’s nice to know that a show called Human Vapor is able to successfully shift forms at will.
#2026 #HumanVapor #Japan #KentoHayashi #Netflix #SciFi #ShinzoKatayama #ShunOguri #SouthKorea #SuzuHirose #Toho #TVReview #YutakaTakenouchi #YūAoi
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Pop Cryptid Spectator #5
Hello and welcome to the 5th Pop Cryptid Spectator – my chronicle of observing the changing appearance of and attitudes towards “cryptids” in popular culture.
My interest is in exploring the expansion of cryptozoology into a mass cultural phenomenon. This edition provides more examples of how cryptids are part of our everyday lives. They are a way of framing the world in terms of mystery and wonder about monsters, and animals that may still be out there to find. Or, they are useful as liminal creatures formed from and existing only in our imaginations, or on the internet, but that we enjoy believing are real.
In this edition:
- Bigfoot makes an appearance in a divorce case
- Sidenote – Hunt for the Sasquatch race
- The Times of London promotes growing belief in Bigfoot
- E-DNA and the Enormous Eel Effect
- Sidenote – Excited whale parts
- The Utah Yetis dream dissolves
- Reality Shifting and Cryptids
- The Goosepig of Alexandria, Virginia
Bigfoot makes an appearance in a divorce case
A recent news story shows how important Bigfoot is to some peoples’ personal identity, so much so that it impacts their relationships and their work life. A man in British Columbia lost a claim for spousal support after a judge concluded that if he was capable of hunting Bigfoot, he was capable of getting a real job. The judge made multiple references to the unnamed man’s love for “camping, fishing, hunting, riding ‘quad’ motorcycles, and exploring remote areas of B.C. in search of sasquatch”. During a camping trip in 2020, the man was joined by an ex-girlfriend, who apparently shared his interest in cryptid hunting, without the wife’s knowledge. This led to the dissolution of the marriage. He claimed that a fall in 2016 while on a Sasquatch expedition caused him injuries and chronic pain that still prevented him from being able to work. The judge did not agree since evidence was provided that his still pursued his hobby and he had a capable brain for jobs that didn’t involved physical exertion. Sounds like he might do well as a Bigfoot reality TV star.
Sidenote – Hunt for the Sasquatch race
In a tangentially related side note, a Bigfoot “hunt” for the more physically fit occurs in Polk County, Florida on February 1 when Parks and Recreation will host its 9th annual The Hunt for Sasquatch trail race. Here’s hoping the winner finds a Sasquatch!
The Times of London promotes growing belief in Bigfoot
The Times (UK) has an article out this week, which highlights the continued interest in Bigfoot. Unfortunately, however, it features Matt Moneymaker of the Bigfoot Field Research Organization and Finding Bigfoot TV show, a person who is less than reasonable or cordial to anyone who doesn’t unquestionably accept his fringe claims. Just skip over his parts to see that the article states Bigfoot is “one of the most enduring myths in the United States has inspired a thriving subculture”. The writer cites a 2022 poll that shows 13% of American adults agreed with the statement that Sasquatch is a real, living creature, and suggests that percentage is growing. There is an unavoidable problem when polling people about beliefs, or anything else – they give you their opinion of the moment. This is heavily influenced by the media they consume and maybe the last person they talked to about it, or perhaps they answer “Sure, why not?” just because they are in a cheeky mood. We don’t know. But it is a reasonable estimate for interest in the subject for that particular population sampled.
E-DNA and the Enormous Eel Effect
In 2019, Professor Neil Gemmell, a geneticist from the University of Otago in New Zealand, used eDNA collection procedures and analysis at Loch Ness. The result was a bit of a bust since he found no mystery DNA that provided evidence of an unknown animal in the lake. But, he found lots of eel DNA, and then, inappropriately concluded that there may be giant eels which might be what people are seeing in that loch. Gemmell hit the jackpot by hooking his research to Nessie as it made headlines worldwide. The giant eel nonsense has reared its head out of the water again.
Prof Gemmell is once again planning to head back to the lake for Loch Ness 2.0 where he wants to use a different type of DNA sequencing to show the proportional change in a species’ population over time. The project has real world value regarding biodiversity, but Gemmell continues to use Nessie as the gimmick for attention even though he doesn’t expect to find a monster (eel or otherwise).
“[L]ast time around with Loch Ness 1.0, being able to capture that excitement and communicate it to the world was so much fun.”
He might still be pushing the big eel idea that no knowledgable Nessie researcher takes seriously. Of course there are eels in Loch Ness, but there is no evidence, not even DNA, that suggests a giant eel lives there. Gemmell erodes his cred by taking such a leap, previously saying, “Well, our data doesn’t reveal their size, but the sheer quantity of the material says that we can’t discount the possibility that there may be giant eels in Loch Ness. Therefore we can’t discount the possibility that what people see and believe is the Loch Ness Monster might be a giant eel.”
The enormous eel trope stuck with other DNA researchers too. When Prince William was visiting scientists at NatureMetrics, a research lab near London that also uses eDNA processes, he joked, “Does this mean you can find the Loch Ness Monster?” Firm founder Dr. Kat Bruce then claimed that the so-called creature was more likely a “very big eel” — at least according to testing done on one of the world’s most infamous lakes. Ugh! Silly ideas can be so sticky!
Sidenote – Excited whale parts
In the same Prince William article, the NY Post tabloid also printed that “A few years back, one daring academic proposed that the mythical beast is actually a “whale’s penis” — only to retract the whopper of a theory after being ridiculed mercilessly.” That’s incorrect. The whale penis suggestion is not ridiculous – the appearance of such a spectacle almost certainly happened in the past and threw observers for a loop – but it was in relation to sea serpents, not lake monsters like Nessie. For more on that story – see this compilation. (It’s SFW.)
The Utah Yetis Dream Dissolves
Here’s an update on the story from Pop Cryptid Spectator #4, there will be no new cryptid-named NHL team. You can thank your vacuum-sealed double-walled water bottles and coolers. The Utah hockey club stated the following: “An SEG executive shared that it explored every avenue to make Yeti work but that YETI Coolers, LLC was ultimately unwilling to agree to a co-existence agreement. SEG has confirmed it is no longer pursuing Yeti as a potential name for the team.” That’s a real shame. The next best name is the Mammoth, especially since mammoths did once roam the area now known as Utah.
Reality Shifting and Cryptids
There is an undeniable rift in the cryptozoology scene now. On one side is the idea that cryptids exist in our reality – that we can search for them, maybe find them, even if they have non-natural attributes. On the other side is that cryptids are made part of our reality because we put them there, we create them, and believe in them for strong personal reasons. For the latter, discovery is not the goal. The creatures exist in our defined reality because we allow them to and they serve a purpose that is not zoological.
If you are still following along and haven’t rolled your eyes and checked out, I thank you. I think the concept of reality shifting is important to why we are are experiencing the explosive growth of “cryptid” in its popular context, why cryptid cosplay and merchandise is so popular, and why cryptids are now incorporated into how some define their identity.
Reality shifting is a deliberate activity where a person, usually under the age of 30 (a generation known as Gen Z or Zoomers, born after 1996), decides to construct their own reality and live in that instead of the stressful, unrewarding, day-to-day grind of modern times. The world feels unreal and upside down to many people, so they go online. While the concept of reality shifting appeared in 2019, Covid lockdown created a surge of people constructing their alternate reality. People who create their own fantastical reality can include cryptids or even be cryptids themselves.
Internet folklorist, Gunseli Yalcinkaya, writes about reality shifting. And, she is also a huge fan of cryptids. I was introduced to her work via the Reality Studies vidcast from August 2024. Calling reality shifting an “ascendant form of zoomer spiritualism”, she talks about the development of shared fantasies online, where reality and fantasy merge. People take up a desired reality as a form of escapism and creative expression. The current internet landscape makes this very easy to do.
“To imagine the cryptid – a creature that is by definition unknowable – demands us to suspend real-world rules and immerse ourselves in the fantasy of what’s ‘out there’. […] The desire to uncover hidden truths extends across our post-truth landscape, from the tin-hat conspiracies we consume, to our ongoing fascination with creepypastas like Slenderman and Loab, and the UFOria sweeping across the mainstream. Similarly, we cannot fully comprehend the cryptid because it exists outside the human world.” – Gunseli Yalcinkaya
Gunseli talks about cryptids mostly in the pop cryptid framework, which is where she excels, but sometimes slips into the old timey cryptozoology tropes. She defines cryptids as creatures that may or may not exist under a Western scientific framework, in the sense that any undiscovered animal is a cryptid. She counts interesting animals, like the gorilla, as cryptids prior to it being discovered; I don’t agree with framing historical finds as cryptid prior to the word existing. But she has keen insight into the modern view of cryptids that sci-cryptozoology lacks entirely. In one article, she noted that the appeal of Bigfoot may be that it manages to “exist” in reality, or as just an icon, but still manages to avoid being overtaken, tracked, and captured by technology. Her way of using cryptid, however, is often missing the concept of it being “ethnoknown” (a subject that exists in prior human knowledge, usually from local cultural tales). The minimizing, or total loss, of the historical anecdotal basis for cryptids is evident with new AI cryptids that appear online – LOAB, crungus, and erosion bird. They are shared online in a form of “existing” but their origin is hidden; it remains unclear how or why they appeared. They might appear so often in your online environment that they begin to feel “real”. If any faked or fictional thing sticks around long enough, it can become real – like when fakelore turns into folklore and people tell the stories about encoutering the creatures that originated in Internet liminal space.
I talked about AI cryptids in the Pop Cryptid Spectator #2, but there far is more to be said on these creatures. I know that talking about very modern pop cryptids, from the view of the “extremely online” population of mostly young people, is so far from the original concept of cryptozoology that it makes many people uncomfortable. But fields of study evolve in response to changes in society and technology. That is certainly happening with cryptozoology.
Check out this talk by Gunseli called Cryptid: A Theory of Post-Digital Selfhood for some more brain stretching exercises. I really love the statement early on that the cryptid is defined by the “patchwork of stories” about it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0X8C8WmCUM
The Goosepig of Alexandria, Virginia
A fakelore cryptid is thriving at Spa Spring in Alexandria, Virginia. The “goosepig” legend gets a boost by appearing on signage designating historical areas. The creature, resulting from the cross-breeding of pigs and geese, derived from the town’s history of banning these two animals from the city via a local ordinance. Pushed to the fringes, they interbred creating an impossible four-legged animal with a beak. The source of the story on the historical marker is a book on local pets dated 1972. But the story derives from tales referenced from 1928. It might have circulated even earlier as a town historian says that swine and geese were banned from the town beginning at least around 1811.
The new Alexandria Historical Sign Finder map will certainly help boost the goosepig story as more people will find and popularize the sign celebrating the creature. Although the animal is fake, it represents a social event that pushed livestock, and a way of living, out of a city aiming to modernize. While the goosepig does not qualify as a “mysterious animal” in terms of the original intent of “cryptid”, it is set to become a pop cryptid similar to the Hodag of WI and the Squonk of PA. Next logical step is for a goosepig festival to appear!
For more, click on Pop goes the Cryptid landing page. Make sure you subscribe to all the posts – it’s always free and I don’t send annoying spam.
You can email me with comments, suggestions or questions at Popcryptid(at)proton.me
Pop Cryptid Spectator is also available on Substack. Please share this with cryptid fans you know!
#Bigfoot #cryptid #EDNA #GiantEel #Goosepig #LochNess #Nessie #popCryptid #PopCryptidSpectator #PopGoesTheCryptid #Sasquatch #utahYetis
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Kenstrosity’s Top Ten(ish) of 2024
By Kenstrosity
When I think back on this year, a year of unprecedented stress and struggle for this sponge, one predominant emotion rises above the rest. Gratitude. I went through hardships I couldn’t possibly have anticipated; watched as harrowing events, both global and domestic, rocked our world; and trudged through time-dilating frights that I only previously experienced in some of my worst nightmares. And yet, I persist! I found myself asking, once again, why I was spared a worse fate where others weren’t? What have I done in life to deserve the good fortune I’ve received? In time I’ve come to believe that understanding the why of it all isn’t always the most important part. In some ways, the pursuit of an answer to “why” even blinds us to more enriching lessons we can learn from the experiences we share, both mundane and extraordinary. These things teach us how to be human, how to grow, how to thrive, and how to come together as a community. So, for what must be the first time of my life, I stopped asking why anything happened, as tempting as that spiral always looked from outside. Instead, I spent all of my energy prioritizing the moment, experiencing it, allowing it to change me and mold me, and to be present in it not just for me, but for my friends, my family, and my neighbors.
Back to gratitude. More so this year than any other, I must express my deepest, most heartfelt gratitude for damn near everyone. When my roommate and I lost everything overnight, I felt completely and utterly overwhelmed by the response. Hands of friends, family, and community reached towards us, open to do whatever they could to help us up. AMG Himself, Steel Druhm, Sentynel, GardensTale, Twelve, Dolphin Whisperer, Maddog, Holdeneye, Cherd of Doom, Grymm, El Cuervo, Dr. Wvrm, Ferrous Beuller, Saunders, Eldritch Elitist, Doom_et_Al, Dear Hollow, Carcharodon, Felgund, Ferox, Thus Spoke, Iceberg, Mystikus Hugebeard, Itchy, the n00bs, a shit ton of Discord frens, all of my meatspace friends, Mom, Dad, my sister, some of my extended family, my work colleagues and acquaintances, random kind strangers, even Dr. A. N. Grier went above and beyond to help directly with our recovery. Every single member of staff here did whatever they could to give some relief, far beyond what I could’ve ever asked for, and it overwhelms my little heart to know they cared that deeply. My owlpal and great friend Rolderathis, writer and editor at Toilet ov Hell, unexpectedly swooped in via Discord to jump start our financial recovery by creating a crowdsourcing page for us—even as the admin for AMG planned to do the same. Instrumental to its dissemination and subsequent explosion,1 both AMG Himself and Steel Druhm made sure to aggressively spread the word via an official post on this very site, and in their own circles public and private. Friends and family did the same, to great effect. Toilet ov Hell even posted their own article, too, and I don’t even fucking write there. Incredible. My aunt and her husband helped us replace two full rooms worth of furniture without hesitation, and another close friend of mine provided yet another room’s worth on top of that. Our friends reached far and wide to find opportunities to get us shelter, food, essential items, and vital emotional support. FEMA did more than their part for us as well, and they continue to help us as we navigate the next stages of long-term recovery. My therapist stuck with me through the storm, helped carry me through some concerning emotional blockages shortly after, and continues to guide me now. The continuous waves of support and outreach blew me away, and motivated me to pay it forward in whatever way I was capable for those who were going through hell with us. I thank you all, from the bottom of my heart.
As if a hurricane wasn’t enough to bear, Mom was diagnosed with lung cancer just ten days after the storm hit. Still, there shined small silver linings that kept me going. It was caught very early, and she has already returned home after a resoundingly successful surgery, where they removed the tumor in block.2 As scary as the thought of losing my Mom right after everything else that’s happened was, I choose to emphasize the excellent treatment and attention to detail that allowed Mom to come home quickly and in decent health, all things considered. I choose to be with my family, to live in this moment through the pain, the fear, the uncertainty, so I can be there when the sun inevitably shines again, too. I want to extend a very special thanks to Dad, who remained constantly by Mom’s side and supported her through every stage of this development when I wasn’t able.
All of this merely scratches the surface of everything we’ve gone through in 2024. But we are still here!3 We are living the best we can, helping each other to survive, and perhaps soon to also thrive again. The sense of community I feel not just for my deeply wounded city, but also the people in my life, deepened significantly just in the last few months. These experiences have changed me, changed my outlook on life and on relationships. The fragility of life and the sheer power of the love that comes from the people in it sharpen my understanding of what’s really important. Life is about the people you have, the way you treat them, and how you conduct yourself in this world to try to improve it with your unique light, little by little. It’s about supporting your loved ones as they go through good times just as fiercely as when they go through hardship and change. It’s about growing every day into the very best version of yourself, and being there to witness and celebrate the same journey in those close to you. I understand that more today than ever before, and I am thankful that this lesson, above all else, is my takeaway from 2024.
It’s going to be a while before we can return home to AVL, but I’ve already returned full force to my home away from home, Angry Metal Guy! I’d like to thank Steel Druhm and AMG Himself again for keeping my spot warm for me and for being excellent taskmasters and blogrunners, to Sentynel for keeping things running smoothly on the back end and for being awesome in general at his job, to all the writers for continuously providing the internet with the best worst opinions on metal extant, and to Dr. A. N. Grier for deleting everything I’ve ever written so that nobody has to suffer my silly goofy ramblings.
With that said, everybody should probably snapshot this little Top Ten(ish) of mine before Grier deletes that, too. It looks mighty different to how it would’ve had the storm not happened, both because I couldn’t listen to any new music for a while and because the event itself ushered a sharp shift in my listening preferences. Regardless, I’m happy with my selections, and I fully expect the rest of you to rabble at my confounding omissions.4 Let it commence!
#ish. Elvellon // Ascending in Synergy – Elvellon holds a special place in my heart, and thanks to masterful songsmithing, Ascending in Synergy holds a well-deserved placement on my list. I simply haven’t been able to stop jamming it all year. Ascending in Synergy is everything I loved about metal when I first got into it, and it embodies much of what I love about metal today. It never hurts that the first eight songs are all megaton bangers. This record would have placed nearer the top if it weren’t for the monologue in the penultimate epic. Nonetheless, I love Ascending in Synergy.
#10. Madder Mortem // Old Eyes, New Heart – Ever since Marrow, Madder Mortem successfully won me over where every other album in their back catalog failed to resonate. I can’t explain what exactly it was that captured my adoration all of a sudden, but Old Eyes, New Heart has my heart just as Marrow did before it. Smart compositions, earnest delivery, crystalline lyrics, lush sound, this record has it all. I’d be a fool not to award it placement on this list.
#9. Oceans of Slumber // Where Gods Fear to Speak – Oceans of Slumber carved out an ever-evolving, fearlessly creative, and unique sound for themselves since their inception, but always seemed somewhat inconsistent with the quality of their songwriting. Not so on their magnum opus Where Gods Fear to Speak. Immense, cohesive, and richly layered with detail and compelling songwriting, Where Gods Fear to Speak feels like the culmination of their entire career, fully matured and refined to peak form.
#8. Sunburst // Manifesto – There was a point in time that I was confident Manifesto would top this list. That was largely due to sheer excitement that a new Sunburst album, which I never thought I would see in the first place, actually turned out to be great. Rich compositions, sharp hooks, and a masterful performance from everyone involved, Manifesto solidifies Sunburst as one of the best bands out of the Greek power metal scene. I just hope that I don’t have to wait another eight years for the next one!
#7. Scumbag // Homicide Cult – This record is simply unfair. I had my Top 10 all sorted out, and then some bottle-nosed bastard with a dorsal fin and a propensity for beating up smaller mammals on the wrong side of the sea had me check this out, with the promise of killer riffs by the main Noxis guitarist. That bastard was right, this record absolutely rips. There are so many unbelievably filthy, stank-face inducing riffs on Homicide Cult that I had to get plastic surgery to look like myself again. Otherwise, I’d look more like my rotted-out friend on the cover.
#6. Noxis // Violence Inherent in the System – Death metal this good hits me in a special place. While embodying all of the skullcrushing ways of olde, Violence Inherent in the System represents one of the most creative, smart, and well-produced records in modern death metal currently. And while my review helped spike the hype, it still feels a bit like Noxis are running further under the radar than they deserve. Coming out of absolute nowhere and dropping the best straight-up death metal of the year? Unreal.
#5. Feind // Ambulante Hirnamputation – Grind, and all of its hybrids, never once made it on my proper Top 10. I’ve written here for six years. That’s how powerful Feind’s Ambulante Hirnamputation truly is. Immense fun, more quality riffs stuffed into less than twenty minutes than some of the best records can fit into an hour, and cheeky to boot, Ambulante Hirnamputation proves that Feind mastered the grindset. Let’s hope this isn’t the last I get to hear of Feind.
#4. Brodequin // Harbinger of Woe – In contrast to grind, I almost always have a brutal death metal record on my Top 10. It’s a style that resonates with me very easily, and there’s never a shortage of it for my personal enjoyment. Brodequin won the day in a year chock full of great options, with the immensely accessible Harbinger of Woe. The sheer level of groove brimming from this torture chamber sends my booty into overdrive, and the thick, nasty production only serves to enhance the entire experience. There’s very little else I could ask for to sate my brutal death cravings.
#3. Iotunn // Kinship – It’s been a banner year for our friend Jon Aldará. Where Iotunn’s Access All Worlds interested, but did not woo, me, follow-up Kinship absolutely rocked my socks. Every single track is a celebration of epic, melodic, and deeply immersive extreme metal. Gorgeous compositions, ascendant guitar work, ridiculous replay value, and stellar vocals propelled Kinship way up on my list of favorite records at a blistering pace, leaving me revelling in an idyllic honeymoon period. Even after investing more time marinating in its wondrous environs, I’ve only fallen deeper and deeper in love with it. I just can’t imagine how Iotunn are going to top this.
#2. Replicant // Infinite Mortality – This is the year for records that floored me where their predecessors didn’t. Replicant’s Malignant Reality was enjoyable, but couldn’t touch my Top 10 in its year. Infinite Mortality, on the other hand, made a valiant bid for Album o’ the Year from the very first riff kicking “Acid Mirror” into the stratosphere. Hardcore-tinged technical death metal for fans of the discordant and the unorthodox, Infinite Mortality is supremely memorable not just for its sound, but for its infallible, hook-laden construction. Infinite Mortality may not be the only record of its kind released this year, but it’s without a doubt the greatest.
#1. Myrath // Karma – Hurricane Helene took my home. It changed the ecology, geology, and pedology of the entire Asheville region, likely for all time. But one thing it couldn’t take from me is my spirit, my drive to survive, and my determination to thrive. Even during a long period where access to music was a rare luxury, Karma remained at the forefront of my mind. It held me from giving up and reminded me of the strength that burgeoned not just in myself, but also in my friends, family, and greater community as we rebuilt our lives together. If there was ever a record released this year that embodies that spirit of triumph over adversity, it’s Myrath’s incredible Karma. It was always going to be high on this list, thanks to its insanely memorable songwriting and passionate performances of univerally great songs. However, it wasn’t until I personally resonated with its empowering message in the context of a devastating natural disaster that I knew this would be, unquestionably, my Album o’ the Year.
Honorable Mentions
- Amiensus // Reclamation Pt. II – Thoughtful, dynamic, and immersive, Reclamation Pt. II represents the pinnacle of what I like in progressive black metal.
- The Flaying // Ni dieu ni maître – Unsung melodic death metal heroes The Flaying offer up nonstop hooks and a crazy bass performance delivered at a feral pace.
- Hamferð // Men Guds hond er sterk – Empotionally compelling and monstrously heavy, Men Guds hond er sterk is death doom at its peak form.
- Khirki // Κυκεώνας – Massively dynamic hard rock that comes from the heart and the head, not the butt.
- Saidan // Visual Kill: The Blossoming of Psychotic Depravity – Fun, fast, ferocious, Visual Kill is an unqualified blast of killer hyper-melodic black metal.
- Unhallowed Deliverance // Of Spectres and Strife – Deathcore rarely offers this level of dynamics and quality in songwriting, and it hits like a runaway train full of unstable nuclear warheads.
Non-Metal Album o’ the Year
- Kali Uchis // Orquídeas – Simply put, this album is pure sex. Period.
EP o’ the Year
- Glassbone // Deaf to Suffering – Far and away the slimiest, crustiest, and bestest slam of the year. Absolute filth.
Song o’ the Year
- Elvellon – “A Vagabond’s Heart” – Easily my most listened to song of the year, “A Vagabond’s Heart” strikes a special chord in my spirit that embodies everything I used to love and everything I love today. Furthermore, it leaves me hopeful and excited for what the future holds. As a delightful bonus, it’s catchy as all get-out. I couldn’t ask for a better song to fit this slot.
Surprise o’ the Year:
- Nightwish // Yesterwynde – My original intent was to place this somewhere on my list proper, but the storm foiled that aspiration, as I rarely got to listen to any new music that came out in late September and pretty much all of October until it was way too late. But when I did get to spend time with Yesterwynde, it continually impressed me. Songs that felt novel and exciting, performances that brimmed with new life, and wonderful pacing from start to finish, Nightwish’s latest record feels like a return to form. I’m excited to follow them on this latest arc in their career.5
Disappointment o’ the Year:
- Vredehammer // God Slayer – The riffs are there, that’s for sure. But the album just doesn’t come together in a way that scratches my brain at all. Therefore, I had the most difficult time sitting through God Slayer. Shame, especially considering how much of a banger each of the previous two records were…
#2024 #Amiensus #Brodequin #Elvellon #Feind #Glassbone #Hamferð #Iotunn #KaliUchis #KenstrositySTopTenIshOf2024 #Khirki #MadderMortem #Myrath #Nightwish #Noxis #OceansOfSlumber #Replicant #Saidan #Scumbag #Sunburst #TheFlaying #UnhallowedDeliverance #Vredehammerð
-
Kenstrosity’s Top Ten(ish) of 2024
By Kenstrosity
When I think back on this year, a year of unprecedented stress and struggle for this sponge, one predominant emotion rises above the rest. Gratitude. I went through hardships I couldn’t possibly have anticipated; watched as harrowing events, both global and domestic, rocked our world; and trudged through time-dilating frights that I only previously experienced in some of my worst nightmares. And yet, I persist! I found myself asking, once again, why I was spared a worse fate where others weren’t? What have I done in life to deserve the good fortune I’ve received? In time I’ve come to believe that understanding the why of it all isn’t always the most important part. In some ways, the pursuit of an answer to “why” even blinds us to more enriching lessons we can learn from the experiences we share, both mundane and extraordinary. These things teach us how to be human, how to grow, how to thrive, and how to come together as a community. So, for what must be the first time of my life, I stopped asking why anything happened, as tempting as that spiral always looked from outside. Instead, I spent all of my energy prioritizing the moment, experiencing it, allowing it to change me and mold me, and to be present in it not just for me, but for my friends, my family, and my neighbors.
Back to gratitude. More so this year than any other, I must express my deepest, most heartfelt gratitude for damn near everyone. When my roommate and I lost everything overnight, I felt completely and utterly overwhelmed by the response. Hands of friends, family, and community reached towards us, open to do whatever they could to help us up. AMG Himself, Steel Druhm, Sentynel, GardensTale, Twelve, Dolphin Whisperer, Maddog, Holdeneye, Cherd of Doom, Grymm, El Cuervo, Dr. Wvrm, Ferrous Beuller, Saunders, Eldritch Elitist, Doom_et_Al, Dear Hollow, Carcharodon, Felgund, Ferox, Thus Spoke, Iceberg, Mystikus Hugebeard, Itchy, the n00bs, a shit ton of Discord frens, all of my meatspace friends, Mom, Dad, my sister, some of my extended family, my work colleagues and acquaintances, random kind strangers, even Dr. A. N. Grier went above and beyond to help directly with our recovery. Every single member of staff here did whatever they could to give some relief, far beyond what I could’ve ever asked for, and it overwhelms my little heart to know they cared that deeply. My owlpal and great friend Rolderathis, writer and editor at Toilet ov Hell, unexpectedly swooped in via Discord to jump start our financial recovery by creating a crowdsourcing page for us—even as the admin for AMG planned to do the same. Instrumental to its dissemination and subsequent explosion,1 both AMG Himself and Steel Druhm made sure to aggressively spread the word via an official post on this very site, and in their own circles public and private. Friends and family did the same, to great effect. Toilet ov Hell even posted their own article, too, and I don’t even fucking write there. Incredible. My aunt and her husband helped us replace two full rooms worth of furniture without hesitation, and another close friend of mine provided yet another room’s worth on top of that. Our friends reached far and wide to find opportunities to get us shelter, food, essential items, and vital emotional support. FEMA did more than their part for us as well, and they continue to help us as we navigate the next stages of long-term recovery. My therapist stuck with me through the storm, helped carry me through some concerning emotional blockages shortly after, and continues to guide me now. The continuous waves of support and outreach blew me away, and motivated me to pay it forward in whatever way I was capable for those who were going through hell with us. I thank you all, from the bottom of my heart.
As if a hurricane wasn’t enough to bear, Mom was diagnosed with lung cancer just ten days after the storm hit. Still, there shined small silver linings that kept me going. It was caught very early, and she has already returned home after a resoundingly successful surgery, where they removed the tumor in block.2 As scary as the thought of losing my Mom right after everything else that’s happened was, I choose to emphasize the excellent treatment and attention to detail that allowed Mom to come home quickly and in decent health, all things considered. I choose to be with my family, to live in this moment through the pain, the fear, the uncertainty, so I can be there when the sun inevitably shines again, too. I want to extend a very special thanks to Dad, who remained constantly by Mom’s side and supported her through every stage of this development when I wasn’t able.
All of this merely scratches the surface of everything we’ve gone through in 2024. But we are still here!3 We are living the best we can, helping each other to survive, and perhaps soon to also thrive again. The sense of community I feel not just for my deeply wounded city, but also the people in my life, deepened significantly just in the last few months. These experiences have changed me, changed my outlook on life and on relationships. The fragility of life and the sheer power of the love that comes from the people in it sharpen my understanding of what’s really important. Life is about the people you have, the way you treat them, and how you conduct yourself in this world to try to improve it with your unique light, little by little. It’s about supporting your loved ones as they go through good times just as fiercely as when they go through hardship and change. It’s about growing every day into the very best version of yourself, and being there to witness and celebrate the same journey in those close to you. I understand that more today than ever before, and I am thankful that this lesson, above all else, is my takeaway from 2024.
It’s going to be a while before we can return home to AVL, but I’ve already returned full force to my home away from home, Angry Metal Guy! I’d like to thank Steel Druhm and AMG Himself again for keeping my spot warm for me and for being excellent taskmasters and blogrunners, to Sentynel for keeping things running smoothly on the back end and for being awesome in general at his job, to all the writers for continuously providing the internet with the best worst opinions on metal extant, and to Dr. A. N. Grier for deleting everything I’ve ever written so that nobody has to suffer my silly goofy ramblings.
With that said, everybody should probably snapshot this little Top Ten(ish) of mine before Grier deletes that, too. It looks mighty different to how it would’ve had the storm not happened, both because I couldn’t listen to any new music for a while and because the event itself ushered a sharp shift in my listening preferences. Regardless, I’m happy with my selections, and I fully expect the rest of you to rabble at my confounding omissions.4 Let it commence!
#ish. Elvellon // Ascending in Synergy – Elvellon holds a special place in my heart, and thanks to masterful songsmithing, Ascending in Synergy holds a well-deserved placement on my list. I simply haven’t been able to stop jamming it all year. Ascending in Synergy is everything I loved about metal when I first got into it, and it embodies much of what I love about metal today. It never hurts that the first eight songs are all megaton bangers. This record would have placed nearer the top if it weren’t for the monologue in the penultimate epic. Nonetheless, I love Ascending in Synergy.
#10. Madder Mortem // Old Eyes, New Heart – Ever since Marrow, Madder Mortem successfully won me over where every other album in their back catalog failed to resonate. I can’t explain what exactly it was that captured my adoration all of a sudden, but Old Eyes, New Heart has my heart just as Marrow did before it. Smart compositions, earnest delivery, crystalline lyrics, lush sound, this record has it all. I’d be a fool not to award it placement on this list.
#9. Oceans of Slumber // Where Gods Fear to Speak – Oceans of Slumber carved out an ever-evolving, fearlessly creative, and unique sound for themselves since their inception, but always seemed somewhat inconsistent with the quality of their songwriting. Not so on their magnum opus Where Gods Fear to Speak. Immense, cohesive, and richly layered with detail and compelling songwriting, Where Gods Fear to Speak feels like the culmination of their entire career, fully matured and refined to peak form.
#8. Sunburst // Manifesto – There was a point in time that I was confident Manifesto would top this list. That was largely due to sheer excitement that a new Sunburst album, which I never thought I would see in the first place, actually turned out to be great. Rich compositions, sharp hooks, and a masterful performance from everyone involved, Manifesto solidifies Sunburst as one of the best bands out of the Greek power metal scene. I just hope that I don’t have to wait another eight years for the next one!
#7. Scumbag // Homicide Cult – This record is simply unfair. I had my Top 10 all sorted out, and then some bottle-nosed bastard with a dorsal fin and a propensity for beating up smaller mammals on the wrong side of the sea had me check this out, with the promise of killer riffs by the main Noxis guitarist. That bastard was right, this record absolutely rips. There are so many unbelievably filthy, stank-face inducing riffs on Homicide Cult that I had to get plastic surgery to look like myself again. Otherwise, I’d look more like my rotted-out friend on the cover.
#6. Noxis // Violence Inherent in the System – Death metal this good hits me in a special place. While embodying all of the skullcrushing ways of olde, Violence Inherent in the System represents one of the most creative, smart, and well-produced records in modern death metal currently. And while my review helped spike the hype, it still feels a bit like Noxis are running further under the radar than they deserve. Coming out of absolute nowhere and dropping the best straight-up death metal of the year? Unreal.
#5. Feind // Ambulante Hirnamputation – Grind, and all of its hybrids, never once made it on my proper Top 10. I’ve written here for six years. That’s how powerful Feind’s Ambulante Hirnamputation truly is. Immense fun, more quality riffs stuffed into less than twenty minutes than some of the best records can fit into an hour, and cheeky to boot, Ambulante Hirnamputation proves that Feind mastered the grindset. Let’s hope this isn’t the last I get to hear of Feind.
#4. Brodequin // Harbinger of Woe – In contrast to grind, I almost always have a brutal death metal record on my Top 10. It’s a style that resonates with me very easily, and there’s never a shortage of it for my personal enjoyment. Brodequin won the day in a year chock full of great options, with the immensely accessible Harbinger of Woe. The sheer level of groove brimming from this torture chamber sends my booty into overdrive, and the thick, nasty production only serves to enhance the entire experience. There’s very little else I could ask for to sate my brutal death cravings.
#3. Iotunn // Kinship – It’s been a banner year for our friend Jon Aldará. Where Iotunn’s Access All Worlds interested, but did not woo, me, follow-up Kinship absolutely rocked my socks. Every single track is a celebration of epic, melodic, and deeply immersive extreme metal. Gorgeous compositions, ascendant guitar work, ridiculous replay value, and stellar vocals propelled Kinship way up on my list of favorite records at a blistering pace, leaving me revelling in an idyllic honeymoon period. Even after investing more time marinating in its wondrous environs, I’ve only fallen deeper and deeper in love with it. I just can’t imagine how Iotunn are going to top this.
#2. Replicant // Infinite Mortality – This is the year for records that floored me where their predecessors didn’t. Replicant’s Malignant Reality was enjoyable, but couldn’t touch my Top 10 in its year. Infinite Mortality, on the other hand, made a valiant bid for Album o’ the Year from the very first riff kicking “Acid Mirror” into the stratosphere. Hardcore-tinged technical death metal for fans of the discordant and the unorthodox, Infinite Mortality is supremely memorable not just for its sound, but for its infallible, hook-laden construction. Infinite Mortality may not be the only record of its kind released this year, but it’s without a doubt the greatest.
#1. Myrath // Karma – Hurricane Helene took my home. It changed the ecology, geology, and pedology of the entire Asheville region, likely for all time. But one thing it couldn’t take from me is my spirit, my drive to survive, and my determination to thrive. Even during a long period where access to music was a rare luxury, Karma remained at the forefront of my mind. It held me from giving up and reminded me of the strength that burgeoned not just in myself, but also in my friends, family, and greater community as we rebuilt our lives together. If there was ever a record released this year that embodies that spirit of triumph over adversity, it’s Myrath’s incredible Karma. It was always going to be high on this list, thanks to its insanely memorable songwriting and passionate performances of univerally great songs. However, it wasn’t until I personally resonated with its empowering message in the context of a devastating natural disaster that I knew this would be, unquestionably, my Album o’ the Year.
Honorable Mentions
- Amiensus // Reclamation Pt. II – Thoughtful, dynamic, and immersive, Reclamation Pt. II represents the pinnacle of what I like in progressive black metal.
- The Flaying // Ni dieu ni maître – Unsung melodic death metal heroes The Flaying offer up nonstop hooks and a crazy bass performance delivered at a feral pace.
- Hamferð // Men Guds hond er sterk – Empotionally compelling and monstrously heavy, Men Guds hond er sterk is death doom at its peak form.
- Khirki // Κυκεώνας – Massively dynamic hard rock that comes from the heart and the head, not the butt.
- Saidan // Visual Kill: The Blossoming of Psychotic Depravity – Fun, fast, ferocious, Visual Kill is an unqualified blast of killer hyper-melodic black metal.
- Unhallowed Deliverance // Of Spectres and Strife – Deathcore rarely offers this level of dynamics and quality in songwriting, and it hits like a runaway train full of unstable nuclear warheads.
Non-Metal Album o’ the Year
- Kali Uchis // Orquídeas – Simply put, this album is pure sex. Period.
EP o’ the Year
- Glassbone // Deaf to Suffering – Far and away the slimiest, crustiest, and bestest slam of the year. Absolute filth.
Song o’ the Year
- Elvellon – “A Vagabond’s Heart” – Easily my most listened to song of the year, “A Vagabond’s Heart” strikes a special chord in my spirit that embodies everything I used to love and everything I love today. Furthermore, it leaves me hopeful and excited for what the future holds. As a delightful bonus, it’s catchy as all get-out. I couldn’t ask for a better song to fit this slot.
Surprise o’ the Year:
- Nightwish // Yesterwynde – My original intent was to place this somewhere on my list proper, but the storm foiled that aspiration, as I rarely got to listen to any new music that came out in late September and pretty much all of October until it was way too late. But when I did get to spend time with Yesterwynde, it continually impressed me. Songs that felt novel and exciting, performances that brimmed with new life, and wonderful pacing from start to finish, Nightwish’s latest record feels like a return to form. I’m excited to follow them on this latest arc in their career.5
Disappointment o’ the Year:
- Vredehammer // God Slayer – The riffs are there, that’s for sure. But the album just doesn’t come together in a way that scratches my brain at all. Therefore, I had the most difficult time sitting through God Slayer. Shame, especially considering how much of a banger each of the previous two records were…
#2024 #Amiensus #Brodequin #Elvellon #Feind #Glassbone #Hamferð #Iotunn #KaliUchis #KenstrositySTopTenIshOf2024 #Khirki #MadderMortem #Myrath #Nightwish #Noxis #OceansOfSlumber #Replicant #Saidan #Scumbag #Sunburst #TheFlaying #UnhallowedDeliverance #Vredehammerð
-
Kenstrosity’s Top Ten(ish) of 2024
By Kenstrosity
When I think back on this year, a year of unprecedented stress and struggle for this sponge, one predominant emotion rises above the rest. Gratitude. I went through hardships I couldn’t possibly have anticipated; watched as harrowing events, both global and domestic, rocked our world; and trudged through time-dilating frights that I only previously experienced in some of my worst nightmares. And yet, I persist! I found myself asking, once again, why I was spared a worse fate where others weren’t? What have I done in life to deserve the good fortune I’ve received? In time I’ve come to believe that understanding the why of it all isn’t always the most important part. In some ways, the pursuit of an answer to “why” even blinds us to more enriching lessons we can learn from the experiences we share, both mundane and extraordinary. These things teach us how to be human, how to grow, how to thrive, and how to come together as a community. So, for what must be the first time of my life, I stopped asking why anything happened, as tempting as that spiral always looked from outside. Instead, I spent all of my energy prioritizing the moment, experiencing it, allowing it to change me and mold me, and to be present in it not just for me, but for my friends, my family, and my neighbors.
Back to gratitude. More so this year than any other, I must express my deepest, most heartfelt gratitude for damn near everyone. When my roommate and I lost everything overnight, I felt completely and utterly overwhelmed by the response. Hands of friends, family, and community reached towards us, open to do whatever they could to help us up. AMG Himself, Steel Druhm, Sentynel, GardensTale, Twelve, Dolphin Whisperer, Maddog, Holdeneye, Cherd of Doom, Grymm, El Cuervo, Dr. Wvrm, Ferrous Beuller, Saunders, Eldritch Elitist, Doom_et_Al, Dear Hollow, Carcharodon, Felgund, Ferox, Thus Spoke, Iceberg, Mystikus Hugebeard, Itchy, the n00bs, a shit ton of Discord frens, all of my meatspace friends, Mom, Dad, my sister, some of my extended family, my work colleagues and acquaintances, random kind strangers, even Dr. A. N. Grier went above and beyond to help directly with our recovery. Every single member of staff here did whatever they could to give some relief, far beyond what I could’ve ever asked for, and it overwhelms my little heart to know they cared that deeply. My owlpal and great friend Rolderathis, writer and editor at Toilet ov Hell, unexpectedly swooped in via Discord to jump start our financial recovery by creating a crowdsourcing page for us—even as the admin for AMG planned to do the same. Instrumental to its dissemination and subsequent explosion,1 both AMG Himself and Steel Druhm made sure to aggressively spread the word via an official post on this very site, and in their own circles public and private. Friends and family did the same, to great effect. Toilet ov Hell even posted their own article, too, and I don’t even fucking write there. Incredible. My aunt and her husband helped us replace two full rooms worth of furniture without hesitation, and another close friend of mine provided yet another room’s worth on top of that. Our friends reached far and wide to find opportunities to get us shelter, food, essential items, and vital emotional support. FEMA did more than their part for us as well, and they continue to help us as we navigate the next stages of long-term recovery. My therapist stuck with me through the storm, helped carry me through some concerning emotional blockages shortly after, and continues to guide me now. The continuous waves of support and outreach blew me away, and motivated me to pay it forward in whatever way I was capable for those who were going through hell with us. I thank you all, from the bottom of my heart.
As if a hurricane wasn’t enough to bear, Mom was diagnosed with lung cancer just ten days after the storm hit. Still, there shined small silver linings that kept me going. It was caught very early, and she has already returned home after a resoundingly successful surgery, where they removed the tumor in block.2 As scary as the thought of losing my Mom right after everything else that’s happened was, I choose to emphasize the excellent treatment and attention to detail that allowed Mom to come home quickly and in decent health, all things considered. I choose to be with my family, to live in this moment through the pain, the fear, the uncertainty, so I can be there when the sun inevitably shines again, too. I want to extend a very special thanks to Dad, who remained constantly by Mom’s side and supported her through every stage of this development when I wasn’t able.
All of this merely scratches the surface of everything we’ve gone through in 2024. But we are still here!3 We are living the best we can, helping each other to survive, and perhaps soon to also thrive again. The sense of community I feel not just for my deeply wounded city, but also the people in my life, deepened significantly just in the last few months. These experiences have changed me, changed my outlook on life and on relationships. The fragility of life and the sheer power of the love that comes from the people in it sharpen my understanding of what’s really important. Life is about the people you have, the way you treat them, and how you conduct yourself in this world to try to improve it with your unique light, little by little. It’s about supporting your loved ones as they go through good times just as fiercely as when they go through hardship and change. It’s about growing every day into the very best version of yourself, and being there to witness and celebrate the same journey in those close to you. I understand that more today than ever before, and I am thankful that this lesson, above all else, is my takeaway from 2024.
It’s going to be a while before we can return home to AVL, but I’ve already returned full force to my home away from home, Angry Metal Guy! I’d like to thank Steel Druhm and AMG Himself again for keeping my spot warm for me and for being excellent taskmasters and blogrunners, to Sentynel for keeping things running smoothly on the back end and for being awesome in general at his job, to all the writers for continuously providing the internet with the best worst opinions on metal extant, and to Dr. A. N. Grier for deleting everything I’ve ever written so that nobody has to suffer my silly goofy ramblings.
With that said, everybody should probably snapshot this little Top Ten(ish) of mine before Grier deletes that, too. It looks mighty different to how it would’ve had the storm not happened, both because I couldn’t listen to any new music for a while and because the event itself ushered a sharp shift in my listening preferences. Regardless, I’m happy with my selections, and I fully expect the rest of you to rabble at my confounding omissions.4 Let it commence!
#ish. Elvellon // Ascending in Synergy – Elvellon holds a special place in my heart, and thanks to masterful songsmithing, Ascending in Synergy holds a well-deserved placement on my list. I simply haven’t been able to stop jamming it all year. Ascending in Synergy is everything I loved about metal when I first got into it, and it embodies much of what I love about metal today. It never hurts that the first eight songs are all megaton bangers. This record would have placed nearer the top if it weren’t for the monologue in the penultimate epic. Nonetheless, I love Ascending in Synergy.
#10. Madder Mortem // Old Eyes, New Heart – Ever since Marrow, Madder Mortem successfully won me over where every other album in their back catalog failed to resonate. I can’t explain what exactly it was that captured my adoration all of a sudden, but Old Eyes, New Heart has my heart just as Marrow did before it. Smart compositions, earnest delivery, crystalline lyrics, lush sound, this record has it all. I’d be a fool not to award it placement on this list.
#9. Oceans of Slumber // Where Gods Fear to Speak – Oceans of Slumber carved out an ever-evolving, fearlessly creative, and unique sound for themselves since their inception, but always seemed somewhat inconsistent with the quality of their songwriting. Not so on their magnum opus Where Gods Fear to Speak. Immense, cohesive, and richly layered with detail and compelling songwriting, Where Gods Fear to Speak feels like the culmination of their entire career, fully matured and refined to peak form.
#8. Sunburst // Manifesto – There was a point in time that I was confident Manifesto would top this list. That was largely due to sheer excitement that a new Sunburst album, which I never thought I would see in the first place, actually turned out to be great. Rich compositions, sharp hooks, and a masterful performance from everyone involved, Manifesto solidifies Sunburst as one of the best bands out of the Greek power metal scene. I just hope that I don’t have to wait another eight years for the next one!
#7. Scumbag // Homicide Cult – This record is simply unfair. I had my Top 10 all sorted out, and then some bottle-nosed bastard with a dorsal fin and a propensity for beating up smaller mammals on the wrong side of the sea had me check this out, with the promise of killer riffs by the main Noxis guitarist. That bastard was right, this record absolutely rips. There are so many unbelievably filthy, stank-face inducing riffs on Homicide Cult that I had to get plastic surgery to look like myself again. Otherwise, I’d look more like my rotted-out friend on the cover.
#6. Noxis // Violence Inherent in the System – Death metal this good hits me in a special place. While embodying all of the skullcrushing ways of olde, Violence Inherent in the System represents one of the most creative, smart, and well-produced records in modern death metal currently. And while my review helped spike the hype, it still feels a bit like Noxis are running further under the radar than they deserve. Coming out of absolute nowhere and dropping the best straight-up death metal of the year? Unreal.
#5. Feind // Ambulante Hirnamputation – Grind, and all of its hybrids, never once made it on my proper Top 10. I’ve written here for six years. That’s how powerful Feind’s Ambulante Hirnamputation truly is. Immense fun, more quality riffs stuffed into less than twenty minutes than some of the best records can fit into an hour, and cheeky to boot, Ambulante Hirnamputation proves that Feind mastered the grindset. Let’s hope this isn’t the last I get to hear of Feind.
#4. Brodequin // Harbinger of Woe – In contrast to grind, I almost always have a brutal death metal record on my Top 10. It’s a style that resonates with me very easily, and there’s never a shortage of it for my personal enjoyment. Brodequin won the day in a year chock full of great options, with the immensely accessible Harbinger of Woe. The sheer level of groove brimming from this torture chamber sends my booty into overdrive, and the thick, nasty production only serves to enhance the entire experience. There’s very little else I could ask for to sate my brutal death cravings.
#3. Iotunn // Kinship – It’s been a banner year for our friend Jon Aldará. Where Iotunn’s Access All Worlds interested, but did not woo, me, follow-up Kinship absolutely rocked my socks. Every single track is a celebration of epic, melodic, and deeply immersive extreme metal. Gorgeous compositions, ascendant guitar work, ridiculous replay value, and stellar vocals propelled Kinship way up on my list of favorite records at a blistering pace, leaving me revelling in an idyllic honeymoon period. Even after investing more time marinating in its wondrous environs, I’ve only fallen deeper and deeper in love with it. I just can’t imagine how Iotunn are going to top this.
#2. Replicant // Infinite Mortality – This is the year for records that floored me where their predecessors didn’t. Replicant’s Malignant Reality was enjoyable, but couldn’t touch my Top 10 in its year. Infinite Mortality, on the other hand, made a valiant bid for Album o’ the Year from the very first riff kicking “Acid Mirror” into the stratosphere. Hardcore-tinged technical death metal for fans of the discordant and the unorthodox, Infinite Mortality is supremely memorable not just for its sound, but for its infallible, hook-laden construction. Infinite Mortality may not be the only record of its kind released this year, but it’s without a doubt the greatest.
#1. Myrath // Karma – Hurricane Helene took my home. It changed the ecology, geology, and pedology of the entire Asheville region, likely for all time. But one thing it couldn’t take from me is my spirit, my drive to survive, and my determination to thrive. Even during a long period where access to music was a rare luxury, Karma remained at the forefront of my mind. It held me from giving up and reminded me of the strength that burgeoned not just in myself, but also in my friends, family, and greater community as we rebuilt our lives together. If there was ever a record released this year that embodies that spirit of triumph over adversity, it’s Myrath’s incredible Karma. It was always going to be high on this list, thanks to its insanely memorable songwriting and passionate performances of univerally great songs. However, it wasn’t until I personally resonated with its empowering message in the context of a devastating natural disaster that I knew this would be, unquestionably, my Album o’ the Year.
Honorable Mentions
- Amiensus // Reclamation Pt. II – Thoughtful, dynamic, and immersive, Reclamation Pt. II represents the pinnacle of what I like in progressive black metal.
- The Flaying // Ni dieu ni maître – Unsung melodic death metal heroes The Flaying offer up nonstop hooks and a crazy bass performance delivered at a feral pace.
- Hamferð // Men Guds hond er sterk – Empotionally compelling and monstrously heavy, Men Guds hond er sterk is death doom at its peak form.
- Khirki // Κυκεώνας – Massively dynamic hard rock that comes from the heart and the head, not the butt.
- Saidan // Visual Kill: The Blossoming of Psychotic Depravity – Fun, fast, ferocious, Visual Kill is an unqualified blast of killer hyper-melodic black metal.
- Unhallowed Deliverance // Of Spectres and Strife – Deathcore rarely offers this level of dynamics and quality in songwriting, and it hits like a runaway train full of unstable nuclear warheads.
Non-Metal Album o’ the Year
- Kali Uchis // Orquídeas – Simply put, this album is pure sex. Period.
EP o’ the Year
- Glassbone // Deaf to Suffering – Far and away the slimiest, crustiest, and bestest slam of the year. Absolute filth.
Song o’ the Year
- Elvellon – “A Vagabond’s Heart” – Easily my most listened to song of the year, “A Vagabond’s Heart” strikes a special chord in my spirit that embodies everything I used to love and everything I love today. Furthermore, it leaves me hopeful and excited for what the future holds. As a delightful bonus, it’s catchy as all get-out. I couldn’t ask for a better song to fit this slot.
Surprise o’ the Year:
- Nightwish // Yesterwynde – My original intent was to place this somewhere on my list proper, but the storm foiled that aspiration, as I rarely got to listen to any new music that came out in late September and pretty much all of October until it was way too late. But when I did get to spend time with Yesterwynde, it continually impressed me. Songs that felt novel and exciting, performances that brimmed with new life, and wonderful pacing from start to finish, Nightwish’s latest record feels like a return to form. I’m excited to follow them on this latest arc in their career.5
Disappointment o’ the Year:
- Vredehammer // God Slayer – The riffs are there, that’s for sure. But the album just doesn’t come together in a way that scratches my brain at all. Therefore, I had the most difficult time sitting through God Slayer. Shame, especially considering how much of a banger each of the previous two records were…
#2024 #Amiensus #Brodequin #Elvellon #Feind #Glassbone #Hamferð #Iotunn #KaliUchis #KenstrositySTopTenIshOf2024 #Khirki #MadderMortem #Myrath #Nightwish #Noxis #OceansOfSlumber #Replicant #Saidan #Scumbag #Sunburst #TheFlaying #UnhallowedDeliverance #Vredehammerð
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Stuck in the Filter: August 2025’s Angry Misses
By Kenstrosity
The heat persists, but now the humidity comes in full force as storm systems wreak havoc upon the coasts. I hide in my cramped closet of an office, lest I be washed out once again by an unsuspecting deluge. However, I still send my minions out into the facility, bound by duty to search for those metallic scraps on which we feast.
Fortuitously, most all of those imps I sent out came back alive, and with wares! BEHOLD!
Kenstrosity’s Galactic Gremlin
Silent Millenia // Celestial Twilight: Beyond the Crimson Veil [August 26th, 2025 – Self-Release]
Have you ever seen such a delightfully cheesy cover? Probably, but it’s been a while for me. I bought Celestial Twilight: Beyond the Crimson Veil, the second raw symphonic black metal opus from Finnish one-man act Silent Millenia, on the strength of the artwork alone. Little did I know that what lay beyond this crimson veil was some of the most fun melodic black metal this side of Moonlight Sorcery. The same low-fi roughness that personifies Old Nick’s work grounds Silent Millenia’s starbound songwriting as it traverses the universe with an energetic punch reminiscent of Emperor or Stormkeep (“Awaken the Celestial Spell,” “Daemonic Mastery”). To help differentiate Silent Millenia’s sound from that of their peers, a gothic atmosphere ensorcells much of this material to great effect, merging eerie Victorian melodies with galactic adventurism in an unlikely pair (“Enthrone the Spectral”). Swirling synths and sparkling twinkles abound as well, creating blissful moments of interest as frosty tremolos and piercing blasts take full advantage of the false sense of security those entrancing clouds of synthetic instrumentation create (“Benighted Path to Darkness Mysterium,” “Reign in Cosmic Majesty”). Simply put, Celestial Twilight is an unexpected gem of a symphonic black metal record, bursting with killer ideas and infinite levels of raw, unabashed fun. You should hear it!
Kronos’ Unexpected Unearthments
Street Sects // Dry Drunk [August 15th, 2025 – Self Release]
Dry Drunk sticks to your inner surfaces, draining down like cigarette tar along paralyzed cilia to pool in your lungs until the cells themselves foment rebellion. Once it’s in you, you feel paranoid, wretched, and alone. So it’s the proper follow-up to Street Sects’ visionary debut, End Position. Like that record, Dry Drunk plumbs the most mundane and unsavory gutters of America for a cast of protagonists that it dwells in or dispatches with a mixture of pity and disgust, with vocalist Leo Ashline narrating their violent crimes and self-hatred in a mixture of croons, shrieks, and snarls that cook the air before the speakers into the scent of booze and rotten teeth. And like that record, Shaun Ringsmuth (Glassing) dresses the sets with a fractal litter of snaps, squeals, crashes, gunshots, and grinding electronics, caked in tar and collapsing just as soon as it is swept into a structure. And like End Position, Dry Drunk is a masterpiece. The impeccable six-song stretch from “Love Makes You Fat” through “Riding the Clock” ties you to the bumper and drags you along some of the duo’s most creative side-roads, through the simmering, straightjacketed sludge of “Baker Act” to the chopped-up, smirking electronica of “Eject Button.” Swerving between addled, unintelligible agony and unforgettable anthems, Dry Drunk, like End Position before it is nothing less than the life of a junkie scraped together, heated on a spoon, and injected into your head. Once you’ve taken a hit, you will never be quite the same.
Thus Spoke’s Frightening Fragments
Defacement // Doomed [August 22nd, 2025 – Self Release]
There’s music for every vibe.1 The one Defacement fits is an exclusively extreme metal flavor of moody that is only appreciable by genre fans, made tangibly more eerie by their persistent idiosyncratic use of dark ambient interludes amidst the viciously distorted blackened death. Audiences—and reviewers—tend to disparage these electronic segments, but I’ve always felt their crackling presence increases the analog horror of it all, and rather than being a breather from the intensity, they prolong the nausea, the sense of emptiness, and the abject fearfulness of head-based trauma. This latter concept grows more metaphorical still on Doomed, where the violence is inside the mind, purpose-erasing, and emotionally-detaching. The ambience might be the most sadly beautiful so far (“Mournful,” and “Clouded” especially), and the transitions into nightmarish heaviness arguably the most fluid. And the metal is undoubtedly the most ambitious, dynamic, and magnificent of Defacement’s career, combining their most gruesome dissonance (“Portrait”) with their most bizarrely exuberant guitar melodies (“Unexplainable,” “Unrecognised”). Solos drip tangibly with (emotional) resonance (“Unexplainable,” “Absent”) and there’s not a breath or a moment of wasted space. Yes, the band’s heavier side can suffer from a nagging sense of homogeneous mass, but it remains transporting. While I can appreciate why others do not appreciate Defacement, this is the first of their outings I can truthfully say mesmerised me on first listen.
ClarkKent’s Heated Hymns
Phantom Fire // Phantom Fire [August 8th, 2025 – Edged Circle Productions]
While I waded through the murky depths of the August promo sump, Steel implored me to take the eponymous third album from Phantom Fire. “The AMG commentariat love blackened heavy metal,” he said. I disregarded his advice at my peril, and while I ended up enjoying what I grabbed, it turns out this would have been solid too. Featuring members from Enslaved, Kraków. Hellbutcher, and Aeternus, Phantom Fire play old school speed metal that harks back to the likes of Motörhead and Iron Maiden’s Killers. Thanks to healthy doses of bass and production values that allow the instruments to shine, each song is infused with energetic grooves. The music sounds fresh, crisp, and clear, from the booming drums to Eld’s “blackened” snarls. Early tracks “Eternal Void” and “All For None” show off the catchy blend of simple guitar riffs and a hoppin’ bass accompanied by energetic kit work. While placing a somewhat lengthy instrumental track in the middle of a record usually slows it down, “Fatal Attraction” turns out to be a highlight. It tells a tragic love story involving a motorcycle with nothing but instruments, an engine revving, and some police sirens. The second half of Phantom Fire gets a bit on the weirder side, turning to some stoner and psychedelia. There’s a push and pull between the stoner and Motörhead speed stuff on songs like “Malphas” and “Submersible Pt. 2,” and this blend actually works pretty well. It turns out that they aren’t phantom after all—these guys are truly fire.
Burning Witches // Inquisition [August 22nd, 2025 – Napalm Records]
With six albums in eight years, Swiss quintet Burning Witches has really been burning rubber. While such prolific output in such a short time frame generally spells trouble, Inquisition is a solid piece of heavy/power metal. Burning Witches dabbles in a mix of speedy power metal and mid-tempo heavy metal, often sounding like ’80s stalwarts Judas Priest and Def Leppard. With Laura Guldemond’s gruff voice, they produce a more weighty, less happy version of power metal than the likes of Fellowship or Frozen Crown. While the songs stick to formulaic structures, tempo shifts from song to song help keep things from growing stale. We see this variety right from the get-go, where “Soul Eater” takes a high-energy approach before moving into the more mellow “Shame.” There’s even a pretty solid ballad, “Release Me,” that grounds the back half of the record. Songs of the sort that Burning Witches write need catchy choruses, and fortunately, they deliver. “High Priestess of the Night” is a particular standout, delivering a knock-out punch in its delivery. It helps that the instrumental parts are well-executed, from crunchy riffs to subdued solos to booming blast beats. Anyone looking for a solid bit of power metal that’s not too heavy on the cheese will find this worth a listen.
Deathhammer // Crimson Dawn [August 29th, 2025 – Hells Headbangers Records]
Celebrating 20 years of blackened speed, Deathhammer drop LP number six with the kind of energy that exhausted parents dread to see in their children at bedtime. This is my first foray with the band, and I am in awe of the relentless level of manic energy they keep throughout Crimson Dawn’s 39 minutes. If science could learn how to harness their energy, we’d have an endless source of renewables. The two-piece out of Norway channels classic Slayer on crack and even has moments reminiscent of Painkiller-era Judas Priest. They play non-stop thrash cranked to 11, with persistent blast beats and some dual guitar parts that leave your head spinning from the rapid-fire directions the riffs fire off in. The heart of the mania is singer Sergeant Salsten. His crazed vocals are amazing—snarling, shouting, and shrieking in a way that took me back to the manic pitch Judge Doom could reach in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? He sings so fast that on the chorus of “Crimson Dawn,” it sounds like he says “Griffindor,” which had me searching confusedly for the Harry Potter tag. This was probably my favorite song, not just because of the Griffindor thing, but because that chorus is so catchy. Either way, it’s tough to pick a standout track because they all grip you by the throat and don’t let go. Crimson Dawn is a ton of fun and a must listen if you like your music fast.
Grin Reaper’s Bountiful Blight
Kallias // Digital Plague [August 14th, 2025 – Self Release]
Machine gun drumming, spacey synths, Morbid Angel-meets-Meshuggah riffing, Turian-esque barking and Voyager-reminiscent vocal melodies…what the fuck is going on here? The only thing more surprising than someone having the moxie to blend all these things together is how well they work in concert. Kallias doesn’t hold back on sophomore album Digital Plague, and the result is a rocket-fueled blast through forty-four minutes of eclectic, addictive prog. The mishmash of styles keeps the album fresh and unpredictable while never dipping its toes in inconsistent waters, and staccato rhythms propel listeners through eight tracks without losing steam. As with any prog metal worth its salt, Kallias brandishes technical prowess, and their cohesion belies the relatively short time they’ve been putting out music.2 The mix is well-suited to spotlight whoever needs it at a given time, whether the bass is purring (“Exogíini Kyriarchía”), the drums are being annihilated (“Pyrrhic Victory”), or a guitar solo nears Pettrucian wankery (“Phenomenal in Theory”). The end result is three-quarters of an hour filled with myriad influences that fuse into a sound all Kallias’s own, and it’s one I’ve returned to several times since discovering (also, credit to MontDoom for his stunning artwork, which helped initially draw my attention). Check it out—you’ll be sick if you avoid this one like the Plague.
Luke’s Kaleidoscopic Kicks
Giant Haze // Cosmic Mother [August 22nd, 2025 – Tonzonen Records]
Whereas many of my colleagues are bracing themselves for cooler conditions and harsh winters to come, in my neck of the woods, things are warming up. While my own wintry August filter proved scarce, there was one particular summery gem to lift moods with burly riffs and fat stoner grooves. Unheralded German act Giant Haze seemingly emerged out of nowhere during a random Bandcamp deep dive. Debut LP Cosmic Mother channels the good old days of ’90s-inspired desert rock, featuring grungy, doomy vibes via a groovy batch of riff-centric, hard-rocking and uplifting jams, evoking the nostalgic spirit of Kyuss, Fu Manchu, Clutch and perhaps even a dash of Danzig. Punching out raucous, groove-soaked hard rockers with skyscraping hooks (“Geographic Gardens Suck,” “King of Tomorrow,” “Panic to Ride”), summery, funk–psych jams (“Sunrise”), and bluesy, punk-infused fireballs (“Crank in Public,” “Shrink Age”) Giant Haze get a lot of things right on this assured debut. The songwriting is deceptively diverse and punchy, bolstered by solid production, tight musicianship, and the swaggering, ever so slightly goofy vocal charms and powerful hooks of frontman Christoph Wollmann. Inevitably, a few rough spots appear, but overall Cosmic Mother showcases oodles of budding potential, an impactful delivery, cheeky sense of humor, and infectious, feel-good songcraft.
Spicie Forrest’s Foraged Fruit
Bask // The Turning [August 22nd, 2025 – Season of Mist]
Last seen in 2019, Bask returns with fourth LP, The Turning, a concept album following The Rider as she and The Traveler traverse the stars. They still peddle the unique blend of stoner rock and Americana Kenstrosity reviewed favorably in 2019, but 2025 sees them looking up for inspiration. The Turning incorporates a distinct cosmic bent (“The Traveler,” “The Turning”) and post-rock structures (“Dig My Heels,” “Unwound”). These augmentations to Bask’s core sound are enhanced by the masterful pedal steel of new official member Jed Willis. Whether floating through the firmament or tilling earthly pastures, Willis creates textures both fresh and intensely nostalgic. The infinite shifting vistas of The Turning’s front half coalesce into singular timeless visions on the back half, supporting its conceptual nature in both content and form. Like a combination of Huntsmen and Somali Yacht Club, Bask weaves riffs and melodies heard across the plains and through the void above with an unguarded authenticity felt in your soul.
Dolphin Whisperer’s Disseminating Discharge
Plasmodulated // An Ocean ov Putrid, Stinky, Vile, Disgusting Hell [August 1st, 2025 – Personal Records]
Stinky, sticky, slimy—all adjectives that define the ideal death metal platter. Myk Colby has been trying to chase this perfect balance in a reverb-wonky package with projects like the d-beaten Hot Graves and extra hazy Wharflurch, but vile death metal balance is hard to achieve. However, An Ocean ov Putrid, Stinky, Vile, Disgusting Hell contains a recklessly pinched Demilichian riffage, classic piercing whammy bombs, and spook-minded synth ambience that places Plasmodulated with an odor more pungent than its peers. With an infected ear that festers equally with doom-loaded, Incantation-indebted drags (“Gelatinous Mutation ov Brewed Origin,” “Trapped in the Plasmovoid”) and Voivod-on-jenkem cutaways to foul-throated extravagence (“The Final Fuckening”). An air of intelligent tempo design keeps An Ocean from never feeling trapped in a maze of its own fumes, with Colby’s lush and bubbling synth design seguing tumbles into hammering deathly tremolo runs (“Such Rapid Sphacelation”) and Celtic Frosted riff tumbles (“Drowning in Sputum”) alike, all before swirling about his own tattered, trailing vocal sputters. Steady but slippery, elegant yet effluvial, An Ocean ov Putrid, Stinky, Vile, Disgusting Hell provides the necessary noxious pressure to corrode death metal-loving denizens into pure gloops of stained-denim pit worship. Delivered as labeled, Plasmodulated earns its hazardous declaration. We here at AMG are not liable for any OSHA violations that occur as a result of Plasmodulated consumption on the job, though.
#2025 #Aeternus #AmericanMetal #Americana #AnOceanOvPutridStinkyVileDisgustingHell #Aug25 #Bask #BlackMetal #BlackenedDeathMetal #BurningWitches #CelestialTwilightBeyondTheCrimsonVeil #CelticFrost #Clutch #CosmicMother #CrimsonDawn #Danzig #DarkAmbient #DeathMetal #Deathhammer #DefLeppard #Defacement #Demilich #DigitalPlague #Doomed #DryDrunk #DutchMetal #EdgedCircleProductions #Emperor #Enslaved #Fellship #FinnishMetal #FrozenCrown #FuManchu #GermanMetal #GiantHaze #Glassing #Hardcore #HeavyMetal #Hellbutcher #HellsHeadbangersRecords #HotGraves #Huntsmen #Incantation #Inquisition #IronMaiden #JudasPriest #Kallias #Kraków #Kyuss #MelodicBlackMetal #Meshuggah #MoonlightSorcery #MorbidAngel #Motörhead #NapalmRecords #NorwegianMetal #OldNick #PersonalRecords #PhantomFire #Plasmodulated #PowerMetal #ProgressiveDeathMetal #RawBlackMetal #Review #Reviews #SelfRelease #SilentMillenia #Slayer #Sludge #SludgeMetal #SomaliYachtClub #SpeedMetal #StonerRock #Stormkeep #StreetSects #StuckInTheFilter #StuckInTheFilter2025 #SwissMetal #SymphonicBlackMetal #TechnicalDeathMetal #TheTurning #TonzonenRecords #Turian #Voivod #Voyager #Wharflurch
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Stuck in the Filter: August 2025’s Angry Misses
By Kenstrosity
The heat persists, but now the humidity comes in full force as storm systems wreak havoc upon the coasts. I hide in my cramped closet of an office, lest I be washed out once again by an unsuspecting deluge. However, I still send my minions out into the facility, bound by duty to search for those metallic scraps on which we feast.
Fortuitously, most all of those imps I sent out came back alive, and with wares! BEHOLD!
Kenstrosity’s Galactic Gremlin
Silent Millenia // Celestial Twilight: Beyond the Crimson Veil [August 26th, 2025 – Self-Release]
Have you ever seen such a delightfully cheesy cover? Probably, but it’s been a while for me. I bought Celestial Twilight: Beyond the Crimson Veil, the second raw symphonic black metal opus from Finnish one-man act Silent Millenia, on the strength of the artwork alone. Little did I know that what lay beyond this crimson veil was some of the most fun melodic black metal this side of Moonlight Sorcery. The same low-fi roughness that personifies Old Nick’s work grounds Silent Millenia’s starbound songwriting as it traverses the universe with an energetic punch reminiscent of Emperor or Stormkeep (“Awaken the Celestial Spell,” “Daemonic Mastery”). To help differentiate Silent Millenia’s sound from that of their peers, a gothic atmosphere ensorcells much of this material to great effect, merging eerie Victorian melodies with galactic adventurism in an unlikely pair (“Enthrone the Spectral”). Swirling synths and sparkling twinkles abound as well, creating blissful moments of interest as frosty tremolos and piercing blasts take full advantage of the false sense of security those entrancing clouds of synthetic instrumentation create (“Benighted Path to Darkness Mysterium,” “Reign in Cosmic Majesty”). Simply put, Celestial Twilight is an unexpected gem of a symphonic black metal record, bursting with killer ideas and infinite levels of raw, unabashed fun. You should hear it!
Kronos’ Unexpected Unearthments
Street Sects // Dry Drunk [August 15th, 2025 – Self Release]
Dry Drunk sticks to your inner surfaces, draining down like cigarette tar along paralyzed cilia to pool in your lungs until the cells themselves foment rebellion. Once it’s in you, you feel paranoid, wretched, and alone. So it’s the proper follow-up to Street Sects’ visionary debut, End Position. Like that record, Dry Drunk plumbs the most mundane and unsavory gutters of America for a cast of protagonists that it dwells in or dispatches with a mixture of pity and disgust, with vocalist Leo Ashline narrating their violent crimes and self-hatred in a mixture of croons, shrieks, and snarls that cook the air before the speakers into the scent of booze and rotten teeth. And like that record, Shaun Ringsmuth (Glassing) dresses the sets with a fractal litter of snaps, squeals, crashes, gunshots, and grinding electronics, caked in tar and collapsing just as soon as it is swept into a structure. And like End Position, Dry Drunk is a masterpiece. The impeccable six-song stretch from “Love Makes You Fat” through “Riding the Clock” ties you to the bumper and drags you along some of the duo’s most creative side-roads, through the simmering, straightjacketed sludge of “Baker Act” to the chopped-up, smirking electronica of “Eject Button.” Swerving between addled, unintelligible agony and unforgettable anthems, Dry Drunk, like End Position before it is nothing less than the life of a junkie scraped together, heated on a spoon, and injected into your head. Once you’ve taken a hit, you will never be quite the same.
Thus Spoke’s Frightening Fragments
Defacement // Doomed [August 22nd, 2025 – Self Release]
There’s music for every vibe.1 The one Defacement fits is an exclusively extreme metal flavor of moody that is only appreciable by genre fans, made tangibly more eerie by their persistent idiosyncratic use of dark ambient interludes amidst the viciously distorted blackened death. Audiences—and reviewers—tend to disparage these electronic segments, but I’ve always felt their crackling presence increases the analog horror of it all, and rather than being a breather from the intensity, they prolong the nausea, the sense of emptiness, and the abject fearfulness of head-based trauma. This latter concept grows more metaphorical still on Doomed, where the violence is inside the mind, purpose-erasing, and emotionally-detaching. The ambience might be the most sadly beautiful so far (“Mournful,” and “Clouded” especially), and the transitions into nightmarish heaviness arguably the most fluid. And the metal is undoubtedly the most ambitious, dynamic, and magnificent of Defacement’s career, combining their most gruesome dissonance (“Portrait”) with their most bizarrely exuberant guitar melodies (“Unexplainable,” “Unrecognised”). Solos drip tangibly with (emotional) resonance (“Unexplainable,” “Absent”) and there’s not a breath or a moment of wasted space. Yes, the band’s heavier side can suffer from a nagging sense of homogeneous mass, but it remains transporting. While I can appreciate why others do not appreciate Defacement, this is the first of their outings I can truthfully say mesmerised me on first listen.
ClarkKent’s Heated Hymns
Phantom Fire // Phantom Fire [August 8th, 2025 – Edged Circle Productions]
While I waded through the murky depths of the August promo sump, Steel implored me to take the eponymous third album from Phantom Fire. “The AMG commentariat love blackened heavy metal,” he said. I disregarded his advice at my peril, and while I ended up enjoying what I grabbed, it turns out this would have been solid too. Featuring members from Enslaved, Kraków. Hellbutcher, and Aeternus, Phantom Fire play old school speed metal that harks back to the likes of Motörhead and Iron Maiden’s Killers. Thanks to healthy doses of bass and production values that allow the instruments to shine, each song is infused with energetic grooves. The music sounds fresh, crisp, and clear, from the booming drums to Eld’s “blackened” snarls. Early tracks “Eternal Void” and “All For None” show off the catchy blend of simple guitar riffs and a hoppin’ bass accompanied by energetic kit work. While placing a somewhat lengthy instrumental track in the middle of a record usually slows it down, “Fatal Attraction” turns out to be a highlight. It tells a tragic love story involving a motorcycle with nothing but instruments, an engine revving, and some police sirens. The second half of Phantom Fire gets a bit on the weirder side, turning to some stoner and psychedelia. There’s a push and pull between the stoner and Motörhead speed stuff on songs like “Malphas” and “Submersible Pt. 2,” and this blend actually works pretty well. It turns out that they aren’t phantom after all—these guys are truly fire.
Burning Witches // Inquisition [August 22nd, 2025 – Napalm Records]
With six albums in eight years, Swiss quintet Burning Witches has really been burning rubber. While such prolific output in such a short time frame generally spells trouble, Inquisition is a solid piece of heavy/power metal. Burning Witches dabbles in a mix of speedy power metal and mid-tempo heavy metal, often sounding like ’80s stalwarts Judas Priest and Def Leppard. With Laura Guldemond’s gruff voice, they produce a more weighty, less happy version of power metal than the likes of Fellowship or Frozen Crown. While the songs stick to formulaic structures, tempo shifts from song to song help keep things from growing stale. We see this variety right from the get-go, where “Soul Eater” takes a high-energy approach before moving into the more mellow “Shame.” There’s even a pretty solid ballad, “Release Me,” that grounds the back half of the record. Songs of the sort that Burning Witches write need catchy choruses, and fortunately, they deliver. “High Priestess of the Night” is a particular standout, delivering a knock-out punch in its delivery. It helps that the instrumental parts are well-executed, from crunchy riffs to subdued solos to booming blast beats. Anyone looking for a solid bit of power metal that’s not too heavy on the cheese will find this worth a listen.
Deathhammer // Crimson Dawn [August 29th, 2025 – Hells Headbangers Records]
Celebrating 20 years of blackened speed, Deathhammer drop LP number six with the kind of energy that exhausted parents dread to see in their children at bedtime. This is my first foray with the band, and I am in awe of the relentless level of manic energy they keep throughout Crimson Dawn’s 39 minutes. If science could learn how to harness their energy, we’d have an endless source of renewables. The two-piece out of Norway channels classic Slayer on crack and even has moments reminiscent of Painkiller-era Judas Priest. They play non-stop thrash cranked to 11, with persistent blast beats and some dual guitar parts that leave your head spinning from the rapid-fire directions the riffs fire off in. The heart of the mania is singer Sergeant Salsten. His crazed vocals are amazing—snarling, shouting, and shrieking in a way that took me back to the manic pitch Judge Doom could reach in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? He sings so fast that on the chorus of “Crimson Dawn,” it sounds like he says “Griffindor,” which had me searching confusedly for the Harry Potter tag. This was probably my favorite song, not just because of the Griffindor thing, but because that chorus is so catchy. Either way, it’s tough to pick a standout track because they all grip you by the throat and don’t let go. Crimson Dawn is a ton of fun and a must listen if you like your music fast.
Grin Reaper’s Bountiful Blight
Kallias // Digital Plague [August 14th, 2025 – Self Release]
Machine gun drumming, spacey synths, Morbid Angel-meets-Meshuggah riffing, Turian-esque barking and Voyager-reminiscent vocal melodies…what the fuck is going on here? The only thing more surprising than someone having the moxie to blend all these things together is how well they work in concert. Kallias doesn’t hold back on sophomore album Digital Plague, and the result is a rocket-fueled blast through forty-four minutes of eclectic, addictive prog. The mishmash of styles keeps the album fresh and unpredictable while never dipping its toes in inconsistent waters, and staccato rhythms propel listeners through eight tracks without losing steam. As with any prog metal worth its salt, Kallias brandishes technical prowess, and their cohesion belies the relatively short time they’ve been putting out music.2 The mix is well-suited to spotlight whoever needs it at a given time, whether the bass is purring (“Exogíini Kyriarchía”), the drums are being annihilated (“Pyrrhic Victory”), or a guitar solo nears Pettrucian wankery (“Phenomenal in Theory”). The end result is three-quarters of an hour filled with myriad influences that fuse into a sound all Kallias’s own, and it’s one I’ve returned to several times since discovering (also, credit to MontDoom for his stunning artwork, which helped initially draw my attention). Check it out—you’ll be sick if you avoid this one like the Plague.
Luke’s Kaleidoscopic Kicks
Giant Haze // Cosmic Mother [August 22nd, 2025 – Tonzonen Records]
Whereas many of my colleagues are bracing themselves for cooler conditions and harsh winters to come, in my neck of the woods, things are warming up. While my own wintry August filter proved scarce, there was one particular summery gem to lift moods with burly riffs and fat stoner grooves. Unheralded German act Giant Haze seemingly emerged out of nowhere during a random Bandcamp deep dive. Debut LP Cosmic Mother channels the good old days of ’90s-inspired desert rock, featuring grungy, doomy vibes via a groovy batch of riff-centric, hard-rocking and uplifting jams, evoking the nostalgic spirit of Kyuss, Fu Manchu, Clutch and perhaps even a dash of Danzig. Punching out raucous, groove-soaked hard rockers with skyscraping hooks (“Geographic Gardens Suck,” “King of Tomorrow,” “Panic to Ride”), summery, funk–psych jams (“Sunrise”), and bluesy, punk-infused fireballs (“Crank in Public,” “Shrink Age”) Giant Haze get a lot of things right on this assured debut. The songwriting is deceptively diverse and punchy, bolstered by solid production, tight musicianship, and the swaggering, ever so slightly goofy vocal charms and powerful hooks of frontman Christoph Wollmann. Inevitably, a few rough spots appear, but overall Cosmic Mother showcases oodles of budding potential, an impactful delivery, cheeky sense of humor, and infectious, feel-good songcraft.
Spicie Forrest’s Foraged Fruit
Bask // The Turning [August 22nd, 2025 – Season of Mist]
Last seen in 2019, Bask returns with fourth LP, The Turning, a concept album following The Rider as she and The Traveler traverse the stars. They still peddle the unique blend of stoner rock and Americana Kenstrosity reviewed favorably in 2019, but 2025 sees them looking up for inspiration. The Turning incorporates a distinct cosmic bent (“The Traveler,” “The Turning”) and post-rock structures (“Dig My Heels,” “Unwound”). These augmentations to Bask’s core sound are enhanced by the masterful pedal steel of new official member Jed Willis. Whether floating through the firmament or tilling earthly pastures, Willis creates textures both fresh and intensely nostalgic. The infinite shifting vistas of The Turning’s front half coalesce into singular timeless visions on the back half, supporting its conceptual nature in both content and form. Like a combination of Huntsmen and Somali Yacht Club, Bask weaves riffs and melodies heard across the plains and through the void above with an unguarded authenticity felt in your soul.
Dolphin Whisperer’s Disseminating Discharge
Plasmodulated // An Ocean ov Putrid, Stinky, Vile, Disgusting Hell [August 1st, 2025 – Personal Records]
Stinky, sticky, slimy—all adjectives that define the ideal death metal platter. Myk Colby has been trying to chase this perfect balance in a reverb-wonky package with projects like the d-beaten Hot Graves and extra hazy Wharflurch, but vile death metal balance is hard to achieve. However, An Ocean ov Putrid, Stinky, Vile, Disgusting Hell contains a recklessly pinched Demilichian riffage, classic piercing whammy bombs, and spook-minded synth ambience that places Plasmodulated with an odor more pungent than its peers. With an infected ear that festers equally with doom-loaded, Incantation-indebted drags (“Gelatinous Mutation ov Brewed Origin,” “Trapped in the Plasmovoid”) and Voivod-on-jenkem cutaways to foul-throated extravagence (“The Final Fuckening”). An air of intelligent tempo design keeps An Ocean from never feeling trapped in a maze of its own fumes, with Colby’s lush and bubbling synth design seguing tumbles into hammering deathly tremolo runs (“Such Rapid Sphacelation”) and Celtic Frosted riff tumbles (“Drowning in Sputum”) alike, all before swirling about his own tattered, trailing vocal sputters. Steady but slippery, elegant yet effluvial, An Ocean ov Putrid, Stinky, Vile, Disgusting Hell provides the necessary noxious pressure to corrode death metal-loving denizens into pure gloops of stained-denim pit worship. Delivered as labeled, Plasmodulated earns its hazardous declaration. We here at AMG are not liable for any OSHA violations that occur as a result of Plasmodulated consumption on the job, though.
#2025 #Aeternus #AmericanMetal #Americana #AnOceanOvPutridStinkyVileDisgustingHell #Aug25 #Bask #BlackMetal #BlackenedDeathMetal #BurningWitches #CelestialTwilightBeyondTheCrimsonVeil #CelticFrost #Clutch #CosmicMother #CrimsonDawn #Danzig #DarkAmbient #DeathMetal #Deathhammer #DefLeppard #Defacement #Demilich #DigitalPlague #Doomed #DryDrunk #DutchMetal #EdgedCircleProductions #Emperor #Enslaved #Fellship #FinnishMetal #FrozenCrown #FuManchu #GermanMetal #GiantHaze #Glassing #Hardcore #HeavyMetal #Hellbutcher #HellsHeadbangersRecords #HotGraves #Huntsmen #Incantation #Inquisition #IronMaiden #JudasPriest #Kallias #Kraków #Kyuss #MelodicBlackMetal #Meshuggah #MoonlightSorcery #MorbidAngel #Motörhead #NapalmRecords #NorwegianMetal #OldNick #PersonalRecords #PhantomFire #Plasmodulated #PowerMetal #ProgressiveDeathMetal #RawBlackMetal #Review #Reviews #SelfRelease #SilentMillenia #Slayer #Sludge #SludgeMetal #SomaliYachtClub #SpeedMetal #StonerRock #Stormkeep #StreetSects #StuckInTheFilter #StuckInTheFilter2025 #SwissMetal #SymphonicBlackMetal #TechnicalDeathMetal #TheTurning #TonzonenRecords #Turian #Voivod #Voyager #Wharflurch
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Stuck in the Filter: August 2025’s Angry Misses
By Kenstrosity
The heat persists, but now the humidity comes in full force as storm systems wreak havoc upon the coasts. I hide in my cramped closet of an office, lest I be washed out once again by an unsuspecting deluge. However, I still send my minions out into the facility, bound by duty to search for those metallic scraps on which we feast.
Fortuitously, most all of those imps I sent out came back alive, and with wares! BEHOLD!
Kenstrosity’s Galactic Gremlin
Silent Millenia // Celestial Twilight: Beyond the Crimson Veil [August 26th, 2025 – Self-Release]
Have you ever seen such a delightfully cheesy cover? Probably, but it’s been a while for me. I bought Celestial Twilight: Beyond the Crimson Veil, the second raw symphonic black metal opus from Finnish one-man act Silent Millenia, on the strength of the artwork alone. Little did I know that what lay beyond this crimson veil was some of the most fun melodic black metal this side of Moonlight Sorcery. The same low-fi roughness that personifies Old Nick’s work grounds Silent Millenia’s starbound songwriting as it traverses the universe with an energetic punch reminiscent of Emperor or Stormkeep (“Awaken the Celestial Spell,” “Daemonic Mastery”). To help differentiate Silent Millenia’s sound from that of their peers, a gothic atmosphere ensorcells much of this material to great effect, merging eerie Victorian melodies with galactic adventurism in an unlikely pair (“Enthrone the Spectral”). Swirling synths and sparkling twinkles abound as well, creating blissful moments of interest as frosty tremolos and piercing blasts take full advantage of the false sense of security those entrancing clouds of synthetic instrumentation create (“Benighted Path to Darkness Mysterium,” “Reign in Cosmic Majesty”). Simply put, Celestial Twilight is an unexpected gem of a symphonic black metal record, bursting with killer ideas and infinite levels of raw, unabashed fun. You should hear it!
Kronos’ Unexpected Unearthments
Street Sects // Dry Drunk [August 15th, 2025 – Self Release]
Dry Drunk sticks to your inner surfaces, draining down like cigarette tar along paralyzed cilia to pool in your lungs until the cells themselves foment rebellion. Once it’s in you, you feel paranoid, wretched, and alone. So it’s the proper follow-up to Street Sects’ visionary debut, End Position. Like that record, Dry Drunk plumbs the most mundane and unsavory gutters of America for a cast of protagonists that it dwells in or dispatches with a mixture of pity and disgust, with vocalist Leo Ashline narrating their violent crimes and self-hatred in a mixture of croons, shrieks, and snarls that cook the air before the speakers into the scent of booze and rotten teeth. And like that record, Shaun Ringsmuth (Glassing) dresses the sets with a fractal litter of snaps, squeals, crashes, gunshots, and grinding electronics, caked in tar and collapsing just as soon as it is swept into a structure. And like End Position, Dry Drunk is a masterpiece. The impeccable six-song stretch from “Love Makes You Fat” through “Riding the Clock” ties you to the bumper and drags you along some of the duo’s most creative side-roads, through the simmering, straightjacketed sludge of “Baker Act” to the chopped-up, smirking electronica of “Eject Button.” Swerving between addled, unintelligible agony and unforgettable anthems, Dry Drunk, like End Position before it is nothing less than the life of a junkie scraped together, heated on a spoon, and injected into your head. Once you’ve taken a hit, you will never be quite the same.
Thus Spoke’s Frightening Fragments
Defacement // Doomed [August 22nd, 2025 – Self Release]
There’s music for every vibe.1 The one Defacement fits is an exclusively extreme metal flavor of moody that is only appreciable by genre fans, made tangibly more eerie by their persistent idiosyncratic use of dark ambient interludes amidst the viciously distorted blackened death. Audiences—and reviewers—tend to disparage these electronic segments, but I’ve always felt their crackling presence increases the analog horror of it all, and rather than being a breather from the intensity, they prolong the nausea, the sense of emptiness, and the abject fearfulness of head-based trauma. This latter concept grows more metaphorical still on Doomed, where the violence is inside the mind, purpose-erasing, and emotionally-detaching. The ambience might be the most sadly beautiful so far (“Mournful,” and “Clouded” especially), and the transitions into nightmarish heaviness arguably the most fluid. And the metal is undoubtedly the most ambitious, dynamic, and magnificent of Defacement’s career, combining their most gruesome dissonance (“Portrait”) with their most bizarrely exuberant guitar melodies (“Unexplainable,” “Unrecognised”). Solos drip tangibly with (emotional) resonance (“Unexplainable,” “Absent”) and there’s not a breath or a moment of wasted space. Yes, the band’s heavier side can suffer from a nagging sense of homogeneous mass, but it remains transporting. While I can appreciate why others do not appreciate Defacement, this is the first of their outings I can truthfully say mesmerised me on first listen.
ClarkKent’s Heated Hymns
Phantom Fire // Phantom Fire [August 8th, 2025 – Edged Circle Productions]
While I waded through the murky depths of the August promo sump, Steel implored me to take the eponymous third album from Phantom Fire. “The AMG commentariat love blackened heavy metal,” he said. I disregarded his advice at my peril, and while I ended up enjoying what I grabbed, it turns out this would have been solid too. Featuring members from Enslaved, Kraków. Hellbutcher, and Aeternus, Phantom Fire play old school speed metal that harks back to the likes of Motörhead and Iron Maiden’s Killers. Thanks to healthy doses of bass and production values that allow the instruments to shine, each song is infused with energetic grooves. The music sounds fresh, crisp, and clear, from the booming drums to Eld’s “blackened” snarls. Early tracks “Eternal Void” and “All For None” show off the catchy blend of simple guitar riffs and a hoppin’ bass accompanied by energetic kit work. While placing a somewhat lengthy instrumental track in the middle of a record usually slows it down, “Fatal Attraction” turns out to be a highlight. It tells a tragic love story involving a motorcycle with nothing but instruments, an engine revving, and some police sirens. The second half of Phantom Fire gets a bit on the weirder side, turning to some stoner and psychedelia. There’s a push and pull between the stoner and Motörhead speed stuff on songs like “Malphas” and “Submersible Pt. 2,” and this blend actually works pretty well. It turns out that they aren’t phantom after all—these guys are truly fire.
Burning Witches // Inquisition [August 22nd, 2025 – Napalm Records]
With six albums in eight years, Swiss quintet Burning Witches has really been burning rubber. While such prolific output in such a short time frame generally spells trouble, Inquisition is a solid piece of heavy/power metal. Burning Witches dabbles in a mix of speedy power metal and mid-tempo heavy metal, often sounding like ’80s stalwarts Judas Priest and Def Leppard. With Laura Guldemond’s gruff voice, they produce a more weighty, less happy version of power metal than the likes of Fellowship or Frozen Crown. While the songs stick to formulaic structures, tempo shifts from song to song help keep things from growing stale. We see this variety right from the get-go, where “Soul Eater” takes a high-energy approach before moving into the more mellow “Shame.” There’s even a pretty solid ballad, “Release Me,” that grounds the back half of the record. Songs of the sort that Burning Witches write need catchy choruses, and fortunately, they deliver. “High Priestess of the Night” is a particular standout, delivering a knock-out punch in its delivery. It helps that the instrumental parts are well-executed, from crunchy riffs to subdued solos to booming blast beats. Anyone looking for a solid bit of power metal that’s not too heavy on the cheese will find this worth a listen.
Deathhammer // Crimson Dawn [August 29th, 2025 – Hells Headbangers Records]
Celebrating 20 years of blackened speed, Deathhammer drop LP number six with the kind of energy that exhausted parents dread to see in their children at bedtime. This is my first foray with the band, and I am in awe of the relentless level of manic energy they keep throughout Crimson Dawn’s 39 minutes. If science could learn how to harness their energy, we’d have an endless source of renewables. The two-piece out of Norway channels classic Slayer on crack and even has moments reminiscent of Painkiller-era Judas Priest. They play non-stop thrash cranked to 11, with persistent blast beats and some dual guitar parts that leave your head spinning from the rapid-fire directions the riffs fire off in. The heart of the mania is singer Sergeant Salsten. His crazed vocals are amazing—snarling, shouting, and shrieking in a way that took me back to the manic pitch Judge Doom could reach in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? He sings so fast that on the chorus of “Crimson Dawn,” it sounds like he says “Griffindor,” which had me searching confusedly for the Harry Potter tag. This was probably my favorite song, not just because of the Griffindor thing, but because that chorus is so catchy. Either way, it’s tough to pick a standout track because they all grip you by the throat and don’t let go. Crimson Dawn is a ton of fun and a must listen if you like your music fast.
Grin Reaper’s Bountiful Blight
Kallias // Digital Plague [August 14th, 2025 – Self Release]
Machine gun drumming, spacey synths, Morbid Angel-meets-Meshuggah riffing, Turian-esque barking and Voyager-reminiscent vocal melodies…what the fuck is going on here? The only thing more surprising than someone having the moxie to blend all these things together is how well they work in concert. Kallias doesn’t hold back on sophomore album Digital Plague, and the result is a rocket-fueled blast through forty-four minutes of eclectic, addictive prog. The mishmash of styles keeps the album fresh and unpredictable while never dipping its toes in inconsistent waters, and staccato rhythms propel listeners through eight tracks without losing steam. As with any prog metal worth its salt, Kallias brandishes technical prowess, and their cohesion belies the relatively short time they’ve been putting out music.2 The mix is well-suited to spotlight whoever needs it at a given time, whether the bass is purring (“Exogíini Kyriarchía”), the drums are being annihilated (“Pyrrhic Victory”), or a guitar solo nears Pettrucian wankery (“Phenomenal in Theory”). The end result is three-quarters of an hour filled with myriad influences that fuse into a sound all Kallias’s own, and it’s one I’ve returned to several times since discovering (also, credit to MontDoom for his stunning artwork, which helped initially draw my attention). Check it out—you’ll be sick if you avoid this one like the Plague.
Luke’s Kaleidoscopic Kicks
Giant Haze // Cosmic Mother [August 22nd, 2025 – Tonzonen Records]
Whereas many of my colleagues are bracing themselves for cooler conditions and harsh winters to come, in my neck of the woods, things are warming up. While my own wintry August filter proved scarce, there was one particular summery gem to lift moods with burly riffs and fat stoner grooves. Unheralded German act Giant Haze seemingly emerged out of nowhere during a random Bandcamp deep dive. Debut LP Cosmic Mother channels the good old days of ’90s-inspired desert rock, featuring grungy, doomy vibes via a groovy batch of riff-centric, hard-rocking and uplifting jams, evoking the nostalgic spirit of Kyuss, Fu Manchu, Clutch and perhaps even a dash of Danzig. Punching out raucous, groove-soaked hard rockers with skyscraping hooks (“Geographic Gardens Suck,” “King of Tomorrow,” “Panic to Ride”), summery, funk–psych jams (“Sunrise”), and bluesy, punk-infused fireballs (“Crank in Public,” “Shrink Age”) Giant Haze get a lot of things right on this assured debut. The songwriting is deceptively diverse and punchy, bolstered by solid production, tight musicianship, and the swaggering, ever so slightly goofy vocal charms and powerful hooks of frontman Christoph Wollmann. Inevitably, a few rough spots appear, but overall Cosmic Mother showcases oodles of budding potential, an impactful delivery, cheeky sense of humor, and infectious, feel-good songcraft.
Spicie Forrest’s Foraged Fruit
Bask // The Turning [August 22nd, 2025 – Season of Mist]
Last seen in 2019, Bask returns with fourth LP, The Turning, a concept album following The Rider as she and The Traveler traverse the stars. They still peddle the unique blend of stoner rock and Americana Kenstrosity reviewed favorably in 2019, but 2025 sees them looking up for inspiration. The Turning incorporates a distinct cosmic bent (“The Traveler,” “The Turning”) and post-rock structures (“Dig My Heels,” “Unwound”). These augmentations to Bask’s core sound are enhanced by the masterful pedal steel of new official member Jed Willis. Whether floating through the firmament or tilling earthly pastures, Willis creates textures both fresh and intensely nostalgic. The infinite shifting vistas of The Turning’s front half coalesce into singular timeless visions on the back half, supporting its conceptual nature in both content and form. Like a combination of Huntsmen and Somali Yacht Club, Bask weaves riffs and melodies heard across the plains and through the void above with an unguarded authenticity felt in your soul.
Dolphin Whisperer’s Disseminating Discharge
Plasmodulated // An Ocean ov Putrid, Stinky, Vile, Disgusting Hell [August 1st, 2025 – Personal Records]
Stinky, sticky, slimy—all adjectives that define the ideal death metal platter. Myk Colby has been trying to chase this perfect balance in a reverb-wonky package with projects like the d-beaten Hot Graves and extra hazy Wharflurch, but vile death metal balance is hard to achieve. However, An Ocean ov Putrid, Stinky, Vile, Disgusting Hell contains a recklessly pinched Demilichian riffage, classic piercing whammy bombs, and spook-minded synth ambience that places Plasmodulated with an odor more pungent than its peers. With an infected ear that festers equally with doom-loaded, Incantation-indebted drags (“Gelatinous Mutation ov Brewed Origin,” “Trapped in the Plasmovoid”) and Voivod-on-jenkem cutaways to foul-throated extravagence (“The Final Fuckening”). An air of intelligent tempo design keeps An Ocean from never feeling trapped in a maze of its own fumes, with Colby’s lush and bubbling synth design seguing tumbles into hammering deathly tremolo runs (“Such Rapid Sphacelation”) and Celtic Frosted riff tumbles (“Drowning in Sputum”) alike, all before swirling about his own tattered, trailing vocal sputters. Steady but slippery, elegant yet effluvial, An Ocean ov Putrid, Stinky, Vile, Disgusting Hell provides the necessary noxious pressure to corrode death metal-loving denizens into pure gloops of stained-denim pit worship. Delivered as labeled, Plasmodulated earns its hazardous declaration. We here at AMG are not liable for any OSHA violations that occur as a result of Plasmodulated consumption on the job, though.
#2025 #Aeternus #AmericanMetal #Americana #AnOceanOvPutridStinkyVileDisgustingHell #Aug25 #Bask #BlackMetal #BlackenedDeathMetal #BurningWitches #CelestialTwilightBeyondTheCrimsonVeil #CelticFrost #Clutch #CosmicMother #CrimsonDawn #Danzig #DarkAmbient #DeathMetal #Deathhammer #DefLeppard #Defacement #Demilich #DigitalPlague #Doomed #DryDrunk #DutchMetal #EdgedCircleProductions #Emperor #Enslaved #Fellship #FinnishMetal #FrozenCrown #FuManchu #GermanMetal #GiantHaze #Glassing #Hardcore #HeavyMetal #Hellbutcher #HellsHeadbangersRecords #HotGraves #Huntsmen #Incantation #Inquisition #IronMaiden #JudasPriest #Kallias #Kraków #Kyuss #MelodicBlackMetal #Meshuggah #MoonlightSorcery #MorbidAngel #Motörhead #NapalmRecords #NorwegianMetal #OldNick #PersonalRecords #PhantomFire #Plasmodulated #PowerMetal #ProgressiveDeathMetal #RawBlackMetal #Review #Reviews #SelfRelease #SilentMillenia #Slayer #Sludge #SludgeMetal #SomaliYachtClub #SpeedMetal #StonerRock #Stormkeep #StreetSects #StuckInTheFilter #StuckInTheFilter2025 #SwissMetal #SymphonicBlackMetal #TechnicalDeathMetal #TheTurning #TonzonenRecords #Turian #Voivod #Voyager #Wharflurch
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Stuck in the Filter: August 2025’s Angry Misses
By Kenstrosity
The heat persists, but now the humidity comes in full force as storm systems wreak havoc upon the coasts. I hide in my cramped closet of an office, lest I be washed out once again by an unsuspecting deluge. However, I still send my minions out into the facility, bound by duty to search for those metallic scraps on which we feast.
Fortuitously, most all of those imps I sent out came back alive, and with wares! BEHOLD!
Kenstrosity’s Galactic Gremlin
Silent Millenia // Celestial Twilight: Beyond the Crimson Veil [August 26th, 2025 – Self-Release]
Have you ever seen such a delightfully cheesy cover? Probably, but it’s been a while for me. I bought Celestial Twilight: Beyond the Crimson Veil, the second raw symphonic black metal opus from Finnish one-man act Silent Millenia, on the strength of the artwork alone. Little did I know that what lay beyond this crimson veil was some of the most fun melodic black metal this side of Moonlight Sorcery. The same low-fi roughness that personifies Old Nick’s work grounds Silent Millenia’s starbound songwriting as it traverses the universe with an energetic punch reminiscent of Emperor or Stormkeep (“Awaken the Celestial Spell,” “Daemonic Mastery”). To help differentiate Silent Millenia’s sound from that of their peers, a gothic atmosphere ensorcells much of this material to great effect, merging eerie Victorian melodies with galactic adventurism in an unlikely pair (“Enthrone the Spectral”). Swirling synths and sparkling twinkles abound as well, creating blissful moments of interest as frosty tremolos and piercing blasts take full advantage of the false sense of security those entrancing clouds of synthetic instrumentation create (“Benighted Path to Darkness Mysterium,” “Reign in Cosmic Majesty”). Simply put, Celestial Twilight is an unexpected gem of a symphonic black metal record, bursting with killer ideas and infinite levels of raw, unabashed fun. You should hear it!
Kronos’ Unexpected Unearthments
Street Sects // Dry Drunk [August 15th, 2025 – Self Release]
Dry Drunk sticks to your inner surfaces, draining down like cigarette tar along paralyzed cilia to pool in your lungs until the cells themselves foment rebellion. Once it’s in you, you feel paranoid, wretched, and alone. So it’s the proper follow-up to Street Sects’ visionary debut, End Position. Like that record, Dry Drunk plumbs the most mundane and unsavory gutters of America for a cast of protagonists that it dwells in or dispatches with a mixture of pity and disgust, with vocalist Leo Ashline narrating their violent crimes and self-hatred in a mixture of croons, shrieks, and snarls that cook the air before the speakers into the scent of booze and rotten teeth. And like that record, Shaun Ringsmuth (Glassing) dresses the sets with a fractal litter of snaps, squeals, crashes, gunshots, and grinding electronics, caked in tar and collapsing just as soon as it is swept into a structure. And like End Position, Dry Drunk is a masterpiece. The impeccable six-song stretch from “Love Makes You Fat” through “Riding the Clock” ties you to the bumper and drags you along some of the duo’s most creative side-roads, through the simmering, straightjacketed sludge of “Baker Act” to the chopped-up, smirking electronica of “Eject Button.” Swerving between addled, unintelligible agony and unforgettable anthems, Dry Drunk, like End Position before it is nothing less than the life of a junkie scraped together, heated on a spoon, and injected into your head. Once you’ve taken a hit, you will never be quite the same.
Thus Spoke’s Frightening Fragments
Defacement // Doomed [August 22nd, 2025 – Self Release]
There’s music for every vibe.1 The one Defacement fits is an exclusively extreme metal flavor of moody that is only appreciable by genre fans, made tangibly more eerie by their persistent idiosyncratic use of dark ambient interludes amidst the viciously distorted blackened death. Audiences—and reviewers—tend to disparage these electronic segments, but I’ve always felt their crackling presence increases the analog horror of it all, and rather than being a breather from the intensity, they prolong the nausea, the sense of emptiness, and the abject fearfulness of head-based trauma. This latter concept grows more metaphorical still on Doomed, where the violence is inside the mind, purpose-erasing, and emotionally-detaching. The ambience might be the most sadly beautiful so far (“Mournful,” and “Clouded” especially), and the transitions into nightmarish heaviness arguably the most fluid. And the metal is undoubtedly the most ambitious, dynamic, and magnificent of Defacement’s career, combining their most gruesome dissonance (“Portrait”) with their most bizarrely exuberant guitar melodies (“Unexplainable,” “Unrecognised”). Solos drip tangibly with (emotional) resonance (“Unexplainable,” “Absent”) and there’s not a breath or a moment of wasted space. Yes, the band’s heavier side can suffer from a nagging sense of homogeneous mass, but it remains transporting. While I can appreciate why others do not appreciate Defacement, this is the first of their outings I can truthfully say mesmerised me on first listen.
ClarkKent’s Heated Hymns
Phantom Fire // Phantom Fire [August 8th, 2025 – Edged Circle Productions]
While I waded through the murky depths of the August promo sump, Steel implored me to take the eponymous third album from Phantom Fire. “The AMG commentariat love blackened heavy metal,” he said. I disregarded his advice at my peril, and while I ended up enjoying what I grabbed, it turns out this would have been solid too. Featuring members from Enslaved, Kraków. Hellbutcher, and Aeternus, Phantom Fire play old school speed metal that harks back to the likes of Motörhead and Iron Maiden’s Killers. Thanks to healthy doses of bass and production values that allow the instruments to shine, each song is infused with energetic grooves. The music sounds fresh, crisp, and clear, from the booming drums to Eld’s “blackened” snarls. Early tracks “Eternal Void” and “All For None” show off the catchy blend of simple guitar riffs and a hoppin’ bass accompanied by energetic kit work. While placing a somewhat lengthy instrumental track in the middle of a record usually slows it down, “Fatal Attraction” turns out to be a highlight. It tells a tragic love story involving a motorcycle with nothing but instruments, an engine revving, and some police sirens. The second half of Phantom Fire gets a bit on the weirder side, turning to some stoner and psychedelia. There’s a push and pull between the stoner and Motörhead speed stuff on songs like “Malphas” and “Submersible Pt. 2,” and this blend actually works pretty well. It turns out that they aren’t phantom after all—these guys are truly fire.
Burning Witches // Inquisition [August 22nd, 2025 – Napalm Records]
With six albums in eight years, Swiss quintet Burning Witches has really been burning rubber. While such prolific output in such a short time frame generally spells trouble, Inquisition is a solid piece of heavy/power metal. Burning Witches dabbles in a mix of speedy power metal and mid-tempo heavy metal, often sounding like ’80s stalwarts Judas Priest and Def Leppard. With Laura Guldemond’s gruff voice, they produce a more weighty, less happy version of power metal than the likes of Fellowship or Frozen Crown. While the songs stick to formulaic structures, tempo shifts from song to song help keep things from growing stale. We see this variety right from the get-go, where “Soul Eater” takes a high-energy approach before moving into the more mellow “Shame.” There’s even a pretty solid ballad, “Release Me,” that grounds the back half of the record. Songs of the sort that Burning Witches write need catchy choruses, and fortunately, they deliver. “High Priestess of the Night” is a particular standout, delivering a knock-out punch in its delivery. It helps that the instrumental parts are well-executed, from crunchy riffs to subdued solos to booming blast beats. Anyone looking for a solid bit of power metal that’s not too heavy on the cheese will find this worth a listen.
Deathhammer // Crimson Dawn [August 29th, 2025 – Hells Headbangers Records]
Celebrating 20 years of blackened speed, Deathhammer drop LP number six with the kind of energy that exhausted parents dread to see in their children at bedtime. This is my first foray with the band, and I am in awe of the relentless level of manic energy they keep throughout Crimson Dawn’s 39 minutes. If science could learn how to harness their energy, we’d have an endless source of renewables. The two-piece out of Norway channels classic Slayer on crack and even has moments reminiscent of Painkiller-era Judas Priest. They play non-stop thrash cranked to 11, with persistent blast beats and some dual guitar parts that leave your head spinning from the rapid-fire directions the riffs fire off in. The heart of the mania is singer Sergeant Salsten. His crazed vocals are amazing—snarling, shouting, and shrieking in a way that took me back to the manic pitch Judge Doom could reach in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? He sings so fast that on the chorus of “Crimson Dawn,” it sounds like he says “Griffindor,” which had me searching confusedly for the Harry Potter tag. This was probably my favorite song, not just because of the Griffindor thing, but because that chorus is so catchy. Either way, it’s tough to pick a standout track because they all grip you by the throat and don’t let go. Crimson Dawn is a ton of fun and a must listen if you like your music fast.
Grin Reaper’s Bountiful Blight
Kallias // Digital Plague [August 14th, 2025 – Self Release]
Machine gun drumming, spacey synths, Morbid Angel-meets-Meshuggah riffing, Turian-esque barking and Voyager-reminiscent vocal melodies…what the fuck is going on here? The only thing more surprising than someone having the moxie to blend all these things together is how well they work in concert. Kallias doesn’t hold back on sophomore album Digital Plague, and the result is a rocket-fueled blast through forty-four minutes of eclectic, addictive prog. The mishmash of styles keeps the album fresh and unpredictable while never dipping its toes in inconsistent waters, and staccato rhythms propel listeners through eight tracks without losing steam. As with any prog metal worth its salt, Kallias brandishes technical prowess, and their cohesion belies the relatively short time they’ve been putting out music.2 The mix is well-suited to spotlight whoever needs it at a given time, whether the bass is purring (“Exogíini Kyriarchía”), the drums are being annihilated (“Pyrrhic Victory”), or a guitar solo nears Pettrucian wankery (“Phenomenal in Theory”). The end result is three-quarters of an hour filled with myriad influences that fuse into a sound all Kallias’s own, and it’s one I’ve returned to several times since discovering (also, credit to MontDoom for his stunning artwork, which helped initially draw my attention). Check it out—you’ll be sick if you avoid this one like the Plague.
Luke’s Kaleidoscopic Kicks
Giant Haze // Cosmic Mother [August 22nd, 2025 – Tonzonen Records]
Whereas many of my colleagues are bracing themselves for cooler conditions and harsh winters to come, in my neck of the woods, things are warming up. While my own wintry August filter proved scarce, there was one particular summery gem to lift moods with burly riffs and fat stoner grooves. Unheralded German act Giant Haze seemingly emerged out of nowhere during a random Bandcamp deep dive. Debut LP Cosmic Mother channels the good old days of ’90s-inspired desert rock, featuring grungy, doomy vibes via a groovy batch of riff-centric, hard-rocking and uplifting jams, evoking the nostalgic spirit of Kyuss, Fu Manchu, Clutch and perhaps even a dash of Danzig. Punching out raucous, groove-soaked hard rockers with skyscraping hooks (“Geographic Gardens Suck,” “King of Tomorrow,” “Panic to Ride”), summery, funk–psych jams (“Sunrise”), and bluesy, punk-infused fireballs (“Crank in Public,” “Shrink Age”) Giant Haze get a lot of things right on this assured debut. The songwriting is deceptively diverse and punchy, bolstered by solid production, tight musicianship, and the swaggering, ever so slightly goofy vocal charms and powerful hooks of frontman Christoph Wollmann. Inevitably, a few rough spots appear, but overall Cosmic Mother showcases oodles of budding potential, an impactful delivery, cheeky sense of humor, and infectious, feel-good songcraft.
Spicie Forrest’s Foraged Fruit
Bask // The Turning [August 22nd, 2025 – Season of Mist]
Last seen in 2019, Bask returns with fourth LP, The Turning, a concept album following The Rider as she and The Traveler traverse the stars. They still peddle the unique blend of stoner rock and Americana Kenstrosity reviewed favorably in 2019, but 2025 sees them looking up for inspiration. The Turning incorporates a distinct cosmic bent (“The Traveler,” “The Turning”) and post-rock structures (“Dig My Heels,” “Unwound”). These augmentations to Bask’s core sound are enhanced by the masterful pedal steel of new official member Jed Willis. Whether floating through the firmament or tilling earthly pastures, Willis creates textures both fresh and intensely nostalgic. The infinite shifting vistas of The Turning’s front half coalesce into singular timeless visions on the back half, supporting its conceptual nature in both content and form. Like a combination of Huntsmen and Somali Yacht Club, Bask weaves riffs and melodies heard across the plains and through the void above with an unguarded authenticity felt in your soul.
Dolphin Whisperer’s Disseminating Discharge
Plasmodulated // An Ocean ov Putrid, Stinky, Vile, Disgusting Hell [August 1st, 2025 – Personal Records]
Stinky, sticky, slimy—all adjectives that define the ideal death metal platter. Myk Colby has been trying to chase this perfect balance in a reverb-wonky package with projects like the d-beaten Hot Graves and extra hazy Wharflurch, but vile death metal balance is hard to achieve. However, An Ocean ov Putrid, Stinky, Vile, Disgusting Hell contains a recklessly pinched Demilichian riffage, classic piercing whammy bombs, and spook-minded synth ambience that places Plasmodulated with an odor more pungent than its peers. With an infected ear that festers equally with doom-loaded, Incantation-indebted drags (“Gelatinous Mutation ov Brewed Origin,” “Trapped in the Plasmovoid”) and Voivod-on-jenkem cutaways to foul-throated extravagence (“The Final Fuckening”). An air of intelligent tempo design keeps An Ocean from never feeling trapped in a maze of its own fumes, with Colby’s lush and bubbling synth design seguing tumbles into hammering deathly tremolo runs (“Such Rapid Sphacelation”) and Celtic Frosted riff tumbles (“Drowning in Sputum”) alike, all before swirling about his own tattered, trailing vocal sputters. Steady but slippery, elegant yet effluvial, An Ocean ov Putrid, Stinky, Vile, Disgusting Hell provides the necessary noxious pressure to corrode death metal-loving denizens into pure gloops of stained-denim pit worship. Delivered as labeled, Plasmodulated earns its hazardous declaration. We here at AMG are not liable for any OSHA violations that occur as a result of Plasmodulated consumption on the job, though.
#2025 #Aeternus #AmericanMetal #Americana #AnOceanOvPutridStinkyVileDisgustingHell #Aug25 #Bask #BlackMetal #BlackenedDeathMetal #BurningWitches #CelestialTwilightBeyondTheCrimsonVeil #CelticFrost #Clutch #CosmicMother #CrimsonDawn #Danzig #DarkAmbient #DeathMetal #Deathhammer #DefLeppard #Defacement #Demilich #DigitalPlague #Doomed #DryDrunk #DutchMetal #EdgedCircleProductions #Emperor #Enslaved #Fellship #FinnishMetal #FrozenCrown #FuManchu #GermanMetal #GiantHaze #Glassing #Hardcore #HeavyMetal #Hellbutcher #HellsHeadbangersRecords #HotGraves #Huntsmen #Incantation #Inquisition #IronMaiden #JudasPriest #Kallias #Kraków #Kyuss #MelodicBlackMetal #Meshuggah #MoonlightSorcery #MorbidAngel #Motörhead #NapalmRecords #NorwegianMetal #OldNick #PersonalRecords #PhantomFire #Plasmodulated #PowerMetal #ProgressiveDeathMetal #RawBlackMetal #Review #Reviews #SelfRelease #SilentMillenia #Slayer #Sludge #SludgeMetal #SomaliYachtClub #SpeedMetal #StonerRock #Stormkeep #StreetSects #StuckInTheFilter #StuckInTheFilter2025 #SwissMetal #SymphonicBlackMetal #TechnicalDeathMetal #TheTurning #TonzonenRecords #Turian #Voivod #Voyager #Wharflurch
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O elemento que me fascina na feira da ladra é a capacidade daquela tralha toda gerar bizarras associações de significado. Onde mais se cruzaria o camarada armaldo com capas porno-cheesy de discos?
Também há o de quando em vez encontrar coisas interessantes no meio dos livros, mas isso, é outra conversa. #random #lisbon #lisbonlovers #lisboa
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Today's #BowieADay album is Reality (2003). The standout for me: "Bring Me the Disco King". The track was 1st recorded during the BTWN sessions, originally a cheesy number that didn't fit the album. The 2nd version was from the Earthling sessions, "muscular" with a "pulsating, Kraftwerk-style synth groove". But the 1st version that was actually released was a remix on the Underworld soundtrack (2003), w/Danny Lohner, Maynard James Keenan, John Frusciante, et al.
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Today's #BowieADay album is Reality (2003). The standout for me: "Bring Me the Disco King". The track was 1st recorded during the BTWN sessions, originally a cheesy number that didn't fit the album. The 2nd version was from the Earthling sessions, "muscular" with a "pulsating, Kraftwerk-style synth groove". But the 1st version that was actually released was a remix on the Underworld soundtrack (2003), w/Danny Lohner, Maynard James Keenan, John Frusciante, et al.
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Just five simple ingredients make these homemade cheese straws irresistibly easy and addictive.
This Southern classic delivers big flavor with minimal effort—discover the secret to the perfect cheesy bite.
#CheeseLover
#Appetizer
#SouthernFood
#Recipes https://cookingbride.com/appetizers/homemade-cheese-straws/ -
Dark Ages: WHEN AND WHY SCIENCE GOES IN REVERSE
The logic of scientific discovery is not just a matter of curiosity or history. It’s also a matter of logic: finding what was found first, because it is often what is the most apparent and obvious. Thus studying the history of science has a pedagogical aspect.
But not just that: often the logic of discovery has been obscured and one of the reasons has been to dissimulate how clever and “scientific”, or technological people could be in the past [1]. It has also obscured how the several Dark Ages we know of happened. In the Dark Age which terminated the Bronze Age, the savagery got so intense that writing was lost to the point that the old writing systems disappeared (the Phoenician alphabet, which gave rise to the Greek alphabet, did not derive from Cretan alphabets; it was derived from something else 1000 year old).
So by studying how and why science got destroyed, one can study forces to that effect… They keep on coming back…
***
The Loss Of Ancient Science Was Astounding:
Examples are the discovery that the Earth was round and correct computation of its size (Phyteas of Marseilles, an explorer who may have got to Iceland; generations later, Eratosthenes). Much of that knowledge like the rest of Greco-Roman science was erased by Christian Terror and Obscurantism… Itself propelled and engineered by obscurantist plutocracy, precisely to create unreason and stupidification.
Thus the Ankyterea mechanism, a very sophisticated mechanical computer, or the start of infinitesimal calculus or Aristarchus of Samos’ heliocentric arguments… The argument, relaunched by Buridan around 1340 CE, that the Sun was gigantic and thus ought to be the one turned around, was pretty obvious: after computing the distance of the Moon from Earth’s shadow, studying the terminator of the Moon, the Greeks knew the Sun was at least three million kilometers away and thus much bigger… Also Greece earned a lot of income by breeding better animals thus knowing about selection…
***
Science was destroyed by Christianism and its plutocratic sponsors to create the meta-worship of unreason: if one venerates unreason, one may as well believe that there is more wisdom in One-man rule, rather than in debate…. Thus “Orthodox Catholicism” was translated into the worship of the Emperor/Monarch, representative of the great Dog barking from Heaven.
Buridan and other top intellectuals, and the science and mathematics they produced, and that includes the geometric calculus which Newton would use, were condemned. more than a century after Buridan’s death, when the French King Louis XI, Europe’s most powerful monarch, made an alliance with the Pope. This holy alliance of fiends had long term consequences, like sending to be burned alive many thinkers, including the medical doctor who discovered blood circulation, Servet… Who was burned alive very slowly, over several hours in Geneva, by the always very attentionate fanatic, a French lawyer called Calvin, Geneva’s tyrant, whom the abuse of God had rendered completely insane and amazingly vicious…
Fortunately, the complete fall in the Dark Ages was avoided in the Sixteenth Century: several of the monarchs in power were not too enarmored by the existing order and kept their distances from the Pope (Charles Quint, Henry VIII, Henri III, Henri IV)… Technological superiority won wars and thus science was well received by the powers that be. Rome under Emperor Vespasian (circa 70 CE) could afford to despise the advancement of technology… But Elizabeth I could not because her sea captains had to be the best in the best ships, lest the Great Armada took Britain over… While Basque fishermen had long learned to discreet about the abundant cod and right whales off Newfoundland…
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Later science was diverted to cultivate nationalism or ethnicism. The numeral system, launched by the Greeks and amplified by Indians, who added the crucial zero was called an “Arab” invention generally in conjunction with singing the praises of Islam. However the transmission and amplification (if any) was due to a Central Asian, Al-Khwarizmi in the House Of Wisdom… the House of Wisdom in Baghdad which one can euphemistically describe as the good side of Islam (Mahomet advocated for science at some point; something Christ never did to my knowledge).
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A Striking Example of Historical Disinformation Is to Stamp Mechanics WithThe Label “Newton”:
Nearly all Newton’s laws were discovered before Newton, three of them by French physicists (horror!). Ishmael Bullaldius/Boulliaut, a French priest (with now a crater on the Moon), discovered the Gravitation Law, and the proof of F = ma for gravitation is in Buridan, three centuries earlier (I read it verbatim; In Buridan Axiomatics, F = ma is a theorem…). BTW, Newton himself argued that in his dispute with Hooke… “I saw further because I was standing on the shoulders of giants… “ a famous quote from Bernard of Chartres, who died in 1124 CE, 550 years before Newton… Which Newton used tongue in cheek… While discreetly insulting the dwarfy Hooke…
Not to say Newton was not great. He was! His proofs of how various axioms of mechanics implied each other was crucial.However, it’s Buridan who found momentum, three centuries before Newton and F = m dv/dt…
And look at Émilie du Châtelet: long considered, even in France, just as Voltaire’s girlfriend.. She was more important than him! But that was ignored because she was a woman (who decided to dress like a man to be taken seriously…) Émilie, translating Newton from Latin to French, realized that Newton had confused momentum and energy. She did not just translate: she redid Newton’s math, chapter by chapter and added supplements, for example on tides, or on Earth’s inclination (her translation is still the copy of Newton in French in 2026, BTW)
All of this is of great contemporary interest: In Europe the partisans of “degrowth” succeeded to make “degrowth” official European policy in many countries (for example Elizabeth Bornes, French PM, wanted to reduce French electric consommation by 35% by 20235, while turning everything electric). That grotesque and anti-civilizational, even anti-humanistic policy of degrowth is now increasingly contested, as it is becoming ever more obvious that Europe is losing AGENCY.
Thus the partisans of degrowth, cornered like the antihumanists they are, now want to double up on their evil scheme and advocate outright “DESCIENCE”. An immediate battle is the FCC, the Future Circular Collider in the greater Geneva area, a new extension of CERN. This is to study high energy physics, the architecture of nature, and it costs peanuts relative to the handbag industry in France alone…
The truth is that, without much more advanced science, most of the present world’s population will have to vanish, because the present technologies are unsustainable in many different ways…
Who found what, when and how shows us how to inquire. It’s a must, not just to figure things out, and to learn how to figure things out, but also because, if we don’t, civilization may well die, and not nicely…. This is what the epidemics of unreason and de-science in the past have shown, and what we must study, including the Maya collapse…
To explain civilizational collapse, one generally look at Inequality. However, the Inequality is the fruit of a Plutocracy, and the Plutocracy, as its name indicates, uses evil ways to stay in power: removing agency in those over whom Plutocracy exert its power is crucial. That is best implemented not by using physical chains, but mental chains. Hence Plutocracies tend to stupidify their subjects. And how to do this? By implementing de-science!
Patrice Ayme
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BURIDAN: MOMENTUM, FORCE, INERTIA, F = MA, MIDDLE AGES…
https://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2016/03/20/momentum-force-inertia-middle-ages-buridan/
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[1] And this happens also in a granular fashion. When general Vespasian succeeded, after the year of the four emperors, to Nero, he abandoned or demolished several of Nero’s technological projects (like the hydropower revolving restaurant, or the giant canal projects). Vespasian actively discouraged the advancement of engineering… To save jobs, he said, the same old argument which has resurfaced with AI. After Vespasian, there are no quarrels on advancing technology: that’s abandoned. It’s in Gaul that mechanical harvesters would be used while in Italy, slaves laboring in giant latifundia would be preferred. The former explains why Gaul became the power of the future and Italy would never recover all the way to Mussolini… So a grain of degrowth, de-science and de-tech like Vespasian can bring an entire state, here the Roman state to fall…
She found energy, infrared… What did Newton find?
#Civilization #Collapse #DarkAges #DeScience #Degrowth #HistoryOfScience #plutocracy #Religion #Science #Unreason -
Mocking conventions from an armchair
The legendary island of Friesland, located east of GreenlandThe Tough Guide to Fantasyland by Diana Wynne Jones.
Vista, 1996.Discover the laws
governing fantasy worlds.
Beware tongues in cheeks.Helpful tips for travellers to Fantasyland by the late great Diana Wynne Jones, from which I draw a number of conclusions:
(1) Get immunised by reading a wide range of fantasy, both good and bad: you never know what bugs you will be exposed to in Fantasyland.
(2) Remember to have an up-to-date passport: you’ll need either your own unread fantasy novel (preferably with your own bookplate stuck in the front) or a library book with plenty of entry/exit stamps from previous travellers’ visits.
(3) Obtain a visa (a credit card receipt for a fantasy book from your local bookseller will do).
(4) Have the correct currency ready (any bronze, silver or gold coins will do, so long as it makes a nice clinking sound in your purse).
(5) Finally, don’t forget to pack the Tough Guide: you’ll be lost without it. The author has travelled widely in Fantasyland, knows the terrain intimately and generously shares her insights into its attractions, peculiarities, geography and distinct cultures.Oh, and don’t speak to any strangers down dark alleyways…
Fantasy World Map (credit: http://freefantasymaps.org/The Tough Guide is a lovely send-up of both the swords-and-sorcery genre and the Rough Guide series of travel books, gently mocking the conventions of the fantasy tome with its maps and symbol-filled book margins along with the places, personages and magic objects that fill the pages of many a Tolkien-inspired title or Dungeons-and-Dragons handbook. Full of truisms that hit you with the shock of recognition, you may find it hard to ever look at a fantasy book the same way again. The Dark Lord of Derkholm and Year of the Griffin, though not sequels as such, follow on from the premise of this book, even to the extent of including one or two geographical sites featured on the map, such as Gna’ash and the Dark Lord’s Citadel.
Not a book to read in one go (it would certainly give me indigestion), the Tough Guide is wonderful to dip into if you’re in need of a grin, a chuckle or even the occasional guffaw, safe in the confines your own armchair.
First published 22nd November 2012, now reposted for #MarchMagics2026. A review of a newer edition appears next.
#dianaWynneJones #fantasy #Fantasyland #MarchMagics2026 #parody #spoof #TheToughGuideToFantasyland -
Mocking conventions from an armchair
The legendary island of Friesland, located east of GreenlandThe Tough Guide to Fantasyland by Diana Wynne Jones.
Vista, 1996.Discover the laws
governing fantasy worlds.
Beware tongues in cheeks.Helpful tips for travellers to Fantasyland by the late great Diana Wynne Jones, from which I draw a number of conclusions:
(1) Get immunised by reading a wide range of fantasy, both good and bad: you never know what bugs you will be exposed to in Fantasyland.
(2) Remember to have an up-to-date passport: you’ll need either your own unread fantasy novel (preferably with your own bookplate stuck in the front) or a library book with plenty of entry/exit stamps from previous travellers’ visits.
(3) Obtain a visa (a credit card receipt for a fantasy book from your local bookseller will do).
(4) Have the correct currency ready (any bronze, silver or gold coins will do, so long as it makes a nice clinking sound in your purse).
(5) Finally, don’t forget to pack the Tough Guide: you’ll be lost without it. The author has travelled widely in Fantasyland, knows the terrain intimately and generously shares her insights into its attractions, peculiarities, geography and distinct cultures.Oh, and don’t speak to any strangers down dark alleyways…
Fantasy World Map (credit: http://freefantasymaps.org/The Tough Guide is a lovely send-up of both the swords-and-sorcery genre and the Rough Guide series of travel books, gently mocking the conventions of the fantasy tome with its maps and symbol-filled book margins along with the places, personages and magic objects that fill the pages of many a Tolkien-inspired title or Dungeons-and-Dragons handbook. Full of truisms that hit you with the shock of recognition, you may find it hard to ever look at a fantasy book the same way again. The Dark Lord of Derkholm and Year of the Griffin, though not sequels as such, follow on from the premise of this book, even to the extent of including one or two geographical sites featured on the map, such as Gna’ash and the Dark Lord’s Citadel.
Not a book to read in one go (it would certainly give me indigestion), the Tough Guide is wonderful to dip into if you’re in need of a grin, a chuckle or even the occasional guffaw, safe in the confines your own armchair.
First published 22nd November 2012, now reposted for #MarchMagics2026. A review of a newer edition appears next.
#dianaWynneJones #fantasy #Fantasyland #MarchMagics2026 #parody #spoof #TheToughGuideToFantasyland -
Hmm, I just notice that Johnny Tillotson has passed away, on April 1st this year, aged 86.
A while ago I played a Greatest Hits CD of him in my car, and my mom said "hey, my elder sister used to listen to that when I was a kid!"
I didn't get that music from her, I discovered it all by myseld. Sure, in middle school my friends would laugh at me for listening to this old, cheesy stuff, but thankfully I've never paid much attention to what other people think of my taste in music.
Here's his best known song, Poetry in Motion:
#^Johnny Tillotson - Poetry In Motion
#JohnnyTillotson #PoetryInMotion #music -
Despised Icon – Shadow Work Review
By Owlswald
Widely regarded as one of the original architects of deathcore, Canada’s Despised Icon hardly needs an introduction. But just in case you’ve been living under a rock for the past two decades, here’s a brief introduction: back in 2002, when MySpace was all the rage and everyone had a friend named Tom, five dudes from Montreal dropped their debut LP, Consumed by Your Poison. Heavily influenced by the likes of Suffocation and Dying Fetus, these Canadians continued to hone their crushing sound on 2005’s The Healing Process by injecting metalcore and hardcore elements into their deathly framework. This unique formula culminated with their third LP, The Ills of Modern Man (2007)—the crown jewel of their discography that made Despised Icon deathcore royalty. The rest, they say, is history. Fast forward 18 years and, following a hiatus and three subsequent albums, the group has now readied their seventh LP, Shadow Work. So, dust off that windbreaker and lace up your best pair of New Balance kicks; it’s time to dive into Shadow Work.
In typical Despised Icon fashion, the opening title track instantly rips one’s jaw from its joints with a strong, technical launch. Leading the assault is Éric Jarrin and Ben Landreville’s signature pitch-shifted guitar squeals (a staple since 2019’s Purgatory), which, alongside rapid-fire tremolo scales, synchronize perfectly with Alex Pelletier’s blistering rhythms and Sebastien Piché’s grinding bass to fuel the album’s heavy, frenetic passages. The dual-headed vocal attack from Alex Erian and Steve Marois sounds as strong as ever, alternating raspy screams, slam-style pig squeals and hardcore chants that add a sharp, aggressive edge. Guest spots from Matthew Honeycutt (Kublai Khan TX), Scott Ian Lewis (Carnifex) and Tom Barber (Chelsea Grin) compliment Erian and Marois’ delivery but ultimately land with mixed results. Shadow Work’s powerful first half (“Shadow Work” through “The Apparition”) proves Despised Icon can still execute with the same ferocity as on past efforts. Conversely, Shadow Work’s energy wanes toward the end with formulaic pit anthems (“Obsessive Compulsive Disaster,” “Fallen Ones”) settling into a cliché hardcore spirit, though the record’s strongest material warrants repeat listens.
The first half of Shadow Work delivers a powerful blend of technical proficiency and a dash of genre experimentation before the album settles into a more formulaic hardcore groove. “Death Of An Artist” is a straight-up, drum-driven banger that introduces new wrinkles like clean vocals, dissonant high leads and a tasteful thrash and death eeriness that adds fresh flavor to Despised Icon’s well-known formula. Similarly, “The Apparition” is a relentless burner, injecting elements of symphonic death and black metal while maintaining the group’s core sound. Across the album’s succinct 37 minutes, monolithic breakdowns are plentiful—tense builds frequently give way to gut-punching beatdowns replete with fret slides (“Shadow Work”), air raid sirens (“The Apparition”) and stutter-step riffing (“Death of an Artist”), delivering a seismic release and an irresistible urge to pit.
However, Shadow Work hits a predictable wall at its midpoint, slumping into an over-reliance on tropey, Hatebreed-adjacent, inspirational anthems. Characterized by pervasive gang vocals, two-step riffs, and cheesy lyrical themes, tracks like “Fallen Ones,” “Obsessive Compulsive Disaster,” and “Reaper” feel less about pushing Despised Icon’s established deathcore boundaries and more about catering to the masses, thereby detracting from Shadow Work’s initial aggression. While Scott Ian Lewis’ gruff, thrashy vocal textures on “In Memoriam” effectively add a new element and the raucous “Omen of Misfortune” or “ContreCoeur” offer relief, Despised Icon’s heavy reliance on clichéd, tough-guy hardcore vocal cadences and themes holds Shadow Work back. For instance, lines like “From the ground up, never gave up, from the gutter to the surface” (“Reaper”) leans too far into its hardcore roots. Even the otherwise stronger early track “Over My Dead Body” is hampered by a cheesy hardcore/nu-metal feel in its bridge, its jarring cadence and Honeycutt’s yelling of “bitch” further exposing Shadow Work’s central weakness.1
Shadow Work is a good record marred by frustrating dualities. The first half unleashes the punishing, technical ferocity and syncopated slams that cement Despised Icon’s legacy as godfathers of deathcore. Yet, Shadow Work’s potential is sacrificed in the latter half, by leaning too hard on formulaic, predictable hardcore anthems. By repeatedly prioritizing comfortable clichés over their trademark sound, Despised Icon ultimately delivers an uneven album that only teases at the complete savagery fans know these legends are still more than capable of delivering.
Rating: Good
DR: 5 | Format Reviewed: 256 kbps mp3
Label: Nuclear Blast
Websites: despisedicon.com | facebook.com/despisedicon
Releases Worldwide: October 31st, 2025#2025 #30 #CanadianMetal #Carnifex #ChelseaGrin #Deathcore #DespisedIcon #Devourment #DyingFetus #Hatebreed #KublaiKhanTX #NuclearBlast #Oct25 #Review #Reviews #ShadowWork #Suffocation